Don't - Instrumental (Shoji Meguro PS2 Rock Remix) | Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aigis -The Answer-

This is the instrumental version of this track, here's the version with vocals! -    • Don't (Shoji Meguro PS2 Rock Remix) |...  

This is a cover of Don't by Ryota Kozuka, Lotus Juice and Azumi Takahashi from Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aigis -The Answer-. I have remade the track in the style of Shoji Meguro's rock battle tracks around the PS2 era of Persona and SMT games, as if this track was originally included in The Answer in Persona 3 FES.

To celebrate the release of Episode Aigis The Answer coming out today, I've decided to cover the new player advantage theme in battles: Don't. A really cool track that is very obviously composed by Ryota Kozuka after a few listens, the man has a magic touch. While using similar instruments to Shoji Meguro during the PS2 days, the song is not quite his style compositionally, so I've made some adjustments to translate things nicely. As cool as the synth pad in the background is during the verses (arguably my favourite part of the whole song) it isn't very Meguro. So I've changed that for some tremolo strings with very trebly clean guitar over the top, a la Time from P3P. The piano plugin I've used here is the same one that Meguro himself has been using since Persona 4, New York Grand Piano by Native Instruments. At the right velocities, it sounds like it was ripped right out of P4, which helps to make this cover more authentic. Initially I thought that this was the piano plugin used in P3 as well, but as @mineformer_ informed me, we currently aren't sure exactly what piano Meguro used at that time. It's believed to be Universal Soundbank Acoustic Piano, but it isn't readily available online, making this hard to verify. All in all though, not much really needed to be changed, mostly small details to match the PS2 era.

Just like with my PS2 cover of It's Going Down Now, I wanted to have a guitar solo of the main melody in here to showcase the lead tone used by Meguro during the PS2 era. For more details on how I recreated it, I'd advise checking out the description for the cover of An Honour Befitting That Name I made here:    • An Honor Befitting That Name (Shoji M...  

The vocals were somewhat tough to mix right, but not as difficult as those in It's Going Down Now. Tracks in P3R tend to have their vocals a little quieter in the mix than other songs, which makes them tough to extract and have sound clean. For this cover, I've tried to keep the vocals mixed about the same as they were in the original track.

As someone who already played through the entirety of The Answer back in Persona 3 FES, I am somewhat cautious about the new version in Reload. The original had plenty of small issues that added up over time and was much longer than it needed to be, so here's hoping that a few changes are made this time around. I have a feeling a lot of newcomers are going to be put off by The Answer this time around and will drop it pretty quickly because of its design, but who knows, maybe this will be a definite improvement. (Also am I the only one who is slightly bothered by them calling it "Episode Aigis" for the English version this time around? I get it was the name in Japanese, but wouldn't you think to just keep calling it "The Answer" for consistency's sake? Ah whatever.)

I hope you enjoy this cover!

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