VG Frequency

2K releases 12 orchestral tracks from BioShock for free

2007-08-25T06:22:00.000-05:00

BioShock is an FPS just released on the 21st on this month by 2K Games. It is a spiritual successor to System Shock 2, another FPS that was developed by Irrational Games, which was acquired by 2K Games in 2006. The game is generally regarded as being pretty cool stuff.

A limited edition of the game was released with a figurine, making-of DVD, and CD. The CD was originally supposed to be a soundtrack of the game, but instead contained three remixes of classic songs from the time period the game is supposed to take place in (and which appear in-game), arranged by Moby and Oscar the Punk: "Beyond the Sea" by Bobby Darin, "God Bless the Child" by Billie Holiday, and "Wild Little Sisters" by Brian Lovely and Paul Patterson.

However, 2K Games has just released twelve orchestral pieces from the soundtrack of the game, composed by Garry Schyman. While it's not a complete score, the twelve tracks still give you a taste of the creepy atmosphere of BioShock. You can download the music from 2K's "The Cult of Rapture" BioShock community site, or directly download it from their site through this link.

The Problem With Beginners

2007-08-24T08:41:00.000-05:00

I'm back to once again write about more or less interesting things about OCR, VGM and everything else I can think of. This time I will tell you a story about OverClocked Remix and a phenomenon known as "Beginners" or more often "n00bs" and how they could potentially take over the world with their ever-evolving talents.

When I first got in touch with OverClocked Remix I was a boy that just wanted to hear more music that was connected to what I loved. At that time Final Fantasy remixes was all I ever listened to. Slowly but surely I started to find other pieces that was highly enjoyable even thought they were NOT Final Fantasy arrangements. My eyes opened to the world of VGM arrangements. I wanted to be a part of this too.

So eventually I started trying to arrange some of that music I loved oh-so-much. Being young (It was two and a half years ago damnit) I started playing some zelda themes at my guitar. I wasn't good.. at all. But that's beside the point. The point is that I thought I was really good at that time. I hooked up with VGMix and actually got some pretty nice reviews, they made my head grow to the size of the sun and I submitted it to OverClocked Remix. Instant reject if I recall correctly. I stopped remixing video game music for one and a half years after that.

And THERE folks we have it. The problem. I often hear a promising remixer with a wip that is at least decent and often very creative. Then they submit it as soon as they've worked at the song for a week or so. It gets rejected, sometimes with a message regarding resubmission. I never see the remixer again. And this my friend is a terrible loss. You see if the remixer would have stayed, maybe got some production and arrangement tips from seasoned pros who, by the way, often are very helpful we would have a winner.

It's also because of this we have judge hate. The remixers are so sure they will get accepted, so sure they are amazing that when somebody says they're not they often go in to some kind of rage. I know I did. But in reality judges have made OverClocked Remix a better place. Most of the time they give constructive criticism that can actually help the remixer evolve. Also, try to sort the remixes after year. Starting with 2007 and moving your way backwards. Do you hear the difference? OverClocked Remix is slowly but surely going towards a better future and the quality has really improved during the years I've been listening. And if the remixers that got rejected looked back at their rejected material a couple of months after they made the song most of them realize what was wrong with the remix. Then instead of sulking, use your new found skills to make an even better remix. Keep evolving. Evolution got OverClocked Remix this far, why couldn't it get you the same distance? Everyone has to start somewhere. And believe me, #ocrwip, wip forums, asking an ocremixer or even reading some online tutorials is all for the better. Some of you has the potential to be far better than everything OCR ever has seen if you just put a little effort in it.
Now go remix! :)

PS: I did start remixing again, took a lot of advice and it was worth it. Coming soon to an OverClocked Remix front page near you.

The OneUps take over Penny Arcade Expo

2007-08-24T05:54:00.000-05:00

Ok, well in a perfect world, they'd have taken over Penny Arcade Expo. With prejudice. But as such, they're just performing. Today. I'm jealous, but we wish these bros the best, for undoubtably their biggest performance to date at Seattle's Washington State Convention & Trade Center.

When they were announced for PAX back in March, what resulted was a humungous influx of traffic to OneUp Studios and new fans for The OneUps. They look to be going stronger than ever headed into the festival where they'll be performing along with the NESkimos (also on today) and Minibosses (closing things out Saturday).

The Wingless makes the move to Pandemic Studios

2007-08-23T17:33:00.000-05:00

We don't have enough eccentrics in the game arrangement community, but truth be told John "The Wingless" Burnett could fill in for 10 of them. He's his own improv troupe, although why he isn't in The Second City is beyond me (he's auditioned with them before).

Continuing in the vein of yesterday's blog regarding Mazedude, it's good to see individuals take their hobbies and successfully run with them into the professional world. Having already made his way into the gaming industry, The Wingless recently posted of an employment change via Facebook and MySpace, announcing a move from Chicago's Midway Games as a user interface artist to Los Angeles's Pandemic Studios as a senior user interface artist this past Monday.

So those of you in the know already caught wind of this, so if this is shocking news to you, please do not think ill of me for not telling you. Either there was no good way to tell (which happens) or I just flat-out don't like you (which, while implausible, most certainly is possible).

I accepted a job with Pandemic Studios in L.A.

So I'll be moving out to Cali (Westwood, to be specific) by probably the 10th of September to start my new life between Santa Monica Beach and Hollywood. My last day at Midway Games will be August 31st, the very last trembling drop of Summer.

But in the meantime, I'll be around for at least 3 weeks and I would *love* to spend as much of my time with all of you as possible. Send me a line if you'd like to do something, and I will try my best to be with you. Also, if you've had a crush on me, but were bereft of a charming way to ask me out, now's as good a time as any :)

In any event, I will miss you all very much. Believe it or not, the hesitation to move was based largely on all the resplendent personalities I have met. I adore everything about you.

All my love and all my luck. I have more than enough to spare.

With the move, John's now in the hub of American video game development. If you've followed his website over the years, through its many core design changes and plethora of side projects, his design skills are already mutil-faceted. Will he eventually make the transition to sound design or music composition? Well, he's already got some mutual acquaintances with VGM professionals based in the area through friendships with members of OneUp Studios, so the future looks bright no matter what the angle is. We definitely wish The Wingless the best of luck as he valiantly attempts to trim the wings off of the City of Angels.

Mazedude's music featured on Capoeira Nation

2007-08-22T08:52:00.000-05:00

The members of the VGM fan arrangement community are a diverse bunch. But arguably no one stands further away from the mean than Chris "Mazedude" Getman. Not only are his sound programming and composition styles unique unto themselves, but he's got some attention-grabbing hobbies.

He's a stuntman. And he can dance while kicking your ass, because he's a disciple of capoeira. A truly lucky individual is able to mesh his hobbies with his professional life, and Mazedude has done just that yet again by providing music and video production to a website promoting instructional videos on the art of capoeira, Capoeira Nation.

Chris says, via the OC ReMix forums:

I am very proud and excited to announce the launching of a new website. It is the first of its kind - to teach the martial art of Capoeira via Instructional Videos on the Internet.

I am even more delighted to share the kickass news that I am the composer for the website, and all of their video productions. For those who are not aware, Capoeira is from Brazil, and the music that accompanies the martial art is very unique and ethnic. The vocals are in Portuguese, and the beats are performed by such instruments as the berimbau, atabaque, and pandeiro. I play each of these instruments, and am fluent in the various traditional beats and songs. However, for this project I have been given the freedom to fuse the traditional style with that of my own, and I've had just oodles of fun putting it together. :)

I invite everyone to check it out: http://www.capoeiranation.com

Even better examples can be heard in the Promo videos [...] although the timing is off slightly due to YouTube's conversion.

Enjoy the music, but furthermore, enjoy the site. If you're at all interested in learning Capoeira, but don't have any teachers near you, well, that's what this website solves!

SGX & zircon offer 3-CD sale

2007-08-21T19:46:00.000-05:00

SGX & zircon are teaming up to bring their material to the masses with a limited time sale on their electronic warez. Via CDBaby, US$15 (plus shipping & handling) will get you...

SGX's Better Than Sliced Beats

SGX's Chroma

and zircon's Antigravity

How long will said sale last? I've got no idea, those cryptic bastards! Check out the free previews and hook it up soon, because as zircon says, "this deal won't be around forever." Good things come to those who ORDER NOW!

Fast Talk: Gamer Controls Music 2.0

2007-08-21T01:53:00.000-05:00

Andrew "zircon" Aversa is a long-time colleague of mine on the OCR judges panel, and has a remarkable business sense about him. He's always trying to learn everything he can not just about the creation side of music, but the fiscal side as well. Currently attending Philadelphia's Drexel University, he's in a great place to soak up knowledge, and always passes along cool information he picks up along the way.

Via the July issue of Fast Company (#117), Andy clued me into something regarding Electronic Arts that I read about a year or so ago in the conception phase having recently resurfaced. The article by Cora Daniels features EA Worldwide Executive of Music and Marketing Steve Schnur discussing his plans for a record label inspired by video game music.

Well, not in the traditional sense of releasing original or arranged soundtracks. But with the Artwerk label (a cooperative venture with Nettwerk), Schnur feels that the exposure from popular EA franchise games like Madden NFL and NBA Street have the potential to launch breakout bands with original albums after clinching fan interest via the game soundtracks. So far, the label's first big signing in Tom "Junkie XL" Holkenborg this past March looks nothing but good. With such a conservative approach by Schnur and EA purposefully not aiming to create a big label, however, do you think a format like this could fully achieve its stated goals?

Sefiros releases new original album, Under the Roots

2007-08-20T20:38:00.000-05:00

Bryan "Sefiros" Henderson announced the release of his new original album Under the Roots this past Friday via MySpace bulletin.

The album is free to download, so there's no cost besides time. Why should you check it out despite the cost of time? Well, Bryan's been on my radar for a while due to his material at VGMix. He later scored an successful submission to OC ReMix with a Final Fantasy VIII arrangement entitled "Everything = Nothing" which featured some of the most beautiful and emotive string sequencing I've ever heard in my time in the community.

With that said, Bryan constantly keeps himself busy with periodic album releases, never allowing himself to get stagnant. On the production side, some of the levels should be toned down, but my favorite tracks on the album have to be the opening track "Dependence", the high-powered "Warfare", as well as well-textured"Degeneracy" and the unassumingly titled "Oh". Swing by Sefiros's space and grab 'em all.

LaLa reviews Reyn Ouwehand's new album "The Blithe, The Blend & The Bizarre" at Remix64

2007-08-19T18:39:00.000-05:00

One of my "failings," as it were, in covering the VGM arrangement scene is giving fair representation to the European side, primarily focused on the Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga computers (as well as lesser focus on the Atari ST and ZX Spectrum). I never have been as familiar with the Commodore scene as much as the U.S.-based one, so it's certainly more difficult to familiarize oneself's with the history AND goings-on.

However, the scene across the Atlantic has things covered well by Remix64, the first source on all things going on with the Commodore arrangement community. Unlike the American scene, the European side has a lot stronger ties to the demoscene as well as more acknowledgement and interactivity with the actual game music composers that inspired the movement. That means I'm extremely jealous!

But back to the love, Imre "LaLa" Olajos Jr. has recently reviewed the album The Blithe, the Blend & the Bizarre by Last Ninja 3 and Flimbo's Quest composer Reyn Ouwehand and put out by Reyn's label Prevue Productions.

I don't wanna crib Imre's whole review, which you should go out of your way to check out at Remix64, but part of his opening paragraph sums things up nicely.

If I had to choose one word to describe Reyn Ouwehand's latest SID remix album, it would be "fun". Because doesn't matter what mood you're in, I guarantee you will be 100% happier after you listen to it, even if you are not familiar with the original SID tunes the album is based on. The style of music here ranges from 70s rock to jazz, from carousel music to soundtracks, from the blithe to the blend, and even the bizarre...

That's a solid endorsement from LaLa expressing accessibility and diversity, and one you should take to heart with this album. Check out the tracklist and preview clips available via the album's page on C64Audio.com and you'll find some solid stuff including arrangements of the works of Chris Hülsbeck (The Great Giana Sisters), Martin Galway (Comic Bakery, Wizball) and my personal favorite VGM composer Tim Follin (Ghouls 'N Ghosts, Magic Johnson's Fast Break). Track 6, arranging Ghouls 'N Ghosts would be welcome on Dirge for the Follin, that's for sure.

The album clocks in at a relatively brief 40 minutes, but Weezer's asked for more money for less muzak. Via C64Audio, not only can you preview every track in high quality, but you've already also got access to fully downloading 5 of the album's 20 arrangements, perfect for getting a taste of the action. So considering plunking down for Reyn Ouwehand's The Blithe, the Blend & the Bizarre and making a really sound investment for a change!

I was brought here by HUMANS who wish to pay ME tribute

2007-08-18T20:25:00.001-05:00

During my periodic search for the word "Dhsu" on Google and YouTube (for reasons completely unrelated to stroking my own ego), I came across this vid by YouTuber Dekreme:

To say that I'm flattered would be an understatement. To say I'm impressed would also not be enough...even though it isn't my most complicated arrangement, learning the whole thing by ear takes a special kind of dedication. Mad props, my man!

As surprised I was by this though, I'd be lying if I said this sort of thing hasn't happened before...

Though my name isn't specifically mentioned in the description, the source of the arrangement is obvious. Kazamajin1, the performer in the video, asked me directly for the sheet music to "A Clockwork Vampire" and kept me personally updated on his progress in learning this piece. The culmination of his efforts was the video you now see here.

As for the implication by certain smellyjdgfgts that I might be jealous of or threatened by these rising talents, I can assure you such claims are preposterous. I am in fact quite glad that "Nayru's Love" is fulfilling its purpose of getting people to give the Zelda Oracle games more, well...love.

Overlooked Soundtrack #1: Bomberman 64: The Second Attack!

2007-08-17T21:38:00.000-05:00

Steven Spielberg didn't start off directing extremely well-known movies like Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the beginning of his career, he directed small, independent films like Amblin', episodes of TV shows like Night Gallery, and made-for-TV movies like Duel. And even after becoming a big-name director after such box-office successes like the Indiana Jones trilogy, he still managed to direct some films that fell under the radar, like Always and The Unfinished Journey.

Tangent: the VG Frequency record for most links in a single paragraph is now 11.

The point is that, when a person has a large body of works, it's inevitable that some of them will be overlooked in favor of others, even if the person is as famous as Steven Spielberg. The same principle applies to video game composers as well. Most people are probably familiar with Yasunori Mitsuda's work on games like Chrono Trigger/Cross and Xenogears (certainly remixers are), and maybe even some of his lesser-known works like Tsugunai: Atonement and Graffiti Kingdom (his best soundtrack no matter what anyone says), but he's also worked on other games that don't immediately come to mind, like Mario Party.

I mentioned in my very first post that I'd write something about "overlooked works by big-name composers." And exactly two months later, here's the first one!

And since I used Mitsuda as an example above, let's just go with that.

~~~~~~~~~~

Bomberman 64: The Second Attack!
Composers: Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoshitaka Hirota
Platform: N64
Release date: 1999-12-03 (Japan), 2000-05-28 (United States)
Developer: Hudson Soft
Publisher: Vatical Entertainment

Mitsuda and Hirota have worked together three times, including this game; their other shared works are Shadow Hearts (co-composed with Masaharu Iwata and Ryo Fukuda) and Shadow Hearts: Covenant (co-composed with Kenji Ito, Tomoko Kobayashi, and Ryo Fukuda). And, if you listen from a distance and squint your ears, the soundtrack of Bomberman 64: The Second Attack! does sort of sound like what the soundtrack of a Bomberman RPG would be, if a Bomberman RPG existed.

Unfortunately, the Flash player I've been using to provide music samples, JW MP3 Player, chooses to play the tracks from this game at an accelerated speed. It actually is kind of amusing to listen to, but instead I'll just give direct links to the tracks. So long, convenience of being able to listen to the songs without navigating away. You shall be missed dearly.

>> "Sthertoth, the Demon"

>> "Warship Noah"

The music is unlike that of any other Bomberman game, befitting the fact that this is the only game in the series either composer worked on (and also befitting the fact that the story and atmosphere are unusual for the series as well). However, the music is also unlike that of the Shadow Hearts series which the two composers collaborated on; noticeably absent are the series's music's quirks and Mitsuda's Celtic trappings.

>> "LD Angel"

>> "Miheale Theme II"

The music of the game is quite difficult to track down, since there exists no complete rip of the game as far as I know (the samples in this post come from an incomplete rip where every track is 3:10 in length). If you're feeling adventurous and have the ability to play USF sets (as I am unable to, being Mac'd), there exists a preliminary USF set at USF Central that might not be complete, or work. There are also ten MIDIs over at VGMusic.com.

Sephfire interviewed re: Shadow of the Colossus by Tales of Shadows

2007-08-17T00:46:00.000-05:00

After I read Alex Rowe's interview with SGX over at Tales of Shadows, I let him know that he should talk with other OC ReMixer fans of Fumito Ueda's games, including Sephfire and Binster. But before Alex ever heard from me, he already had his plans in motion to interview Daniel "Sephfire" Floyd.

Released yesterday, the interview discusses Sephfire's plans to arrange material from Sony's recent blockbuster hit Shadow of the Colossus. Floyd's arrangement, entitled "Snowfall on Forbidden Lands," was also his first released collaboration with his wife Carrie "ceili" Floyd, which made for an excellent pairing, resulting in a whole that, in my opinion, was greater than the sum of its parts.

Floyd also provided background on how he got into video game music arrangement as well as his own take on the artistic merits of the Fumito Udea series of games. It's a quick but interesting read for fans of all types that you should check out. Let's hope Alex goes for the OCR trifecta down the line!

Songs The Lady Likes #1: Shivers "Cerebral Rose Jam"

2007-08-16T18:21:00.000-05:00

Some of you might remember me from my days of guesting as Larry's friend, and later Larry's Lady, on his radio show. Back then, I was what people might call "a hater."

Most of the video game music I had heard back then was stuff I didn't like. It was too electronic, not very compelling melodically, and I wasn't familiar with most of the games being referenced to appreciate VGM even from a nostalgic perspective.

Back then, Larry was diligent in his effort to bring me over to the dark side. We had always shared music we liked, and Larry refused to see VGM as a point of departure in taste like the Beastie Boys.

Why is it that every guy I know creams himself over that band? I'd much rather listen to "Lonely Swedish" than "Brass Monkey" if I had to make a terrible choice in hell or Abu Ghraib.

My esteem for VGM, well, more accurately, OCR, grew slowly, hesitantly. Perhaps, it was my pride, or my general tendency to be sparing with my praise, but upon hearing a track that wasn't offensive, I would say something like "not terrible," or shrug my shoulders non-committally.

Over the years, as the musical selection available at OCR grew more diverse, and the quality of musicians and production increased exponentially, I found there were more and more instances where I would begrudgingly say "I don't hate it."

And then, one fateful day, the sky fell in and I actually liked a song...in fact, I liked it so much, I unabashedly added it to my iPod.

Israfel (aka Michael Dover) gets full credit for the dastardly deed, with his most appealing "Cerebral Rose Jam" from the game, Shivers.

When djp wrote his write-up of the ReMix, he was on target when he said, "I'd imagine this ReMix will get more listeners from fans of Israfel than of the source material."

What I loved about this mix was how atmospheric, exotic, and totally unexpected it was. Not to mention the fact that you can lull yourself into a gratifying stupor listening to CRJ on loop.

It's a pretty moody mix, that alludes to summer evenings in Cairo, smoking a cheroot as you wait for your "man" on the dig to bring you a souvenir from King Tut's Tomb.

It's also damn sexy, and I wonder if Israfel didn't spend his nights dreaming of someone special's flat, sweaty tummy as he added in the darbuka (I think), finger cymbals (possibly tingsha), and jingle bells.

There's lots of space in this track, which is what I think makes it so successful compared to other instrumental versions of "Middle Eastern-like" music, where usually the rhythm is so driving it's hard to really immerse yourself in the theme.

In that respect, I think Israfel's got a good vibe going on of what is very similar to maybe some Rabih Abou-Khalil's Blue Camel and Sufi trance music.

WARNING! APPROACHING TANGENT:
Larry says, "Damn, that's esoteric as fuck! Sufi trance music?"
I showed Larry a sample of what I was talking about. Larry thought I was talking about this.
That's "trance" as in meditative music.

Now my suggestion to the haters, or, ahem, lovers as it were, is to pick this track up from OCR, put it your Winamp and turn off the lights. It will give you the "shivers."

So, folks, if you like this, I'll come back regularly with other songs I, the nay-saying mistress of mainstream (and mystical world music), actually like.

Ayako Saso Chronology

2007-08-16T02:55:00.000-05:00

A month ago, I blogged about two composer chronology videos, looking at works by two Namco composers, Shinji Hosoe and Nobuyoshi "sanodg" Sano.

The creator of those two videos, TYKUN, now has a third video about a third Namco composer, Ayako Saso:

Lots of love for the Ridge Racer series.

nyoro~n (You Sure Look Chilled Out!)

2007-08-16T00:02:00.000-05:00

If I did quit the OC ReMix judges panel, I'd hope the aftermath was exactly like this:Who even made that? :-D I've seen the stock image before, but not with a black guy until now.

I've still got lots more work to do in terms of judging submissions. As of press time, we've got 54 submissions still on the panel, and I've yet to evaluate 11 of 'em. It was 12, but I just YESed one (t'was good).

In terms of my personal progress, where I'm at isn't so bad, but it's certainly time consuming going through the submissions, comparing them with the original tracks and formulating opinions. Guys like Vigilante and DarkeSword have the ability to crank out brief but accurate criticisms down to a science.

Hopefully by September 9th though (the end of The Lady's vacation), I'll be all caught up to present day, which will be the first time anyone's ever done it since what I'm guessing would be the first year of the OCR's existance. It's like moving a mountain. And there's nothing glamorous about moving a mountain.

"Into the Score" podcast blends VGM with academia

2007-08-15T07:27:00.000-05:00

In my regular perusal of the various blog trackers, I came across one blog/podcast yesterday that was very unique, so I was surprised that I hadn't heard of it before. Kenley "siven7" Kristofferson's Into the Score is dubbed "the only podcast devoted to the academic study of video game music," which is a hell of a format and one worth checking out as soon as possible.

In the second part of Into the Score's tenth episode (entitled "...to the Orchestra!"), Kenley gives a great overview of arranger Jeremy Robson and Robson's Final Fantasy VII "Philharmonic Suite", the first and fifth parts of which are hosted at OverClocked ReMix. Included are a rundown of Robson's musical influences, a reading of djpretzel's writeup for the first movement at OCR, and complete playthroughs of all five movements in the suite.

Kenley's a little rough on the delivery but no more so than me during my time with college radio, plus he's got great energy, an earnest respect for video game music, and genuine knowledge about the technicalities and structure of music. He also claims to play a mean euphonium, having studied at the University of Manitoba. And he sounds like a nice guy. If you've heard Mazedude's voice before, this guy is just as good natured. (Ironically, he also looks like Makke.) He's got a good voice, and, with more poise on his delivery, could quickly be mistaken for someone on NPR or XM Classics.

For those that aren't into music theory discussions or referencing the roots of classical music, Into the Score's subject matter may feel difficult to access, at least for a bum such as myself. But whatever subject matter goes over my head pales in comparison to the enjoyment of what does remain accessible to me, that being a sincere appreciation of the medium of video game music. New episodes of the show come out infrequently enough that one can't set their watch to it, which impedes the building of a large audience. But don't sleep on Into the Score and this podcast's unique and enlightening format; you may just learn something. Give it that look.

NPR covers Video Games Live in Washington, DC

2007-08-14T21:33:00.000-05:00

While attending Video Games Live in Washington, DC this past June, I saw some young reporters from NPR interviewing fans for an upcoming story. Checking around the web, I finally caught onto the story, having been released about a week ago by Benjamin Frisch in both written and broadcast form. They're two different presentations of the story, so check them both out.

Joystiq's Justin McElroy (employing the royal "we) had me laughing with his observation of one portion of the broadcast version:

We have to admit to being a little bit perturbed by the tone of the reporter, who appears to be mystified by the idea that anyone would be in the seats. "Why is video game music so compelling to these people?" he wonders aloud, the disdain deliciously audible.

Sure, one could interpret it that way, but I'll give Ben the benefit of the doubt, as the tone of his question is mean to evoke what a casual listener may be thinking, and may not necessarily be his own point of view. We may never know, but I also don't lose any sleep over it.

OverClocked ReMix's djpretzel was interviewed for the article, but in the final cut NPR went for a generalized angle on video game fandom and the increased attraction it's brought to the orchestra rather than the rise of the profile of video game music. More's the loss, I say, but I have my preferences. :-D

Tommy Tallarico reasoned that Beethoven would have been a video game composer, which has gained some criticism from various people who've encountered the article. While Tommy was wildly speculative in his assertion, when you think about it, it is really that far out there a scenario? Not to merely be biased toward video game music, but when one thinks about the decline of the traditional symphony in terms of attendance and cultural relevance, you realize that orchestration remains healthy in the mediums of film, television, and video games.

As mentioned, the story is still a good read and listen, even if the overall tone of the piece is very much in layman's terms. Give it a look and see what you think. And the next time Video Games Live or PLAY! or Eminience shows up in your town, make every effort you can to head on out there and partake in the experience.

Maximo's Bombos vs. Everything published by Tokyopop

2007-08-13T09:14:00.000-05:00

I first met Maximo V. Lorenzo at MAGFest 5 this past January. I was hoping to sell OC ReMix t-shirts in the game room, and Mustin was nice enough to give me some room next to him as he sold CDs from OneUp Studios and others. The most cringe-worthy moment we had was when a fan of OneUp Studios came by to talk, and praised Mustin, but subsequently mentioned that he had obtained all of OneUp Studios' albums illegally. When the guy left, Mustin said under his breath something to the effect of "Yeah, thanks a lot buddy." Then we laughed at how the guy had the sheer nerve to actually tell him he stole the albums. Oy!

Sitting on my right though was this artist with a killer portfolio. Tons of original artwork as well as excellent stuff from the worlds of manga, anime, comics and video games. We got to talking, and he showed me some cool art of his, including his take on the characters of Mother 3. He also had a REALLY badass black & white Hellboy print that just caught my eye and I knew I had to part with my money. I promised him I'd hit the ATM and be sure to make the purchase. None of this "Yeah, I'll buy something maybe" BS. A couple of bucks later and I was the proud owner of a fine piece of art.

As you've figured, the guy's name was Maximo, and I knew he had the talent to make it in the art game. And it's not just hollow sentiment like "Yeah, I knew he'd make it." I didn't know he'd "make it" make it. I just said I knew he had the talent to make it. For a pessimist like me, I know that many talented aritists (visual and musical) will unfortunately never get their due, even for someone like Max who's an alumnus of The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art.

But in the time since I met Maximo at MAGFest, he's since helped Mustin by providing some cool art for OneUp Studios' free web releases, with one piece done for Mustin's tracks, as well as a pair done for the OUS EP's Club Game Music and the swanky Bad Dudes.

But now, he's got a much bigger milestone realized with the release of his first full professional work via Tokyopop entitled Bombos vs. Everything. It's been in the works for a long time, and you can pick it up at fine bookstores everywhere. (I'm partial to Borders, as I used to work there and their customer service policies are better.) If you're a fan of manga and anime (hey, who knows; enough support could eventually get the property picked up by an animation studio), definitely get a hold of Bombos vs. Everything, pimp it to friends and get the word out. Max'll be glad you did.

Cheaters in the 21st Century

2007-08-12T01:12:00.000-05:00

The Slate usually has some good reads about just about anything in popular culture, including the occasional pieces on gaming. A recent article by Luke O'Brien on the evolution of cheating in video games entitled "Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, B, A" was pretty interesting, though I wish more depth was permissible for how cheating functions in this day and age, especially the measures given to eliminate it. Still a good read that you should check out.

And as mentioned, be sure to "compare Contra with World of Warcraft." Hidden plugs? I'm cheap like that.

Tom Clancy Really Happy With How Latest Video Game With His Name On It Came Out

2007-08-11T19:49:00.000-05:00

This man looks really happy. That's because, I'm really looking forward to Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Black Ops, and he's gonna get my cash. Excellent coverage of this pending business transaction is provided by The Onion.

And here's a free track from OC ReMix arranging Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear; classic stuff with Jared Hudson, who (if all goes well) will eventually score a future Tom Clancy-named interactive cash cow.

IGN posts list of best ten 8-bit soundtracks; the universe laughs

2007-08-10T02:30:00.000-05:00

IGN has started a new weekly column called "Top 10 Tuesday," in which they, predictably, post a new top ten list of some sort every Tuesday. Their very first list, published this week on the 8th, is entitled "Top Ten Tuesday: Best 8-Bit Soundtracks," covering, among other systems, the NES and Sega Master System:

We realize that, in addition to the Nintendo Entertainment System, the 8-bit console era also included the Sega Master System. And while we considered titles like Phantasy Star and Wonder Boy, the truth is the best Master System soundtrack isn't as good as the tenth best NES game.

Erm, scratch that. But anyway! The list!

Super Mario Bros.

Castlevania

The Legend of Zelda

Contra

Shadowgate

Punch-Out!!

Dr. Mario

Wizards & Warriors

Blades of Steel

Metroid

Their honorable mentions include such vastly inferior soundtracks as Mega Man II's.

But the very best part about the article is that IGN decided to include samples of each game's music to show why each game deserved to be on their list. I personally was unsure that Contra should rank as high as fourth, but after hearing their audio sample, the seven-note title theme, I was convinced. Likewise, the song that comes to my mind when I think of Dr. Mario? Why, the game over theme, of course!

NOTE: The list says that the #8 game, Wizards & Warriors, was developed by Acclaim. This is incorrect; the game was actually developed by Rare (the soundtrack was done by resident composer Dave Wise). But after coming up with such a well-reasoned and carefully researched piece, I think we can let that one little mistake slide.

Dwelling of Duels: July 2007 Results (Donkey Kong)

2007-08-09T22:23:00.001-05:00

I haven't formally introduced Dwelling of Duels around here yet (of course, I have during my radio shows, but the blog is new territory). It's a usually monthly compo where artists are encouraged to predominantly perform the arrangement live, usually via live instruments rather than sequencing, gravitating toward rock. \m/

Every month at DoD features a different theme based around the world of gaming. Usually franchises, occasionally with broader concepts, always with cool customized game art (see below). Songs are released anonymously near the end of the month, accompanied by a listening party for community regulars. Voting takes place in the following days via a point spread of the voter's choice, and on the 1st of the new month the results are unveiled along with the new theme for next month.

So just a quick one with this past month's results, where anything from the Donkey Kong franchise of games was up for grabs.

There are so many new faces that first come to light into the video game music arrangement community via The Shizz's Minibosses message board and Dwelling of Duels, so it's no surprise that a relative newcomer like Scared Sim was able to walk away with the gold, with an arrangement of Donkey Kong Country's "Aquatic Ambience" called "Swimming Monkey".

I'd include direct links, but then you wouldn't visit the actual site. Results follow below, and keep an eye out for DoD's current PC Month competition for the month of August :

Scaredsim - Donkey Kong Country - Swimming Monkey
Paragon - Donkey Kong Country - Fibonacci Factory
thesamareaye, aklmfreak - Donkey Kong Land - Templo de la Fantasía
Fourth Place (tie): Bobby Winston, pingosimon - DK: King of Swing (GBA) - Jumping and Swingin'
Fourth Place (tie): Kodiak Attack - Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong 3 (NES) - Grizzlies Crush Rolling Barrels and Beehives
Sixth Place: Corax, Zachariasmith, Ryan Bennet - Donkey Kong Country 2 - Stickbrush Brambles
Seventh Place (tie): CB+ - Donkey Kong Country 3 - Unrefinery
Seventh Place (tie): tibone - Donkey Kong (NES) - Monkey can´t tune!! Monkey need bananas!!
Seventh Place (tie): Vegeroth, Battlerager - Donkey Kong Country 2 - Tides of Darkness
Tenth Place: AFM SwordBreaker - Donkey Kong Country 2 - Instigating Whispers

SGX interviewed re: ICO by Tales of Shadows

2007-08-08T23:22:00.000-05:00

Alex Rowe (not to be confused for this OTHER Brit) of the ICO and Shadow of the Colossus blog Tales of Shadows interviewed Danny "SGX" Adler yesterday as part of the blog's ongoing series of "Player Interviews," where celebrity fans of the two Sony/Fumito Ueda hits discuss their own expressions of fandom.

SGX was questioned on his love of ICO, as brought to life by his arrangement of the soundtrack's "heal" and "continue" known as "Save Me". ("Save Me" is freely available in an edited form at OverClocked ReMix, while a wholly original track comprised of the non-VGM bits of the arrangement called "Saved" is available for purchase on SGX's fourth album Synesthetic.)

Danny shed light on how arranging video game music was responsible for building his fanbase, and even suggested that he may not be entirely done with video game arrangements. Always good news to me. Check the interview out for a good read.

Destiny releases double-album "Inside Myself / Once Upon a Time"

2007-08-07T20:28:00.000-05:00

Although Helen Trevillion hasn't been around the OCR community for a while now, she has always been highly regarded for the Enya-quality vocal and instrumental work in her submissions to the site under the ReMixer name Destiny.

Helen's first album is a 2-CD endeavor via her personal label Faefly Records, with a total of 22 tracks. The first disc is called Inside Myself and contains the bulk of the songs on the album, while the second disc is entitled Once Upon a Time, having a fairy tale theme. You can buy the whole shebang at her CD shop. Google Checkout only works for orders within the UK at the moment, unfortunately.

The price is a bit hefty at 8.49 GBP (~$17 USD), especially with international shipping if you're in the US (another 2.00 GBP, for a total of about $21 USD), but most people who have heard her work will agree that it's worth it for 2 CDs of Destiny goodness. In addition, each copy will be personally signed by Helen, with an optional message of your choice. Here are a couple previews from her site in case you're still not convinced:

Inside Myself

Once Upon a Time

There are also additional full-length samples available on Helen's MySpace.

Better grab a copy while you can though: there are only 100 in print.

Doujin Spotlight #1: Saitama Saisyu Heiki (S.S.H.)

2007-08-07T14:54:00.001-05:00

So CHz thought it would be clever to get up all in my grill/step on my turf by talking about S.S.H.'s original work, while still including enough info about him in his writeup that a second entry would be practically pointless.

But I'm not going to let him stop me. No sir, not today. I'll post about S.S. flippin' H. whenever I durn well please. And now with that out of the way, onto actual content...

Here we see the S.S.H. in his natural habitat of ROCK'N. The S.S.H.'s sound is very distinct, with complex sequenced electric guitar and synth "wank" a common identifier in the species. Anyone who's heard the S.S.H. could most likely spot it from an arbitrary number of miles away. Here we see one of the most famous specimens:

"The Decisive Battle"
Final Fantasy VI (Super Famicom)

Okay, so silly nature show parodies aside, suffice it to say S.S.H.'s style is fairly distinguishable. However, it's also...shall we say...consistent, perhaps to a fault. To give an analogy, you could call S.S.H. the DragonForce of doujin. That is to say, it's definitely awesome for rocking out to when you're in the mood, but after a while it starts to wear on you, and you begin to notice the structure and instrumentation of his songs becoming predictable and formulaic, despite the impressive variety in source material from classic favorites such as Castlevania and Final Fantasy to slightly more obscure titles like Shin Megami Tensei and Super Robot Wars.

Of course, there are exceptions, such as these poignant arrangements:

"Red Tint"
Atlach-Nacha (PC)

"Home Sweet Home"
Final Fantasy V (Super Famicom)

S.S.H. has (at least to my knowledge) released only one solo video game album, entitled "Underworld Shade Saitama," which is by now undoubtedly available only on Japanese auction sites. No need to despair however, as most of his work is still available on his site.

As to his current whereabouts, unfortunately I must admit I'm completely in the dark on that subject. But hopefully he'll resurface again someday and give all us doujin fans another big dose of ROCK'N.

8-Bit Artist, 16-Bit Genocide

2007-08-07T00:08:00.000-05:00

Chris "8-Bit Artist" Olan is out of steam for now. As he announced this past June, he's gonna be going on an indeterminate hiatus once the upcoming video game music and art showcase 16-Bit Genocide goes down. That's Saturday, August 25th in Baltimore, MD. If I wasn't possibly headed to TooManyGames with Mad-Gear the following day in Reading, PA, I'd be there.

Garish looking promotional poster, but it gets the job done. :-D On top of the great bands there (The Protomen, Entertainment System, Powerglove, Anamanaguchi, This Place is Haunted and Temp Sound Solutions), there are gonna be some artists there also bringing the nostalgia, including Chris.

Now every time Chris posts something on his DeviantArt page, I check it out, but his recently posted piece from Super Mario All-Stars' Super Mario Bros. 3 blew me away:

Pretty swanky, eh? And many of those are configurable pieces. Read up on it.

Wait. 3 fireballs at once??? Blasphemy!

I kid, enjoy.

Live VGM #1: S.S.T. Band

2007-08-06T03:04:00.000-05:00

You may have heard of The Black Mages. Formed in 2003 with, among other people, three Square Enix composers (including Nobuo Uematsu), TBM is the closest thing Square Enix has to an official band. Other game companies (especially during the 90's) have had bands featuring one or more in-house composer, like Konami's Kukeiha Club and Taito's Zuntata, but TBM is probably the most prominent modern example.

Live performances of VGM have been not necessarily commonplace in Japan, but certainly more frequent than in the United States and elsewhere. However, in the past few years, there have been an increasing number of video game concerts like PLAY! A Video Game Symphony and Video Games Live. So, I figured it might be kind of cool to look at other, earlier VGM performances, including those by in-house bands and those like VGL. I mentioned the S.S.T. Band in "Composer Spotlight #3: Koichi Namiki," so that's as good a place to start as any.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The S.S.T. Band was one of the first, possibly the first, official developer band, starting way back in 1988. "S.S.T." stood for "Sega Sound Team," befitting the fact that, of the six original members, three were Sega composers (Hiroshi Miyauchi, Jouji Iijima, and Koichi Namiki). A fourth member, Kimitaka Matsumae, would later become a Sega composer, as well as would two future band members who were not part of the original lineup, Hisanori Kumamaru and Takenobu Mitsuyoshi.

I was going to make an info file about the S.S.T. Band's members, discography, etc., but their Wikipedia article is very thorough, probably more thorough than anything I would have written, so I'll pimp that out instead. The only full arrangement albums are MEGA SELECTION I & II and BACK IN THE S.S.T. BAND!!; all of the others contain both arrangements by the S.S.T. Band and original soundtracks.

An interesting thing to note is that every single S.S.T. Band member had a stage name, most of which were taken from Sega arcade games:

Jouji Iijima: GALAXY (Galaxy Force)
Shingo Komori: BURNER (After Burner)
Hisanori Kumamaru: SPLASH Wave ("Splash Wave" is the name of a track from OutRun)
Kimitaka Matsumae: HARRIER (Space Harrier)
Takenobu Mitsuyoshi: R360 (refers to the R360 arcade cabinet)
Hiroshi Miyauchi: Hiro
Koichi Namiki: Mickey or Pretty K.N.
Masato Saito: TURBO-kun (Turbo OutRun)
Takehiko Tanabe: THUNDER (Thunder Blade)

But the best part of the S.S.T. Band, even moreso than their rockin' arrangements, is their appearance. Remember when sleeveless vests, ponytails, bandanas, and sunglasses used to be cool on musicians?

"After Burner" (arrangement of the track of the same name from the game of the same name)
video from the S.S.T. Band Live! DVD (1990 concert)
Jouji "GALAXY" Iijima: Guitar (red)
Kimitaka "HARRIER" Matsumae: Keyboards (right)
Hiroshi "Hiro" Miyauchi: Keyboards (left)
Koichi "Mickey" Namiki: Guitar (yellow)
Masato "TURBO-kun" Saito: Bass
Takehiko "THUNDER" Tanabe: Drums

The band's arrangements always strayed close to the original, usually being covers with the occasional solo thrown in to retain the feel of the originals, all of which were from Sega arcade, Master System, or Genesis games. Since the band's instruments were guitars, keyboard, and drums, they usually picked upbeat songs that could easily be converted to synthrock, like the title theme from After Burner seen above. However, as the material dictated, they were not above slower, jazzier pieces like their medley of Galaxy Force tracks and ballads like their cover of "Last Wave," the high scores theme from OutRun.

Other videos from their 1990 concert on YouTube are "Magical Sound Shower" from OutRun and an After Burner medley featuring other tracks from the game other than the title track. One last video, from no concert I can identify, is a cover of "Like the Wind" from Power Drift. Soak up the retro.

Cave Story creator releases simple shoot 'em up, Guxt

2007-08-06T00:11:00.000-05:00

I'm ironically not much of a gamer, so anything having to do with actual game releases I'm bound to be slow on. DarkeSword recently made mention that Cave Story creator Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya released a new, even simpler free homebrew shmup called Guxt. (Have Japanese characters installed on your comp, please.) With Cave Story under his belt, Pixel's already got the buzz needed to give any new project of his a good deal of attention in the gaming community, and February's release of his most recent game has already got people talking.

I make mention of Guxt, because Pixel is not only a programmer, but a composer as well. With his one man Studio Pixel team, Amaya does it all, including the actual game music. For Guxt, that includes a standalone player program that features all 8 tracks from the soundtrack. It's classic-style VG muzak, just the way you like it: small size, tons of hooks, and very appropriate for the game setting. The Boss theme in particular is excellent.

Makes me wonder who in the community's gonna have the first well-made rearrangement from the game under their belt...

Netlabel pimps (Reunion & II)

2007-08-05T18:53:00.000-05:00

I loves me some netlabels. As a big proponent of free music (not ideologically, don't worry), some of the most creative music you'll find doesn't cost you more than the time it takes to download.

Obviously, I spend a lot of time involved in the video game music rearrangement community, but netlabels feature great collectives of talent doing original music as well.

Like any hobbyist initiative, productivity can sometimes be intermittent. My favorite netlabel Hellven, run by Xavier "mv" Dang, has stopped and started on several occasions. This makes it difficult to find a really steady source of content to satisfy your fix.

On the chiptune side, Audun "AkumuHau" Sorlie, keeper of the most comprehensive NSF collection out there (and the only other guy I know who's listed his hobbies as "VG, Wrestling, Comics" in that order), has been pimping the latest chiptune netlabel, II (i.e. Pause). Norrin Radd and Shawn Phase are there. I'll be checking out their other material in the near future, but check out this cover art hotness for Radd's album, Melodia di Infinità.

That art's good enough to hang on your wall.

One of the other latest netlabels with strong ties toward the game music arrangement community that I've been made aware of has been Jonas "Platonist" Loman's effort, Reunion, which announced last month that its site had gone out of beta stage into a final release. They have a lot of good artists I'm aware of from OC ReMix including FFmusic Dj, GaMeBoX, Saiko, SGX, Siamey, The Joker, and even guest releases by Binster and OverCoat. They've hit a pretty good stride, just announcing their 45th single release (courtesy of GaMeBoX), so give 'em a look and bask in the free.

Powerglove no longer needs your help to name a track

2007-08-04T21:41:00.000-05:00

As announced today by bassist Nick Avila, Powerglove's previously untitled Final Fantasy VII arrangement has been named thanks to Steven Gregory Passick of Muskego, Wisconsin and Cubby Nuxx of Lubbock, Texas.

"Omnishred" will take it's rightful place on the group's upcoming CD release Metal Kombat for the Mortal Man, alongside tributes to Mega Man II, Mortal Kombat, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Final Fantasy IV, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Tetris, Duck Hunt, Killer Instinct, Guilty Gear and Castlevania.

Not that you have to, but if you want to wait to pick up the album with the chance to get it signed by the band in person, you could always lay low until MAGFest 6...

Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero

2007-08-03T21:34:00.000-05:00

God bless ya, The Onion. Washington, DC is the paper's ninth print edition market, and I love picking it up every week. The cutting edge of reporting.

And this? The cutting edge of video game music. The game's not a hot seller, I'm afraid.

Powerglove needs your help to name a track

2007-08-02T20:21:00.000-05:00

Powerglove announced via MySpace bulletin today that they need title suggestions for their cover of Final Fantasy VII's "Still More Fighting".

Help a brother out (with the best suggestion of course), and you receive the band's upcoming CD, Metal Kombat for the Mortal Man, free!

Get crackin'.

(By the way, the tangentially related image, "Powerglove", is by the versatile artist Kari Fry. Check out her portfolio.)

bLiNd and Leifo playlisted by Ferry Corsten

2007-08-01T17:12:00.000-05:00

I've known Jordan "bLiNd" Aguirre and Randy "Leifo" Oxley for many years.. Leifo first hit OverClocked ReMix in 2002 with a Mario Paint ReMix entitled "BLind is Dah BomB", a tribute to the style of bLiNd. bLiNd's music was an inspiration to Leifo, and, once the two became friends and musical collaborators, Leifo vowed to move from New Jersey to Las Vegas with the intent on making his name alongside bLiNd as an electronic musician.

Given Leifo's own astronomical growth as an artist in the past 5 years and bLiNd's staunch dedication to his craft, it's not a surprise to me that these two have finally been able to gain some traction in the electronic music scene, under their collaborative name "Vega Projekt".

Aaron "Global-Trance" Wu announced today at OC ReMix that renowned DJ Ferry Corsten has included Vega Projekt's single "The First Day" on the playlist of his radio show "Corsten's Countdown", syndicated on Digitally Imported (di.fm) and XM Satellite Radio. If you register at the Ferry Cortsen forums, you'll be able to vote at the Cortsen's Countdown page for "The First Day" to make the monthly top 10 countdown. It's a quick signup and will help Vega Projekt earn more recognition with an accomplished DJ and producer.

Wu also let it be known that the track may also be may also be incorporated into an upcoming DJ set of his and is also under strong consideration for pickup by Corsten's record label, Flashover Recordings. Hopefully, this is a watershed event for Vega Projekt towards expanding their audience and gaining notice within industry circles. They've certainly given it their all thus far.

Half-Life: Black Mesa developers on Cockbite Radio

2007-07-28T12:25:00.000-05:00

Uh...Cockbite Radio.

But yes, the developers of the upcoming Half-Life 2 mod Black Mesa were on episode 5 of Cockbite Radio (there's that name again) this past Wednesday to discuss all things Black Mesa and how they're remaking the first Half-Life from the ground up. OC ReMixer Kevin "Lorenzo" Sisk, one of the voice actors of the game, intros the podcast. (Check for him also at the 11-minute and 53-minute marks as well.)

Kevin adds: "That screenshot [below], other than the surface tension dam, is a prime example of how the team is trying to bring the original game up to date with today's graphic standards, while preserving the game's spirit." Definitely give it that look.

Also of note for this podcast, 30 seconds in has a hilarious rant from Casey about 12-year-old boys on XBOX Live. Creepy, immature boys on the internet? Never.

Armcannon wants to be the next American Idol?

2007-07-28T11:12:00.000-05:00

Hell, I didn't know Americal Idol was doing a spinoff show for bands, called The Next Great American Band. I don't care for American Idol. I'm sure not to care for American Band.

But I love Armcannon. Saw them play at MAGFest 5 this past January and djpretzel in particular was really impressed.

Right now they're trying to shoot up 4 other bands in WUTV FOX-29's local contest to send a band from West New York to Las Vegas for the auditions of American Idol's upcoming band-themed show.

Check out the contest. You've only got until Sunday, July 29th, with the winner announced on Monday. Center of the page towards the bottom. It takes literally 3 seconds to vote.

A vote for Armcannon is a vote for video game music. Help a brother out.

Chat with David Lloyd...

2007-07-25T18:21:00.000-05:00

A cooler aspect of being involved at the top of the game arrangement community: I'm privy to creative flourishes such as...

3:31 PM David: dude

gerudo hip hop

I got it in my head

3:38 PM Larry: hahaha; one of the perks of working with you; I get to hear stuff like

"dude

gerudo hip hop

I got it in my head"

The crazy thing is that djpretzel can be counted on to make the idea work. However, he can't be counted on to actually finish the track. Too many ideas, too little time. For many arrangers, therein lies the game.

VGM Facebook Groups

2007-07-24T14:29:00.000-05:00

I'm going to be gone on a trip for the next couple of days, and so I'm not going to be able to get the post that I wanted to finish done. So what is this special filler edition of VGF about?

Well why don't you just read the post title, you lazy good-for-nothing. Pretty much everyone, their mother, family pets, and great-aunt Tilly who's never used a computer before has a Facebook account; it's like MySpace except apparently less objectionable for some reason.

I found out earlier today that there is a group dedicated to composer Hitoshi Sakimoto, with whom I have been locked in a violent struggle since before this universe was created. In retrospect, it's pretty obvious that there would be Facebook groups like this, but until now I never bothered to search for them.

Unfortunately, Facebook's current group classification system doesn't make it easy to find these groups, which are listed under, among other categories, "Entertainment & Arts - Fine Arts," "Just for Fun - Fan Clubs," "Music - Songwriting," and "Music - Instruments." So, I did a little legwork in searching for some interesting groups. If you know of any others that look good or start your own, please let me know!

General

Game Music Fans

Mega Man series

Videogame Music Doesn't Get Enough Credit

Live Performances

Eminence Symphony Orchestra

MAGFest

Press Play on Tape

Video Games Live

Remixes

C64 Remixes

OverClocked ReMix

Composers

Michael Giacchino

Masashi Hamauzu

Rob Hubbard

Yuki Kajiura

Yoko Kanno

Jake "virt" Kaufman

Koji Kondo

Yasunori Mitsuda

Hitoshi Sakimoto

Motoi Sakuraba

Yoko Shimomura

Koichi Sugiyama

Kumi Tanioka

Kazumi Totaka

Nobuo Uematsu

Akira Yamaoka

Awesome review on OC ReMix's IceCap Zone project, "ReCapitated"

2007-07-23T20:08:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, it's the little things that make me smile. Check out this LiveJournal-based review on OCR's most recent project tackling Sonic the Hedgehog 3's IceCap Zone, ReCapitated:

ReCapitated
How did I not know about this?

It's a whole OCRemix arrangement project dedicated entirely to Sonic 3's Ice Cap theme. It's easily the most overmixed song in the gaming community, but that doesn't stop anyone from putting their spin on it. This is 18 tracks of the same song, remixed by different artists. Honestly, ever since the Duck Hunt remix project, I didn't think this kind of thing would fly anymore.

I guess why I didn't see it is because, it's not on the site projects forum of the web site. It's merely the artists getting together on their own to put out this album. Is it any good? Not really. It kind of listens like a few guys just dicking around on their keyboards. Some more organized than others, but I refuse to believe it's anywhere near a "best effort". One even mixed Chrono Trigger's Trial theme in the beginning and leads into some kind of weird crossover that should not be. It's not to say that the songs aren't worth checking out, it's just some of them are just plain bleh. Of course, what can you expect from the community's most single mixed song. There's only so much you can do with it.

In any case, check out the above link and have a listen.

Only the review's from June 28th. ... Did I forget to mention this? How did he know about the Duck Hunt project, but somehow not pick up on this? :-D

Too bad he didn't get into any specifics on the tracks. He probably thought mine was the best though, so I can understand him not wanting to tarnish the other songs in comparison. You know how it is.

bustatunez scores Hellgate: London trailer, revealed at E3

2007-07-22T23:59:00.000-05:00

I had the pleasure of finally meeting Wilbert "bustatunez" Roget, II at the Video Games Live OCR meetup in Washington, DC. But we actually used to both reside in New Haven, CT, my hometown, and where Wil attended Yale University for his music degree (man, how my life would have been different had I gone there). We tried meeting up during Will's last few months there before he graduated but couldn't work out our schedules, so it was excellent finally getting to shake his hand and shooting the shit with him.

At the VGL DC meetup, Will was only at liberty to say that he has just scored the trailer for an upcoming game and that the trailer was set to debut at E3. Besides being excited for the opportunity, he wouldn't tell us anything more, not even what genre the game even was. So just to let Flagship Studios know, he held VERY tightly to his NDA!

But with E3 now in the past, Flagship Studios (spun off from Blizzard North and responsible for the Diablo franchise) recently took the Hellgate: London trailer public. GameSpot has a great-quality version of the trailer to check out.

Now, I'm not about to praise the trailer merely to pay lip service to Flagship and suck up on behalf of anyone. Anyone familiar enough with the business of games knows that there are (unfortunately) a lot of games with great soundtracks that end up having awful "everything else". But this trailer looked REALLY polished. It may be for a game, but Hellgate: London has what looks like a straight up movie trailer.

There's no guarantee Will will be involved with the actual game soundtrack itself, but hitting paydirt with the release of this trailer is a potentially great sign of things to come for a young, talented composer like bustatunez. Be sure to give the trailer a look and send some congradulations Will's way for one of his first professional gigs, as I hope it's the start of a fruitful career in video game music.

"There's always too many projects"

2007-07-18T09:02:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone, this is Fishy (also known as Cain irl). I would imagine only a few people know who I am, and I would wager that most of those people are on some of the ongoing OCR projects. This is because I’m what’s known as a ‘total project whore’. The projects are probably my favourite aspect of the OCR community. It’s an astonishing feat for a large-scale album to be made and hosted totally through voluntary and unpaid contributions. A huge amount of work is put into them, and the end results are usually pretty damn cool, so I thought I would chronicle my thoughts and experiences on the projects here.

When I joined OCR mid-2006, practically the first thing I latched onto was the project thread for the Pokèmon project. This was mostly because the track I ended up completing had “Reserved for awesome guitarist” in massive font written next to it and I was feeling cocky. Once I was in the forums and posting WIPs, I suddenly realised how preferable the environment was. For a new guy, it was pretty easy to be ignored in the WIPs forum, in fact the only person who replied to my craptastic first ReMix was good ol’ Geoffrey Taucer. In the project forums though, suddenly I was getting loads of useful help from some guys I was really looking up to at the time. I enjoyed being a part of a team, and getting involved and helping out so I set out in search of what would become a very long list of projects.

Recently, I started downloading many of the existing projects to check them all out. From the 60% Protricity "Relics of the Chozo," to the latest "Project Chaos," they are some really great moments out there. If you haven’t downloaded some of them yet, I really do recommend it. Theres always a few songs in every style, so there really is something for everyone.

It’s easy to see what has come, but its harder to see what is coming. I’ve seen some people only just realising some projects exist even though they’ve been running for months. The mods have been kind enough to put them all in one place though, so now it’s a bit easier, but heres the list (of the officially recognised ones anyway) with whos running what:

Boss Themes: Crescendo to Chaos – Pi_R_[]ed
Doom 2: Delta-Q-Delta – The Orichalcon
Dragon Warrior series: Children of Erdrick – Rexy
Kirby Super Star: Milkyway Wishes – Nicholas
Mega Man 4: No title yet? – Dafydd
Pokèmon: No title yet – The Damned
Radical Dreamers: Thieves of Fate – The Prophet of Mephisto
Seiken Densetsu 3: Songs of Light and Darkness – Usa
Super Dodge Ball: Around the World – Murmerli Walan
Super Mario 64: Portrait of a Plumber – POCKETMAN (and yours truly)
Tales Series: Summoning of Spirits – KyleJCrb
Tim Follin: Dirge for the Follin – Liontamer
Xenogears: Humans and Gears – Avaris
Zelda: Link’s Awakening: No title yet? – Aetherius

And they say they are too many projects going on. Sorry if I missed anyone but uh… I don’t think you can blame me. You may have noticed I left out one project in particular, but I want to talk about that now.

The humongous, and highly anticipated Final Fantasy VII project, "Voices of the Lifestream". This game is the cream of the fanboy crop and the thorn in the elitist gamers side, but no one can deny its popularity or its significance, which is why it’s being run by zircon. If this project was going to be made, it had to be totally awesome to live up to its source, so who better then a judge to run it? I left this project until last because it is more or less definitely the next one to come out, and soon too. zircon will be announcing the date at Otakon, but I can tell you its not far off at all.

It’s also, interestingly enough, going to be my OCR debut. I’ve had a ReMix in the ‘to be posted’ cue for months now, but its not going to be released until the Pokèmon project is released, much after the FF7 one. Funnily enough, its my highest quality ReMix so far, so when my other project tracks come out you’ll see a regression to my initial abilities, which is odd.

Lastly, I just wanted to mention two recently planned projects. The first one is Ladies of Legend of Zelda, which is DarkeSword’s quest to reveal the true pimp that is Link. The other (which was announced literally hours ago from me writing this) is a Final Fantasy VIII project proposed by kungfuchicken. I hope these both take off, as they should make great albums, but for now, I’m gonna gtfo.

Tl;dr.

Composer Spotlight #3: Koichi Namiki

2007-07-18T01:47:00.000-05:00

Alternate title: "Sales Pitch #2: Koichi Namiki"

Works featured in this post:

Bakusou Dekotora Densetsu 2 (PlayStation)

GuitarFreaks (PlayStation)

Rail Chase (Arcade)

Super Hang-On (Arcade)

Thunder Blade (Arcade)

full list of works

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Koichi "Mickey" Namiki (who has also had the nickname "Pretty K.N") is an oddly system-specific composer. He's also old guard as far as video game composers go, starting in 1987 with the game Super Hang-On, which he composed with Katsuhiro "Funky K.H" Hayashi and Shigero "Recruit O" Ohwada. For eight years, he composed solely arcade games, mostly ones published by Sega.

"Winning Run"
Super Hang-On (Arcade)

"Type II (BGM2)"
Thunder Blade (Arcade)

The soundtracks to many of Namiki's older games have the same style: they're not the strongest in the melody department, but they have enough hooks to get through the song and just groove along. Rail Chase stands as the most notable exception with its almost adventure movie-style score.

"Stages 1 & 4"
Rail Chase (Arcade)

Starting with 3D Shooting Maker in 1996 and reaching until his most recent game credit, Akudaikan 2 in 2003, he composed solely for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 systems, with the exception of 2002's Magides Fight for the Xbox. Even though he composed more games during this second time period, fewer of those games were released in the U.S. or even had soundtrack releases.

Namiki was a member of the S.S.T. Band, Sega's official band composed partially of Sega composers who played rock arrangements of different songs from Sega games. He was one of two guitarists in the band (the other was Jouji Iijima, who composed the soundtracks to Galaxy Force II and Zero 4 Champ RR), and played for the full five years that the band was active. In some of his later compositions, Namiki wields his mighty axe.

"Dream One"
Bakusou Dekotora Densetsu 2 (PlayStation)
vocals by Shoji Koganezawa

"J-STAFF"
GuitarFreaks (PlayStation)

I did mention in the first line of this post that this should be called "Sales Pitch #2," so let's get to that. Over the past couple of years, Sega's Wave Master sound development studio has released soundtracks to classic Sega video games, such as the Monster World and Outrun series. They have also started the "SOUND!SHOCK SERIES" of albums, the first of which was released this month, SUPER HANG-ON 20th Anniversary Collection. In addition to the soundtracks of Hang-On and Super Hang-On (of which Namiki composed three tracks, including "Winning Run" above), the album also includes five new arrangements, one by Hiroshi "Hiro" Miyauchi and four by Namiki, all of which rock.

The second album in the series, Galaxy Force II & Thunder Blade Original Soundtrack, is set to be released on the 26th of this month. I mentioned Galaxy Force II and Jouji Iijima, its composer, earlier; its style of music is actually quite similar to Thunder Blade's. This album will have another four arrangements by Miyauchi and Namiki. Both albums are available from VGM World, along with the ten disc Game Sound Legend Series Box 2 ~Platinum Box~, which contains the soundtrack to Bonanza Bros. and many, many more games.

Play-Asia.com has the GUITAR FREAKS 2nd MIX ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK, which consists mostly of tracks from GuitarFreaks 2nd Mix, but also has three tracks from the original GuitarFreaks, all written by Namiki, as well as extended versions of each. Also available is SEGACON: The Best of SEGA Game Music - Vol. 1, which also contains the soundtrack to Super Hang-On, as well as those of other older Sega games.

Finally, CDJapan might have a copy of Bakusou Dekotora Densetsu 2 ~Otoko Jinsei Yume Ichiro~ Original Soundtrack. ("Usually ships within 3-7 days" means that CDJapan doesn't know if the distributor has any in stock, but if they do, it'll take about 3-7 business days to ship.) The tracks are all vocal like the sample above, and there are four vocalists other than Shoji Koganezawa.

"I Hate Arrangements That Have Vocals..."

2007-07-17T16:56:00.000-05:00

For readers of the various message boards in the amateur VGM arrangement communities, a hot button topic for some is "arrangements that have vocals".

Every once in a while at OC ReMix (you don't hear this come up much in smaller, more tight-knit communities), a fan starts a discussion specifically seeking out arrangements with vocals in them. Vocals are an expected component of almost any mainstream music one may listen to, so on that level I at least understand the expectation. While I don't understand the infatuation, I realize that for the general populace out there vocals are needed to "complete" the musical experience.

However, the opposite argument that vocals ruin music is one the most out there complaints heard in the community. And yet around these parts we hear it all the time. Go to Ormgas.com even, and within its chatbox you'll see the occasional "I wish there wasn't any singing" complaint. And then you get the always-insulting "Can I get an instrumental version?", when asked specifically because they didn't like the vocals. Granted, when it comes to video game music (especially older material), vocals are generally nowhere to be found. It's not a stretch to infer that this could condition some listeners to not want their music intruded upon by a voice.

Is it wrong for us to fall in the middle and not pick either ridiculous side? As much as there are some guys who neeeeeed vocals, I've also never heard nearly as many people on that side outright dismissing instrumental music. If I had to pick one side, it certainly wouldn't be with the vocal haters. Taking a close-minded approach to music on any level is unwelcome around VG Frequency. Make sure you outlaw it in your neighborhood TODAY.

We's goin' to Otakon

2007-07-16T22:38:00.000-05:00

Now I'm no anime geek, but I do love spreading the gospel and playing video games with the peeps. So I look forward to Otakon in Baltimore, Maryland once again this weekend. Courtesy of our crew of djpretzel, zircon, pixietricks and myself, OC ReMix will be officially representing there on Friday, July 20th for our second annual panel. OCR's latest press release gives the dirt.

Last year featured two hilarious guys cosplaying Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle. Who knows who'll be there this year. The Phoenix Wright girls from Video Games Live plan to make an appearence.

Dale North (providing coverage for Destructoid), Injury, José the Bronx Rican, MIDIman, and Xaleph plan on being there, and SGX will be arriving later in the day on Friday.

I'm also looking forward to two of the con's musical guests in particular. Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy Tactics, Breath of Fire V) with be at the con, also performing alongside part of the Eminence symphony orchestra.

If you see anyone with OC ReMix t-shirts on, let them know how sexy they look. Hope to see you there.

zircon review's Beatdrop's new album "In the Dark"

2007-07-12T22:14:00.000-05:00

Andrew "zircon" Aversa's big on reviewing music. Either at Broadjam or the OverClocked ReMix judges panel, Andy's been all about giving out criticism and hoping for some in return.

Recently, zircon has positioned his MySpace blog as a central location for music reviews, aiming to spread the good word. While zircon focuses on electronic music in general, it's always relevant when he takes a look at original music from artists within the game music arrangement community.

Dain "Beatdrop" Olsen recently hit professional paydirt, co-winning a Broadjam-sponsored contest on May 8 to have a track added to the official soundtrack of Konami's Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA 2.

If you do as zircon recommends and check out Beatdrop's free album, In the Dark, you yourself can obtain a copy of the winning track "Until Forever", and pretend to stomp on some arrows as you await DDR's latest installement.

Keep an eye glued on zircon's MySpace for addtional music reviews in the near future.

The intrinsic value of Sequenced Music vs. Live Music

2007-07-12T16:37:00.000-05:00

Recently at the OverClocked ReMix forums, one new user, "ContinueTheEnd", made it a point to decry sequenced music as being a lower form of art than live music...

"Why is it that people have to mock the concept of real instruments by imitating them with technology?"

"Evidently, [JigginJonT,] you abandoned your previous ambitions about making music with instruments and replaced them with the lower, easier ambitions of sequencing music."

...going so far as to say that he did not consider sequenced music as part of his personal definition of music.

That being said, it was quite a while until the $64,000 question came up from Andy Jayne:

"The majority video game music has been sequenced, do you consider it not to be music? If so then what are you doing at a place which is based on the appreciation of video game music?"

Considering that OverClocked ReMix is predominantly a community of amateur musicians, it is understandable that the major majority of the arrangements hosted there would be sequenced rather than performed with traditional physical instruments. Continue's cutoff point for what was acceptable vs. unacceptable use of sequencing all hinged on live performances:

"Still, you could make do with a synthesizer of some sort and still avoid the sequencing - as long as it's a human playing it and not a computer, it'll have that human quality, though it won't be the actual instruments playing. One of bladiator's mixes, "Super Mario Grand Valse" [sic], was played by a synthesizer, and it retained that human quality; it did not have that precise sequenced quality that is often so easily detectable in those types of mixes. By far, the most abominable thing I find about sequenced music is that it lacks that "human quality" - as soon as you insert sequenced material in a song, you have that mechanized, precise, machine-like taste, even if the instrumentation you used doensn't [sic] sound "techno" or mechanical."

None of the debates or arguments such ignorant statements were due to conjure up resulted in any understanding on the part of Continue until one man showed up and laid the debate to waste. Mike "Kanthos" Chase encapsulated a definition of music that worked under no pretentious assumptions, reaching more to the heart of music-making:

"If sequenced music lacks human qualities, that's because the arrangers suck. There is nothing inherent about sequencing that *forces* music to be made in a more mechanical way. Besides, some people like me who have musical ideas that they can't translate to sound using an instrument alone (I have tendonitis [sic] and was forced to really reduce the amount of time I spent playing the piano, so my playing skills now are not what they used to be, nor will I ever hit that level again); should those good musical ideas be lost because of some idealistic, pretentious crap?

Also remember that a lot of people use things like MIDI keyboards to play their parts in, only resorting to sequencing tools like a piano roll when editing is needed. And before you say that editing is just trickery used by sequencers, you're ignorant if you don't realize the amount of editing that happens on nearly every album released in every genre, including classical and jazz.

Either way, I'll be damned if some pretentious loser comes along and says that because I don't have the skills to make top-quality recordings live and don't have a band to play with or a drum kit or piano in my apartment to record on, that I'm not making real music because I use a MIDI keyboard and a bit of editing to get good results.

Music isn't notes on a page, data on a computer, audio waves, tone colors, and anything else that someone like you would typically associate with music. Music is a language of self-expression that transcends and encompasses all of these. Maybe someday you'll realize that.

So tell me, what do you do? You play a handful of acoustic instruments and jam in a garage with your brothers. Have you accomplished anything creative? Do you fairly regularly create music that makes people with more musicality (note: this doesn't just include technical skill or even experience as a player) be impressed, not because of your tone quality or things like that, but because of what you've done? Have you taken any genre and pushed its limits? Have you re-imagined any music in such a way that would get the original composer, should he happen to hear your music, take notice? Have you tried coming up with a new sound that no one else has done before? If not, then why are you insulting those here who have?

Every new genre of music has had its critics. There will always be some narrow-minded buffoons who will hear something going in a direction they didn't imagine and try to discredit it, because they have mechanical skills and maybe even some semblance of musicality, but they do not have creative ideas. Right now, you are one of the ignorant."

And in fact, there was really only one appropriate way for Continue to respond. Mea culpa:

"First let me say that you've just convinced me to accept sequenced music as music - I guess I was being a little ignorant of others' preferred performing methods. I kinda got too obsessed with fending off all of your arguments and didn't pay attention to what I was actually implying. To everyone out there, I'm truly sorry if I said some things that got you upset. When I read Kanthos' post I realized that I really was ignoring one aspect of music: the fact that it's a "language" that everyone can express in their own way; whether it's with instruments, computers, synthesizers, etc. I shouldn't expect everyone else to create music by my own standards (which are now changed) that I inherited from my childhood - again, I'm sorry if I offended anyone. I'll gladly say that both sequenced and instrumentalized music forms have their ups and downs, and neither is in any way "superior" to the other, especially when some people have disabilities or medical conditions that prevent them from using one way over the other. I see now that everyone has the right and the choice to express themselves musically in any way that they wish."

It's belief systems like Continue's, touting the worthlessness of sequenced music, that negatively affect the reputation of video game music and the video game music arranging community. Half-jokingly, perhaps we can enlist Mike Chase to be the community's spokesperson, opening eyes and ears, converting one listener at a time. Good start, Mike.

Composer Spotlight #2: Saitama Saisyu Heiki (S.S.H.)

2007-07-11T16:58:00.000-05:00

"Come on, CHz. What do you think you're doing, dude? Everyone knows who S.S.H. is. He's that badass doujin remixer dude from Japan who slings the best guitar synths in the business and totally rocks out VGM covers. You can't just talk about stuff that's not original game material."

That's why we're going to be talking about stuff that's original game material!

Works featured in this post:

Lost Child (PC)

Sixty Nine 2 (PC)

full list of works

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'll just come clean and say that S.S.H.'s original game compositions sound, well, just like all his other songs: thrashing guitars, smooth synth melodies, etc. The difference is that, instead of having nostalgia for his tracks to rest their laurels on, they stand fully on original material.

And, of course, they still completely rock. This is S.S.H. we're talking about, after all.

"Fly High"
Sixty Nine 2 (PC)

Of course, in regard to both his remixes and original pieces, not all of S.S.H.'s tracks are synthrockin', high-flying (see what I did there) power extravaganzas. For example, "Crying" on LOST CHILD ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK FROM S.S.H SIDE-A and "Into the Noize Ocean" on Sixty Nine2 ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK FROM Saitama Saisyu Heiki are both slowly building tracks, "Crying" taking the rock ballad approach and "Into the Noize Ocean" featuring synth melodies, that only break out with guitaric ferocity after more than three minutes in. LOST CHILD ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK FROM S.S.H SIDE-B has the most variety, from the industrial-like "Amitto" to "Relieve," a piano version of the vocal opening theme composed by Soshi Hosoi.

"Amitto"
Lost Child (PC)

Currently, both SIDE-B and Sixty Nine2 are available for purchase at VGM World. If you've heard all of S.S.H.'s tunes on his web site Live House S.S.H and desperately need more, or just want some music to rock out to, both of these albums would be well worth your time and money.

VGM World has also stocked SIDE-A in the past, but they are currently out of stock (although the "Buy Now" button, which usually disappears when an album is sold out, is still there, so maybe they really have some...?). LOSTCHILD ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK ALTERNATIVE SIDE-X was a bonus single packaged with the limited edition version of SIDE-B, and LOST CHILD ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK FROM S.S.H THE FINAL SIDE-Z was only packaged with the 2006 re-release of Lost Child, you will likely have to check eBay or elsewhere.

Album Flashback: Quinn Fox - "Fitz Warine II" (2005)

2007-07-10T00:01:00.000-05:00

I don't own many albums, period. I tend to only buy stuff where a major majority of the album is enjoyable, i.e. I don't purchase blind. So there don't end up being many albums, or even EPs, where I can sit down and listen to the whole thing.

I'll admit, I was lukewarm on Fitz Warine II...at first. It wasn't a mediocre EP by any means. Indeed, something about the tracks made me keep listening long after I had downloaded them. Fully appreciating the album took me about a month, but it was well worth it. Before we get into the album, onto some background...

In my time at OC ReMix, Quinn Fox has been one of those modest guys who doesn't like being overly praised. I once asked him (through GrayLightning) repeatedly over the course of half a year to submit a great Sega Rally mix he did, "Snow Tires", and he said that if I ever asked again, there was no way he'd submit it. /shrugs

But he also recoils after being criticized. Much of the reason for criticism stems from his usage of out-of-the-box preset drumloops, a practice that Protricity's constant decrying in the formative years of the judges panel ultimately made taboo around OC ReMix. (Though I'd definitely argue that for the community, it was a development for the better. Parts of the necessary "evils" of being on the judges panel. :-D)

Quinn Fox's predominantly original album Fitz Warine II turned out to be 29 minutes and 32 seconds of really excellent material, full of driving beats, 'verby soundscapes, and great hooks. Sure, many, of the drum patterns are essentially or verbatim preset loops. But one thing that Quinn does right that hardly anyone else does (so far, only Red Tailed Fox has been comparably decent at it), is actually integrating those presets properly within the context of a complete piece of music.

If I didn't know any better, I could just as easily believe that Quinn wrote all of the drums. While it's not rocket science, to me such successful integration of presets is indeed a matter of skill and experience.

Once you check the album out, you'll see that there's a lot of care taken by Quinn to fashion smooth, ethereal textures to accompany the evolving grooves at the foundation of each track. For anyone familiar enough with Fox's OC ReMixes and other works, Quinn has a telltale style on account of his other sounds as well. The album is a nice cross-section of spacey pieces alongside some big beat-style material.

"Lonely Air Machine", "No Proper Time of Day" and "When and How I Feel" in particular remind me of how the video game industry is missing out on someone who knows how to create very engaging tracks, modern in their approach, but hearkening of the old school in terms of catchiness and memorability. Somewhere out there, a simple but modern-looking space shooter game is crying for a Quinn Fox soundtrack. Meanwhile, his Ristar "H2O" arrangement will keep the VGM-hungry among you satiated for at least 3 minutes and 32 seconds.

Some of the louder tracks were mixed a little too hot for my tastes, and some of the textures could have been fuller for the quieter pieces, but everything turns out a winner overall, especially on the writing side. For the clock-conscious music listener, it's not a huge time investment, so you should be willing to download this free album and see how it suits you. At a mere $0, the price is right. Have at it, and be sure to let Quinn know if you enjoy the album.

"Shinji Hosoe chronology" video at YouTube

2007-07-07T22:00:00.000-05:00

Shinji Hosoe is one of VGM's most prolific and longest-working composers. From Dragon Spirit, an arcade game released in 1987, to Folklore, a PS3 game released on June 21 this year in Japan and set to be released some time in November in North America, Hosoe has worked on the soundtracks to more than fifty games. His highest profile works are those in the Ridge Racer series, those in the Street Fighter EX series, and the in-game music to Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse (the much more well-known cutscene music was done by Yuki Kajiura, who fully scored Xenosaga Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra).

A friend gave me a link to a YouTube video by TYKUN called "Shinji Hosoe chronology," which samples eighteen of Hosoe's video game and original works, along with title screen or box art pictures for each work. It's a fascinating look at one of the industry's distinguished veterans:

TYKUN also has a chronology video for one of Hosoe's colleagues at Namco, Nobuyoshi "sanodg" Sano. Be sure to check it out too.

Personal feelings about Akitaka Tohyama

2007-07-07T14:35:00.000-05:00

This isn't composer spotlight. That's CHz's thing, and he is good at it. This is something else. I just had to write something. You see, I've listened to Akitaka Tohyama for hours in a row now. That man is a freaking genius. Someone give him a medal or something! He has a sense of style and a way of using sounds that I've never experienced before. The only man on this earth that's even close to Akitaka Tohyama's uniqueness is, in my opinion, Trent Reznor, and that's saying a lot. So let me tell you why Akitaka Tohyama's work constantly blows my head up.

The works I've heard by Mr. Toyama are his tracks in Tekken 4, Tekken 5, Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari (all must-have soundtracks by the way; Tekken 4 is maybe not that must-have). They share a really unique feel to them. Extensive use of effects with some serious automation, interesting and phat synths, and amazing beatwork. Now pick up your copy of Tekken 5 (you've got one, right?) and play some arcade. Then die. Yes, I know it pains you and lowers your ranking but do it anyway. Now you're at the continue screen. Here is what I'm talking about. Turn the volume to max, plug in some headphones and you'll hear something unbelievable. Akitaka Tohyama get's freaky. The extensive use of bitcrush and the fast repetitive drum-rolls (made popular by IDM music) is amazingly well programmed and It's really a something the world of game music hasn't heard much of before. The bleepy synth sounds, at first sound completely random but you soon realize he knows exactly what he's doing. In a way Tohyama captures the essence of old-school game music witht the lo-fi and upgrades it to fit the role that game music has today. This is high-quality, interesting and highly listenable music.

If you're not impressed yet and think the glitchy lo-fi stuff is just THAT bad, don't turn off Tekken 5 just yet. You want some pumping techno? You like zircon's use of phat synths or you plain just want to move your butt and still not ruin your reputation as the geek who only listens to game music? Go into training mode and select the level to play on. Select the final stage (the last of the two stages you meet Jinpachi on). Keep your headphones on. If I was out clubbing or dancing (which I sometimes do, especially at the club-tent at Arvikafestivalen, a music festival in Sweden) this would most certainly get me to move my feet. Again, it's Tohyama's unique skill to find the right sounds that makes this track so good. He also get's some of the classic VGM elements in there. The strings alone could be used in any RPG and the chord progression isn't that bad either. Still able to keep a groove that gets my adrenaline pumping faster than any other beat 'em up soundtrack has ever done, this is quality game music.

Sadly, this composer is very hard to find some decent information about. He's one of the Namco house composers (I guess?), so he's worked on some Namco games, but I only know of the four soundtracks I named up there and Soul Calibur. If ANYONE has a list or something of any of his works, please contact me on anothersoundscape@gmail.com. Any information about more of his works are welcome. Now get going and play some Tekken 5, because it has one hell of a soundtrack, even if it's not all Akitaka Tohyama. I might as well be back some other time with more rundowns of Tekken 5 tunes and composers. I'm just that nice.

Video Games Live in Washington, DC (6/29-6/30) Report

2007-07-06T23:22:00.000-05:00

Having attended both nights of concerts (June 29th & 30th) from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, I finally wanted to get my thoughts down. My girlfriend, The Lady, has her own take on the concerts, available at Century Fille. She has a great outsider perspective on things, and always speaks her mind.

As the OC ReMix group stopped by after rehearsal was over on Friday, one thing I really liked about Tommy Tallarico was that he wears what he wants whenever he wants. His outfits are crazy (love his Spider-Man shirt; wish they had it in black), but I relish the freedom he has to do as he pleases.

Tommy and his brother Mike Tallarico (VGL's merchandise manager) dipped their hands everywhere trying to coordinate things leading up the show. As noted by my colleague Jimmy "Big Giant Circles" Hinson, Mike in particular was very attentive and integral to getting djpretzel and the OCR representatives set up for prize giveaways on both days, as well as stocking OCR t-shirts for sale alongside VGL merchandise.

Every time we needed help, Mike was more than willing to assist, and we were thankful for his help the whole way. "Merchandise Manager" doesn't begin to describe the amount of things Mike assists with or is responsible for. In lieu of djpretzel's unavailability for Saturday's show, Mike provided Jimmy & I (and our respective ladies) with the backstage hook up, which we greatly appreciated. Luckily, one of Jimmy & I's last memories of VGL was taking a picture with Mike and saying our goodbyes as he and the rest of the tour got ready to leave DC and head to Detroit for the July 6th leg of the tour.

I was very impressed with The Lady, as she worked effortlessly to get djpretzel involved in media coverage of the Friday night show, working the room and obtaining interviews with the National Symphony Orchestra's in-house media team as well as National Public Radio and Wired Magazine. She also spoke afterwards at length with Cindy Wall (Jack Wall's wife) regarding both Video Games Live and OverClocked ReMix and also provided each of the celebrities at the Friday meet-and-greet with Andrew "zircon" Aversa's latest CD "Antigravity". She's very well suited to be OC ReMix's press liaison, and I liked watching her in action.

The shows themselves were a great experience. It was rewarding hearing OC ReMixes playing in the Concert Hall as people entered in to take their seats. DjSammyG of our meetup group managed to snag top honors in Friday night's costume contest as a red L-block from Tetris. (Check him out in the Washingtonian's blog, hoping to be outdone by Mega Man.) Sammy won, thanks to the crowd's nostalgia of Tetris over all other games. The OCR delegation made sure to whoop it up.

The music itself was excellent. My lady thought the more traditional-sounding orchestral arrangements (e.g. God of War, Medal of Honor, World of Warcraft) felt too similar, and that you only got a substantial change of pace from the arrangements based on non-orchestral soundtracks (Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog). I'm a fan regardless of genre, and I felt like the pieces arranged from orchestral originals were significantly different. For more modern game scores, the soundtracks are more create moods rather than hooks, thus seeming less defined by any one particular aspect. It gets into the debate of the values of older vs. newer game music, but that's neither here nor there.

During the Metal Gear Solid portion, one could tell that Tommy was the guy under the box on stage due to his telltale shoes. What I didn't learn until I hung out backstage the following day was that Mike was actually the soldier who ended up being alerted to "Snake's" presence, with real armor (but a plastic gun). Definitely a cool tidbit just illustrating how into the nitty-gritty these guys are in terms of putting on the show.

djpretzel got a little of the VGL shine reflected on him not just via the interviews and autographs he gave, but also being able to head up on stage and give away the swag from Friday's Space Invaders intermission (courtesy of DreamAuthentics and the very affable Rick Baretto [President & CEO]), including a DVD full of OC ReMixes. Having gone on stage Saturday night, I can confirm the excitement one feels. It's just good to be involved in something that helps legitimize the quality and professionalism of video game music, which is a mutual goal of OCR and VGL.

Martin Leung, the Video Game Pianist, also tore it up with a 10-song medley from the Final Fantasy series. There was a cool video crossfade effect that was done on Friday but not Saturday (one camera on keys, one on Martin), so I was glad to be in the audience when it was possible. The guy reminds me of Shnabubula's material, not in terms of writing, but in terms of sheer speed. The speed Martin maintains on the keys was impressive, straight up.

Martin seemingly almost had to have his set trimmed down in order to maintain the show's rigid schedule (a Kennedy Center issue, not VGL's), but it was cool seeing Tommy check in with Martin every few minutes just keeping him aware of what would end up happening. Luckily, Martin's planned Final Fantasy set went off without a hitch, though we didn't get to see him perform blindfolded.

Laurie Robinson of Advent Rising was on board for soprano for AR's portion of the show, with some amazing vocals. Being a regular part of the tour, Laurie really seemed in her element backstage on Saturday in terms of simply enjoying the show and chatting with the other performers, frequently joining we backstage onlookers at the right wing of the stage to check out her colleagues in actions. The power in her voice was only made better being a mere 10 feet or so away just offstage.

At any point, I would have loved to have gotten anonymous comments from members of the National Symphony Orchestra on their feelings regarding the concert. The Lady mentioned that one member loved the God of War set in particular, while another member seemed pretty dismissive of the whole affair. I'd think it would be a great thing to play two back-to-back sold out shows with very enthusiastic crowds, but crowds aren't everything.

The meet-and-greet Friday night was fun, and I enjoyed getting acquainted with the pros there, who were all very friendly. Along with other pros, I also met Laurie's husband, fellow composer Emmanuel Fratianni, Brothers in Arms' Stephen Harwood, Jr., as well as Civilization IV's Christopher Tin. The post-show was pretty long though, and I could tell by Jack Wall's demeanor that he was hoping to get elsewhere. As the conductor, he's got as busy a time as anybody as compared to some of the pros who were merely part of the crowd and after-events. Jack was nice enough to snap some quick pics with Jimmy and I on Saturday before getting the hell out of dodge, hopefully for some relaxation.

After mentioning Mazedude's recent God of War ReMix "Minatour Nightmares" (arranging material by Cris Velasco), Gerard Marino gave me his business card and mentioned that if anyone wants to arrange pieces from God of War, he'd hook them up with sheet music, MIDIs, SFX samples, anything they needed to help get the job done. Indeed, Big Giant Circles was yet another person who was astounded by God of War's set in particular, so he confided that he may take Gerard up on the offer.

It was a real pleasure meeting up with the OverClocked ReMix group for our Washington, DC meetup. After traveling to other meetups in the Mid-Atlantic area, it was nice to have one right in my backyard that didn't involve any meaningful travel on my part. Meetups are always fun, and I met a lot of new faces, especially arrangers I'd never met in person yet. I finally got to meet face-to-face with former judges panel colleague Shariq "DarkeSword" Ansari, as well as successfully have Vinnie "Palpable" Prabhu, Wilbert "bustatunez" Roget II, and Brandon "Harmony" Bush all snap up loose tickets on very short notice. I missed having pixietricks and zircon there, especially zircon (who had unexpectedly suffered from appendicitis on Friday and had to convalesce). If I had to "trade them away", I was glad to at least substitute in a lot of really talented musicians who I'd never officially met before.

We all had a great time attending the festivities. One of the most encouraging things I'd heard from Tommy backstage was that ticket demand for the back-to-back shows was so strong, both in presales and walkups on the day of the event, that DC could have run a 3rd show. Very promising news in terms of future shows for a concert series that, in its infancy, almost ceased to be soon after it started. Looking healthy and gaining momentum, whenever Video Games Lives swings by again (Tommy hopes for next year), I'll certainly be there.

Bjørn Lynne in 5.1

2007-07-06T20:15:00.000-05:00

I got my first exposure to Bjørn Lynne's material from Song of the Week, a piece of in-game music from Spin Jam for the PlayStation. He's got some really creative, dynamic material, as evidenced by other tracks of his I've heard, including "Jooli's Song" (which I encountered from Song of the Week as well).

Lynne makes the rounds via his MySpace page, pimping the latest developments on his site to those on his friends list. If you're up for a 14-minute experiment of sorts, give his latest message a look!

I hope you don't mind me taking this opportunity to let you know that produced a brand new music track in 5.1 SURROUND which is now available to download from my web site, for free, in WMA (Windows Media Audio v10) and in AC3 (Dolby Digital) surround music format. The track is a 14-minute ambient rock space journey that sounds pretty cool in surround audio, and I hope you'll enjoy it!

Download the track Voyager in 5.1 surround from my free surround music page.

PS, you can also hear it in regular stereo format (no surround speaker system required for that) on my blog

All the best,
--
Bjorn Lynne
www.lynnemusic.com

Why I hope my marriage is like Super Mario Bros. 3: A long improvised-essay

2007-07-04T22:14:00.000-05:00

OC ReMixer and former OC ReMix judge Antonio Pizza just posted an essay at the OverClocked ReMix forums likening his upcoming marriage to Miss Robin to Super Mario Bros. 3. But for better or for worse? Or for both?

For posterity's sake, we reproduce the entire essay in full:

Why I hope my marriage is like Super Mario Bros. 3:
an improvo-essay by Antonio Pizza

On Monday, February 12, 1990, Super Mario Bros. 3 was released in the United States. I don't know when I got my copy, but I do remember the anticipation leading up to it. I remember seeing the trailers for The Wizard; I remember hearing from a classmate that it was at "The Fun Factory", the local mall's arcade in a Playchoice-10 machine; I remember the brilliantly effective hype commercial with thousands of kids all across North America grouped in different colored shirts chanting "Mario! Mario!" until the camera pulled back into outer space revealing that the kids had formed Mario's smiling face upon the face of the earth. I was hyped, I was eager, I was amped. The classmate (Jeff Kraak, if you're out there somewhere, what's up?) told me magnificent things about the game such as not reverting directly to small Mario if you were injured as Fire Mario, a frog suit(?!), and (get this) the ability to fly! Oh! I had to have it! Everyone knew and loved Mario 1, and Mario 2 was, though not identically, equally loved and adored. How I asked for it, I don't recall. How I convinced my mother to buy it, I don't remember. When we went, I couldn't tell you. What I do remember was travelling to The Crossroads Mall in Portage, Michigan with her and purchasing Super Mario Bros. 3 from K.B. Toy Store for $55.

What I remember next disturbed me at the time and disturbed me in later retrospect, but now I recognize it as an important life lesson. We walked out of the mall and I had Super Mario Bros. 3 in my hands. Finally! I could get this weird "frog suit" and "teddy bear suit" (Tanooki Mario) that I'd heard about. I could try and get the whistle just like Jimmy Woods did in The Wizard, I could do better than Moira Grissom who stupidly fell and died in World 1's first miniboss castle, and I whoop the snot out of the evil and arrogant Lucas and his crony Toby Maguire. I could see if "Wart" was coming back!

I could finally do what I'd been waiting so long for. But the strangest feeling washed over me on our way back to the car.

I didn't want it anymore.

The excitement, the fever, the hype, the rush... all of it had vanished. I wanted to take the game and just throw it away. Not because it disgusted me, but I just didn't want it anymore. It was taking up precious space in my hands. Though nine-year-old me couldn't articulate it at the time, twenty-six-year-old me can say that it wasn't the game I desired most. It was wanting the game that I desired most. And as soon as I had it, my need had been fulfilled and I felt extremely disappointed at what I now had. Keep in mind, this is before I ever got home. This is still on the way to, and in, the car. Of course I hid this from my mother who had just shelled out $55 on something she had not the slightest interest in. I feigned excitement and contentment as well as a nine-year-old could in 1990. The inevitable logical question arises: "Why on earth would you desire for your marriage to emulate that?" Follow me and I'm going to bless you...

I'm not much of a gamer. The Legend of Zelda came out in 1987, Super Mario Bros. came out in 1985. I didn't beat either of them until 1996. I don't know how long it was until I beat Mario 3 but I'm sure it was well into the 90s as well. But that didn't stop me from playing it over and over again. Initially disappointed, I took the game (since I had it now and dare not even attempt to conjure up the notion of maybe suggesting that it should possibly be returned to the store), played it, eventually embraced it, and grew to love it. My next door neighbor and I would have all night Mario 3 sessions in the summer to see how far we could get without warping before we finally fell asleep (he always fell asleep by Water Land, I usually got tired around Level 7 or 8 ). I mastered the timing to hit the star at the end of every level. I could line up the Starman in Toad's scrolling extra lives game every time without trying. I memorized patterns in the N-card memory game. I discovered other whistles, I'd hunt the mysterious coin ships and blue Toad houses, I'd hoard P-Wings and Lakitu clouds until Dark World. Above a bachelor's, but not quite a doctor, I had mastered SMB 3 except for one part... I couldn't beat the freakin' thing. Getting through Dark World was hard enough, but throw in Bowser's castle plus the fact that I had no initial idea on how to beat him and it wouldn't be rare for me simply to get to Dark World and turn the game off. I wasn't unfulfilled, but I wasn't at a level of skill where I could face what was facing me. This wasn't, nor is, a matter of disappointment for me as Super Mario Bros. 3 ranks as one of my top 5, if not number one, favorite video game of all time. This isn't necessarily for matters of excellent construction or graphics or challenge, but because when I think of joy I've experienced when playing a video game, Mario 3 is at the forefront of my memory. I associate Super Mario Bros. 3 with pleasant memories and experiences. And though I have no difficulty breezing through the game today and stomping Bowser in the mud (or letting him stomp himself rather), it still brings me great pleasure despite it being 17 years old.

What I mean to say is that on the sixth anniversary of the party by the pool thrown by Flowerguy, I will become a married man and I have great expectations, hopes, and dreams. Admittedly, there are a few anxieties that I would not call cold feet, but merely recognition of the tasks and responsibilities that lie before me. I do not take what I am about to embark upon lightly. I am very excited but I hope that my excitement isn't quick to wear off in the eventual normalcy of everyday life. Keep in mind, I never imagined that upon walking out of the store in 1990 that I would no longer want what I'd been fiending for for weeks on end. But the redemption in that (besides a true calling from the Lord for me to marry this woman and my own personal desire and love to do so) is that my own life has revealed a wonderful precedence. What began as intense desire became, through time, hard work, passion, and zeal, a timeless and lasting experience. I get a kick every time I play Mario 3. It's as much fun now as it was in 1990, '98, and '06. I couldn't beat it at first, but by not giving up on it and sticking it through I eventually mastered it and began discovering fun new elements all the time (like getting all the coins in World... 2-2 I believe, makes a blue Toad's house appear). Yeah I'd throw the controller in disgust at times, and of course I'd angrily hit the power button on the NES and declare "I DON'T WANNA PLAY THIS NO MORE!" but rash statements can't quench a love of the game that easily. Of course I had to try again. I'd had too much fun to give up on it forever.

People say marriage is no picnic, but I youthfully disagree. Having been in the relationship with my fiancée for an adequate number of years, I know that it takes actual work to build on what you started with and to keep the two of you growing together. And if you and your honey want to go on a picnic, it takes work. Food must be bought and prepared. Decisions must be made on what to bring. An agreement must be made on when the time to have the picnic is available and where the two of you are going to go. How much is being brought? What is being brought? Is anyone else coming? Someone has to carry the stuff and if your locale is far off someone has to drive, be it you, your honey, the bus driver, the cab driver, or your grandma. The site must be set up and cleared of debris. But once all of that has taken place, you and your mate can literally enjoy the fruits of your labor. I'm not going into Dr. Phil mode, but I submit unto you folks in relationships; when was the last time you and (s)he went on a picnic?

Just as I'd heard and seen so much about Mario 3's fun (and difficulty via The Wizard) without ever having played it, I have high hopes that my inital eagerness and excitement about my upcoming and only marriage will mature into a lasting love and appreciation upon which I can fondly reminisce in 17 or, God willing, even 71 years from now. My father once wrote a poem about how we do not desire the sunshine, but desire the desire for sunshine. Immaturely, I fell into that trap as a 3rd grader in mid-1990 (and again when DKC 2 for the SNES came out) but now I realize that the desire for the desire can occasionally confirm that what you were chasing after was your true treasure after all. You didn't enjoy the desire of Mario 3, you actually wanted Mario 3 the whole time. You just didn't know it. You were merely sidetracked, but time can correct and redirect the course of that river. Have I stretched and exegied too much out of my illustration? Possibly. Does any of this make a lick of sense to someone out there? Possibly. Could it impact someone for the positive? Hey, anything could happen. That was not my inspiration for this improvised essay, but instead one of those quick 1½ - 2 second thoughts in which is compacted and compressed an entire day's worth of meditation and verbal dialogue. Nonetheless, I fancied it an interesting simile worth sharing and figured that if it could be appreciated anywhere, it would be on a videogame webforum.

If you read all of this, I thank you. If you're a Christian, we'd appreciate your prayers for our marriage. If you're not a Christian, I still would still love to cheerfully accept your well wishes. We need all the support we can get. And if you're like one of those types who has been on the forums since I first joined but still have yet to grow or mature any in the past 6 years, your immaturity, bitterness, snide attitude, and anger at the world is cause for great sadness. There is a world outside of your computer. The sunlight doesn't hurt. Embrace it occasionally. I beg you, turn away from Dustin Diamondism. I don't say this to whore out congrats for myself, but I believe in the prayers of the saints and would love their prayers for my marriage. However I recognize that everyone does not believe what I do and I don't want to deny a well meaning person the opportunity to say "ur gettin' /\/\4rr13|)??!!!11~ omg kewl." So I leave you on a positive note. Buy yourself an ice cream sandwich, fire up your NES if it still works, and play through all of Super Mario Bros. 3 (with the one you love if you can convince them) without warping, and beat the game.

Till next time, peace out, God bless, and may the force be with you.

-ap

P.S. But if you really want to show us you're happy for us, we want a Wii. :)

Xoc back at it with Kirby's Adventure & Gremlins 2 tribute albums

2007-07-04T16:06:00.000-05:00

Jason "Xoc" Cox has has plenty of arrangements, side projects and concept albums come out since the ultra-popular Super Mario World tribute "SMW", but the spiritual successor to "SMW" finally arrived a few weeks ago with the Kirby's Adventure tribute album "What's Pink and Sucks?"

Go for it now. You're bound to find something that you like within the album. It's over 30 minutes of Jason at his best, making creative use of a cavalcade of instruments and coming up with some great results. I don't have any nostalgic ties to the Gremlins 2 NES game (that's never stopped me), but Jason's arranged that as well, so you should know "G2EP" is worth the download.

Introducing yet another blogger at VGF

2007-07-04T09:18:00.000-05:00

Whozzat? Sum n00b?

I know. You don't know me, therefore I'm not as interesting as the mighty Larry Oji. But it's okay. I'm still going to write stuff here from time to time. Let me give you a brief introduction to the man that is Another Soundscape.

My name is Mattias Häggström Gerdt. It's a strange name because I'm from Sweden. You know the ever-neutral country up north? Where Gecko Yamori is from? Yeah, that's the one. I am one of those new ReMixers that haven't really made it on the big scene yet. I am also one of the small percentage of new ReMixers who's still here, still trying, after rejections.

I do have some merits though. I have two finished songs for the FF7 project (schh, it's a secret) and I'm also a part of some other projects, including Larry's own Dirge for the Follin. I make all of my music in Reason 3.0 as it is now (you back there, yeah you FL user, stop booing) and I enjoy tweaking sounds beyond recognition and acoustic drums and percussion mixed with synths. When I'm blogging here I'm going to tell you about many things, including: OCR as a beginner, OCR as a European, ReMixing, video game music I enjoy, video game music in general and other more or less relevant stuff. Now, that's enough introduction for me. Let's get it on!

So it's 4.30 PM and I recently got home from work. All sweaty and tired, I get down to my computer and start iTunes. Since I'm such an impulsive fellow I usually have iTunes set to 'shuffle'. I clicked the VGM playlist and there it was. "Voiceless Poem" from Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, composed by Ken Nakagawa, Daisuke Achiwa and Akira Tsuchiya (probably just one of them but I don't know who to credit).

Atelier Iris is one of those series of RPGs that hasn't really made it here in Europe, I don't know about the USA but in Japan this series, produced by Gust, is a long-runner. The first game in the series (that I know of) is Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg, released in 1997 for Sega Saturn. Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana on the other hand is for the PS2 and was released in mid-2004. Thinking it was a Disgaea rip-off (hey, 2D graphics in PS2 games isn't THAT common), I bought the game about a year ago and boy was I surprised. It's a classic 2D RPG with all elements you may and may not expect. Charming characters, incredibly smooth 2D graphics and the kind of plot that makes you think "ooh, the 90s". On top of this we have the soundtrack. Man, the soundtrack.

When the song "Voiceless Poem" was first heard in the game I thought to myself "this is one cozy track. It's got the melody and mood so right it's incredible. It's piano, it's synth pads and plucked stuff. Yum." And then out of nowhere comes an analogue, sharp, bouncy kickdrum. It could've been sampled right out of any psytrance song out there. Together with some 909-style hi-hats, the once so mellow tune goes downbeat-breakbeat, and I love it. The soundtrack is filled with those kinds of surprises. We have the regular Motoi Sakuraba-influenced songs, some sad themes and loads of the classic that's-the-funny-person-in-the-game-themes.

Although in Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, all the tunes share an experimental and interesting approach to this. With loads of ethno instruments and bells joining hands with analogue-type synths, beats and strange FX, the composers created a soundtrack that is really interesting to listen to, especially as a composer or remixer. You don't even have to play the game to enjoy these tunes. Sometimes the soundtrack suffers from some low-quality instruments, not in the bad-MIDI-way, but in the this-is-like-SNES-and-PSX-but-cooler-way. So do yourself a favour, pick up the soundtrack. Or even better, get the game at a game outlet near you. It's pure pleasure.

virt experiences wet dream, scores Contra 4

2007-06-29T02:56:00.000-05:00

As CHz reported over at ThaSauce, arrangement scene old-schooler turned professional game composer Jake "virt" Kaufman was outed in the current issue of Nintendo Power as being the composer for Konami's upcoming Contra 4 for the Nintendo DS. (Here's hoping they at least stick with Contra IV/4 in the title, and don't drop that in favor of just a subtitle.)

While unable to comment much beyond confirming his role on the upcoming shoot-them-motherfuckers-up (loosely translated, "schmup"), Jake backs up the Ninty Power interview and assures us that we'll be rocked by new themes as well as rearrangements of classic themes from the Contra series.

I personally can't wait until Jake has a chance to score another console game a la 2005's Legend of Kay, but congratulations to Jake on a dream project that's a major footnote in his growing career.

OneUp Studios: The Extra B Stands for BYOBB

2007-06-29T02:43:00.000-05:00

OneUp Studios recently hosted their latest BBQ, marking the event's 5th anniversary. I was invited by Mustin to the 3rd (honored, to be perfectly honest), and ever since then it's been open invitation. I :'-( every year I can't make it to Arkansas for the festivities. One day though...

Be sure to check out the OUS forums for information on how everything went. The OneUps themselves (OUS's cornerstone band) have been given new life since all but calling it quits last year, and will be performing at this year's Penny Arcade Expo (PAX).

Nice new OUS gear, by the way. Remind me to buy a black medium-size shirt.

Dale muses on "Fail"

2007-06-26T16:39:00.000-05:00

OneUp Studios co-founder and OC ReMixer Dale North has a new post up at Destructoid on America's history of crappy video game art and animation. Clearly the Mega Man series is in there. The video accompanying the post is tough in some cases (EarthBound? It's different, but what's wrong with that one?), but the gist of it is that Japanese art that's much more relevant to games is passed up for oftentimes non-sequitor art, usually resulting in cases of "fail."

Best moment of the video for me:
An iconic picture of Pac-Man is shown midway through the video: "Oh man! How are they gonna fuck that up???"
Seconds later, the Atari box art: "Dear LORD!"

Oof. I also don't believe I've ever seen anything as comparatively anti-septic and bland as the American box art for Breath of Fire III after the vibrant Japanese art.

And say what you will about the US-based cartoons being poor. You still watched them. Never ever heard of that DarkStalkers cartoon until now. Don't forget though that the Super Mario Bros. Super Show cartoon segments and Mario 3/Mario World cartoons by DiC were really strong all things considered.

One thing that could be noted for the present is that, with the foothold that manga and anime have on pop culture nowadays, a lot of the showcased art deemed unpalatable to American consumers back then is significantly more permissible. It remains to be seen what that'll translate to for future releases, but hopefully the days of Mega Man I's American box art are basically behind us.

A long-time gamer, Dale's been really active at Destructoid, so be sure to check out his regular updates.

Composer Spotlight #1: Hiroyuki Iwatsuki

2007-06-26T01:41:00.000-05:00

Hiroyuki Iwatsuki is the master of the generic beat 'em up track. What does that mean? Well let's find out!

Works featured in this post:

Choujin Sentai Jetman (NES)

Ghost Sweeper Mikami: Gokuraku Daisakusen (SNES)

Ninja Gaiden Shadow (GB)

Pocky & Rocky (SNES)

Shin Kidoesenki Gundam Wing - Endless Duel (SNES)

Spanky's Quest (GB)

The Ninjawarriors (SNES)

full list of works

~~~~~~~~~~~~

One thing to note about Iwatsuki is that it's hard to get his "sound," so to speak, because he frequently collaborated with other Natsume sound team members, most notably Iku Mizutani and Haruo Ohashi. However, four out of his six chiptune works were solo ventures, so from these we can get some insight into the man's usual style.

"Area E"
Choujin Sentai Jetman (NES)

"Stage 1"
Ninja Gaiden Shadow (GB)

We can already see some similarities in the structure of the songs. Each loop has three basic sections: an intro, main body which ends in an upward sequence, and high conclusion. Both songs also have a driving bassline and percussion too. We'll see the tripartite structure and backbone in the next two co-composed samples from the SNES.

"Crazy Woods"
Ghost Sweeper Mikami: Gokuraku Daisakusen (SNES)
co-composed with Kinuyo Yamashita

"Last Boss"
The Ninjawarriors (SNES)
co-composed with N. Tate

I've been hand-picking tracks on purpose to reinforce the first sentence in the post, that Iwatsuki is the master of the generic beat 'em up track. All four games featured so far are side-scrolling/platforming beat 'em ups. More important, though, is how similar these songs are; the games Iwatsuki has worked on are chock full of songs just like these that grab you and yell out, "Beat up enemies to me!"

However, what I like about these soundtracks are just how eminently listenable they are. "Generic" does not automatically mean a song is bad; despite the four songs I picked being mostly interchangeable with one another (discounting the synth qualities of the three platforms), each track has its own decent melody and hooks, variety, and development. If these types of tracks are up your alley, then you should definitely check Iwatsuki out, because there are lots more tracks just like these.

Now that I've talked about how his music is all the same, let's look about some of his work that actually does sound different!

"Staff Roll"
Spanky's Quest (GB)

"Haunted House"
Pocky & Rocky (SNES)

"Airport"
Shin Kidoesenki Gundam Wing - Endless Duel (SNES)
co-composed with Haruo Ohashi

So in addition to beat 'em up tracks, we also have almost Kirby-like ^___^ness, almost RPG dungeonness, and almost technocrapness. I used "almost" and "-ness" in all three of those "genres" because each track does manage to still retain a little bit of the Iwatsuki flavor. Staff Roll and Haunted House have pumpin' basslines, and Airport still gets you ready to kick the crap out of something. Iwatsuki has a consistent style in his works that just rocks.

A plug for "Music from SSX Blur"

2007-06-24T18:04:00.000-05:00

The Song of the Week competition (Week #98) currently has an entry from Tom "Junkie XL" Holkenborg from Nettwerk/Electronic Arts' recent Music from SSX Blur album, the track being "Wanlong Mamoth".

All I can say is that, after hearing it, I'm really disappointed that I didn't have a chance to attend the Washington, DC part of the album release tour at GLOW on April 21st. That was back before I had my current (and thoroughly enjoyable) job, so all of my attentions had been going towards job hunting.

Nonetheless... :'-(

Great track, and I'll definitely be checking out the rest of the album.

Dhsu Presents: Doujin Spolight

2007-06-21T23:36:00.000-05:00

Hey guys, it's your friendly neighborhood Dhsu here: ReMixer extraordinaire and Asian debonaire. My job is to familiarize all you gaijin with video game arrangements made by our friends in the Land of the Rising Sun. These arrangements are commonly referred to under the umbrella term "doujin" (i.e. amateur or fan) music, and are closely linked to Japan's large "DTM" (or "DeskTop Music") community. The recently-posted "Dignity Ark" by Ryo Lion is but one example of what the majority of Western ReMix-lovers are missing out on.

There are a number of factors that contribute to the relative inaccessibility of doujin arrangements: in addition to the obvious language barrier, the doujin community doesn't have (at least to my knowledge) the equivalent of dedicated, centralized submission sites like OCR or VGMix. The closest thing would probably be sites such as CREATOR BACKER that keep track of the myriad personal sites run by the artists. Also, like their American counterparts, Japanese arrangements aren't all good, so it's a task in itself to sort through all "bleh" stuff. What's worse, the arrangements that actually turn out to be amazing are often available only as part of albums sold on the artists' websites.

But hey, that's what I'm here for! I'll be your tour guide of sorts to the wonderful world of doujin music, sharing sites and various other finds that I've come across during my own travels. I did a Doujin Spotlight feature at ThaSauce too a while ago, so the 2 whole people who ever went there will know the drill. ;)

As I close this post, I do have a small confession to make: namely that I typically only check arrangements for games or sources that I'm familiar with. Since I'm a bit of a Squaresofgt, that means mostly Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger. Although that's pretty much the only thing Japanese people remix anyway, aside from Touhou and hentai games. :P Oh yeah, and the Ys series, but nobody's ever played those.

How a Russo-Nigerian Stallion Found Video Game Music, Part 6: Joining the Establishment

2007-06-13T17:49:00.000-05:00

The coolest aspect by far of working at OC ReMix has been the job of helping select which tracks are posted. Especially as a listener/non-musician judge, being invited on board the Judges Panel validated the extent of my fandom for the amateur video game music community. Getting into the stories of my time on the panel will be cool for those insterested enough of the inner workings of the site, so I might as well lead off with how I ended up joining them.

Dain "Beatdrop" Olsen had recently stepped down from the panel after his second go-round, again for a lack of time. Long-time judges Ari "Protricity" Asulin and Binnie "Digital Coma" Katti were pretty merciless in pointing out that they thought he was a shitty judge for being so inactive at the end of both of his stints. I wouldn't know firsthand, but their complaining was probably a significant reason that pressure came down on Beatdrop to step down.

Myself having been on the panel for almost 3 years, I can tell you that the collective mindset of the panel never dwells on a loss. When someone resigns or is removed from the panel, it's unfortunate, but the gears immediately spring into motion for selecting a replacement. At the time Beatdrop left, several people were immediately brought up. JigginJonT likely would have been invited had he had the free time to join, but told whomever asked him about the opportunity that he didn't have the time. In the end, the two serious candidates brought up were Jack "Adhesive Boy" Ryerson and myself.

If you ask me, Adhesive Boy got a raw deal when he was nominated. If you listen to his material, you'll find that he's an A-grade arranger that's come out with some really impressive and creative pieces. By the time of his second posted ReMix, Treasure Hunter G 'Linoleum Stalactites', I had felt that he was on the road to making it onto the panel if he continued on that level, as he was only bound to get better.

When it came down to him or me, I ended up winning out, but at the same time, the potential to simply take on two new members was there, so AB and I weren't in any direct competition. After I joined though, I learned that close to the end of the selection process, the panel collectively decided they didn't need two people (which would have put the panel size at a then-unheard of 12 members). On top of that though, two mainstay judges felt AB made calls that nitpicked details and missed a lot of the big picture, and unfortunately that was it.

I was nominated by Protricity after a brief AIM conversation. From the looks of it, he had read the summer music reviews I had maintained for VG Frequency as he told me that he had the impression that I was enthusiastic about the community's music, but was able to call and spade a spade and be honest about when something was weak. I'd never find out that he was actually the one who nominated me outright until I joined.

Because I had always gotten along well with Gray "GrayLightning" Alexander, and he was my main source of communication as to what was going on in the judges panel, I had assumed that he had been the one who put my name forward. In actuality, he had reservations about me because I was already devoting so much time to college and the VG Frequency radio show there; he was wary of a someone coming on board who wouldn't make the panel something of a priority.

Digital Coma had bigger reservations about my objectivity but was ok enough to give me his support. I wouldn't know it until years later, but a long vote on one mix in my third day on the job caused him to go on a rant in the private judges chatroom on how I ended up being a terrible choice.

Vigilante intially had a bad vibe about my objectivity as well, but after he got a hold of me on AIM and gave me some test songs, I ended up with his strong support. Paraphrasing him, he could tell that I was capable of giving critical opinions and not trying to figure out what he wanted me to say. I forgot the other songs I listened to, but my first vote was one of the test batch songs Vig asked me about, Koelsch1's Valkyrie Profile 'Blind Eternity'. I figured it was worth it for my first vote to be a submission I would remember. My first YES vote went to a young up-and-comer by the name of Andrew "zircon" Aversa, for his very first passable submission Chrono Trigger 'Calamitous Judgement'.

When I was finally selected for the panel, djpretzel messaged me that night and made the official invitation. While I was secure in my skills, I was ecstatic that I was selected. As a non-musican, the fact that I had won the support of a very talented and selective group of musicians was especially gratifying.

Five hours later, after talking with djpretzel about the responsibilities of the job, getting congratulated by my new collegues, and reading through all the old topics and policy debates in Judges Discussion, I was ready to go. In my first four days, I had voted on everything there was to vote on, which was around 35 submissions.

After seeing my opening flurry of voting, Gray immediately warned me about working too hard and risking burnout. I dunno if he had ever seen anyone come in and annihilate the queue like that. And as soon as djpretzel posted the next flood of submissions a few days later, I voted on all 20 of them in 16 hours. There's no way I could do that nowadays, but my overall work ethic remains the same to this day. If a submission comes through the panel, I've voted on it 99% of the time.

Working these past three years evaluating OC ReMix's submissions has been almost nothing but fun. There have been plenty of internal squabbles, bouts of panel ennui, emo artists, ignorant assumptions by outsiders, and straight up crappy subs to weather. Depending on how forthcoming I am, you'll get to hear bits and pieces of all of that stuff if you stick around the blog. At the end of the day however, I'm currently one of only 10 people on earth who decided what you hear at OC ReMix. It's an envious job if you have an open mind and really, really love video game music.

And ever since I found it, I've really, really loved video game music.

Let's talk about someone other than me now.

How a Russo-Nigerian Stallion Found Video Game Music, Part 5: Scintillating Data Entry

2007-05-28T04:04:00.001-05:00

If someone had told me back in 2002, when I first found OverClocked ReMix, that I'd end up handling much of its day-to-day operations I'd be surprised. But not too surprised.

It doesn't happen at the drop of a hat, but when I'm passionate about something, I invest a lot of personal time in learning everything I want to know. When I first started choosing ReMixes to keep at OCR, I researched tons of information like the artists' real names and websites, the original composers, and the source tunes. One other byproduct of that passion is the desire to befriend the people involved and offer my assistance if needed.

From 1999-2001, I spent a lot of time around LatestWrestlingNews.com, a now-defunct pro wrestling news site that had a reputation for only posting hard news. After establishing myself as someone who could present their point of view articulately and getting to know site creator Derrick Flippin, he offered me a position as an opinion columnist. After proving myself as being dedicated, I moved onto posting news, providing show coverage, handling discussion moderation, and handling some limited administrative duties, and we talked on the phone a good deal.

Derrick closed down the site in 2001 to focus on his music (and he's a great musician; at the time he was friends with artists like Pearl Jam, Lisa Germano & Neil Finn), and I haven't heard from him in a while, but working for him and with him was one of my first experiences on the web learning everything I could about a site I cared for, befriending its head honcho & joining the staff, and amassing more and more responsibilities over time.

After finding OCR and becoming very familiar with the material there, I private messaged djpretzel in January 2003 hoping to help fill out the vastly empty OC ReMix informational database. I'm not sure how much flack djp received at the time, but aside from the strong core of the database actually existing, there was virtually no complete information for anything. Given the amount of work involved, I can see how it wasn't a priority vs. evaluating and posting new material. Nonetheless, games frequently has no composer listing, no release year, and no publisher. The major majority of ReMixers had no information filled out as to their real names, websites, email addresses of forum profiles. With the actual skeleton of the database there, it was up to someone else to flesh it out and realize its potential.

Back then, I worked through an Excel spreadsheet to amass the data, focused on game information (year, publisher, composers), but in retrospect it was a pretty cumbersome task as djp would have to transfer all the Excel data into SQL query strings he could use to add the information. I would never actually get to hand over that Excel information as my laptop at the time fried in the middle of my work. After recovering the data a few weeks later, I didn't revisit the project until 2004 after I had officially joined the staff as a judge.

My largest projects have involved populating the site database with information on the games, composers & source tunes, and details on the ReMixers, with most of the work as well as research acumen already cultivated by the years my own personal interest. Being able to collect and (finally) apply that information to the site itself is arguably something that would have otherwise taken a team of people to accomplish.

In case you don't know, by far the most important aspect of OCR are the ReMixers who contribute their material. Even on the sidelines, I was disheartened by the lack of readily available information about them in the OCR database. Again, djpretzel is only one man. But, to me, empty information meant that fans would have fewer resources for learning more about the artists themselves, as well as what other works they created. One thing that's obvious over time is that people are inherently lazy. I don't even mean that in a bad way. But in terms of information, most want it at their fingertips; they don't want to dig around the internet the way I did. Then you have the contingent that don't even know they want the information, but end up appreciating it once they find it available.

Thus, the first major improvement to the database was filling out the ReMixer information fields, of which the major majority was done from 2004-2005. I ended up having to redo about a third of the work after that aforementioned laptop disaster, but I was able to retrace all of my steps and discover some new information.

Back around 2003, OC ReMixer Zac "Psychrophyte" Brier also spearheaded an community effort to fill out the nearly empty source tune information fields in the database, which I was a small part of. Much of the work done amounted to cataloging the original songs from popular games, amounting to about 300 added and associated tracks. After taking over and continuing the effort in 2005, I've updated incorrect and unofficial track names for existing songs and added over 700 other songs. In short, if a ReMix on OCR is associated with an original song, you probably have me to thank about 80% of the time.

Those initiatives explain much of the development of OC ReMix into a more useful tool for promoting the knowledge of both original video game music and the ReMixers who make it all happen at OCR. To the average person, however, that stuff is all pretty cumbersome, all unsexy research and data entry. The real fun of joining OCR's staff was being invited to join the site's judges panel. To be given a say in deciding what music actually makes it into OCR...that'll take us to Part 6...

How a Russo-Nigerian Stallion Found Video Game Music, Part 4: VG Frequency (The Radio Show)

2007-05-19T22:02:00.000-05:00

After a semester of my "(Insert Name Here)" radio show, split between my favorite mainstream tracks and tracks from the amateur VGM arrangement community, I realized that most of my listening audience stuck around for the video game music. Having promoted my show more thoroughly on OverClocked ReMix's message boards, I managed to secure a tight-knit group of listeners who I'd gather up on AOL Instant Messenger in a chat room. Among them were Scott "SeattleOverCoat" Porter (later just "OverCoat", my first regular listener), a.p. "analoq" matthews, Candy "Juverna" Bullard, and Danny "SuperGreenX" Adler (now "SGX").

I honestly don't remember if any specific track prompted me to also follow the original music that amateur VGM arrangers made. Having done a great amount of personal research on the artists' homepages, I was able to familiarize myself with the fact that many of them also had original works on MP3.com or personal homepages.

As far as I recall, it was around the end of the 2002 school year when I decided to do an episode of "(Insert Name Here)" exclusively featuring original tracks by artists in the OC ReMix community. Mixers who had already heard of my show quickly turned out, so I ended up with material from all the names mentioned prior. SGX's stuff in particular was very impressive (and continues to be to this day). I was also excited to receive material from top names like Disco Dan, Ailsean, Injury, DarkeSword, Protricity, and Star Salzman.

One particular thing I remember in preparation was that I printed notes on each musician and track to reference for the introduction of each song. Not to sound egotistical, because my shows were both very loose and tongue-in-cheek, but I'm impressed at the degree of seriousness that I gave to the subject matter at the time. I was able to note real names, music competitions that they had recently taken part in, as well as previous works and relevance to the community. There was no moment where my audience went "Damn, he respects the community. He knows his stuff," but I feel those things were inherent and unspoken to those from the VGM arrangement community who tuned in.

In the summer of 2003, I finally made the move to focusing on video game music and the amateur VGM arrangement community entirely. After being stuck on a name for weeks (the best I could initially come with was VGM: Very Good Music, which I allowed Steve "D-Lux" King to steal years later), my friend Joe bantered out a few radio sounding words, including the word "Frequency." As soon as I put "VG" in front of it and said it aloud, I knew I had a very strong name for the show.

Looking back to my first episode's playlist from VGF, I'm certainly astonished by a few things:

*I forgot about my penchant for inserting songs into my playlists on the fly when requests popped up; my first track of the show was a request for Gröûp X.
*Just friends at the time, "The Lady", Paige, called into the very first show. Though basically a hater (you'll hear more from her when the time comes), she was impressed by the music of Jared Hudson and Quinn Fox.
*My selection was nowhere near as deep back then. Most of the tracks were favorite OC ReMixes.

It would take too much time to go through all the various developments in the show that were very important to me at the time. The ball started rolling with people I had known beforehand, and soon enough I was joined by people I didn't know well but knew of the show. The show clearly became more important over time as ReMixers started going out of their way to catch it, started providing me with audio bumpers, tracks to play (many times, before anyone else had heard them), works-in-progress to provide feedback to or interviews, and started treating the show's chat room as a important place to be to interact with lots of community members.

Memories of those 3 years, in shorthand:

*The headache that was streaming in RealAudio
*Commercials for Zwings 'n Things ("Miss the old days when a wing was a wing?", which Spencer Koch later admitted he had no idea how he came up with that when recording the ad)
*Bubb Rubb during all of the early aftershows
*Coining the term "e-penis" while interviewing KyleJCrb and reading the chat room window contents over the air; if you've ever heard the term anywhere, I somehow invented it
*The Wingless explains the meaning of bukkake
*The Valentine's Day shows
*Being saved in a big way by 5 interviews when audio from my computer was a no-go one week
*Interviewing Protricity, the arrival of Jim Holland and newly being able to record the shows myself, leading to jump in popularity once show MP3s became available every week
*Having friend, Emory student, WMRE DJ, and old-school OC ReMixer Electron on board as guest host
*The yearly "Best of the Best" episodes capping off each year's run
*Interviewing OC ReMix founder, David "djpretzel" Lloyd
*The surprise return for one more season after graduating from Emory University in 2005

VG Frequency certainly was a memorable experience that fueled my love for broadcasting to this day. The radio show kept me in tune with the goings-on of the amateur VGM arrangement community for quite a long time in an Internet age where people move fast and events move faster. The casual fan misses out on the high quality, diversity and vast selection in arrangements outside of OC ReMix and especially original works from artists' homepages. It made me respect the community's musicians even more, and bringing those tracks awareness they may have otherwise not received is something I'm proud of doing.

Though I served an unconventional role in the community as a radio DJ, the role was one that provided me not only the opportunity to observe the community's contributors, but ultimately the ability to actively shape the community's direction in my own small way. After doing community music reviews during the summer of 2004, I entered a few people's radar as a serious candidate for a position on the OverClocked ReMix Judges Panel. That'll take us to Part 5...

How a Russo-Nigerian Stallion Found Video Game Music, Part 3: Discovering OverClocked ReMix

2007-05-01T18:49:00.001-05:00

When Matt Kertz mentioned to me to check out remix.overclocked.org in early 2002, I was definitely interested, but never became a hardcore fan of the site until the following summer. The first newly posted track I remember being interested in back then was DarK PurPLe's Super Mario Bros. 2 "The DarK Underground."

When I first browsed OC ReMix, I only downloaded and kept about 30 tracks. All were from games I was familiar with, including Super Mario Bros. 1-3, Super Mario 64, Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3, Streets of Rage 1-2, F-Zero, Street Fighter II and Mega Man X (which I had downloaded a ROM of). Any other games I had played had no mixes at the time, and I only played a limited number of games growing up. I quickly added enjoyable tracks from OCR to my radio show playlists, impressed at the sound quality and creativity of guys like McVaffe (Mike Vafeas). Even as a newbie, I could instantly tell the guy was treated like a huge deal there.

The advent of torrenting years later would make OCR's catalogue much more accessible than when I first arrived. But in retrospect, what's funny to me is that I initially treated the site rather nonchalantly, armed with downloading habits I'd chastise newbies for having nowadays. In that sense, I wasn't there broadly looking to find good music, I was strictly there for nostalgia. My attitude wasn't rude or dismissive, but other mixes on OCR might as well have not existed; they simply weren't on my radar.

Even when I got my first taste of ReMixes that were from games I didn't know, my horizons weren't broadened at all. I simply downloaded the new tracks that I liked and did no further exploration. My roommate back then, Dave Share, managed to download Chris J. Hampton's Chrono Trigger "New Zeal" and McVaffe's Castlevania Adventure "CV2k" (since removed from the site, no thanks to me) searching for cool stuff himself once I told him of the site. When he played those tracks on his comp, they were so catchy that I asked him what they were from and was surprised that they were also from OC ReMix. You'd think I would have learned to check out everything, but then again the task of amassing every mix back in 2002 was time-consuming and potentially not worth the returns.

Some n00b things I remember about my earliest days:
*Before realizing he was the site creator, wondering how egotistical djpretzel was for being the only person using the first person in the ReMix writeups
*Visiting VGMix shortly after learning about the ReMixer Exdous, downloading several mixes there, realizing most of the tracks sucked and subsequently never visiting it again; they had no quality control system in place at the time, and it showed
*Severely disliking Super Mario World "Flat Goom Beat" (also since removed) for being uncreative
*QuasiKaotic & Jade Gemini

Luckily I passed on the good word about OC ReMix onto my best friend, Joe Mauri. If Matt Kertz was the one who guided me to OverClocked ReMix in the first place, then Joe was the one who's actions ended up making me a hardcore fan. Back in the days when bandwidth was costly and speed was inconsistent, OCR's downloading policy strongly discouraged people hitting the site hard and snagging lots of tracks within a short period of time. About a week after telling Joe about OC ReMix however, he had unabashedly downloaded everything, the site having around 600 songs by that point. He was there for nostalgia, but he was also broadly looking to find good music.

The summer of 2002, Joe came to stay with my family during summer break, which was great for both of us. One of the most influential activities of mine that summer was taking three days to sit down and listen through all of the nearly 700 ReMixes he had, starting from the letter A and working my way down through Z. It was definitely a rewarding experiencing, as I ended up keeping about a third of the mixes, becoming familiar with lots of the artists there, and becoming indirectly familiar with a lot of popular game soundtracks. I didn't know Mega Man II's "Dr. Wily Stage 1" or Final Fantasy VI's "Terra" beforehand, but I definitely knew them now. From that point forward, OC ReMix was a daily visit. Once I lurked the forums, I decided my best approach for becoming a community regular would be to post a handful of mix reviews first to have some posts to my name; you can still see those archived posts today.

Much like my habits with mainstream music I liked, I meticulously tagged the OC ReMixes I held onto. While the framework was good, OCR's informational database was really lacking back then as it was only as complete as djpretzel's spare time or interest could manage. Thus, my curiosity had me researching the source tunes of the mixes at Zophar's Domain, original composers, ReMixer real names, email addresses and homepages; whatever wasn't readily available, I worked hard to track down out of my own personal interest.

My burgeoning interest in OverClocked ReMix quickly led to me altering the divided focus of my radio show singularly to the amateur VGM arrangement community. That'll take us to Part 4...

How a Russo-Nigerian Stallion Found Video Game Music, Part 2: Starting in Radio

2007-04-30T22:49:00.000-05:00

Along with using Napster to seek out the occasional video game tracks, I also amassed a collection of mainstream tracks that I had liked over the years. Being detail-oriented, I always changed filenames, and I used Winamp to tag my tracks pretty meticulously: release year, album, publisher. But also being a very particular fan, I didn't have anything more than maybe 275-300 tracks, most bands or artists having only 1 or 2 tracks. Still though, whenever I found something good enough to keep, it was always a big deal. Especially in music, I'm of the view that one should be open to all new music, but also feel one's preferences to be the most interesting out of anybody's.

In late 2001, I guested a lot on my friend Anna Scruggs' radio show at WMRE, Emory University Student Radio. She played a good deal of pop music, but within the mix she had a lot of interesting bands, including Coldplay just before I was familiar with 'em. She picked her music well, and at the time she was a particularly big fan of Guster as well as the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. I don't even recollect why I first joined her on the air other than to hang out; I hadn't been bitten by the radio bug yet.

Due to WMRE having a webcam and being broadcast on Emory on-campus cable system, Anna, much like any and all females visible on WMRE, was frequently propositioned to flash the webcam by horny male students, always funny and/or mildly annoying on- or off-air. Thems were the breaks.

One aspect of WMRE I particularly enjoyed was working with its primitive soundboard (which was eventually upgraded to a very professional one). Using it to broadcast was pretty fun, and joining the station to be allowed to actually work with the equipment was one reason I joined. The other reason went back to my earlier mantra: one should feel one's musical preferences to be the most interesting out of anybody's. Discovering the opportunity to share my favorite music with people and spread the good word about it was all the impetus I needed to ask about having my own timeslot on the station in February 2002.

One thing job-seeking websites and books promote heavily for hungry individuals looking for opportunities is to grab tenaciously at even the smallest bite, in order to get one's foot in the door. At WMRE, that meant eagerly accepting the Thursday night, 2-4AM timeslot when it was the only one offered to me. While an objectively lousy slot, the time wasn't bad relative to my Friday class schedule, so I went for the hand I was dealt. My original show name, "(Insert Name Here)", sounded witty enough given that I couldn't come up with anything else. In any case, that's where seizing the opportunity factored in.

Where luck and the ability to stand out eventually factored in was in how diligently I filled in for DJs who couldn't make it to their scheduled shows. Most of the time, whenever a DJ announced they couldn't make it, I would swoop in and reply offering to cover their slot. Most of the time, it didn't matter how short notice it was; I was able to compose a fresh playlist in half an hour that I felt had pretty good flow and subsequently hotfoot it with my laptop over to the Longstreet dorm where the station was housed. Being committed to only 4 two-hour shows per month, within my first month at WMRE I instead managed to host over 40. By that time, I frequently got calls from people recognizing me, telling me that they saw me in the studio all of the time, with most people liking what I was playing.

My format at the time was a mixture of mainstream music, mostly UK-based bands (Travis, The Verve, Coldplay) and video game music that I could find at reasonable quality in MP3 format. That limited me to stuff like Street Fighter Alpha 3, GoldenEye 007, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs. SNK and other assorted goods, but I still had a fairly deep selection.

After coming in on one occasion to cover for a timeslot after another friend of mine, Matt Kertz, Matt asked me what my show format was and I mentioned the video game music portion of the playlist. Particularly a fan of the CastleVania series mixes available there, Matt recommended me to http://remix.overclocked.org, emphasizing that the tracks available there were abundantly free. Making a mental note of it, I followed up on it a few days later, which I'll elaborate on next time around.

After that month of constantly filling in for people, I received an email from WMRE's then-Program Director Caroline Riegel, who had also provided me my initial DJ training. It turned out that the Saturday night, 10PM-Midnight slot had been freed up and she had noticed my dedication to being on the air. She had sent me the email letting me know that the timeslot was free and that, due to my enthusiasm, she was offering me the opportunity to take it over or decline it before she publicly put it up for grabs. I quickly thanked her and accepted my new slot. And of course, I kept right on plowing through and substituting for other people. I loved being on the air.

While I felt it important to plug video game music on my radio show, it truly took on a life of its own once I became familiar with OverClocked ReMix. That'll take us to Part 3...

How a Russo-Nigerian Stallion Found Video Game Music, Part 1: The Games

2007-04-29T18:44:00.000-05:00

I thought it would be appropriate to give some background on myself and why I decided to start a blog about video game music. Or, more accurately, how my girlfriend (a woman you'll hear more from known as "The Lady") encouraged me to start a blog about video game music. It's been a relatively long road getting to VGM listening as a life's hobby.

I was never big into video games as a kid. I loved the ones I did have, but never owned too many or spent way too much time playing them. In short, loved 'em, just not fanatically. And it continues that way up until the present day. I don't own a Wii, a PS3 or an Xbox 360, though I've played Wario Ware: Smooth Moves for a few minutes and loved it.

My uncle bought my (fraternal) twin brother & I an NES in 1988 for our birthday, which came with the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combo cartridge (naturally). Despite playing Nintendo together at the same distance from the television, my brother's eyesight stayed 20/20 and mine started getting worse for whatever reason. I needed glasses in 1st grade (didn't end up getting them until years later).

The music of Super Mario Bros. definitely stuck with me and remains an instant bit of nostalgia, but while it planted a seed, I never sat down and tape recorded the music like a lot of colleagues I know.

Other earlier memories involved:
*a friend of my brother's, Nnamdi Ifejika, having a ton of NES games, which allowed me to sample a lot of 'em and get to know bits and pieces of several titles
*3rd grade, where my friend Eric Hole had a huge Nintendo Power strategy guide and letting me borrow it for a few days, as just reading about the games was amazing enough
*playing the Sega Master System, particularly the footbag portion of California Games, at my uncle's house (the one who bought us the NES)
*playing Duck Hunt at a brother's friend's house and chancing on a sweet spot in Clay Shooting that allowed me to hit each target no matter where it was on the screen; I eventually got nervous around Round 90 after I sportingly let one clay pigeon almost get away, then somehow got nervous and tried to shoot it directly
*Receiving both Super Mario Bros. 3, and the excellent Nintendo Power Strategy Guide for it in 1990
*Playing the SNES at Dave Riccio's house back when it first came out, especially Street Fighter II years later
*Choosing Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers over Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for a birthday present (a difficult choice at the time, an excellent choice in retrospect)
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV
*My friend Hayden Mixsell bequeathing me his Sega Genesis after moving onto the Nintendo 64, hooking me up with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Streets of Rage 2 in the process

It's difficult to encapsulate the entire mish-mash of games of my childhood, but so many of them had really memorable themes, Streets of Rage 2 in particular. Some of Pilotwings comes to mind. Road Rash. Super Mario Bros. 2. Street Fighter Alpha had a really big impact on me. There's a big list eventually waiting to be recollected.

It wasn't until Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Napster in 2000 during my freshman year at Emory University in Atlanta, GA that I really got into trying to find video game music. As far as I knew, back in the relative infancy of the internet, there weren't any concentrated websites to buy game music let alone simply find it. But on a whim, I figured that if mainstream music was available, maybe somebody had some video game music from games I used to love.

There was no luck finding Street Fighter II, but Street Fighter Alpha 3's "Brave or Grave" came up once somehow and I decided to check it out. I'd never played the game at the time, but I loved the track. In retrospect it's not an A-grade piece of work, but the energy was pretty crazy the first time I heard it. I was gradually able to amass most of the soundtrack by searching for Street Fighter Zero 3 and becoming lucky when certain users would show up. Karin Kanzuki's theme "Simple Rating" quickly became my favorite, along with Cody's "Stripes," Vega's "Crimson," and Cammy's "Doll Eyes."

A friend of mine who lived in my freshman hall, and who I stayed friends with throughout my 4 years, Dave Share, had a Sega Dreamcast and quickly got me back into the Street Fighter game series, far and away my favorite bunch of games. Eventually, I was playing Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs. SNK (truly a dream game when I first saw it) and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, loving each one of the soundtracks even more than I loved the games.

It wasn't until 2001 that I became interested in spreading the word on VGM through the radio. That'll take us to Part 2...