music
Tessie! (aluminum's Brainshock Mix)
3:25, MP3 192kbps, 4.71 MB
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This represents my most recent attempt at creating something for OCR, and it has since been posted there. It has met with what seems to be a fairly favorable reaction, for which I'm most appreciative. I had actually started this song quite some time ago, before being drawn deeper into what we'll call my "WoW" phase, and it was left to languish miserably.
Another factor that delayed the completion of this mix was frustration with my hardware setup at the time; all of my previous songs had been created on a P3-800 MHz machine. While it had served me well, the limits it placed on the number of softsynths and effects I could run (even with Reason's crazy CPU efficiency) were just too extreme. After purchasing a new machine, I had the opportunity to upgrade my music workstation to a 3GHz HT monstrosity, whose motherboard promptly fried upon making the switch, effectively halting any further composition.
But! The song is done, I'm pleased with the results, and I guess that's sufficient. I probably should have used this space to actually say something about the music- maybe next time.
Scrambled Egg Zone (aluminum's Yield Mix)
3:03, MP3 192kbps, 4.19MB
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In a renewed effort to get my mixing abilities back on track, I decided to toss together this hastily-made entry for the People's Remix Competition (PRC) #84 over at OCR. The source is a Sonic 2 tune from the Master System version; my entry was made in a few hours on a Friday evening, and the lack of time spent on it is unfortunately readily apparent.
Regardless, it's not completely unlistenable, and it gave me to opportunity to try a few different ideas and push some areas I don't normally focus as much on, like the percussion. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I suppose.
BlackLight (aluminum's Floor Essence Mix)
3:01, MP3 192kbps, 4.14MB
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This song is a slightly retouched version of my remix of NoWave's Blacklight, which I created for ORC 8, titled Floor Essence. Get it? Black light? Fluorescent? Fluorescence?
Terrible pun aside, I made this in about an hour or so just before the deadline because no other entries had materialized, and it seemed like a shame for that to happen. The mix is strongly reminiscent of Daft Punk crossed with a straight-up dance feel, and represents a significant step up in production for me, I think. This version is slightly modified from the original, and also re-mastered a bit. Unfortunately, Reason experienced a snafu during the mix-down process and rendered things with a few glitches in the audio stream which didn't otherwise appear in the playback process-- note the clipping-like "pop" on the delayed synth near the beginning. Regardless of the few flaws, though, I'm happy with this one, despite (or perhaps because of) the minimal amount of time I invested.
MST3K Love Theme (aluminum's 4A&R Mix)
4:14, MP3 192kbps, 5.83MB
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I'm not going to ramble on excessively about this mix except to say that I'm surprisingly happy with it. It's a pop-style take on the end title theme from the inimitable Mystery Science Theater 3000 and is at least worth a try, I'd wager. I'm particularly satisfied that the mastering/post production turned out as well as it did, given that the mix itself wasn't that strong to begin with. The bridge gets a bit quirky because I more or less ran out of ideas for the arrangement, but I like this one quite a bit (largely a result of my fondness for the original, perhaps).
Memory
5:52, MP3 192kbps, 8.07MB
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I hadn't written any purely original material in quite some time, so I sat down and came up with what I have here; though somewhat hastily created, it still makes for a pretty good listen. This song doesn't have much of a melody to speak of throughout most of its duration, and indeed, it isn't really meant to; it's just a simple build-up and exploration of some (very) basic chord progressions, starting from slow, dark territory and gradually moving on from there. Not cerebral by any stretch of the imagination, though it does contain some interesting textures. Among those are some more of those wonderfully "fat" pad samples I tend to love, although everything else is, of course, done from scratch.
Memory isn't mastered nearly as loudly as I'd like, primarily because I've been making some poor choices during the mixing process that have hindered me. It should still be audible enough, however.
Theme from 'The Critic' (aluminum's Irresponsible Mix)
2:50, MP3 192kbps, 3.89MB
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I sequenced this mix, which is my version of Hans Zimmer's theme from the short-lived animated show 'The Critic', entirely in about two and a half hours. While I'm sure that professionals or those more experienced than I could churn out a masterpiece of production in about that amount of time, for me it was quite a stretch. As such, it's a little rough around the edges, but is still quite listenable. It's done in the sort-of reggae/gospel style I used for Brining up Bahamut (see below), which, depending on your genre preferences, will either be amusing or terrible. This song was my entry in PRCA:II.
Dragon Lords (aluminum's Apocryphal Mix)
4:00, MP3 192kbps, 5.49MB
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Apocryphal is a new-age, Enigma-esque interpretation of the "Dragon Lords" theme from the relatively unknown SNES RPG Dragon View, created in response to a request. While I like this song, and think it turned out reasonably well, I can't honestly consider it to be the best I've done to date. Specifically, I didn't do as adequate a job in many of the technical aspects of the production and arranging as I thought I did while I was creating it. Hence the name, which suggests that it doesn't quite seem to fit with my other songs so far; regardless, it's still enjoyable enough, and is well suited to playing in the background at low volumes and generally chilling out.
Update 7/2/2004: As it turns out, a little patience and some careful listening can make a world of difference. When I had finished this mix before, I really hadn't taken the necessary time to give it the polish it needed, especially in the EQ and level balancing departments. One pad in particular was absurdly loud and was really saturating things; plus, the mix as a whole was too bass-heavy and rather muddy. I finally decided to come back to it and fix it up, and I can safely say that it sounds about one-hundred times better than it did before, thanks to a few new tricks and a renewed willingness to take my time with it. It's definitely far from perfect still--I went a little overboard with the hard limiter in a few spots--but I'm much more pleased with this one than I was previously.
E1M9 (aluminum's A Common Neurosis Mix)
3:43, MP3 192kbps, 5.11MB
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For the record, I'm a great admirer of Doom and its soundtracks, although I have always preferred the second installment over the first. Over a fairly lengthy period, in fact, I listened to nothing but the Doom II MIDI score, in a vaguely obsessive manner, day in and day out. It should come as no surprise, then, that I enjoyed the opportunity to remix the episode one, mission nine theme from Doom for a small competition on the OCR forums. I'll more than likely be submitting this to OCR, as well as the recently resurrected VGMix.com.
An Affliction of Philosophy
6:24, MP3 192kbps, 8.79MB
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When it comes to influences, the music of Delerium has, without a doubt, had the greatest impact on me in terms of electronic music style, structure, and sound. Truthfully, I'm a fan of all the projects Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber have been involved with- Front Line Assembly, Conjure One, Noise Unit, and all the rest.
Ever since I bought a copy of Reason, then, I've been intending to produce a song in the style of Delerium. An Affliction of Philosophy is the first, and probably not the last, track to fulfill that intent. This particular song is inspired by Delerium's Semantic Spaces album, and makes use of some wonderful pad samples I've been eager to put to use, alongside some nice, thick percussion sounds.
Fanfare (aluminum's Climhazzard Rush Mix)
3:52, MP3 192kbps, 5.31MB
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Over the summer, I finally found the time to attempt another videogame remix. The fact that the source material is drawn from the Final Fantasy series probably won't shock anyone, nor will the fact that I've also submitted this to OCR. I had originally planned to hold off on posting this song until the judges at OCR had a change to review it, but because I'm still patiently waiting for them to work through the queue, I decided to simply go ahead and upload.
As the name suggests, I've remixed the victory fanfare theme from Final Fantasy VII. Because of the, shall we say, brevity of the original, I've attempted to expand on it substantially. I'm hard pressed to describe this song stylistically, given that it's a sort of industrial-electric-jazz hybrid, but I can say that I bellieve it to be one of my better-sounding mixes overall.
Thundershock 2003
3:11, MP3 192kbps, 4.37MB
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This remix is... not particularly inspiring. It began life as a temporary track in which to practice with several electronic sounds I had heard and desired to replicate in my own songs- specifically, the "stuttering" lead and the drum-loop breakdown near the end. So, if it seems somewhat derivative, that's only because it is. Eventually, I included the theme from Pokemon to serve as the melody, and received this mix as the result. It's far from perfect, especially considering that it was simply a quick, "just for the hell of it" mix; the first lead came out a bit on the dull side, and the sub-par mastering leaves things feeling a bit flat overall. So, while it certainly won't be revolutionizing music as we know it (or at least as I know it), fans of incredibly cheesy dance music or Pokemon (or both, I suppose- I imagine there's some intersection between the two) may still enjoy it.
Paradise (aluminum's Wasteland Soliloquy Mix)
4:04, MP3 192kbps, 5.58MB
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What you'll find in this MP3 is a remix of a song from the Trigun soundtrack named "Paradise," though I've also seen the title translated as "Eden" elsewhere on the web. I wrote this mix for Anime ReMix where it has been accepted and posted, so if at all possible, click on over there and download my mix and some of the other great mixes that have already been posted.
On to the mix itself. There's really only one word for the style of this song-- "pop." The instrumentation and arrangment all lend themselves to a highly new-age-ish pop sound. The bridge cuts things out to a mellow symphonic section, and I've been told on more than one occassion that it sounds like "church music;" I'd say that such sentiments are in fact mostly accurate, and I sincerely hope that anyone who has watched Trigun will understand my motivation for this. Anyway, click the link and give it a listen, even if you don't think the style fits in with your typical sensibilities.
Another Cold Morning
5:34, MP3 192kbps, 7.64MB
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This is an open, quasi-ambient, and above all, very simple techno tune. I pieced this song together just for myself, as a sort of stress relief exercise. I'm still not sure whether or not it worked. Given that, though, it's probably not going to impress anyone, at least on a technical level, but that's fine- that was never the goal.
I realized after I was about halfway through the construction of the mix that it uses the exact same chord progression that Forty Miles to Sunday (see below) does, which is definitely something I need to attempt to avoid in the future. So, you could almost consider this the techno companion piece to that other song. I think it stands well enough on its own. On the technical side of things, there's two minor spots in the mix where the compression squashed the crash cymbal a bit too much; also, the mid to high range frequencies could use a bit of boost to counter the heavier bass side, but I've since moved on to other projects.
The Song of Storms (Ghosts of Zelda's Past Christmas Mix)
4:24, MP3 160kbps, 5.04MB
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The song in question here was also an entry in the IronMix Challenge. As with previous iterations of the contest, there was a one-week timeframe given in which to re-work Zelda 64's classic "Song of Storms/Windmill Hut" theme into a pleasing Christmas tune. Because of my own time constraints I was forced to completely write this song during the last few hours of the challenge, but it turned out well enough to land a solid second place finish.
The song itself is perhaps best described as a bit unconventional. It opens and closes with a nice (if a bit simple) piano solo in 4/4 time, later switching to a 3/4 R&B-style "waltz" beat for the meat of the song. The bridge cuts things down to half-time with a sampled Rhodes taking the chords while a vibe-like synth takes the melody.
Bringing up Bahamut
2:15, MP3 192kbps, 3.10MB
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This song was my entry in an informal contest held over at the forums on Overclocked ReMix. Each entrant was required to submit a remix of the title theme from the gameboy's "Final Fantasy Legends" in just one week. I chose to tackle it in an unconvential fashion- as a reggae-ish groove mix. It's not perfect, but I'm pleased with how it turned out for only a few hours of work. The version on this site was remastered a bit to fix some digital audio clipping problems in the original.
For what it's worth, I came in at a resepctable fourth place.
Forty Miles to Sunday
3:19, MP3 192kbps, 4.55MB
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Here we have a relatively simple piano ballad against a gentle R&B beat, building steadily to a finish featuring some rich string and choir work with rolling timpani accents. I worked hard to make the piano track as tight as possible, and while it never quite achieved the perfection I first desired, I think this still came out as a charmingly insouciant little tune. Definitely good mood music.
Metal Gear Solid 2 Theme (aluminum's Serpentine Mix)
3:51, MP3 192kbps, 5.30MB
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This remix of the stirring theme from the recent "Metal Gear Solid 2" represents my first attempt at music making after quite some time- for a first try, I'd say I'm happy with the results. It features a fun, espionage-style intro, replete with heavy bass and delayed hat patterns, which quickly give way to the rolling, breakbeat-infused rendition of the theme. This song has been submitted for posting to Overclocked ReMix, but has yet to be judged.