One Winged Angel and Soulja Boy? Hey, it kind of works!
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Now here’s a video that makes me wish I had more than an ounce of musical talent. Japanese violinist Teppei Okada doesn’t just play Mario tunes with his violin, he synchronizes it with the action that appears on-screen. Listen up, parents. This is how you get your kids to want to play an instrument.
[UPDATE 7/3/10 - The embedded video was made private so I changed it.]
Maybe you’ve heard of lonlonjp, maybe you haven’t. The story is that he’s a guy living in Tokyo who is a mild-mannered office worker by day and secret acoustic guitar-playing street performer by night. He’s incredibly passionate about guitars and posts weekly videos of himself playing game music requested by his YouTube fans.
His music is varied, but my favorite pieces are the battle remixes from the Final Fantasy games. Go check them out at his YouTube channel and maybe you’ll become a fan as well.
This is a metal remix of the grasslands theme from Heroes of Might and Magic II. The song is called ‘Tercios’ and the artist is Harjawaldar. Be sure to check out some of the other stuff on the YouTube channel. Dude should remix a few more songs and release a fan album.
Last year, I put up a post detailing my investigation into why some of the tracks in Heroes of Might and Magic IV sounds nearly identical to music from the Pirates of the Caribbean game and The Twelve Kingdoms anime series. In the end, I emailed the composer of Heroes IV and learned that the music came from an ancient instrument sample. Similar to stock photography, video game composers often purchase stock melodies for instruments they are unfamiliar with. They then tweak the music and remix it with some of their original work. Apparently, all three composers used the same music sample — resulting in three songs with slight differences.
Apparently, whatever album the ancient instrument sample came from must have been pretty popular because there are a lot of other composers who have used it.
Check out the videos below.
This is the grassland theme from Heroes of Might and Magic IV — a soothing Celtic-sounding piece called “The Mountain Song.” However, this song appears to have been assembled by mixing four distinct samples:
1. Vocals (chanting)
2. Violin
3. Flute
4. Guitar (background)
By themselves, there’s nothing special. The vocals are just a woman chanting. The violin is just a violin. But put the four samples together and you get a great song.
Now here’s the track “Memories” from the soundtrack for The Twelve Kingdoms. The song is extremely similar because it uses the same violin, flute, and guitar samples as the previous song. However, to add a distinct Eastern flavor to the music, the composer replaced the violin with a Chinese erhu string instrument. You’ll also hear some bells and a tambourine halfway through the song.
Here’s another rearrangement of the same samples. For the song “Silvermyr,” the composer for Warlords Battlecry II used the guitar and vocal samples, but not the violin or flute. The result is a more subdued, ambient track. The vocals are used very sparingly. You can hear them at 1:46 and it’s identical to the vocals from “The Mountain Song” at 0:43.
I’ve been told that the same instrumental samples are used in Black & White 2. But I have yet to track down the soundtrack for the game to confirm this. So stay tuned.
Finally, let me be clear that the purpose of this post is not to speak out against the sampling of ancient instrument samples in soundtracks. I have nothing against this practice nor do I consider composers who use music samples to be lazy. The samples are clearly intended to be used in such a manner. Rather, I love dissecting music and reverse engineering the methods composers use to create their catchy soundtracks. Just so we’re clear.
Well, here it is: The Demonstration’s cover of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance. Some people think it’s great and others think it’s terrible. Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about what constitutes good or bad metal. What do you think?
By the way, there’s a cleaned up version of the song on the band’s MySpace page.
I’ve been playing around with an interesting music site called Grooveshark that has apparently been around since 2007. It’s kind of like Pandora Radio, but without the random music selection. I’m not sure how it slipped under my radar all this time.
The interface allows you to search for songs, artists, or albums and then add them to a personal playlist. You can then play and share your list with friends.
I’ve seen a lot of music sites come and go due to litigation from the recording industry. But so far, Grooveshark seems to be navigating the legal waters by maintaining a low profile. Like many video sharing sites, users are able to upload music from their hard drive onto the Grooveshark database. It’s up to copyright owners to invoke DMCA wizardry to request the reactive removal of their content.
It’s interesting to note that Grooveshark was sued by EMI in October 2009 and ended up working out a licensing deal. So the site could possibly be on its way toward guilt-free 100% legal listening.
Links:
Grooveshark
