Peep his latest song above and let us know what you think. While you can cop Roots for a mere ten dollars, Danimal Cannon’s “Roots (IRL Mix)” is available for free on Bandcamp.
Monthly Archives: February 2012
Pro Tip: Get In On zircon’s Production Workshop Tonight
In his most recent Facebook update, award-winning sound designer and audio specialist Andrew Aversa has just announced that he will be hosting a free production session today, February 16th  for those who are interesting in learning the finer aspects of audio production and sound tuning:
This FRIDAY at 9pm EST, I’m going to do an experimental 1 hour long live production session. I’ll work on a track, take some Q&A, talk tech and just generally have a good time. If it goes well I’ll probably do both freeform sessions and maybe more structured classes focused on Q&A, at a low price per ‘seat’ (like $5-10).
Better known by his exhaustive involvement in the VGM community as zircon, Aversa has arranged and collaborated on over twenty accepted submissions and projects for OverClocked ReMix since 2004. He has also produced music for a variety of video games, television, and interactive media, such as Soul Caliber V, Return All Robots!, Heroes, and MTV’s Making Of series to name a few.
With zircon’s substantial experience with video game music and sound, we would like to urge aspiring professional composers and remixers or even those interested in exploring the scope of sound design to take advantage of this exciting event (can we just mention again that it’s free?). The production session will be hosted on Livestream.
TheGuitahHeroe’s Step Back Will Get You Groovin’
Although only eighteen years old, Jamison Randell is definitely no stranger to video game music. With several comprehensive VGM reviews and over 1,000 subscribers, it has been made clear that Randell’s heavy VGM presence on YouTube is a force to be reckoned with. Under the guise TheGuitahHeroe, Randell’s distinctive work has also been accepted into several VGM communities such as OverClocked ReMix and ReMix: ThaSauce.
To our surprise, TheGuitahHeroe’s newest EP deviates from his standard VGM practice, yet has us shooting eargasms of euphoria nonetheless. Step Back assuredly marks TheGuitahHeroe’s adept ability to adapt to varied styles while staying in touch with his roots within the VGM community. For example, “Chip Monster” hits those characteristic ‘womp womp’s without over-the-top distortion effects characteristic to the dubstep genre while “My Fax Machine is Broken (What in the Hell)”‘s smooth transitions from chiptune to hard-hitting basslines pay homage to TGH’s playful take on pop culture dub references (Hank Hill on dubstep, anyone?).
While you get a chance to preview some of TheGuitahHeroe’s EP below, Step Back is available for free on TheGuitahHeroe’s Bandcamp page.
Nerdy Show’s MegaCon Panel with Brian Clevinger This Sunday
If you are attending MegaCon this weekend, stop by & say hi to the A Comic Shop crew at the Nerdy Show table in Artist Alley, white section, table 13. We’ll have Triforce Mike’s new comic Dungeons & Doritos #1 and his tribute T-Shirts available for sale to raise money for the charity started in his memory. Hope to see lots of friendly faces there!
As one of the largest sci-fi and comic book conventions in Orlando, MegaCon 2012 will commence this Friday, February 17th through Sunday, February 19th. Special guest Brian Clevinger, the mastermind behind popular webcomic 8-Bit Theater and the Eisner-nominated Atomic Robo, will also be present at Nerdy Show’s MegaCon Panel this Sunday in Room 221C at 3 PM. If you happen to be interested in attending MegaCon, one-day and three-day tickets are available on-site for $25 and $60, respectively.
EARTHBOUND PAPAS “Metal Hypnotized” Contest Winners Published
As excited as we were to see the winning submissions of the contest, we were elated to find out that one of ThaSauce’s very own featured artists has been chosen to be a guest performer on the next EARTHBOUND PAPAS album. As shown above, Tony Dickinson, also known as Prince of Darkness, single-handedly transforms “Metal Hypnotized” into his own metal symphony with a nice touch of epic shredding that puts even the best metal bands to shame. Other notable entries (like this great 8-bit interpretation by Nikola Whallon or this piano composition by eba9production) were also rewarded with special autographed prizes from EARTHBOUND PAPAS.
ThaSauce would like to congratulate Tony Dickinson and the rest of the EBP contest participants who entered in the contest. Thanks for taking time out to create such incredible interpretations for one of our favorite EBP songs!
beek’s 7bit date: robot love Released Just In Time for Valentine’s Day
Fresh out of Ubiktune, classic tracker composer Chris J. Hampton has just released a new album just in time for Valentine’s Day. Also known by his alternate moniker beek, this 8-bit veteran has appeared in various Ubiktune releases such as Around Past and Wintertunes for a while now. beek’s 7bit date: robot love sacrilegiously pushes the chiptune genre over the edge, in a frenzied flurry of chip sounds that manages to make our ears happy. Marked by retro influences from the ’80s and ’90s, beek’s work is a total blast to the past, actively transporting the listener to a time when chiptunes were prioritized as primary sources of composition and arrangement.
Describing 7bit date: robot love as a “a varied collection of chippy goodness”, beek relates his own experiences with the album with special attention to resisting traditional chip sounds:
7bit date: robot love is a collection of chips I began tracking in 2008, with one song reaching as far back as 1998. In 2008, having recently graduated from university, I reexamined my chiptune past and decided to get back in the game. Life carried on, and years later, I remembered my original goal of a new chipdisk release.. Here we are today, 2012!
For 7bit date, I didn’t limit myself to traditional chip sounds. I make use of Amiga ST-XX samples in a few tracks — a process which rekindled some of my imagination, as I remembered this or that MOD from back in the day with each Amiga sample I came across. Another characteristic of my chips is to use no external/post-processing effects, just some occasional Schism filters, so the original .IT files will reproduce pretty close to the MP3.
While 7 bit date: robot love is available on beek’s Bandcamp, we’ve also included a few tracks to preview for you below. Go and get some chiptune lovin’ today!
ThaSauce Wrap-Up: This Week in Review (Feb 6 – Feb 12)
At the end of the week, ThaSauce Wrap-Up feature posts bite-sized news recaps just in case you missed any juicy articles. Have any interesting video game music-related stories that you want us to look into? Are you an artist, composer, or remixer that wants keep in touch? Shoot an e-mail to [email protected]. If you’re looking for more ways to get your VGM fix, be sure to follow us on Tumblr or like us on Facebook as well.
- Concert Line-Up for PAX East Finalized:  Taking place in Boston, Massachusetts on April 6th, 2012, PAX East is the ultimate three-day game festival for tabletop, videogame, and PC gamers alike. The concert line-up for PAX East has recently been finalized and it’s looking pretty sexy.
- Sound Bytes: Shnabubula Covers Double Dragon’s “Title” Theme:Â Okay, so we might have a habit of hyping up NYC-based remixer and piano prodigy Shnabubula. But can you blame us? Shnabubula has just released a new teaser for his upcoming album, featuring music covers that only utilize live piano & NES and it is absolutely off the hook.
- Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy Tour Hits America:Â Get ready for the ultimate fanboy experience with the official Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy tour, which features classic Final Fantasy selections with state of the art HD video presentations filled with exclusive images direct from Square Enix.
- In Tha ‘Tube: Liquid Wind, Level 99, Brandon Strader, Shael Riley, Safra, & TH3HT: In Tha ‘Tube focuses on ReMix: ThaSauce’s very own vast database of VGM remixes as a tribute to the appreciation & reinterpretation of video game music. This week, we start you off right with select songs from celebrated VGM artists like Level 99, Liquid Wind, Brandon Strader, Shael Riley, Safra, and TH3HT.
- 10th Annual Game Audio Network Guild Awards Nominees Announced:Â On March 8th, the Game Audio Network Guild will celebrate its tenth annual G.A.N.G Awards at Game Developers Conference 2012 to commemorate the highest quality and achievement of those individuals, projects and products offering a significant and positive impact on the art and craft of interactive audio.
- ReMixer Spotlight: djpretzel:Â To kick off the brand new biweekly remixer spotlight, Mirby takes a look back at one of her most surprising interviews. Read on to find out about the genesis of OverClocked ReMix and just how founder David W. Lloyd, aka djpretzel, got into remixing and creating a cornerstone of the remixing community!
ReMixer Spotlight: djpretzel
[EXPAND Click here to view my exclusive interview with the man, myth, and legend of OverClocked ReMix, djpretzel!]
Mirby: What started your interest in video game music?
djpretzel: Well, I was already interested in both video games AND music, so it wasn’t an epiphany or revelation, just a natural extension of combining two different loves into a single interest. I remember playing “Smurfs†on Colecovision or “Spy Hunter†on C64 and getting those themes stuck in my head, humming them for the rest of the day. Part of it may simply have been how BAD I was at certain games, and how many times I thus had to hear the same music over and over. When I got a Sega Master System, that was the first game console that was MINE instead of the family’s (I have two older sisters), and that was really the system where themes like OutRun and Space Harrier and Shinobi got me hooked on VGM.
M: Classic tunes.
djp: Absolutely – they were all actually arcade themes, just conversions, except for Alex Kidd and Phantasy Star.
M: What started your interest in remixing?
djp: Now, as a far as remixing/arranging goes, I come from a musical family. Interestingly enough, neither of my parents are particularly musical or play instruments, but my sisters and I were all in high school band, marching band, etc., and we listened to a lot of different music on family trips.
M: I know another David like that…
djp: My sister Emily got a Yamaha PSR home keyboard – I forget the model, but it was actually really cool because it was one of the few that actually let you program your own sounds in a limited version of FM synthesis. She never used that feature, but later on I got into it. She wrote some original stuff, mostly cheesy synth pop since that was all the rage at the time, and I tried to as well. I got more and more into synthesis and electronic music because of this FM programming feature on this PSR – I was fascinated, crappy as it was, that I could actually design my own sounds. Back then eBay didn’t even exist, I think, but I started looking in the classifieds for people selling used music gear, synths in particular. I bought a Casio CZ-101 from some dude in Maryland – my parents had to drive me to pick it up – and that made sound design a lot more fun since there were more options.
M: Sweet!
djp: It didn’t have a sequencer, and I didn’t have a computer, so I needed a way to actually record compositions as MIDI (all my original stuff at this point in time). So I checked the classifieds again and found someone selling an Alesis MMT-8. This is a hardware sequencer – a type of device that doesn’t even really exist anymore, completely replaced by computers or onboard sequencers. It does nothing other than record MIDI, and play it back.
M: I figured as much.
djp: As I later learned, it also had the bad habit of erasing ALL of its storage if the power spiked.
M: That’s not good… hehe…
djp: Anyways, I mention this because the dude I bought the MMT-8 from, we sat down and talked a bit, and he mentioned he was moving and that’s why he was selling it. Then he asked me if I’d be interested in taking his collection of Keyboard magazine off his hands – for free.
M: I smell something a little shady about this…
djp: I played it off casually and said sure, why not, but I was actually really psyched, and for the next couple years I read through all those issues – he had stuff from 1986 through 1993, including old interviews w/ Jan Hammer and Keith Emerson and all sorts of gear reviews. Nah it was completely legit, the guy changed my life by giving me those old magazines, because it got me addicted to synths and music technology in general.
M: Well, I suppose it might be thanks to him we have OCR now, right? Or at least a little bit…
djp: I read those things front to cover, which really gave me an appreciation of where music tech started, and how far it had come. Of course, it’s come twice as far in the time since then, but having that history & appreciation means you don’t take things for granted.
M: Of course not.
djp: Software like Kontakt 4 or Cubase 5 would have been $4000 easily, if you could even come close to matching those features, way back then.
M: Which is a whole lot more these days…
djp: So yeah, I think this guy who gave me hundreds of issues of Keyboard magazine for free, he played some role in the eventual creation of OCR.
M: Somewhere in your subconscious he lurked…
djp: Anyhow, eventually I got a Roland U20, which let me do compositions that started sounding more like actual music, and also an Alesis Datadisk – this device, also now obsolete, was designed specifically to recording incoming MIDI to floppy disks, and then also playing it back. This is all before I had done a single game remix, but I was certainly playing games at the time… this was still the 16-bit era, so I would have been playing Revenge of Shinobi and Phantasy II & III, most likely.
M: Good era.
djp: Anyhow, when each of my sisters turned 16, they got cars. Not superfly fancy cars, but a set of wheels nonetheless, which to a teenager is supposedly the ultimate freedom. I’m not knocking cars by a longshot, but when my turn came around, I decided to delay getting a car so I could get a sampler/workstation instead. That’s when I got my Ensoniq ASR-10.
M: Sounds fancy.
djp: Thing had programmable effects, loaded the OS off floppy, and an LED readout that looked like a Speak & Spell, but man did I love it. And it was really a pretty decent bit of kit – I’d done my research well. I upgraded it to a *whopping* 16MB of memory and attached a 2X SCSI CD-ROM drive and I was on my way!
M: If you don’t mind me asking, did you do early remixes on that thing?
djp: Around the same time I was also getting really involved in the emulation scene – retrogames.com, mame.net, that whole community was a lot more cohesive back then. Nowadays there’s not as much of a scene, since the nostalgia factor has sorta given way to outright piracy masquerading as homebrew, and other issues. I’m getting there.
M: My bad.
djp: Anyways I was a news poster at retrogames.com and was doing my own little emulation-themed comic strip called “OverClockedâ€, which poked fun at the emulation scene. Believe it or not, there was a lot to poke fun at, although it was also just an excuse for me to get better at Photoshop and 3D Studio MAX (I can’t draw – comic strip was all 3D).
M: Don’t feel bad; I can’t really draw either.
djp: Around that time retrogames.com was covering news about the occassional Commodore 64 remix, and indeed there was at that time something of a scene for those doing primarily electronica arrangements of C64 music. I loved that idea, but I wanted it to be all games, from all systems, in all styles of music.
M: A noble plan.
djp: So I sat down and started doing VGM arrangements on my ASR-10, in my parents basement. I did Phantasy Star III and Shinobi, in two different styles, and decided to start a side project to my comic strip, and call it “OverClocked ReMix†where I would post my own game mixes as well as others’.
M: Including a really strange Bubble Bobble one.
djp: Indeed.
M: And from there, the site grew and expanded into what we know today, right?
djp: That’s the long version of that story, but essentially a series of events combined to get me interested in electronic music and emulation/retrogaming, and those two interests coalesced when I started this side project. Which, yeah, eventually grew much bigger and became my primary focus.
M: And it’s a great community, if I do say so myself.
djp: Thanks.
M: Hey, it’s the truth. After all, OCR gave birth to VGMix, and from there, Dwelling of Duels… Or something like that, right?
djp: Hmm, I have no idea how DoD came to be, but OCR certainly predates both of them.
M: Well I figured since DoD is hosted on VGMix… And I thought I read that VGMix was born out of some discontent members from OCR…
djp: It wasn’t always hosted there, AFAIK, but like I said, OCR was certainly first.
M: I know this. 2000, and it’s been a great 10 years since…
djp: There are a couple versions of that story, but that’s certainly one way to put it. It’s been a busy 10 years, that’s for sure, and we’ve been online & growing for all ten of them.
M: 2000+ remixes, 17 albums, hundreds of members… And an inspiration to many, myself included.
djp: Glad to hear it.
M: Are there any tracks you’ve done that you’re more proud of or like more than the others?
djp: Sure, I think Sonic ‘Love Hurts’ is a mix that’s stood the test of time, and Zelda 64 ‘Pachelbel’s Ganon’ as well… those were both made on my Yamaha Motif, which is what I replaced the ASR-10 with.
M: Are there any remixers that you’d like to collaborate with in the future?
djp: I definitely wanna do something w/ Sixto, and I’ve already got an arrangement in mind that would be perfect for katethegreat19 to sing on.
M: Well I’ll let him know, since I’m his unofficial secretary now…
djp: Heh, he already knows – shooting for a style similar to 80s rock band The Cars.
M: Sadly enough, I know who they are, and I can’t wait.
djp: Hey, great band. Actually Trent Reznor mentioned in a Keyboard interview a long time ago that they were an influence for him, the way they blended synths & guitars.
M: Hey, those free magazines just came in handy!
djp: Yup.
M: Anywho…. Any tracks you’d like to remix in the future?
djp: Yeah, I’ve got several WIPs at various stages.
M: I assume you have a backlog of other tracks too?
djp: First out of the gate is probably gonna be a ReMix from the PSP game Crush. Really awesome puzzler.
M: Sweet!
djp: Besides the stuff I already have WIPs for, I also have some project obligations for Dragon Warrior, Mega Man X, and FF9, so I’m keeping busy.
M: You’re always busy.
djp: Very true.
M: Do you have a favorite track from a game?
djp: Not really… I mean, I get asked that a lot, and music is really apples and oranges, I find it hard to rank overall soundtracks, much less individual songs.
M: In that case, are there any particular tracks that stand out in your mind moreso than others?
djp: “Small Two of Pieces†from Xenogears is what I sometimes say, just so I’m not copping out.
M: I don’t qualify that as copping out; I qualify that as not having a favorite because you may or may not like it all equally, or are smart enought to not play favorites. Do you have a favorite video-game composer?
djp: I don’t think in terms of games as much as I do individual songs… if trying to come up with my favorite game composer, I’d go by the number of songs I absolutely love and that I think work perfectly in the context as well. At the moment, using those criteria, I’d probably say Koji Kondo, but it could be [Nobuo] Uematsu, [Yasunori] Mitsuda, or [Yuzo] Koshiro depending on the mood I’m in.
M: That actually describes how I feel at times regarding this… Final question. What do you enjoy most about remixing?
djp: I’m very melody-centric, so I choose my source material and my overall approach with a focus on that. I think the best part of ReMixing is finding that one note, or passage, when if you change an interval or add a counter-harmony or modify the rhythm, it just makes sense and feels natural. Sometimes, when arranging music, you can end up fighting against a source or struggling with it to take it where you go, which is not the worst thing in the world, but it’s much more enjoyable when things click and fall into place and you can get the ideas in your head turned into music that mirrors them.
M: I have the ideas; I just can never transfer them properly…
djp: Yeah I think that happens to even the best arrangers/composers… Until we get neural brain hookups that can seamlessly translate thought into sound, we’re stuck with making music the hard way. But the hard way is often pretty fun, as it turns out.
M: I know; I’ve made one track myself. It sucks, but the fact I actually went through and made it… That is enough to keep me satisfied
djp: Groovy. Got what you needed? I gotta run.
M: Yeah. Thanks for your time!
djp: No problem.[/EXPAND]
You could find his page on OCR here: Artist: djpretzel (David W. Lloyd), or you could just go to OverClocked ReMix and check out the wonderful community he has founded. This was tough for me to do; tuning out the fangirl EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE is difficult, but I managed to do it for the most part. Stay tuned next time for a review of Rocked ‘n Loaded. I should get it sometime next week, so patience is key, people! Until then, game on!
I recently realized I stole that from Joe Santulli, former writer of Collector’s Closet in Tips & Tricks… if you see this, Joe, I hope you don’t mind!
10th Annual Game Audio Network Guild Awards Nominees Announced
On March 8th, the Game Audio Network Guild will celebrate its tenth annual G.A.N.G Awards at Game Developers Conference 2012 to commemorate the highest quality and achievement of those individuals, projects and products offering a significant and positive impact on the art and craft of interactive audio. Formed in 2001, The Game Audio Network Guild has quickly evolved over the years to become one of the largest game audio communities in the world. As such, it’s only fitting that the criteria involved for nominees of the G.A.N.G Awards include production value, quality, innovation and community service.
The full list of nominees are announced below and we’d say that it seems pretty fair. What do you think?
[EXPAND Click here for the official list of nominees for the 10th Annual G.A.N.G Awards]
AUDIO OF THE YEAR
Battlefield 3
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Dead Space 2
Gears of War 3
Portal 2
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
MUSIC OF THE YEAR
Batman: Arkham City
InFamous 2
Kinect Disneyland Adventures
L.A. Noire
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
SOUND DESIGN OF THE YEAR
Battlefield 3
Forza Motorsport 4
Gears of War 3
NCAA Football 12
Portal 2
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
BEST SOUNDTRACK ALBUM
Batman: Arkham City
Dead Space 2
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
Star Wars: The Old Republic
T
he Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
BEST INTERACTIVE SCORE
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Dead Space 2
Kinect Disneyland Adventures
Portal 2
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
BEST HANDHELD AUDIO
Death Rally HD
Infinity Blade II
Monster Hunter 3G
Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D
Super Mario 3D Land
BEST AUDIO IN A CASUAL/INDIE/SOCIAL GAME
Bastion
Conspiracy
Monday Night Combat
Orcs Must Die
Star Wars: Clone War Adventures
WindUp Knight
BEST CINEMATIC/CUT-SCENE AUDIO
Battlefield 3
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Crysis 2
Gears of War 3
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
BEST DIALOGUE
Battlefield 3
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
L.A. Noire
Portal 2
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
BEST ORIGINAL INSTRUMENTAL
“Lacrimosa” – Dead Space 2
“Main Theme” – Deus Ex: Human Revolution
“GameWrapper” – Kinect Disneyland Adventures
“Pirate Dance” – Kinectimals Gold
“Glory, The Galactic Republic” – Star Wars: The Old Republic
“Small Beginnings” – Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
BEST ORIGINAL VOCAL – CHORAL
“Main Theme” – Batman: Arkham City
“Storm Clouds Over Stalingrad†– Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad
“Guardians Theme†– RIFT
“Clash of Destiny†– Star Wars: The Old Republic
“Main Theme” – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
BEST ORIGINAL VOCAL – POP
“Rogue Heart” – Dragon Age II
“Torched Song” – L.A. Noire
“Victoria’s Lab” – LittleBigPlanet 2
“Wabby Wabbo” – Plants Vs. Zombies (PS3/XBOX360)
“Want You Gone” – Portal 2
“Kayfoundo Naweea (Hungry Eyes)†– Star Wars: The Old Republic
BEST AUDIO MIX
Batman: Arkham City
Battlefield 3
Crysis 2
L.A. Noire
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
BEST USE OF LICENSED MUSIC
Kinect Disneyland Adventures
LittleBigPlanet 2
MLB 11: The Show
Rocksmith
Shift 2: Unleashed – Need for Speed
Stacking
BEST GAME AUDIO ARTICLE, PUBLICATION OR BROADCAST
Designing the Boot Sound for the Original XBOX
Game Developer Magazine – “Three Erroneous Conceitsâ€
Mixing as Part of the Music Composing Process
Sound Effects Transformation: From This to That
The Use of Voice in Portal 2[/EXPAND]
The tenth annual Game Audio Network Guild Awards will commence on March 8th in San Francisco as part of the larger Game Developers Conference that will be occur at the same time. Be sure to check ThaSauce for the latest up-to-date news on G.A.N.G winners for this year!
In Tha ‘Tube: Liquid Wind, Level 99, Brandon Strader, Shael Riley, Safra, & TH3HT
In Tha ‘Tube focuses on ReMix: ThaSauce‘s very own vast database of VGM remixes as a tribute to the appreciation & reinterpretation of video game music. Offering hundreds of free MP3 downloads, ReMix: ThaSauce features artists from popular sites such as OverClocked ReMix and VGMix. This feature offers readers, as music enthusiasts, the opportunity to appreciate what ReMix: ThaSauce has to present in the latest VGM styles and genres. Join us as we upload select ReMix: ThaSauce songs every week on YouTube for your aural pleasure. Have any requests? Shoot an e-mail to [email protected]. For the latest exclusive uploads on ThaSauce, be sure to like us on Facebook or follow us on Tumblr.Â
ThaSauce is finally riding the waves of social media again! In Tha ‘Tube aims to post weekly videos onto YouTube for easier access to ReMix:ThaSauce songs in a convenient preview format. This week, we have quite a few songs to start you off right: