Dwelling of Duels at VGMix – December – Free Month

DoD October 2009

Dwelling of Duels, hosted by VGMix is a community wide compo where the main instrument must be played live.  This attracts a variety of talent and often produces amazing results.  Every month, a theme is chosen which must be followed.  Participants have one month to complete their tracks, songs are voted for on the last day of every month.

Current Duel

This month is a free month!  Songs are due on Wednesday, December 30th at 9:00 PM Eastern time. Please join us at MAGfest for a live listening party! Bring your DS for pictochat!
Discuss at theshizz.org forums.

 

November Results
Ryan8Bit: Ninja Gaiden 3 – Welcome to Hell
Akutula, Sascratch: Ninja Gaiden 1, 2 – Duet of Ninjas
BONKERS: Ninja Gaiden 1, 2 – Ouch Death Hurts (Tie)
jaxx: Ninja Gaiden 2 – I Am A Ninja (Tie)
M-H: Ninja Gaiden 3 – What’s a Bio-Noid? (Tie)

Sixth Place – The Ninja GayedMEN (Nario, Powellman, Omnideth): Ninja Gaiden 1 – I’ll Mask YOUR Devil!

Seventh Place – LuketheXjesse: Ninja Gaiden 2 – Scaling the Mountain

Congratulations to the winners, and everyone who participated.  We’ll be watching for next months entries!

Nario ñ Most of Me debut album release

Most of Might
From GameMusic4All:

For those familiar with one Theshizz may also be familiar with one Nario from around those parts. Well like most folks over at the shizz, Nario is quite the musician. He has released his debut album, Most of Me for free download, via Skrow Media. The album spans 13 tracks of relaxing ambient tunes and upbeat melodies.

The album kicks off with the fast paced chiptune anthem HAX. This leads straight into one of my favorite tracks, the piano driven, Metroid soundingChilled Pop Cherry Soda. The swirling piano mixes in with the deep, dungeonesque bassline to create a strong but haunting track.

The album continues to keep things interesting with lots of musical, as well as mood shifts throughout the rest of the songs.

For the best track on the album though, my vote goes to Hallucinogenic Ethics. What I consider one of the more experimental tracks on this album, the song kicks off with some ambient noise, before driving in hard with the main melody. Soon a wall of high pitched flourishes converge with the deep rhythms and create an adventurous track that stays interesting through out the three minute length of the recording. The track comes to a close with a dissonance of eerie sounds that give the track an interesting, unfinished quality to the ending.

This is a strong debut from a person we have been waiting to hear from musically for some time now, so check out his debut as well through this link! Also, be sure to check him out through his youtube page as well!

Week in Video Game Inspired Music 11/30-12/06

From GameMusic4All:

This week in VGIM, the biggest thing, IS OUR OBVIOUS REDESIGN! Did you not notice!? We got us some nice forums as well too! Well besides that we have some cool news stories, even an in-depth look at the history of chiptunes.

Also a few new podcasts and a couple great remixes (Link’s Awakening anyone?). Up top we have some fantastic art by Rocco D Commisso who you might know from the great Megas inspired art we featured last year. “Galaga” is the simple name of this great pin-up piece. Also congrats to good pal jmr for his first piece published on OCReMix!

NEWS

This Week in Video Game Inspired Music

pixt0r

I have decided to start a brand new weekly section. Every Sunday I shall bring together the smaller links I dig up every week and introduce them to you in this segment. As well as update you on the latest releases out ofRemix: Tha Sauce and OverClocked ReMix.

I also hope to toss up some random art to kick off every article, like this awesome painting above byfunnelbc.

As with any other article or news, if you have a good link to send my way for this article, definitely get in touch!

Articles
Sound Current: 2 Player Productions – Reformatting PAX for DVD from GameSetWatch

An audience with Video Games Live’s Tommy Tallarico from geeks.co.uk

Designers Announced for Exclusive Visualist T-Shirts from Blip Festival

Shows & Podcasts
Digital Ensemble #207 and #208 with Special Guests!
A bicycle built for three
Alphabutt Soup

Podcast: NLFM Episode 1 – Open For Business! from Nintendo Life

Remixes
Latest Remix: Tha Sauce songs
Battle in the Ancient Temple (Zelda: Majora’s Mask) by Liquid Wind

Altar Perception (Tales of Symphonia) by Monobrow

Autumn in Yesteryear Guardia (Chrono Trigger) by Protricity

Smithy is Going Down (Super Mario RPG) by NintenJoe 64

Smoothe Criminals (Xenogears) by The Vagrance

Meteorites and Rabbits (Super Mario Galaxy) by jmr

Tryst With the Enemy (Metroid Fusion) by Protricity

Worm Grinder (Super Metroid) by Liquid Wind

Pangaea’s Onomotapoeia (Secret of Evermore) by Meteo Xavier

Crepuscle Results (Sonic 2) by Xenon Odyssey

Investigating Outer Heaven (Metal Gear) by Mutherpluckin’ B

Latest OCReMix releases
Berinstar (Super Metroid) by 8 Bit Instrumental

The Masked Man (Street Fighter II: The World Warrior) by Nutritious

A Mighty Enemy on the Battlefield (Lost Odyssey) by The Dual Dragons

Minibadass (Aquaria) by Daniel Baranowsky

Ravaging Reptile (Mega Man 3) by AeroZ

Psi Piano Omega (EarthBound) by Shnabubula

BTMNTBAMLOL (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project) by Danimal Cannon, KBart, Stemage

And finally, we end with this recent video from dntsje called Bad Apple!! on LCD Screen 128×64 pixels.

VGM Spotlight ñ Shadow Hearts: Covenant

From anosou.music:

One thing I really enjoy about the soundtrack for Shadow Hearts: Covenant(composed mainly by Yoshitaka Hirota) is how much attention is given to the overall “sound” in his effort to portray the characters and add to the game’s unique mood. I’ve noticed that in music for JRPGs traditional instruments or simple synths rule the world and even when something other’s featured (like the ethnic instruments in Ar Tonelico) it’s just used as is.

What Yoshitaka Hirota does on the Shadow Hearts soundtracks is taking his music further by often electronically treating his instruments and using rather unconventional pallets of sound. For all examples I will provide YouTube-links, just click the name of the track.

In the track Death is the Great Leveller the rather mysterious mood is greatly enhanced by the production. To begin with the initial harp sound is quite muffled which makes it be more in the background, just adding to the harmony and not working as the main melodic line. The drums and bass are in the front of the soundscape, working together. The heavily compressed and a bit reverbed acoustic bass adds to the rather ominous mood of the track. The filtered part synthetic, part real drums drives the track forward and some distortion adds a dirty sound that works incredibly well with Shadow Hearts: Covenant’s darker visuals and environments. The mix of traditional sounds like harp, strings and bass with the synthetic drums and overall daring production certainly gives this track an edge that wouldn’t be achievable if it sounded more “clean”.