I wanted to wrap this one up before posting it on OverclockedRemix for review.

Polymer Soul 10B (Soul Calibur II "Raise Thy Sword" & Megaman Zero "X The Legend" Mash Up)

A little bit of continued research on instrument layering and trying to recreate a song from one of my favorite podcasts, The Adventure Zone, after finding a sheet music midi. With a brief bit of research into Eurobeat rhythm too.

Wonderland Round 3 (from 'The Adventure Zone: Balance')

This is a remix of the theme from the new Ethersea campaign from The Adventure Zone by The McElroy Brothers, using the arrangement by Allison Simpkins as a template to build on. Really thankful for the work of Griffin McElroy and fans with great ear training.

The Adventure Zone podcast can be found here:
www.maximumfun.org/shows/adventure-zone

Griffin did an amazing job with the Ethersea theme, and I wanted to put some more time in FL Studio.

I used some sounds ripped from Metroid for adding to the melody. Kind of pulling from some lo-fi, some hip hop, Final Fantasy/JRPG for sound that I went with, but felt that the structure of the song should be like the original. 

Artwork is something I did of Merle Highchurch. You can see more of my art on my instagram page, daft.ward

2021 Fun

Ethersea

Revisited this a while ago and forgot to post it.

Big Shot /World Revolving (Remix Variant)

More of a proof of concept than anything else. Recently found some tools that I am incorporating into my workflow.

Heard Mioune's French version of the Theme of Love from Final Fantasy IV about 15 years ago, and I wanted to learn how to sing the tune in French when I was still a voice major.

There's been a lot of going back to my roots lately in healing from the past while working on the future.

Might delete this. I get a feeling the voice is in the wrong key, but my ears aren't good enough to confirm that.

Theme of Love (feat. Mioune)

It's got a bit of a space western vibe at some parts, but it was a lot of fun to put these two themes together.

Wanted to give Heavenly Flight a proper remix since the last one was still me learning Fl Studio and trying to make sense of old memories of music theory.

I grew up on Dragon Warrior (later Dragon Quest in the States) and Street Fighter from hand me downs from my brothers. It was years before I was able to buy my own copies.

Gotta say that Dudley's theme has some really nice gems in terms of musical lines you don't really get to appreciate due to how dense it is. That's where the really aggressive bass lines come from.

'Street Fighter III' / 'Dragon Quest' Mash Up - YouBlowMyMind & HeavenlyFight

Thought I'd mash up a lot of the 80s content I grew up on in this.

Originally was thinking tense Retrowave, but I added in one voice clip, then another, then the synth keyboards, and it just kept getting happier and happier. And then the fine tuning was on how easy it could be to make it into vapor wave...so just kind of a hodge podge of things.

Thinking the chorus would be good for videos of petting cats and dogs.

You're the Best Around [Karate Kid Remix]

Twitter: daft_ward
IG: daft.ward

Admittedly, I know very little about Critical Role outside of Vox Machina, Chase Noseworthy, and Lilli Furfaro's songs. But I wanted to put some form of “this is one of my favorite songs of Lilli Furfaro’s” out there.

Ended up finding a chord progression on a guitar tabs site, but wanted to change it up to separate out the verses from the choruses. Ended up splitting the verses into two choruses and a verse, choruses getting the new chord progression, verses keeping the old one. Then took parts of the original verses to make another chorus to change up the song just ever so slightly for those familiar with the original.

Ended up putting some Dragon Quest sound effects into “bright, proud, good” to flesh it out. Also put a Mettaton voice clip in there to distract on the transition to the sad part of the songs.

Visuals made using the Camellia style visualizer from https://vizzy.io/ as a base after painting up an image of Furfaro for this. Bright text is pulled from an image used by Furfaro to keep in line with the themes.

Done for fun. Will provide files for Lilli Furfaro to use for her channel if desired.

Bright (Caleb's Song) - Lilli Furfaro / Critical Role remix

been doing a bit of a deep dive to see what past things influenced me and what to focus on going forward.

ended up thinking it would be a lot of fun to take the theme song from Tenchi Universe and do something with it.

well, the one song turned into a mashup where it just kind of felt like a stream of consciousness reminiscent of the techno stations on the radio on long drives to Los Angeles growing up.

this uses the songs mentioned in the title since they're in similar enough BPMs and keys, but dropped down to 126 BPM.

what is love, tenchi muyo bad guy?

broken down. building up.

we all gotta have our mantras that see us through to brighter moments.

The In Between (Jan22build - Work in Progress)

I just always liked the BGM song and felt it needed more time in the sun.

MegaMan & Bass -  Intro Stage (lo-fi)

This is gonna be the version I put on YouTube.

Got some new plug ins, made a new version of the song, overlaid the old one and it turned out pretty good.

Always felt like this song by Toby Fox would be fun with a sort of a Super Sentai / Guitar sound to give it a weird tension.

Attack of the Killer Queen (Surfer Rock Redux)

I think it has a little bit of the Suffering Game vibes, but been replaying Cyberpunk 2077 and enjoying a lot of vaporwave/retrowave/chiptune/city pop/lo fi...so those kind of tastes are mixed in with this.

Needed something on the darker side for October.

3/4 is a fun but strange time signature to work in.

I used the sheet music from Allegro Allie that can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSkfv2Ilgbw

Original song 'Villains' composed by Griffin McElroy for The Adventure Zone : Graduation.

The Adventure Zone: Graduation - Villains -Remix-

Went down memory lane about things I grew up with in making a new friend. 

New friend likes .hack// and thought it would be fun to look into the music.

Kind of wanted to bring the Street Fighter III vibes into it, so I looked up some jazz progressions to add to what I already love with lo-fi music.

Hoping people are doing well, and if not, that the pain is only growing pains.

2022 Fun

Aqua Capital Mac Anu (.hack//INFECTION remix)

Admittedly, I spent a few years in junior college just hanging around, learning how to do flamenco guitar, Gospel music, and Afro-Cuban rhythms at one point.

I also really loved the hell out of MegaMan Zero games...so kind of a throwback to all of that.

Cannon Nova - (MegaMan Zero - Cannonball remix)

I got inspired to do this remix on watching some of deaddomain's vids on YouTube and hearing the Darkstalkers music at the end.

So the idea of the sound was somewhere between Bayonetta music, Sailor Moon's theme on a music box, and some music from Sonic CD's PC port. It ends up having this ethereal sound.

It's kind of a small miracle that this remix worked, as this happened over switching between two computers and losing a bunch of plugins, so I had to render out a copy of the song with replacement instruments to patch the holes, if not recreate the sounds, as the VSTs weren't quite right after the changeover, and after doubling it with an older version and some panning, it's what you hear now. I think it's better for all of the fixes that needed to happen.

I sourced the original MIDI arrangement from VGMusic.com (Marvel VS Capcom under Arcade), but unfortunately, I wasn't able to find the person who arranged the piece to credit.

Marvel vs Capcom: Morrigan's Theme (Ethereal Moon Mix)

This was a request from casa_nova_vegas after hearing my Morrigan remix, so after a few prods about it, I started working on it.

My relationship with a lot of the surface value content of Cap from this era of games is strained, he was more my brother's favorite character with comics. Duty and patriotism aren't things I feel, even coming from a family that I'm odd for not being a veteran. So it's ironic that the Captain America movie is one of my favorite movies for how they characterize Steve Rogers' motivations.

Once I stripped away the drums and changed it to a different tempo, I started realizing the conflicted feelings in this piece, and tried to honor those as best I could.

Marvel vs Capcom: Captain America's Theme (End Credits Mix)

An update to the LoFiBodyFunk remix after deciding a few tracks could use a fresh coat of paint. This one's always done in the vein of speed metal, but there's a lot of character when you slow it down.

Using more plug ins, I worked to build up some atmosphere in the songs as well, which is a fun project for quarantine.

The original song, Cannonball, is from Megaman Zero 3.

MMZ3 - Cannonball Remix 'BigSwordEnergy'

I did this one for Kiwifeet293 per his suggestion to try my hand at Mario Kart Double Dash's Bowser's Castle.

In playing around with this, it sounded a lot like a tune from Night Club, so I leaned into that sound.

2021 Rearrangements

Bower's Night Club (Dark Wave "Bowser's Castle" from Mario Kart Double Dash)

I asked for a recommendation for a song to remix, ZSeaBeard suggested "Wii Sports Resort", so I decided to work on doing a remix of it.

It definitely had a lot of Afro Cuban Ensemble vibes from my days as a music major, so I made sure to incorporate as much of the rhythm as I could make work.

Wii Sports Resort (Afro Cuban Synthsemble)

Before I talk about this, I *highly* recommend The Adventure Zone as podcast to listen to if you love fabulous wizards, tree ****ing dwarves, rogue carpenter fighters with a penchant for collecting robot arms, romance, intrigue, and betrayal all set against LGBTQIA+ positive backdrops. If that's not your thing, they have Firbolgs.

Admittedly, this song and Griffin composing music for Adventure Zone got me thinking to do the same for my friends with our Monster of the Week sessions.

Tried out a few things with the program I use and thought I could make my old remix of this a bit better too.

----
"Oh hey, it's Hodge Podge!" was originally written by Griffin McElroy

Oh hey! It's Hodge Podge (TAZ Balance Remix)

Rearrangements, reorchestrations, revoicing, or remixes are done for fun, education, and appreciation. Also because I am a giant nerd.

Ameliorate.Grey

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