Super Smash Bros. Anthology - Vol. 31: Nintendo & Friends

109. MEGALOVANIA

Deltarune - Legend [Remix By NyxTheShield]

Berdly's theme and its variation in his boss fight are an interesting contrast. Toby fox has the first note used as a pick-up to the 1st beat, while in the fight it is the down beat. It's a little disorienting to the listener being shifted slightly. If we consider the theme to be more in line with Berdly's personality, then the battle theme can be interpreted to be Berdly acting not completely in character, as he is manipulated by Queen. Queen's theme is very classical/baroque sounding, with a hint of carnival, and I thought it would be cool to have the Smart Race portion of the track start more action/cinematic, but slowly transition toward more classical style music.

The Berdly portion of the track is coincidentally waltz style again. Perfect, since I just arranged Empty Town, and I think I got the instruments to sound even more natural and expressive. That being said, I only spent 5% of total work time on Berdly, because Smart Race is crazy…

I usually slow the orchestra down when the original is a chiptune, because it's usually too fast, but in this case I wanted to challenge myself to make the orchestra play just as fast. I settled at a blistering 145 mph (I mean bpm lol), just slightly down from the original's 150bpm. And I still have instruments play 1/16 notes. It's absolute madness! I knew this was possible to pull off after hearing the boss music in Final Fantasy VII: Remake translated to orchestra with increased speed! As the first fight with Berdly takes place on bumper cars on a track, I had F-Zero GX in my mind the entire time arranging this.

Even at this fast pace, I wanted to bring out the "classical/romantic" sound as I previously mentioned really show Queen's manipulation. I didn't really notice that her theme actually plays in the intro. I just thought it was just some flourish until I listened closely with my headphones. My unique approach here is that I arranged the orchestra section first without any percussion, like I was simply creating Mendelssohn-sounding music, but then later dropped in the percussion layer. Hope you enjoyed this technique because I am proud of how much nuance I put in the "performance." Different parts don't just play in harmonic chords, they have their own counterpoint melodies. I also probably did the most amount of "air conducting" to the music, just standing at my desk and waving my arms to feel each section come and go with the right emotion.

Deltarune Orchestrated will be available on iTunes/Spotify upon completion of the album.

MP3 and FLAC available for Patrons. ► https://www.patreon.com/thesecondnarrator

Arrangement by Jeremiah Sun
Original Theme by toby fox

DELTARUNE Chapter 1&2 is currently free to download on PC and the Nintendo Switch!

Deltarune Chapter 2 Orchestrated

DELTARUNE Chapter 2 Orchestrated - Berdly & Smart Race

Check out FalKKonE on YouTube. Support his channel!

DELTARUNE Chapters 3+4 - Black Knife【Intense Symphonic Metal Cover】

Hammer of Justice

Hammer of Justice (Ultimate Orchestra Version)

Action Orchestrations is a collection of pulsating, energy-infused orchestral pieces intended to bring about and stirring some raw emoitional energies.  Particular favorites of mine are Renegade and It Takes Initiative on this compilation :)

A King Corrupted

hope toby fox can finish this game. Playing through chapter 01, I feel like the presentation and pacing is much stronger than Undertale. The soundtrack so far is catchy and memorable just like the original.

The Legend sequence in the opening lends itself to much gravitas. For the arrangement, I focused only on filling out the soundscape more. If there was one criticism I have of toby fox's music style, it's that he can repeat phrases a lot without any variation. This is understandable, as his soundtrack is still very extensive, plus he makes the entire rest of the game too. To make each repetition of the theme flow better, I altered the last measure in each playthrough to transition better to the next phrase.

I didn't use any fancy instruments beyond the normal orchestral set. For the final section, I interpreted it as a quartet, and added the double bass and viola with their own parts to fill out the sound. All in all, the final product has a primarily medieval/classical tone to it. This was a bit challenging to do, as slower music is not my strong suit. I have to really work on the articulations and texturing for long notes so they don't sound too flat with the virtual samples.

MP3 and FLAC available for Patrons. ► https://www.patreon.com/thesecondnarrator

Arrangement and fan art by Jeremiah Sun

Original Song composed by toby fox
DELTARUNE Chapter 01 is currently free to download

Deltarune Orchestrated

DELTARUNE Orchestrated - The Legend

This was the first piece I wanted to arrange, along with Field of Hopes and Dreams (I haven't figured out how to approach that one yet!). What's really exciting here is that I got to build further on techniques and instrumentation I developed from pretty much all my previous Undertale arrangements. Plus I spent a considerable amount of time balancing every instrument, EQ'ing every track to get it sounding good.

My takeaway from the original track and the context of the boss fight is a mix of shock, terror, and some mischief. You know while ascending the palace that the king is not going to grant you access to the fountain, but what surprises you is his disapproval of his son. Not only does he show such disdain, he even relishes in his villainy. This creates a strong motivation to the player to abandon the pacifist method and go all genocide on him.

Hopefully you can tell from listening to my arrangement that I had so much fun with the percussion. After doing the I Am Setsuna track, No Turning Back, I had an itch to make another track with percussion that is intense but still quick on its toes. Nearly all of toby fox's original rhythm is preserved, and I merely layered on top of that.

For others wondering how to orchestrate music, think of it as remastering a game. You don't just copy the same notes and substitute orchestral instruments. That's like slapping on some high-res textures and calling it a day. Does anyone enjoy playing the Final Fantasy games ported to mobile with the smoothed out graphics? You have to remodel everything from scratch with more detail. So for percussion, a trick I use is to subdivide the original rhythm, and then cut it up and distribute it among a bunch of instruments. Give the big booming drums the down beat, and the higher frequency instruments the syncopated and faster 16th note beats. Here are all the percussion patches I used in this song.

Spitfire HZ01 Percussion - Boobams, Paper Djuns
Spitfire HZ02 - Sony Stage Drums
Soundiron Clacks - Bamboo Pole
Cinesamples CinePerc - Taikos, Concert Toms, Tambourines, Tubular Bells, Crash Cymbals, Ensemble Claps + Snaps
QL Stormdrum - Ambient Largeness, Lord of Toms Ensemble, Clacks (Taiko), Spring Drums

I used to only use the stage mic versions of the patches because I naively thought that was the best when trying to recreate the sound of a full orchestra. Here, I experimented a lot with close mic versions, and I discovered that with the right control I can really get the punchy sound of the drums out without having to raise the volume out. This extended to the melodic instruments too, and allowed me to give the cello the same percussive rhythm.

I repeated the first half of the song because it's my favorite part. I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to explore without repeating the entire track. I didn't want to rush into the more intense variation right away because it deserves a build up. If you listen closely, the percussion rhythm in the first run-through is inverted before being restored at the repeat at 1:35. Another first for me in this track is pairing up instruments from different families. I used to keep the woodwinds, strings, and brass separate in their motifs, but here I had them all make friends and do parts solos together, so you'll hear match-ups like Harpischord/Horns, Piccolo/Trumpet, String/Percussion, Brass/Choir. Hope you guys enjoy this!

MP3 and FLAC available for Patrons. ► https://www.patreon.com/thesecondnarrator

Arrangement by Jeremiah Sun

Original Song composed by toby fox
DELTARUNE Chapter 01 is currently free to download

DELTARUNE Orchestrated - Chaos King

So I shared my plan on the community page detailing the rest of the Deltarune tracks I planned to orchestrate, and a lot of people noticed Vs. Susie was not one of them and loudly voiced their desire for me to arrange it. I was thinking, ok I'll probably save it for last, but thought it would be cooler to surprise drop this track first!

The reason I did not consider this one was because the track has an intense heavy metal, and translating it to an orchestra would change the feel of it. I started out adding the electric guitar and designing the orchestra around it, but that didn't sound right either. Then, I thought, maybe I should approach it like I did with Megalovania and just go big with the Hans Zimmer-ish percussion, but I didn't want to retread similar ground. This was tough as I didn't want this track to sound like an afterthought.

While experimenting with the percussion, I came upon a winning combination: Cajon + Drumkit. I used this in Field of Hopes and Dreams with the drums as more of a support, but here I tried to utilize both equally. At my church, the hall we use for worship is not good for drums, so we have people use cajon for a better mix. It works well enough, and as I listen to people play and experiment with it, I feel like, even if we eventually incorporate drums into the band, the cajon could still be utilized to enhance the mid-high range frequencies. So here, the undercurrent of the fast and aggressive cajon is meant to symbolize Susie's rage. While it's a bit hard to hear specifically, I spent quite a bit of time writing out different rhythms and transitions for the development of each portion of the track.

If the percussion and the repeating ostinato represents Susie's exterior demeanor, then the soulful cello, high strings, and trumpet characterize Susie's inner thoughts. I thought it would be cool to really draw out the emotion and justapose it with the angry motif, as if these instruments think they're playing a different song. Until the ending, I kept the beats and harmonies intact, and a big challenge was to try and have the strings play long notes that soar above the general discord in the song. We can see throughout the game that while she's kind of a loner, she has a desire for friends, but she has trouble voicing her feelings and generally doesn't like to display much sentimentality. She also flip flops from hero to villain and back because she is trying to find her identity to excel as. It'll be interesting how toby fox will flesh out her character in the future.

Deltarune Orchestrated will be available on iTunes/Spotify upon completion of the album.

MP3 and FLAC available for Patrons. ► https://www.patreon.com/thesecondnarrator

Arrangement by Jeremiah Sun

Original Theme by toby fox
DELTARUNE Chapter 01 is currently free to download on PC and the Nintendo Switch!

DELTARUNE Orchestrated - Vs. Suzie

Original melody by Toby Fox, orchestral arrangements by Osirois Music.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/BJKzfdpCQDs
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3fsEHSLJVeff3aasSOQMgC
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/osirois-music/1432754313
Bandcamp: https://osiroismusic.bandcamp.com/

Legend

Deltarune - The Legend (Orchestral Cover)

Made by Toby Fox and Smash Bros Ultimate. I do not own this soundtrack.
EDIT: Thanks for these likes :)

Megalovania (Undertale) [New Remix] - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Soundtrack(EXTENDED)

I am a developer as well as a self-taught composer. My style is creating narratives in music through the use of strong melodies and unique instrumentation.

Primary DAW used: Presonus Studio One

DELTARUNE Orchestrated - Chaos King

The Second Narrator