This is the first Video Game remix I've ever done, and the first time I ever recorded music myself. It's Top Man's theme from Megaman 3 in the style of a band called The Fucking Champs, meaning lots of guitar harmonies and no bassist. There are also some other surprises.

Originally recorded for Dwelling of Duels' Free Month November 2015

The Fucking Top Man (Megaman 3)

This is a thrash metal version of the Veldt music from Final Fantasy 6 recorded for Dwelling of Duels' MAGFest/Collaboration month February 2016 and taking third place. This is my first time placing in DoD. 

The idea was to record the Veldt theme in the style of one of my favorite thrash metal bands, Artillery. I always wanted to give some type of desert theme the Artillery treatment because I feel that the style they had on their album By Inheritance lends itself perfectly to this. The remix itself is pretty liberal with it's arrangement, but almost every riff is a reference to some part of the source tune. Notable exceptions are the one Artillery reference in the middle, and the solo section following it.

Because it was collaboration month, I recruited some old bandmates and friends from the thrash metal scene:

Arrangment and most guitars: Sam Agnew (me)
Bass: Mike Dreher from Condition Critical
Guitar solos over the clean section and at the end of the song: Tony Barhoum from Condition Critical
Drums and production: Brian Westbrook from Lich King

Six Feet Beneath the Veldt (Final Fantasy 6)

What if somebody recorded a shitty cover of the punchout fight theme where every note was punched in?

Recorded for Swelling of Jewels (a video game cover competition that is a parody of Dwelling of Duels) in the MAGFest shizz suite.

Mike Tyson's "Punch In" (Swelling of Jewels)

Me playing Breezy from FF8 drunk on guitar. 

Recorded for Swelling of Jewels in the MAGFest shizz suite.

Drunk Breezy (FF8)

Recorded for Dwelling of Duels' Brevity month March 2016. This was a quick demo version for an idea I had for a really fast, brutal grindcore version of the final battle/champion music from Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow. I never got a chance to actually finish it, but even with the scratch guitars and programmed drums it is sure to entertain.

Yes the name is a Terrorizer reference.

Pokemon World Downfall (Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow)

Recorded for Dwelling of Duels Fresh Month April 2016. This is a metal remix of music from the SNES shoot em up, Strike Gunner. When I was 5 years old, I got this game at a flea market and played it all the time so I have been wanting to cover this music for basically most of my life.

I made the arrangement and recorded the guitars/bass.

Streifig programmed the drums

Manny (my room mate) recorded the keys/synths

Munzadeth mixed everything (in less than an hour because I am a shithead and did everything last minute)

Grike Strunner (Strike Gunner Stages 2 & 4)

This one was a huge collaboration that I only did guitars on. Recorded for Dwelling of Duels Collaboration/MAGFest month 2016. It won first place thanks to Snappleman's awesome production :D

It is a straight cover of a song from an obscure arcade game called The Ninja Warriors. We decided to do this as a tribute to the band T Square because we knew it would make everybody on theshizz.org flip out. We didn't need to make a crazy arrangement to place high because the original song was crazy enough!

Credits:

Me - Guitar
Finbeard - Drums
Monte - Keys
Maiko - Bass
Snappleman - Dope ass production and keyboard solo
Robby V - Crazy Shamisen solo in the middle
Tina - Shakers

Daddy Mulk as performed by T-Shizz (from The Ninja Warriors)

Won 2nd place in Dwelling of Duels' Mother month May 2016. 

Personel: Sagnewshreds, Katamari, Trohnics!, Manny

Here is the full story:

Trohnics texts me while I'm at an iOS dev conference in Seattle saying "hey will you be back in New York next weekend? Wanna win DoD? Me and Katamari will come hang" obviously the winning DoD thing was a joke at the time. But that was the one stretch of several days where I'd be home so I said hell yeah. 

They came up to NY and I met them after work. We had no clue what time we were gonna do at first. I said something like "let's do something funky" and Katamari said "no I wanna do something metal if I'm entering with you" so I immediately thought of the most metal SNES tune of all time: "Porky Means Business." I showed it to them and we were nonstop humming and shouting that br00tal, groovy, bendy riff the entire weekend.

After that we went to grab some BBQ and went to a bar with my roommate Manny (who was also on our entry btw I think Katamari forgot to include him) to get nice and toasty before starting. I took them to a secret hidden bar on the second floor of a five guys because that's a cool unsuspecting spot to show people visiting NY. 

So this girl outside of the bathroom came up to us and started talking to us. The conversation went something like this:

Girl: hey what are you guys doing.
Me: we are about to record the greatest video game cover of all time
Girl: what does that even mean?
Me: have you ever played earthbound for the Super Nintendo?
Girl: no but I played Mario before
Me: well towards the end of the game there's this REALLY sick riff.
Girl: Oh
Me: Show her the riff boys
Katamari: (uh dude how does it go again?)
Me: dun dun dah duuuuhhh
*Me, manny, Katamari and Trohnics at the top of their lungs in her face*: DUN DUN DAH DUUUUUUUUUUHHHHH DUN DUN DAH DUUUUUUUUUHHHHH DUN DUN DAH DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHH

Then she laughed and went to the bathroom. We left immediately after because we were done our drinks anyway and wanted her to come back out and be like "where the hell did those weird dudes go"

The next two days involved us arranging a remix from scratch and recording most of it in my apartment. After they left Katamari fine tuned it over the next week or so and pieces all of the sections together and recorded a couple of transitions and the squealy whammy bar part of the guitar solo. Also we recorded Trohnics making a bunch of weird noises (and a couple of riffs and the first quarter of the guitar solo section. I'm so proud of you buddy!)

Pokey.biz (Earthbound - Pokey Means Business)

A remix of "In the Bar" from the Streets of Rage 2 soundtrack on the SEGA Genesis. This is a tribute to a very close friend of mine named Tyler Wiley who recently lost an almost decade long battle with brain cancer. The two of us used to get together and stay up for nights on end playing SNES/Genesis games. We played a lot of beat em ups and I think the one that we'd both agree that we played the most (or at least the one we talked about the most) was Streets of Rage 2. He loved that game, and I always loved the soundtrack.

This was recorded for Dwelling of Duels' Free Month June 2016. I originally planned on recording a different remix, but when I received the news of his passing, I decided to do this as a tribute to him with only two days left before the deadline. I guess this is how I grieved initially. As I worked on this, it didn't even seem real at the time. I knew that I'd never be able to speak to him again, so I wrote him this letter with my guitar.

Please pardon the sloppiness. I only had two days to record it and didn't even have time to finish the rhythm guitar tracks (they are the scratch tracks I initially recorded so I could begin working on lead guitar, but by the time I was done with leads I had no time left).

Thanks to Brandon Strader for helping me mix this at the (very) last minute.

DoD16-06: Free

One Last Drink (Streets of Rage 2 - "In the Bar")

A medley of music from Contra for the NES done in the style of the thrash metal band Vektor. 

I always thought Contra music fits perfectly in the style of Vektor, and with the band's lineup recently falling apart I felt inspired to fill a small part of the void left by a band who influenced me a lot musically, and breathed new life into the subgenre of thrash. This was recorded for Dwelling of Duels' 80's vs 90's month at MAGFest 2017. Whenever I listen to the Alien's Lair music in the final level of Contra, the erratic and crazy time signature/tempo changes as well as the out of this world harmonies conjure the same imagery in my mind as Vektor's music. 

After some thought, I wanted this remix to be bigger than just one source tune so I medleyed basically half of the Contra soundtrack (Alien's Lair, Energy Zone, Snow Fields and Boss Theme). There are a few Vektor references in the arrangement as easter eggs for fans too ;)

This is probably the most ambitious arrangement I've done for a video game remix yet so enjoy!

Thanks to:

Ryan Munz (Munzadeth) who the production. Without him, this would have sounded like complete garbage.

Austin Green (KatamariJr) who did the drum programming. Without him, you would be subject to listening to my blandly unhumanized drum patterns.

I came up with the arrangement and recorded all of the guitar and bass parts.

(Also thanks to Robby V and MagicalYardGnome from The Shizz for being geniuses and describing Vektor as being "if a thrash metal band sounded like the Contra Alien's Lair music")

DoD16-12: 80s vs 90s

Black Future, Red Falcon (Contra Medley)

Dwelling of Duels' Free Month March 2017. I originally arranged this as a track for a community album project that fell through (at the very least, I dropped off) and as an excuse to collaborate with my good friend Waleed (zykO). 

zykO did all of the exotic instruments (the intro and all of the interludes/fills and any instrument that sounds not "metal" were all done by him). I did the arrangement and recorded all of the electric guitars/bass and the drum programming (but I think maybe Austin did a bit of humanization work?) Austin (Katamari) did the mixing in a very last minute favor to me because he's a true pal <3 He also came up with the name.

I've actually never even played the Assassin's Creed games, but thought the Spirit of Damascus track from the first game was pretty cool. Other than getting a chance to make some music with friends, I wasn't very fond of this one after letting it sit for a while. Hope whoever's reading this enjoys it anyway. 

The heavy section with the double bass in the middle is from "Trouble in Jerusalem" which is also from the first Assassin's Creed.

DoD17-04: Free

Altaïr Ibn-Ma'Ass (Assassin's Creed - Spirit of Damascus)

Won 3rd place in Dwelling of Duels' Europe Month in May 2017.

I've never had more fun working on a piece of music. Jamming with Austin (Katamari) and Eric (Trohnics!) for a weekend making funky fresh tunes and hanging in NYC was a blast! We arranged and recorded this entire thing in a weekend.

As per our tradition of having The Boys ™ visit me in NYC every May to throw down a DoD entry in the span of a weekend(see Pokey.biz), Austin and Eric drove up while listening to a bunch of NSFs of possible candidates. They arrived and had a couple of ideas and all we really knew was that we definitely wanted to do a Tim Follin tune (but I was close to just saying we should do Donkey Kong Country) and immediately when they brought up the title screen music of Magic Johnson's Fast Break for the NES I knew we could funk it up super hard.

Here's the long ass story if you care: 

So instead of doing anything productive, we immediately started drinking beer and sake and went to go eat some ramen. When we got back to my tiny West Village apartment (fun fact: I was moving out 2 days after that weekend) we found my door busted and my roommate trying to get in with our building's supervisor. Turns out my smoke detector went off and the fire department came by. 

After that we jammed for a bit, came up with some preliminary ideas and then decided to get drunk and go to Kenka in East Village to drink more and eat more Japanese food. It was a great time. 

The next day we went to Guitar Center because my interface didn't work with Austin's computer. We bought a new interface and returned it that Monday before they left 🏴 

The rest of Saturday and Sunday was spent vigorously recording and drinking seltzer water aside from taking breaks to go on diner/pizza adventures. The only part that wasn't recorded during the weekend was the shred guitar solo I did at the end. I recorded that one the Tuesday after they left before flying to Portland for a conference. 

We never ended up adding the drunken scummy trash fire singing inspired by the Rocky movies, but the song is probably better off without it. 

Looking forward to the next time The Boys™ can make it up to New York to throw down and record some more video game covers with me.

DoD17-05: Europe

Edgar Enchantment's Quick Snap (Magic Johnson's Fast Break - Title Screen)

Mostly metal remixes of old video game tunes

Sagnewshreds

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