My third orchestra+organ play-along album contains nine OC remixes by various artists, all of them in a similar style, as if the original composers would have had a silent agreement that, one day, these pieces were intended to be put together.

The glue between all of the tracks is suggested by the album title — they're all enhanced and backed by a three-manuals French-Romantic Cavaillé-Coll pipe organ, which I added on top by playing along in two live sessions (yes, I love plays on words, hence the album title). This adds even more drama, gravity and a bunch of particular highlights.

Since the additional pipe organ track was recorded in 7.1 surround, the original OC remixes, which served as the re-remixing basis, were also upgraded to 7.1 to fit the setup. The recording and mixing process, credits research, video material research, storybook and composition, album art, media production, etc. took about three months of spare-time work — definitely my most ambitious project so far and an interesting first contact with DAWs in general and Ardour 6 in particular.

More info about this album project and related events as well as links to the full movie cut and surround downloads is available at this OC Remix forum thread: ocremix.org/community/topic/51006

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Metroid: Organ Transplants

Pipe organs usually can be found in churches, but they're such a versatile instrument as well when it comes to orchestral music. "Eurasia" takes this versatility to the top by crossing the border between cultures while keeping the spiritual aspect intact at the same time.

Many pieces in Asian music are based on a five-tone scale, which creates the typical sound which we associate with the characteristic "Asian sound". That's what this compilation tries to simulate with several tracks, including the highlight of it:

"Three Asian Doodles" is an on-spot improvisation that is completely based on the scheme of five-tone music (with a few add-ons). Also, some video game music from Japan (Final Fantasy) and some movie themes from the West (Star Trek 6 at high speed) should not be missing...

Kaiserdom Speed Toccata

Into The Green World

The Crimson Depths

Kraid Begins

Footprints On Zebes

Putting Down On Zebes

Finally, I managed to get the technical stuff up and running to return to my old habit of playing along with video game soundtracks, which was not possible for some years because of hard- and software limitations. Now that this feature is working again, I thought that more than 500 YouTube subscribers would be a nice occasion to put it to a good use.

What you can experience in this compilation is an extra "organ track", which I played and recorded in parallel while the "Legend of Zelda — Breath of the Wild" OST was playing and which was dubbed onto the OST later in a post-processing stage. This felt exactly like being part of the OST orchestra, where I would have the duty of directly contributing to the game music. Nonetheless, this had a bit of "adding even more gravity" to a score that was already perfect — and to make things even more difficult, I played along solely by ear, i.e. without any sheets. The tricky part for me, albeit I had listened to the OST many times before, was to instantaneously react to chord changes and a melody which I roughly had memorized, but not exactly note by note.

Adapting the organ registration (i.e. selecting appropriate stops) to find a volume/dynamics level that was compatible with the orchestral part was another challenge that came on top of "just playing matching notes and/or an additional voice". While the intention was to make the organ present of course, it was always thought as an enrichment and strong foundation backbone, which should never speak over the orchestra too aggressively to achieve the impression that the organ would feel "natural", as if it would always have had its place and role in the original score right from the beginning.

In remembrance of my passed-away grandmother, who would have celebrated her 100th birthday on the date of this release.

Epilogue

Do You Remember?

Calamity Ganon Battle

Activate! The Power Of The Champions

Hyrule Castle

The Final Trial

Tarrey Town

Lurelin Village

Divine Beast Vah Naboris

Attack on Vah Naboris

Master Kohga Battle

Encounter With Riju

Gerudo Town

Divine Beast Vah Rudania

Divine Beast Vah Medoh

Rito Village

Mipha and the Divine Beast

Divine Beast Vah Ruta

Attack on Vah Ruta

Zora's Domain

Great Fairy Fountain

Hateno Village

Sheikah Tower Activated

Sheikah Tower

The Sheikah Towers Appear

Opening

"Melodies From Hyrule" takes the listener on a synthesized musical journey through the "Legend of Zelda" universe. Many scenes and fragments are based on "Ocarina of Time", which still is one of the most significant parts of the franchise.

Though the individual tracks were already improvised in 2009, I didn't rediscover them before 2016, when I finally decided to produce a CD compilation for my friends and family. In addition, MFH is my first CD with a booklet consisting of 12 pages to illustrate each title with an in-game scene.

Melodies From Hyrule

The Sacred Meadow

An excursion through the always changing land of Hyrule, which tackles quite a number of the "Legend of Zelda" franchise episodes — this is the opportunity to literally shine for multiple organs of different traditions and styles of organ building.

Here they can prove their great versatility to support the symphonic character of some most iconic pieces from the Zelda universe that are very well known to almost any fan.

BotW Blights Battle Theme

Koholint Serenade

An ad-hoc live improvisation on "Murph" from the "Interstellar" OST. Picked that up by ear a couple of years ago, but suddenly this one jumped into my fingers during my recent impro session...

Murph (Interstellar By-Ear Live Impro)

Last year, my parents-in-law had a very special birthday present for me: They organised an appointment with the resident organist at St. Stephan, Tangermünde, Germany, where I had the honor to play one of Europe's most important and famous historic pipe organs --- The 1624 Scherer organ!

This organ is one of the most important historical organs in Europe and features some peculiarities of that time, like a short octave and a (1/4th-comma, IIRC) mean-tone temperament, as it was pretty common back in that era.

Luckily, among a number of other recordings, an improvisation on the "Song of Time" from "The Legend of Zelda -- Ocarina of Time" did find its way to my Zoom H6n digital recorder...so, enjoy this rare and unusual piece of VGM "remix", just the way "it was meant to be 400 years ago"! :-)

https://youtu.be/5Rjps9OUgjU

Find out more about the organ at the organ restorer's website and Wikipedia:
- https://www.schuke.de/?projects=tangermunde-st-stephan-germany&lang=en
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Stephen%27s_Church,_Tangerm%C3%BCnde

Temple Of Time, 1624 AD

"Trials of Mana", also known as "Seiken Densetsu 3", is the 1995 successor to the famous SNES "Secret of Mana" JRPG and, back then, was published only in Japan. About two years ago, in April 2020, fans were gifted with a full state-of-the-art remake after a quarter of a century, during which fan-translated ROM versions toured all around the planet.

Being one of these fans, I recently finished multiple runs of that game and found the opening scene — and, most notably, the orchestrated soundtrack — to be one of the major highlights of the remake. Needless to say that this called for an "organic" extension.

For those who own a 7.1 surround system, an 8-channel FLAC file can be picked up here to get an impression of what it will sound like in my living room:
- URL: http://via.woody-mc.de/to/AhilFIYNgjiwMgZq
- Player: Current versions of Media Player Classic are able to properly play multi-channel FLAC files.

Game: Trials of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 3
Publisher: Square Enix
Composer: Hiroki Kikuta

Trials Of Mana: Remake Intro

A chilled but haunting space-themed intro loop, recorded for the cinematic presentation of my "Metroid: Organ Transplants" album (see https://youtu.be/hQLm4DyotRc for reference). This recording features the 1903 Cavaillé-Coll / Mutin organ from Notre Dame de Metz, France, but this time with an extensive reverb.

As M:OT will get a 2nd show at a local movie theater on Nov 5th 2022 8:15pm CET, I got the idea to create this as a loopable intro, which would play during admission (a full hour before the show starts). Hope this helps people to get into the proper mood for the feature film, hehe. :-)

To achieve that vast "space loneliness feeling" for the well-known Metroid intro theme from Nintendo's "Super Metroid" (1994), no less than the Inchindown impulse response sample was used; to avoid a too muddy sound, I even cut down the reverb tails "a bit" -- to 25 seconds, which is only about a third of the original one...

Metroid Space (Cinema Intro Loop)

This was a truly emotional moment: The last piece to play in my old home before I dismantled my DIY setup to move it to our new one.

As I couldn't say beforehand whether or not every part would survive the move safe and sound, I thought it would be a good idea to let the organ scream into the world for one last time -- and to do so at its loudest possible volume. The more the piece evolved, the more tears I shed...this was Amazing Grace indeed and I simply couldn't hold back, ignored all of the world around me and gave all I had.

The good news: Meanwhile, my setup is up and running again, so this is not a goodbye. :-)

For those who own a 7.1 surround system, an 8-channel FLAC file can be picked up here to get an impression of what it will sound like in my living room:
- URL: http://via.woody-mc.de/to/oihMy3hh6nhePuxw
- Player: Current versions of Media Player Classic are able to properly play multi-channel FLAC files.

Woody - Amazing Grace (Organ Demolition Finale)

A special "reORGANization" request from my organ buddy "möchtegernPianist" (he currently renamed his handle to "Magnitendo").

Production side note: This was recorded by ear in one go after listening two times, but with three takes (two for the harmonization, one for an extra melody line). These were synced up with the original soundtrack (OST) using Ardour 6 as my DAW of choice and volume-shaped to keep the intended balance with the OST.

For those who own a 7.1 surround system, an 8-channel FLAC file can be picked up here to get an impression of what it will sound like in my living room:

- URL: http://via.woody-mc.de/to/WRaqMeEmED0KGoin
- Player: Current versions of Media Player Classic are able to properly play multi-channel FLAC files.

Game: Dark Souls 3
Publishers: FromSoftware / Bandai Namco Entertainment
Composers: Yuka Kitamura, Motoi Sakuraba

Woody - Dark Souls 3 Main Theme (Pipe Organ Enhancement)

Made for Rebecca E. Tripp's Chrono Trigger deep analysis video. Watch her full documentary here:
https://youtu.be/LQd9XTOV59A

For those who own a 7.1 surround system, an 8-channel FLAC file can be picked up here to get an impression of what it will sound like in my living room:
- URL: http://via.woody-mc.de/to/Jdb8dedIm9iceZ0r
- Player: Current versions of Media Player Classic are able to properly play multi-channel FLAC files.

Game: Chrono Trigger
Publisher: Square
Composers: Yasunori Mitsuda, Nobuo Uematsu

Chrono Trigger: Woody - Peaceful Days (World Map Theme / Organ Dream Version)

The greatest tracks from the first season of Final Space in one medley, upscaled to 7.1 surround and backed by the magnificient 1903 Cavaillé-Coll romantic pipe organ, located at Notre Dame de Metz in the Northeast of France. This arrangement features several layered pipe organ recordings on the same organ to apply shine and low-freq thrust where I personally was missing it.

0:00 ~ 10 Minutes (J. D. Sidwell)
1:04 ~ Wake Up, Gary (L. M. Shelby)
3:33 ~ A World Beyond (L. M. Shelby)
5:31 ~ Gary's New Arm (J. D. Sidwell)
7:47 ~ Good Enough For Me (J. D. Sidwell)

Current versions of Media Player Classic are able to properly play multi-channel FLAC files.
Like all my other recordings, the music is completely improvised, so there is no sheet music available.

Woody - Final Space Medley

The "Fairy Fountain" theme as you know it from the "25th Anniversary Symphony" -- but this time, I played along live with a pipe organ for an improved foundation in the low-frequency range and even more goosebumps in the mids and treble part!
Since the organ part was recorded and mastered in 7.1 surround, of course the original soundtrack got a retouch, too (stereo to 7.1 upmix with some spacial magic on the surround, center and LFE channels). This improvement is even audible in the YouTube stereo downmix, so...enjoy! :-)

For those who own a 7.1 surround system, an 8-channel FLAC file can be picked up here to get an impression of what it will sound like in my living room:

- URL: http://via.woody-mc.de/to/GpR8T4d21Tz9hzau
- Player: Current versions of Media Player Classic are able to properly play multi-channel FLAC files.

Woody - Fairy Fountain (reORGANized 25th Anniversary)

Full time lead software dev and a passionate spare-time pipe organ player. Adept at picking up, replaying and improvising pieces by ear, but I totally suck when it comes to sight-reading sheet music.

All of my skills are self-taught; starting about 30 years ago back when I was a child, but with the majority added over the past ~10 years, when I first had permanent access to physical pipe organs in Germany and Italy. Heavily influenced by the stuff I watch and play, I'm absolutely NOT the kind of "church organist" that anyone might expect, but focusing on orchestral / VGM / movie / soundtrack themes instead.

If you'd like to know what to expect, you're invited to check out my YouTube channel!

Woody/mC

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