[Update: this music has been revised and re-posted]
In reference to Pilcrow’s prescient request, I now present a remix of title in subject from the Nintendo 8-bit era of glory. The overlaying melody on this thing (I argue) makes the work substantially different enough from the original that this is a new work, which I provide for your download.
This combines work done in Melodyne and Cakewalk with a nintendo sound font.
For an idea of this game (or a strange nostalgic glimpse), here are several YouTube videos -
I don’t like the weird video intro for this one, but it’s the only thing I find that gives the game title sequence (without a painfully elaborate or nerdy uber-over-narration) from which this title remix was built:
There’s this tune from the game Mother (the original Nintendo version of what later became the brilliant EARTHBOUND on Super Nintendo), evidently this is the music when you die. (Or that’s what the track ripper says; “Game Over”: I wouldn’t know because I never played the original. Also, the music when you die in EARTHBOUND is different but equally cool.) One day I was listening to this tune and I heard and started singing a high harmony melody. I’ve now re-rendered the music to include that melody, also altering the bass line enough that I can call this an original - if blatantly ripped off and extended - work, without conscience - so you can download it.
How I made this was tricky - and yet produced results far faster than if I’d figured and re-did all the notes by hand. I’m kinda proud of it. I’ve mentioned Melodyne, which changes pitches very well. I used a Winamp plugin called NotSoFatso that lets you mute tracks in an .nsf (emulated nintendo music) file. I rendered each part (or instrument or harmony) to different wave files via Winamp’s wave writer - bass, lead, and lead echo. That was easier with NotSoFatso allowing me to “shadow” or list one of so many songs in the .nsf (right-click the song listing, click “file info”, then click “shadow->Winamp). I moved the notes of the bass wave file around a bit in Melodyne, and also copied it to another track and divided and moved around the notes and overtones (formants) to make this higher lead part (several of the notes were barely audible until I moved the formants).
Bingo.
Melodyne gave it a sing-song quality, if it is still very much a “nintendo” instrument - because Melodyne is designed to emulate the formants of the human voice in particular. It also made it too “clean” to be a “nintendo” instrument, so I processed the result in Audio Mulch using a “DigiGrunge” distortion decimator simulating a bit depth of 8. Then I mixed it all back together in Guitar Tracks Pro 3, and converted it to .mp3 with foobar2000’s “convert to same directory” right-click option.
This is from that game they might have made, and which you should have won, but you didn’t, because they might not have made it. But it might have involved a hero running through fields defeating the forces of evil, solving puzzles pertaining to the salvation of the world, acquiring mysterious relics, conversing with wizards and sorcerers and friendly beasts, and advancing in skill and stages toward defeating the ultimate foe.
You are free to download, copy and use this song for any purpose (see the license in the tag), and I request a link to this page in any redistributions. I don’t demand credit but request it in any commercial re-use.
This bird quartet was made from recordings of one nightingale duplicated, pitch altered, mixed back onto itself and a “reverb” effect added. (Download mp3 file, 412K) I release this free under Creative Commons Share-alike Attrib 2.0. That means you can copy and use it for any purpose guilt-free, but I’d like credit (though I don’t demand it) in any reproductions/alterations. I made this with a demo for a Cakewalk (or any other audio/music application) plugin I’ve been playing with - an exceedingly cool plugin that does simply miraculous pitch corrections and outright changes. It’s called Melodyne. This version of the plugin (1) doesn’t do what this jaw-dropping video at YouTube demonstrates (a future version (2) of the plugin will) - picking notes out of a chord from a wave recording! - but, like I said, it does its own miraculous things. Fortunately, the plugin demo has very little limitations and allowed me to put together this music. There are odd artifacts from - I think - other very quiet background birds in the recordings that somehow got mixed into the pitch-bending, and who get their volume increased four times for the quartet. I best have done a bypass filter and/or noise cleanup to remove them first, but I didn’t notice them at first and now it’s too late. Or if that isn’t other background birds, there are warbling overtones in choirs of nightingales that emerge when they sing in the Western-style musical scale and classical tradition, which we wouldn’t know about, because we’ve never heard nightingales singing that way. (Just imagine what you can do when any pitched sound can be made a dynamic musical instrument. My imagination is running wild). I also have yet to figure out how to make the plugin alter the timing and length of notes - I could give this more variation and difference in the rhythm of harmonies.
I sequenced (really more sampled) together this music incorporating planetary radio noise samples available from NASA under the Public Domain; it uses other free samples and original sounds too.
Please share your comments about this piece; I’m up for possibly improving it.
I release this under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States; it is free for any use and I do not require but request credit to me by full name (Richard Alexander Hall) in all use.
One day a few years ago, my brother and I burst into invented overlay melodies for this Nintendo music, as we drove in my car - I think this was on or near Halloween (2003?). But to me, this music is just downright.. I dunno. Christmasy.
[note: In time I’ll update this to play it in the page with a little music player (flash), but it’s at a mHz that makes it freak out right now]
My brother started a tune and I finished it and rendered it in a Nintendo SoundFont. I called it Magical Happy. Here’s a first draft (which seems to be final, as I’ve never re-drafted). I’m curious what you think.
Also, I sequenced this song which I call Birds in a Storm. I’ve never re-drafted it, either, but could. I think you might call it something between Chiptunes and Trance.