VGM

Events, Game Music

Know Your MAG 2016: The World Is Square

February 13, 2016 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on Know Your MAG 2016: The World Is Square Share this Know Your MAG 2016: The World Is Square

The 14th annual MAGFest is approaching fast. Each year the festival brings in new music acts, but it also sees the return of some acts from MAGFests past. One of these returning acts is the group The World is Square. Before you head out to the event, here’s your chance to get some background on the group in this entry of Know Your Mag.

The World Is Square is a Boston based game music tribute band that focuses on the music of SquareSoft/Enix titles. The band is comprised of members Lauren Christerson, Joe Corbett, Nick Doane, Joshua Edginton, and Dave Reardon. Each member plays several instruments, which helps cover the various needs of their unique arrangements.

Their style can be summed up as a combination of acoustic folk blended with a sampling of modern and electronic instruments. What results is a collection of light acoustic arrangements that have just a hint of modern flavor. They’ve released a number of arrangement albums over the group’s five year career. While some focus on a specific game series, others provide a collection of covers from various game titles.

<a href="http://theworldissquare.bandcamp.com/album/stay-awhile-and-listen">Stay Awhile and Listen by The World is Square</a>

Many of their albums focus on the earlier years of SquareSoft/Enix, including music from the early Final Fantasy games, Chrono Trigger, and Super Mario RPG. While a majority of the material they play comes from the older RPGs that we all know and love, The World Is Square has also tackled more recent games like Bravely Default and other titles that don’t get as much recognition like the Breath of Fire series.

<a href="http://theworldissquare.bandcamp.com/album/squarelove">SquareLove by The World is Square</a>

The World Is Square is set to perform on the MAGFest main stage on Friday afternoon at 4pm. To find out more about this year’s MAGFest head over to their main site to grab tickets, make hotel reservations, and check out the schedule for this year’s festivities.
Featured

Arrangement of the Week: Aquamarine

February 12, 2016 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on Arrangement of the Week: Aquamarine Share this Arrangement of the Week: Aquamarine

There are a number of great pieces from RPG soundtracks that artists love to cover. Everything from exciting battle themes to the more tranquil town tunes end up being great sources of inspiration. Today’s Arrangement of the Week is a cover of “A Place to Return To,” which is the town theme for Crysta from the game Terranigma.

Despite the game having a limited western release, Terranigma and its soundtrack have gained the attention of game music lovers and remixers alike. This arrangement, titled “Aquamarine,” is an orchestral reimagining of the music from artist mv.

From the start this arrangement sets an incredibly tranquil tone. Sounds of birds and flowing water set the mood perfectly with a simple entrance of piano and harp to ease us into the piece. The arrangement builds up steadily with woodwind solos, mandolin, horns, vocal pads, and strings, but never attempts to break the mellow tone of the track. Each addition to the ensemble works to support or maintain the overall serenity of the experience.

The orchestration of this arrangement is absolutely perfect. There’s plenty of solos from different instruments and the accompaniment instruments blend well together to support the simple and mostly unaltered melodies. It evokes such a calming mood that I could easily imagine this cover being used in a remake or re-release of Terranigma. All in all, it’s just a fantastic orchestral arrangement of the Crysta town theme.

Did you listen to any cool orchestral game music arrangements this week? Let us know about them in the comments below. You can check out mv’s “Aquamarine” on OC ReMix.
Events, Game Music

Know Your MAG 2016: Eight Bit Disaster

February 11, 2016 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on Know Your MAG 2016: Eight Bit Disaster Share this Know Your MAG 2016: Eight Bit Disaster

The wild winter party that is MAGFest is only a few weeks away. There are a ton of great music acts lined up for this year, all with a unique approach to giving tribute to the world of videogames. This year has a few funk rock groups performing on the main stage of this year’s event, including the group Eight Bit Disaster. If you’ve never checked them out before, here’s your chance to fix that with today’s Know Your Mag.

Eight Bit Disaster hails from North Carolina and consists of members John Baxter on bass guitar, DeJuan Gailes on guitars, Gabe Mixon and Eric Krouse on drums, Elliot Wernlund on Saxophone, and Mateo John Marshall on keys. Together they create instrumental game covers that span the genres of funk, rock, jazz, and the blues. There first album Eight Bit Disaster was released back in January of 2013 and shows off their blending of these genres.

<a href="http://eightbitdisaster.bandcamp.com/album/eight-bit-disaster">Eight Bit Disaster by Eight Bit Disaster</a>

Part of their aim as a group is to cover and highlight the more obscure pieces of game music that don’t get enough attention from other artists. The Eight Bit Disaster album features music from Bad Dudes, Rygar, and Wizards & Warriors. Even if you’re not that familiar with the source material, the music covers themselves have a wild and energetic sound. The group’s blend of sax with electric guitar, bass guitar, and drums makes for some truly entertaining covers of these hidden game music gems.

<a href="http://eightbitdisaster.bandcamp.com/album/eight-bit-disaster">Eight Bit Disaster by Eight Bit Disaster</a>

Their upcoming album Eight Bit Disaster III: Covered In Ash is planned to release during MAGFest. The band has already released a preview track for the album which covers the main theme from Morrowind.

Eight Bit Disaster is set to perform on the MAGFest main stage Friday afternoon at 1pm. You can find out more about this year’s MAGFest, including the schedule, hotel options, and ticket sales at the main website.
Game Music

Arrangement of the Week: Caravan Bowser

February 5, 2016 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on Arrangement of the Week: Caravan Bowser Share this Arrangement of the Week: Caravan Bowser

Many of the game music remixes out there focus on soundtracks from earlier console and platform generations for their source material. However, every once and a while more recent material gets a chance to shine. For this week’s Arrangement of the Week we will be looking at an electronic dance remix of a piece from Super Mario 3D World.

The source track is the “World Bowser” map theme, which has been arranged by Flexstyle and XPRTNovice. The remix, titled “Caravan Bowser” is part of a collaborative album Super Cartography Bros., which as the name implies focusses on the map music from various Super Mario Bros. games.

The track is an interesting mixture of genres. There’s your standard EDM elements present of course, but its combination with the live gypsy jazz instrument performances from XPRTNovice really helps give the track a unique sound. The rhythm guitar parts blend well with the percussion and the various solo instruments find their space in the mix without fighting against the other music elements.

The electronic instruments get their time to shine in the remix as well. At around the 1’20” mark the acoustic instruments drop out and let the synth instruments have the spotlight. The track has a wonderfully upbeat feel that is maintained throughout the track’s runtime. All in all, it’s a great blend of jazz and EDM from an unlikely source.

Have you heard any cool game music EDM remixes this week? Let us know in the comments below. You can check out the “Caravan Bowser” track and the full Super Cartography Bros. album on the album’s OC ReMix page.
Game Music

Arrangement of the Week: Fire Still Burns in My Frozen Heart

January 29, 2016 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on Arrangement of the Week: Fire Still Burns in My Frozen Heart Share this

For this week’s installment of Arrangement of the Week, we’re returning to another cover of a track from Ys III: Wanderers from Ys. The game’s soundtrack exists in a few variations thanks to its availability on a number of platforms with different sound chips. Much of the music lends itself well to rock interpretations, as is the case for this cover of “Steeling the Will to Fight.”

The artist for this arrangement is Ansgaros who created a high energy metal interpretation of the track called “Fire Still Burns in My Frozen Heart.”

For the opening sections of this cover, Ansgaros actually sticks relatively close to the marching pace and tone that is set in the original track. But after about a minute, he starts kicking things into high gear. There’s plenty of inhumanely fast drums, some energetic guitar parts, and a decent amount of synth strings that balance well against the rest of the instruments.

One of the things that makes this arrangement work well is that there are occasional breaks between the more intense guitar and drum sections. These contrasting segments transition back and forth rather well, so the cover never sounds disjointed or jarring. These calmer sections also give the listener some breathing room in between the more high-energy guitar sections. Overall, an excellent metal arrangement of music from Ys III: Wanderers from Ys.

Have you heard any good metal covers of game music? Let us know in the comments below. You can check out and download Ansgaros’s “Fire Still Burns in My Frozen Heart” on OC Remix.
Game Music

Arrangement of the Week: Dark World (Mariachi Cover)

January 22, 2016 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on Arrangement of the Week: Dark World (Mariachi Cover) Share this

During my searches for arrangements for this series, I occasionally find myself looking for some unusual things. Recently I decided to see if anyone had done a mariachi cover of some game music. Not only did I find a cover, I found a group that has done a number of mariachi arrangements of game tunes. They are known as Mariachi Entertainment System.

Of the handful of game tunes that the group has covered, today’s Arrangement of the Week is featuring their cover of “Dark World” from The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past.

After the band members take shots of toquilla, a running gag in their videos, the piece opens with trumpets, guitar, vihuela, flute, and guitarron for the familiar intro of the overworld theme. Each performer for the arrangement then gets introduced as they play their parts. The flute, trumpet, and violin players take turns with the melodic material for the duration of the piece, while the guitar, vihuela, and guitarron provide the rhythmic accompaniment.

The arrangement itself is relatively straight forward, without any dramatic structural or melodic changes made for the performance. The source material works quite well with the instrument ensemble and each member of the group delivers a solid performance. The flute, which doesn’t traditionally perform with mariachi ensembles, adds some extra tone color to the arrangement that works well for this particular piece. Overall, an excellent cover of the classic Zelda overworld theme from a talented group of musicians.

Have you heard any interesting ensembles covering game music this week? Let us know in the comments below. You can check out more of Mariachi Entertainment System’s game music covers on their YouTube channel and you can also support them on Patreon.
Game Music

Arrangement of the Week: Gemini Man

January 15, 2016 | Michael Hoffmann | Comments Off on Arrangement of the Week: Gemini Man Share this Arrangement of the Week: Gemini Man

There are some interesting approaches that composers and arrangers take in mixing instruments from different genres. 8-bit sounds have worked well in combination with rock instruments for chiptune rock arrangements, and there’s a healthy dose of dance and electronic genres that 8 bit sounds have meshed well with. Today’s selection for Arrangement of the Week combines the sound capabilities of the NES with upbeat jazz piano.

This peculiar concept comes from artist Shnabubula who has created an entire album, NES Jams, that features arrangements of game music for piano and the NES sound chip. Today we will be looking at one of my favorite tracks on the album, “Gemini Man.”

<a href="http://shnabubulamusic.bandcamp.com/album/nes-jams">NES Jams by Shnabubula</a>

Like the other pieces on the album, the piano is the focus for the arrangement. The NES chip music acts primarily as accompaniment, performing much like the virtual members of a jazz quartet. The percussive effects act as drums, there are discernible 8-bit bass lines, and plenty of countermelodies are provided from the other 8-bit instrument voices to support the piano performance.

The piano gets a majority of the melodic material, with some occasional melody doubling from the NES instruments. There are also some great improvisation sections. At the 2’00” mark, for example, the piano and a few of the NES instruments play some solos against each other. This works as a nice contrast to the earlier sections and it transitions smoothly back to the reprise of the primary themes for a great finale. All in all, it’s an interesting mashup of music elements that makes for a very memorable Megaman 3 arrangement.

Have you heard any interesting instrument combinations for VGM arrangements? Feel free to share them with us in the comments below. You can check out “Gemini Man” and the full NES Jams album on Shnabubula’s Bandcamp page.