EPTI have been actively trying to break down all barriers in music for myself, so that all music is acceptable/enjoyable for me. The result of this work has been that I now unabashedly enjoy music from Ligeti and Saariaho, to Two Door Cinema Club, to Justin Timberlake, to PHISH, the list goes on.. In line with this deconstruction, I felt that it was also time to deconstruct my own compositional process and see if I could adapt my stylistic choices to a genre that I am familiar with, but have zero experience writing in... popular music (I use 'popular' the way most people treat 'classical' music as a descriptor).
Trying to adapt and learn typical, or generalized tropes and use them fluidly has not been particularly easy, and in approaching the subject I decided that I wanted to choose a route that I have gained much enjoyment out of in the last year or so. For that I turn to ocremix.org (If you haven't gone there ever, you should, like now). This certainly isn't a new idea as 'classical music' is littered with re-orchestrations, quotations, theme and variation, or re-arrangements of, or within a piece of music, but moving out into the video game language was certainly new territory for me.
Anyway, I wanted to work with something in Battletoads, partly because there are ZERO remixes of that game that I know of, and partly because that game is just so undeniably awesome and likely my favorite NES game, period. Another reason I chose it was because the music within is pretty kickass, and has a lot of mutability to it. So with that, what level do I choose?
Well that was a hard one. I first wanted to do something on perhaps that most of infamous of levels, the Turbo Tunnel, but I couldn't get a good idea formulated in what to do with it. Then I thought about either some synthesis of both parts of Volkmire's Inferno 1 + 2, or Karnath's Lair. I was leaning heavily towards Karnath and then I got an idea for something using the Ratrace. You can thank Stephanie Germanotta in part for inspiration (bass line ideas).
In writing the piece I started with the middle, then worked backwards, and then jumped into sections 3 + 4, and got very, very stuck in the fourth. It wasn't the most easy of times to try to figure out these ideas, but it took a good month to figure out how to proceed out of what I thought was a pretty solid idea, and into finishing it properly. So periodic work within 3-4 months, and I finally have my first remix, and I think it turned out ok. There are some conceptual issues that I think might hinder it, but blame that on my predilection for complexity. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it as much as I had playing around with it.
+ Show Spoiler [in case you can't see the player] +
Also, why didn't This make it into the final cut for the last boss, I kind of like it, even if she was a pushover.
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Edit: I just finished submitting it to ocr, so we'll see what happens
