"...and it only took me 5 years!"

Aside from being a writer here at Wing Damage, I like to spend my time making electronica music (hosted at MainFinger.com) in my home studio. As I’ve mentioned in the past couple podcasts, I have been very hard at work, both finishing up my new album and building a completely new site. I’ve finally launched the site with the new album on it, available for download and streamable, absolutely free! I do, however, accept donations via PayPal if you feel so inclined. The donation button is located on the sidebar of my site.

In case you’re wondering how this relates to Wing Damage, a majority of the songs on the album are videogame remixes. The tracks range from well known series’ such as Zelda, Metroid and Sonic the Hedgehog to lesser known titles like Section Z. Each track differs greatly in style so there’s a lot of variety to enjoy.

Mode7 has, by far, shown the largest improvement for me in quality between albums. This album is 5 years in the making. It was slowed down by being mixed mostly on a computer that was almost a decade out of date.

During that time, I’ve read up on Sound Engineering. This has greatly increased the clarity of my mixes. On top of that, I’ve acquired a lot of new software and hardware since the last album. This allowed me to include fairly believable orchestral sounds, 8bit sounds, and more powerful drum tracks than ever before. I’ve taken this album much more seriously than any album before it. Click on the links below to download individual songs, click here to download the whole album in a zip file, or visit MainFinger.com to stream them right in your browser.

01. Unpleasant Noise (A James Brown Tribute) [3.33meg - 2:38] This song is made using a sample from Godzilla vs. Monster Zero and samples from as many different James Brown songs as I could cram together. I’ve been wanting to use that Godzilla clip for a long time and finally got around to it. I’m a huge fan of James Brown’s music and wanted to pay my respects in song.

02. Carnival Cave (originally from Sonic the Hedgehog 2) [4.64meg 3:11] The Mystic Cave Zone is quite possibly my favorite song from the entire Sonic series. I’ve attempted to remix it several times and failed. Finally, I was able to make a remix of it I was truly happy with it. You might notice a certain homage to a famous song in the solo.

03. Doomsday Village (originally from American McGee’s Alice) [3.31meg 2:37] The soundtrack to American McGee’s Alice is largely ambient. Village of the Doomed was definitely the standout track for me. Even before the album’s release, this song started to get a bit of a cult following.

04. Relaxin’ in Hyrule (originally from Zelda 2: The Adventures of Link) [2.99meg 2:25] This song contains a guitar sample of Mountain Con’s “I Woke Up and the Morning was Grey”. In fact, when I listened to that song, I immediately thought of the House music from Zelda 2. Right then, I knew I wanted to make a remix of it using the sample. Though the song starts with vibraphones, it evolves into Chip Hop midway through.

05. Passion (Punch Drunk Mix) (originally from Kingdom Hearts 2) [8.78meg 6:34] I got the soundtrack to Kingdom Hearts 2 before the game came to the states. In fact, the original version of my remix came out long before the game released here. It’s a trance mix of the opening/ending theme. The American version is labeled Sanctuary, but since the Japanese version that I remixed is labeled as Passion, I went with that name instead.

06. Don Your Armor, Armadillo (originally from Mega Man X) [4.57meg 2:49] This song starts with a triumphant orchestral intro leading into a fast-paced drum ‘n bass frenzy. I actually ripped the SPC guitar from the original SNES audio, layered it with effects, and used it to make both solos featured in the song.

07. Beware of the Stalker (originally from Castlevania & Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse) [5.90meg 4:06] This is actually a combination of many different Castlevania songs. The most dominant are Stalker (hence the name) and Evergreen. At many points, riffs of different songs from the series are overlapped to create some interesting combinations.

08. Dentists Unite [3.33meg 3:10] There is an interesting story behind this song. I am a web developer by trade and many of the sites I’ve worked on have been for cosmetic dentists. A lot of these sites have background music. What I did here is took several of these dental website loops, sliced them up together, and added my own instruments on top of it all.

09. Enter the Shrine (originally by The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening) [3.37meg 2:30] Even using the GameBoy’s crude sound chip, the Face Shrine in Link’s Awakening had a tune that gave me the creeps. It was eerie, but addicting. My remix is much faster than the original, reducing a bit of the creepy factor, but giving it my own unique take on it.

10. A Timeline Eliminated (originally from Chrono Cross & Chrono Trigger) [4.18meg 3:03] Interestingly enough, this remix started out double the speed it is now. Part way through writing it, I went to half speed for some reason and liked the way it sounded much better. This is a combination of The Dead Sea and Sealed Door with a little bit of Schala mixed in. I’m happy with how well all 3 of these songs meld together into one. I don’t believe it even feels like a medley, though technically it is.

11. Balance of Power (originally from Metroid Prime 2 & Metroid) [3.99meg 3:04] The rhythm distortion in this song is actually my keytar ran through a distortion pedal with some effects layered onto it. This made for a rather interesting sound. It combines the intro tracks from both Prime 2 and the original Metroid.

12. Shootin’ Both Ways (originally from Section Z) [4.29meg 3:01] The stage music from Section Z has been a favorite of mine since childhood. This started out as an original song until Geoffio pointed out the disturbing similarity to Section Z in what I had written so far. Rather than get disheartened at the work of my subconscious, I decided to go along with it and evolve it into a full blown Section Z remix.

13. Doomsday Village (Thin Sliced Mix) (originally from American McGee’s Alice) [3.23meg 2:36] Because of the popularity of the preview version of my original Doomsday Village, I was reluctant to change it too much when revising all of the tracks. I had ideas I wanted to try, but didn’t want to upset the people who had already become so attached to the original. My solution was to create an alternate remix. This way, I would be free to make as many changes as I wanted, no matter how radical. This version is full of hip hop beats and lots of slicing.

14. Requiem of Lost Beats [4.55meg 2:57] When I first purchased Miroslav Philharmonik (my orchestral VST of choice), I felt the need to make an original song that used it heavily. It’s a mix of heavy beats, synth arpegios, and digital orchestral performances done via my MIDI keyboard.

15. The Brink of Time [1.70meg 1:33] This is a bonus track only available on physical copies of the album. This was the first thing I did to test out my new orchestral plugin. It’s a fully orchestrated rendition of The Brink of Time from Chrono Trigger. All of the tracks (with the exception of a few minimilistic ones) were played by me on my MIDI keyboard. In fact, several of the instruments were played simultaneously and simply assigned to different hands. I chose to do this song since I already knew how to play it on piano by memory.

Tags: American McGee's Alice, castlevania, electronica, Kingdom Hearts, Main Finger, Mega Man X, metroid, Mode7, Section Z, Sonic, video game remixes, videogame remixes, Zelda

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.