Kilin the 64Remixer

Posted by Castypher on June 25, 2014, 12:57 p.m.

After many laborious months, I've finally finished my first album. I call it "The Only Album in the World With Three Tracks". I want to thank everyone for their unending support and donations as I've climbed this hell of a mountain, and for your support, I've decided to release it here first, free of charge.

I will of course need some fancy album art to make this a reality.

Anyway, about two months ago, Taizen Chisou, Charlie Carlo, and myself were all happily listening to music. I'd been discussing for a while how I wanted to remix one of Taizen's tracks. And then Charlie decided he wanted to remix one of them first, so he did, and then he remixed mine, and then I remixed both of theirs, and then I decided no album would be complete with only two tracks so I took it a step further and finished a remix I'd done for Mega about a year ago during the 64Remix competition.

Now, when I remix, I tend to alter existing phrases and throw in my own. I also tend to have a very melodic focus.

And so, the results are as follows:

For a long time I'd been wanting to remix this track, but never could figure out what progression to base everything off of. The result was a remix that deviates so far from the source that it's almost unrecognizable. I noticed, after finishing, that it takes very strong influences from Celtic music (the ending) and Touhou music. Coincidentally, when we were all slapping gibberish names on our tracks, I hit some RNG website that churned out "Celtic Whale: The Lunacy Project" as its first result. My jaw is still hanging.

I like Charlie's music because it's unique and kind of eerie, but when we were all sharing the remixing love, I held my head for a few hours wondering how I'd ever remix one of Charlie's tracks. They have a lot of character and not a lot of melody, and the melodies that exist are very discordant. With me being a melodic composer, I had some difficulties establishing some ground to work on.

It took a while but after going through his Bandcamp, I found a couple that I could work with, and chose one of his boss tracks. The result was a more upbeat version that pays its respects to discord in the ending.

For some reason, Mega and others took a liking to this when I posted it, despite the fact that I was working on two hours of sleep, two cups of coffee, sitting at school waiting for my next class. The time I spent on the initial version was also about two hours. I was fairly happy with it when I uploaded it, but I knew it was one of my poorest compositions in terms of quality.

I'd promised Mega for a while that I'd update his remix with something less pitiful, making him promise not to use this track everywhere he went, and the result was a little different than I thought it'd be. Rather than maintaining the upbeat nature like I had before, I went for some smaller breaks as I'd envisioned when I first started listening to this track, and I think it turned out pretty okay.

I hope you guys enjoyed this, because it gave me a reason to compose again. Downloads are enabled for these tracks, for those who want to take them home or something, because a few of you yelled at me for not having downloads enabled before.

Also, Soundcloud really doesn't like my cymbals.

Comments

Astryl 10 years, 3 months ago

Nice work on these Kilin; I haven't heard the original tracks behind the other two (But they sound great. Especially like The Lunacy Project).

I really like how you incorporated some of the chip instruments into this version of Fate of their Souls. :D

And those new melodies are great. Love it.

Quote:
making him promise not to use this track everywhere he went
I hereby solemnly swear to only use this track when I'm battling evil or drowning out the television from the next room.

aeron 10 years, 3 months ago

Kilin it with these remixes! I like how these reflect your style so well despite being derivatives of other composers. Its an interesting collection of tracks to say the least.

As for your cymbal conundrum, try EQ'ing your cymbals and hats and cut out the lower frequencies (or use a high pass filter). You just wanna leave a crisp sizzle and not so much of the deep body of the cymbal as those low/mid frequencies clash more with the mix (probably why they sound muddy with soundcloud's compression). Give it a try or send me the stems :P

Castypher 10 years, 3 months ago

Thanks guys.

Quote:
I hereby solemnly swear to only use this track when I'm battling evil or drowning out the television from the next room.
You can use it now if you must. I just didn't want you using it before because I didn't feel I gave it the attention I usually give my compositions. For all of these, I spent about 6 hours on the base composition, after which I'd render and listen to it for a while to find out what to improve, then I'd go back in for another few hours of adjusting and cleaning up.

Quote:
As for your cymbal conundrum, try EQ'ing your cymbals and hats and cut out the lower frequencies (or use a high pass filter)
I'll give that a try when I get home. Cymbals and hats are the only things that come out distorted nearly every time I upload to Soundcloud, though I can hear a part in Fate of Their Souls where the piano sounds a bit distorted as well.

I'm mostly happy with the rest. Probably not the best the tracks could be but at least it's keeping me productive.

Acid 10 years, 3 months ago

Fate of their Souls is my new pooping theme.

Astryl 10 years, 3 months ago

Well now I can't say I can't compose for shit. :P

Taizen Chisou 10 years, 3 months ago

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5byvc15ruuge8qc/TB2Re.mp3

It sounds like crap in a hat, but here's what happened to what was supposed to be my remix of yours, from two months ago. Sorry about that.

To others:

This is a remix of the second Terminys boss theme. Probably doesn't mean much if you haven't heard the original, so