This is a mashup of three different songs: the "Navigating Icebergs" bit from Codename: Iceman, Detective Gumshoe's theme from the Phoenix Wright series, and the Battlefield 1942 theme. I took the core from Iceman (piano and bass), then changed the Gumshoe and Battlefield bits around to fit the chords. It was surprisingly easy once they were transposed to the right key.

Most of the brass synths were done with my MT-32, for that nice 80's vibe. The wibbly lead synth in one bit was some Maelstrom thing in Reason... I don't really like it, but I'm too lazy to change it now. Very lazy mixing as well; all my energy was spent just recording VSTs and so on and getting the audio files to match up, so no real EQ work going on...

You there, ignominious quartz creature! For Tuesdays and Aledays only, you can bring a family of five to Terrace de Rock's Classic Human Music Reenactment night, 50% off all coal entrees! Dine on our specialized rockshrimp courses and enjoy a dessert of cooled coral magma! The chef can guarantee an 80% chance your meal will NOT have Magnetic, Seismic or Gravitronic wastes!

For entertainment, we have two human musicians chained to the stage to play an endlessly looping segment of Tyrian's planetary anthem using quaint and authentic Earth instruments (Earth instruments are not certified authentic)! Let the ambiance of their droning tonal melodies enrich your gold veins and tickle your silver bone with the mighty purr of hertzes far above our hearing range! Kids, feel free to pelt them with your coloured clayons while you wait for drinks to be served! At the end of the night a contest will be held to see which family decorated the humans in the most bland of colours and their entire meal will be FREE OF CHARGE!

So what are you waiting for? Get your hilly hiney down to Terrace de Rock TODAY! (Today is Sunday, don't go today.)

BONUS MIX (don't vote, ye li'l stoat)

Ah, well... this was going to be longer, but Vista decided to go back to adding glitchy tremelo effects to everything I record today. Thought I'd fixed it. Guess not. At least the first half (recorded yesterday) came out okay. If nothing else, I guess I can use this computer as an effects board, eh?

Weasels are odd creatures. The least weasel, mustela nivalis nivalis, is quite possibly the smallest carnivore on the planet. They are designed to enter very small tunnels and eat whatever is inside them. If a weasel's head can fit in a hole, so can the rest of it.

When a weasel catches prey, it starts at the neck, paralyzing the snack. If it isn't particularly hungry, it will eat the brain first, which is like a fistful of sour gummi worms to a weasel, a scrumptious desert. If it is very hungry, a weasel will eat more. Weasels cannot digest vegetables and carbohydrates, their bodies aren't made for that. But they still need some to live, so what weasels do is wait until their prey has eaten, and then, in between the time when vegetable matter is digested and when it is absorbed into the snack, a weasel will yoink the digested carbohydrates right out by means of eating the intestines. This is pretty cool. What's a bit of a bummer is that weasels can only hold 1/100th of an ounce in their stomachs. They have to eat at least ten times a day to survive their own metabolism. This is not as bad as a shrew or a hummingbird, but it is still pretty ridiculous for a carnivore.

Weasels are good swimmers, and good climbers, too. When climbing down a tree, a weasel can flip their hind paws around backwards to grip the trunk as if they were climbing up the usual way. Squirrels can do this, too. When viewed in darkness with a light shone on them, a weasel's eyes do not reflect red like a cat's, but rather green.

So now you know a bit about weasels.

This song is not about weasels. This song is about freakin' /vampires/.

Starfox 64 - Select (Menu)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLfR_CKnPpo

I think... the first video game tune to make me cry. And still the only song I know of that fills me with a sense of triumph and simultaneous tragedy.

I used to know why it was in 5/4 time; now I don't.

It has come to my attention that for the past however-many songs, I have been using one main soundfont for drums, a one 566-HARD ROCK DRUMS V3.sf2 ... I use this because it is the closest collection of drum sounds I have found that closely matches my computer's midi samples, without being exactly midi. Quite frankly, after composing or remixing an entire song in a midi-editor and getting so used to thinking: "Okay, this is what the drums will sound like, exactly like this, /only better/," and then using some NNXT patch or whatever, the effect is quite the same as having a very lovely picture of a very lovely lady with very lovely auburn hair glowing against a sunset and looking at it for a very long time, and then finally getting to meet her in person and her hair is blue. And an afro.

So this is why I use these drums - though I do my best to layer them with other samples that fit the song's style, such as the ns_kit7free - and if you are quite sick of hearing them, any suggestions for other soundfonts that sound similar only /better/ would be much appreciated. XD

As for the song itself, there may be a few high notes that may pierce your ears. I've tried to EQ these frequencies down so this doesn't happen, but I've no way of telling if it works okay with headphones, as I don't have a pair anymore. It sounds okay on my speakers, though.

I began this faintly inspired by Pink Floyd's "The Gunner's Dream". Then, while laying down the strings, it turned into something completely different - more operatic.*

Then some silly goose went and stuck orignal flute melodies all over the place. I specifically asked for sax solos! So what do I get? A bally flute. Bah.


* In the "this song has no flow and doesn't know how to use musical hooks and why is she being so bloody /dramatic/ about it, it's only a taco" way, not "this is freakin' EPIC" way.

I'm entirely certain I could have done so much better on this. What is it? Light Spanish Jazz Waltz? No idea! Off to enjoy my Happy Box!

Poor, poor monkey.

Wos a bit apprehensive about the origins of this song at first, but darn it if those chords weren't brilliant...

- Finally have live guitar!
- but no clue how to mix live guitar,
- so I buggered up the EQ until the waveform looked like a caterpillar with stomach cramps.
- Vocals are probably too loud... (edit: turned down the guitar and vocals, actually, for this entry.)
- and aren't very good.
- Probably too much original content again...
- and probably too much of King Crimson's "Starless", as well.

Cecil had been told that searing across the desert on a noble steed in quest of the one you love is one of the most heroic acts ever. He found the effect to be less so when the noble steed in question was, in simple terms, a giant yellow chicken.

Tellah had always hated chickens.

Artsy-fartsy! ... for the win? Maybe. Amusement, now... definitely.

Friend Tess: Vocals, funky tinkly sound (unintended side-effect of recording)
Friend Nick: Tinny guitar
Binweasel: Dodgy electric guitar, arrangement, mixing and apprenticing
Reason 3: Cello
Victor Hugo: Lyrics

For less than 24's notice to practice and record for us all, not too bad a job. Especially Vick. He really came through with the lyrics. Amazing job for a dead guy.

Hopefully I've done something about the muddiness this time around (not having a dozen instruments going at once, perhaps?) I over-emphasized the syntheticness of the brass bit rather than try to make crummy samples sound good. Still can't record live guitar, but there's been no complaints about the fake one yet... Drums are pretty bland - making them do more just stuffed up the soundscape. And I forgot to fiddle with the piano velocities, so... just pretend touch response is broken. XD

I added a ton of new stuff in; good luck trying to find the original song. There's not a whole lot you can do with what's basically a glorified chord progression, so that was the role it was relegated to. I did want to do something akin to the ending of Pink Floyd's "Sheep", or the riff in "Run Like Hell", but I was four minutes into the composition of this one before I realised it, and trying to stick it in just sounded... bad.

So here's to Sir Wallace of Fire Emblem; the one game series to make the sudden disruption of world peace not make me twitch and roll my eyes, even if I still don't care for the premise of nations going at it willy-nilly.

Drew: WAIT
Drew: VENUS LIGHTHOUSE
Drew: Golden Bloody Sun!
Drew: ARGH.
Drew: Drew's Party: Oh 'gates oh 'gates we made it.
Drew: Drew's Party: Through monsters and traps and puzzles we made it! We're still alive! And that convenient orb restored all of our health and PP!
Drew: Drew's Party: Oh no, it's those two buggers and our old friend again! And they have Sheba! We have to save them!
Drew: -fifteen minutes of hairpin saves and critical hits later-
Drew: Drew's Party: ALRIGHT. I can't wait to see what happens next!
Drew: Two Buggers: -transform into GIANT PLATINUM DRAGON THING-
Binweasel: So... the lighthouse is pretty epic, huh?
Drew: AAAARGH
Drew: Yeah.
Drew: And impossible to pass.
Drew: There's got to be /some/ bloody secret...
Drew: How in the world are you supposed to beat a great big honking lizard colossus after those two have thrashed you so soundly?
Binweasel: *thinks*
Binweasel: You don't?

Neither of us did, at any rate. Hah. Never got past the first hour of the game, me.

I tried to go for an epic Within Temptation-esque feel, said 'bugger it' about halfway through and noodled around on the rest. Still haven't yet figured out EQing. Sloppiness abounds, as does muddiness. I'm a bleedin' weasel in a bleadin' garbage bin, wot d'you expect, eh?

Real, hah, rush job on this one. Entirely after the extension. Never done a whole 'mix in one day, oi. Wasn't able to do as much as I wanted to with it... Like Chicken, I had to drop out the snare drums if I wanted it done on time.

There are about a hundred things I could do to make this sound better, compositionally and otherwise.

But I can't be bothered. There are CYLONS in my TV.

The Least Weasel (mustela nivalis) is the smallest member of the genus Mustela, and indeed in the entire order Carnivora. Weasels may vary in length from fifteen to thirty-five centimeters (six to fourteen inches). This, you can imagine, makes for very, very small paws. However, this does not stop some subspecies (mustela rubbisha) from attempting to play guitar.

Thankfully, they are very rarely able to properly record their playing and usually must settle with sampled guitars. The result is much more palatable, trust us.

The Nick (homo awesomis), on the other hand, is brilliant on the bass and the improvisation thereof.

One caked-over eye cracked open. It didn't see anything that could be described as having a singular definite shape. But at least it said to the brain: Oi, you're awake now.

King Dedede lie still as his awareness grew. He became aware that he was not in his bed. This panicked him slightly, but then he became aware he wasn't in anyone else's bed either, so this was good news.

He was, in fact, underneath a table. The events of the previous night flooded his memory like... like when you hook up the bathtub's spout to a giant tub of molasses and leave it running all night, he supposed. Molasses with ants in.

The floor was sticky. /Everything/ was sticky. And he was bruised all over. How had he come to this? Right, right... that weird crystal, and... someone kicking the tar out of him with a, a... a flaming sword. Yeah. 's right. And then they'd all gone down to the pub to celebrate their last night on Pop Star and...

Ye gods, he needed another drink.

He remembered vaguely having said to someone, "I bet I can down more pints of scotch than you!" He remembered losing the bet horridly.

What was it his opponent had said?

Oh, yes.

"Hiiiii!"

(Well, it was fun to do, at least.)

I'm not sure the woodland creatures really approve of their homes getting blown to bits. But the accordion makes up for it, hopefully. ...hopefully.