VG Frequency

About Aksys Games
Based in Torrance, California, Aksys Games is a third party licensee of Nintendo of America. More information on Aksys Games can be found online at aksysgames.com.

Jillian “pixietricks” Goldin’s latest newsletter is out, detailing today’s release of her new original album, Origins.

To receive Goldin’s newsletter, visit JillianGoldin.com and enter your email address in the signup box on the left-hand side:

Jillian Goldin - Notes #8 - April 22nd, 2008

Drumroll, please…

The moment we have been waiting for has finally arrived: the release of my debut album, Origins!!! Pick up your copy today! Physicals are at JillianGoldin.com, and digitals are available through CD Baby - both for $12.99. Why get it today, you ask? Read on.

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Earth Day Fundraiser

In honor of Earth Day, I want you to help me in contributing to The Nature Conservatory’s Plant a Billion Trees campaign! For every copy of Origins (physical or digital) purchased by 11:59 pm EST on April 22nd, I will donate one dollar to this cause. What can one dollar do? One dollar plants one tree! Help save the Atlantic Forest in Brazil - one of the most endangered rainforests in the world, with only 7% left of its original area. Unbelievable…

My goal is to raise $100 for the campaign this week. You can also contribute on your own separately by clicking on the image on this page. Mother Nature will thank you; I promise. Let’s do this!

Keep in mind that the number there on the page may appear lower at times because I will be donating my album proceeds in batches, as opposed to one order at a time. Also, please enjoy this recording of me at six years old - a song written by my father about saving the rainforests!

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General Awesomeness

A friend of mine - Kevin “Lorenzo” Sisk (a.k.a. debeerguy007) - put these fantastic desktop wallpapers together using my album art! I’ve hosted them for free download, so take what you like! There are different sizes available: single standard, dual standard, single widescreen, and dual widescreen. Thanks again, Kevin!

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So that’s that. Please let me know what you think of the album! You can post reviews on the CD Baby page, leave a message on my guestbook, or discuss your thoughts on the forum. I would really love to hear your reactions and answer any questions you may have.

Thank you a thousand times over for your support.

With rapturous determination,
Jill

I’ve spent tons of time recently manually reuploading the entire OCR library of mixes to www.last.fm, organized by ReMix ID in sets of twenty so I can manage them better. We went from missing Last.fm previews for over 350+ tracks to missing under 40, and some tracks whose previews were broken or only 20 seconds long should now be fixed. The remaining tracks need to be fixed here on ocremix.org first, since most of them are not to standard 44.1khz frequency specification, which we require and which Last.fm requires as well.

Furthermore, for usability I moved the previews from the download tab right to the main writeup page for each mix. I really feel like this makes it easier to read about the mix and listen at the same time, and in general should make the site friendlier to the type of exploration we encourage. I’m going to try to keep things in sync and upload to Last.fm for each new mix that’s posted, which again I personally find useful. Hopefully you will too!

As a side note, this was extremely monotonous work that took hours, but it was made a lot easier by seeing the support we’ve been getting this month. Thanks!

• Interview
• ReMix

‘Nuff said.

Mustin’s always working hard trying to gain recognition not just for himself and his work with The OneUps, but for VGM in general. He’s looking for your help to make an impact in the 13th annual Northwest Arkansas Music Awards. Voting ends April 11, so drop by and show your support:

I am nominated for a couple of Northwest Arkansas Music Awards (NAMAs). With The OneUps under “Best Electronic/Groove” and myself as a Producer under “Best Studio/Producer” (Mustin Productions).

You can vote here:

http://www.freeweekly.com/vote-nama-xiii/

Please vote for me if you enjoy the music I make.

OC ReMixer Jillian Goldin Wins OurStage.com Grand Prize; SGX and zircon finish top 5

By: Larry Oji, larryoji@ocremix.org

April 5, 2008

BALTIMORE, MD — Jillian “pixietricks” Goldin, OC ReMix judge and ReMixer, emerged victorious in OurStage.com’s March 2008 Music Finals. Goldin’s New Age/World channel-winning song “Hajime” bested thirty-six other channel winners out of a pool of over 30,000 entries to claim first place. Along with the $5,000 Grand Prize, Goldin (www.jilliangoldin.com) is also eligible for several other prizes and awards offered by OurStage and its partners.

Goldin’s “Hajime” is the opening track of her original New Age/World album, Origins, which will be available April 22nd through her website, CDBaby.com, and Apple iTunes.

OurStage (www.ourstage.com) was launched in 2007 to increase the exposure of independent musicians and filmmakers through its democratic “battle” voting system, where users are able to judge each entry against all other competitors. OurStage winners earn cash prizes, along with the potential of other perks including magazine coverage, opportunities to perform at concerts and festivals, and mentoring sessions with established musicians and filmmakers.

“I will also be making a donation to the community of OverClocked ReMix, because my friends and fans there have given [me] so much over the years,” said Goldin in an interview with OurStage’s Quinn Strassel. OverClocked ReMix provides support for developing artists for both game music arrangements and original music. Goldin has performed vocals for 2K Games’ Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword soundtrack as well as session vocals for composer Christopher Tin.

Fellow OC ReMixers Andrew “zircon” Aversa and Danny “SGX” Adler also placed third and fourth in OurStage’s March 2008 Music Finals after wins in the Techno/Club/Dance and Electronic channels, respectively.

About OverClocked ReMix

Founded in 1999, OverClocked ReMix is an organization dedicated to the appreciation, preservation, and interpretation of video game music. Its primary focus is www.ocremix.org, a website featuring hundreds of free fan arrangements, information on game music and composers, resources for aspiring artists, and a thriving community of video game music fans.

Links:

*OurStage winners for March 2008
*Jillian Goldin interview with OurStage’s Quinn Strassel
*Jillian Goldin (pixietricks) at OverClocked ReMix
*Goldin’s original album, Origins
*Andrew Aversa (zircon) at OverClocked ReMix
*Danny Adler (SGX) at OverClocked ReMix

For Immediate Release
April 1st, 2008
Contact: Tyberius H. Guenley, (suzumebachi@gmail.com)

BELEN, NM–ReMix:ThaSauce, in cooperation with Dupaszef, LLC, is proud to present Super Mario Land 2: Tremendous Achievement. Super Mario Land 2: Tremendous Achievement is an achievement unlocked in video game music remixing. Such a great achievement to have been achieved is truly an achievement in itself. Super Mario Land 2: Tremendous Achievement is the remixing community’s first official Super Mario Land 2 remix project, an honorable achievement. Also an achievement, is the incredible talent involved in this achievement. Greatly achieved artists, such as:

• Beatdrop
• injury
• Children of the Washing Machine
• that Mexican guy
• Emmanuel Samuelson IV, Esq.
• MC TOAD
• OverCoat
• that Swedish guy
• OverCoat

This achievement is available to the public at:

http://remix.thasauce.net/sml2/

Downloading of this achievement is free on the condition that you share this achievement with your unachieving friends. After downloading this achievement, users are allowed to select songs from this collection of achievement and listen to them. The act of listening to these songs is an achievement all on its own. Tell your friends. And your mother. Ty Guenley, ThaSauce Admin, ReMixer, Forum Troll, IRC Troll, World of Warcraft Player, Haver of Basic Skills, Project Director for Super Mario Land 2: Tremendous Achievement (http://remix.thasauce.net/sml2/), and Generally Standup Guy, writes:

“This is totally a crowning achievement. Not unlike the crowning of a newborn child, or like the King of Canada or something.”

Founded in 1979, Dupaszef, LLC is a company.

A few days back, jeriaska messaged me to introduce his new VGM news site: Nobuooo. Initially I was skeptical, as (silly name aside) VG Frequency seemed to be filling the same role. However, after closer inspection, I realized that this was a promising new site with some good Digg-like features. Most importantly, jeriaska and the other contributors have been regularly updating the site multiple times per day with some quality VGM info.

Of note to VG Frequency is the newly posted “Nobuooo Toootorial“. Anybody recognize the site at 0:13? I personally think it was respectful of jeriaska to give that nod to VGF, so I have no qualms about reciprocating. Check it out. — [K(G)

For quite a long time, the most comprehensive database of VGM albums was Japan Game Music Library, or J.G.M.L. The Japanese-language resource catalogs a whopping 7,243 albums, and is most impressively maintained by a single person, Fumiaki Kosiro.

On March 16, album number 7,244 was added to VGMdb, a five-track Legend of Zelda series fan arrangement CD, The Legend of Zelda EP, arranged and performed by Echo Park group Batphone. With this addition, VGMdb is now the largest VGM album database on the internet. The milestone occurred, coincidentally, six months to the day after VGMdb opened for public beta.

And the person who submitted the album? None other than Larry Oji himself.

The comparison to J.G.M.L. is a bit unfair, since VGMdb’s scope is much wider; J.G.M.L.’s focus is mainly on official, Japanese-released soundtracks and arrangement albums, while VGMdb also has many Western albums, fan arrangement albums, original works by VGM composers, game-related anime soundtracks, and so on. As such, there are still quite a few albums listed on J.G.M.L. that VGMdb does not contain.

Still, it was an exciting milestone to break, and there is still a wealth of unlisted albums remaining to be added, as well as other features and site improvements. Here’s to 10,000!

I wrote a while back about the launch of VGM Rush, a site devoted to Western video game music. VGM Rush had a promising start, featuring such content as an amazing interview with Alexander Brandon that I pimped in my previous post (seriously, read it if you haven’t), but since December or so, updates to the site have been sporadic. The original version of the site used static HTML for its pages, meaning updating the site could involve making edits to a lot of files and generally be difficult.

The reason behind the slowdown was that Rimo, the man behind the site, was working on an overhaul, including a switch to PHP and MySQL to store data and generate pages. The coding is complete, VGM Rush is back, and new content should be streaming in.

In fact, new content is already streaming in; since the relaunch, four new composers have had biographies and works list added to the database, and five album reviews were added, courtesy of orion_mk3, a fellow who works with me at Song of the Week. Check out the new stuff, and hope along with me that the vein isn’t tapped out for a long time.

Also feel free to shoot me for that last sentence if you deem it necessary.

8bitpeoples is an artist collective and netlabel centered on chiptunes. Their eighty-two releases, almost all of which are freely available to download from their website, span tunes written for recorded from an NES, chiptune rock, and even a release by virt (with a contribution by Shnabubula).

On March 15, they unleashed a brand new site design onto the world, designed by minusbaby and coded by openBack, two of the official 8bp posse. The site is not yet operating at 100%; several sections, such as the retro artpacks and hardware and software sections, are currently under construction for expansion, but all the music is available for consumption. Additionally, there’s now an 8bitpeoples shop, featuring a professionally produced copy of their two-CD fiftieth album, Blip Festival shirts and a DVD of the 2006 event, and a Little Sound Dj cartridge.

I’ve noticed occasional slow load times and generic errors while loading pages, hopefully both of which will be fixed once the new site is broken in. Check it out, and long live the chiptune.

Blue Dragon is an Xbox 360 game released on December 7, 2006, in Japan, and August 29, 2007, in the United States. The soundtrack, composed by Nobuo Uematsu, was released by Aniplex on December 13, 2006, in Japan.

A United States reprint will be released on March 25 by Sumthing Else Music Works, who publish a variety of different music, including the soundtracks to several Western games, like the Halo series, Gears of War, and Mass Effect. The album, which contains the same tracks as the Japanese release, is available for pre-order for $15.98 at Amazon.com.

Music 4 Games‘ Jayson Napolitano conducted a lengthy interview with God of War: Chains of Olympus composer Gerard Marino at GDC08. Marino had plenty of enthusiastic comments for Chains of Olympus, revealing that he didn’t have to sacrifice anything substantive in creating the soundtrack for the PSP.

Marino also shed light on the tools used to create the soundtrack, as well as the unorthodox (yet somewhat refreshing) scenario of composing the music before the game was significantly completed, analogous to the creative process to some spaghetti western film scores. Certainly an interesting comparison, one I can safely say I’ve not seen mentioned anywhere else before. Did Marino feel any benefit from the situation he was placed in? You’ve gotta visit M4G to find out. (Side note: I’d actually love to find out which VGM composers have directly been influenced by spaghetti western scores.)

Jayson and Gerard also got into the very interesting debate on whether it’s more effective for the the games and game music industries to digitally release soundtracks for free rather than physical releases. Based on all of that, along with Marino’s thoughts on his musical growth, and a quick mention of OC ReMix, you’ve definitely got another great read from Music 4 Games.

Chuck Whitby, creator of the progressively expanding gaming convention TooManyGames in Reading, Pennsylvania needs some help. Don’t get me wrong, things are going great for TMG as it heads into its sixth event on May 4th, including the first ever Twin Galaxies Guitar Hero National Championships being held there.

And while OC ReMix will once again be there in full force with Mad-Gear LLC selling swag and providing the musical backdrop for the event, TMG is also in the hunt for some VGM bands to provide some additional flavor to the event with some donated CDs. Via MySpace:

So I was thinking today we have alot of video game bands on our friends list now. So what a better way to help promote them than to possibly play them at our show! Also I was thinking if any of you wanna mail us cd’s that we can give away as door prizes or contest prizes then that would help get word out about what you do. Just include a post-it if the cd is burned with your myspace email and website. I dunno if anyone is interested let me know!

Now, I’m not attempting to objectify the subject of this photo from last year’s TooManyGames 5. The Lady would kill me. I just saw it on the TMG Flickr account and was caught off guard by the sideways orientation. But hey, if you’re a band that wants to actually come down and play, perhaps you can also play Wii Sports: Bowling with the young lady. Then again, you’d probably strike…out.

Show your love for the glove by checking out the details on Powerglove’s upcoming tour across the United States. Promoting their latest album, Metal Kombat for the Mortal Man, here’s the scoop from their MySpace blog:

Read the rest of this entry »

Cool stuff seeing Andrew “Hope Fails” Luers improve his game. The artist also known as OA took home the gold Zelda trophy for the latest Dwelling of Duels competition, focused on the Kirby franchise.

Hope Fails‘ first place track “Puffball Promenade” tackled Kirby’s Dream Land 2 from the Game Boy. He’s really come a ways from earlier material in his game arrangement career, so it’s really nice to see that growth validated with the win here.

As we anticipate next month’s competition, a Sci-Fi Games theme, be sure to get your DoD fill this month and download these tracks inspired by the pink poofer:

Hope Fails: Kirby’s Dreamland 2 (Gameboy) - Puffball Promenade
Musically Inspired, Jabo: Kirby Superstar - Thanks For The Help, Knuckle Joe!
foXdiE: Kirby’s Adventure - Roy G Ambivalence
Fourth Place - Scaredsim: Medley - Pink Like a Bubble Gum
Fifth Place (tie) - ionvortex: Kirby Superstar - Save Cabin Getaway
Fifth Place (tie) - thesamareaye: Kirby’s Adventure - Smooth Like Butter
Seventh Place - Corax, Zachariasmith, hodded: Kirby 64 - Baby Blue Toque
Eighth Place - Noise and a Beat: Kirby Superstar - Gourmet Race of a Thousand Flames
Ninth Place (tie) - Millenial Fairs: Kirby - Kirby’s Nightmare
Ninth Place (tie) - Shnabubula: Kirby’s Adventure - OMG U SUXX

Music 4 Games’ Tony Porter recently conducted an interview with veteran game composer Frank Klepacki on a myriad of topics. Most interesting was that Klepacki revealed his recent work on the Universe at War soundtrack as currently the most challenging soundtrack of his career.

Check out the interview in full for basics like Frank’s musical influences, insight into his gear for the music techies among you, and what games he’s playing, as well as deeper topics like how the job of scoring for games could be made easier, and his outlook on video game scores of the future. Per M4G’s usual, you’re gonna get a great read.

From one band to another, VGM rock band Year 200X are encouraging people to swing over to GotCast and vote for Push Start’s Leo Camacho in a contest determining who gets to join G4 as a Tech Correspondant. The contest ends on April 4, and Leo already holds the lead in voting so far. But things could change if you don’t get out there and show some support.

Head over to Leo’s GotCast page, sign up, and throw your vote in to potentially secure a video game music fan (and musician) a great television opportunity in joining G4.

The prolific Bjørn Lynne has just released a brand new original album, Quiet Places. Lynne referred to the work, two years in the making, as “quiet, reflective, ambient music”, in line with his modus operandi of relaxing compositions (but only one facet of his talents). The album art, including the cover, is bolstered by photos near his home in Stavern, Norway (Norway’s smallest town).

Always generous with access to his material, you can listen to the entirety of Lynne’s new album in low quality, giving you the chance to make a very educated purchase. Currently available only as a digital download via LynneMusic, a very limited run of 300 physical copies will also be available soon, with half available to be shipped by Lynne himself and half shipped through CD Baby. To help keep shipping costs low, European customers should order through Bjørn while American customers will benefit by purchasing through CD Baby.

Are you ready to relax?

Staying with the gravy train of Video Games Live concert reviews, indie game developer Eric Rhea attended the recent Fort Wayne, Indiana performance by the Fort Wayne Philharmonic at the Embassy Theater and had a glowing review of the proceedings (along with a grainy photo :-D).

Rhea’s thoughts confirmed a lot of things that I’m sure concert co-founder Tommy Tallarico loves to emphasize in his zeal for Video Games Live, namely that the event does a great job playing to areas that don’t normally receive video game music performances and not discriminating on location, and that the event has broad crossover appeal.

Have you attended yet? If VGL hasn’t come to your town, you can always contact a local orchestra and see if they could explore the option of holding a concert in your area. Dunno your local orchestra? Do some research and become more cultured!

Shnabubula was kind enough to let me check out the album on the sly back in January, but now that it’s finally out, I’m glad to post about it. Released via II (read: Pause), Controller 1 finally saw the light last week. That’s some pretty awesome concept art from Francis Coulombe, am I right?

Produced by chiptune scene fanatic Shawn Phase, this original chiptune-style album is inspired by the buttons of the classic NES controller, featuring titles all derived from the various controls. Quoth Somnambula:

Take a journey across the face of an old NES controller. Each button has a story to tell if you’re willing to listen. Some of them have been forsaken by their fellow buttons while others are living the good life. Come listen and find out what goes on inside your controller when you’re not around.

I’d recommend something specific, but you’re really not gonna go wrong checking any of this out. At just over 35 minutes and not costing you a dime, you’ve gotta swing over to II and grab this quickly. Tell your friends about it. This album is wild per Sam’s usual craziness.

Early this week, the regulars of SoundTempest were treated to a surprise when legendary Commodore composer and demoscene enthusiast Jeroen “WAVE” Tel showed up to participate in SoundTempest’s regular compo series, CompoST.

zircon, SoundTempest’s creator, hollered at me to come on over, and CHz and I joined in the discussion while OverCoat and other ST regulars got along famously with Tel as well as Peter “Skaven” Habja, who also stopped by briefly.

In the 1-hour time limit compo featuring a factory theme, Tel competed alongside OverCoat, madbrain, Nario and Coda, scoring the victory with his track “Industrial Factory”, available from the CompoST 72’s archive.

Anyone can join in future original music compos with CompoST by joining #soundtempest on the EsperNet network via IRC. Thanks to OverCoat, you never know who will show up!

Attending Game Developers Conference 2008, Destructoid’s Dale North had the scoop on No More Heroes composer Masafumi Takada’s presentation detailing his methods in composing for games. Featured in the presentation were several major titles in Takada’s portfolio, including Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, God Hand, Killer7, and the critical hit No More Heroes. Be sure to read up for some informative details on Takada’s creative processes, as well as Dale’s quick account on a couple of other surprises!

Making the rounds on Digg this past week was “What Super Mario Galaxy Would Look Like on the SNES,” featuring 16-bit sprites gathered from Super Mario World and several other sources to recreate the instant classic in the image of old school. Integral to the Digg’ed video was Ben “chthonic” Briggs Super Mario 64 OC ReMix “Fleeting Ecstacy.”

Originally created with music and sound effects from Super Mario Galaxy, someone took the video and inserted chthonic’s arrangement, doing a good job of upping the energy level and overall appeal. Remind me to kill whoever didn’t follow the OCR Content Policy in not crediting the ReMix as part of the video.

Meanwhile, do it the Mario Galaxy way and give this a spin: