Happy Booky Day, everybody~!
The House Of The Dead turned 20 this September, and as I'm fairly sure all of you know, I'm kind of sort of a bit of a massive fan of the series. The first game especially still rates as one of- if not my flat out- favourite games of all time. There was no way I was going to let the occasion pass by without doing some sort of musical tribute.
Early on, the idea was to do something entirely original, but styled to sound like something that could've come from the original House Of The Dead title. I wasn't really coming up with anything that was working, however, until sudden inspiration struck; what if I did something like the old Resident Evil 2 Remixes Piston Nishizawa did? Take a bunch of leitmotifs from across the game's soundtrack, and rework them into an extended piece that flows through them all fluidly.
I'd gotten the groundwork laid for the track before encountering some problems on the recording end. I'd invested in a USB Audio Adapter with the intent of streamlining my recording process to one machine, but didn't discover that it- and pretty much any USB Audio Adapter- can only record in mono until after I'd bought one (and disposed of that ancient tower I was running for a few months). I tried working with the limitation, but I wound up craving the simple dynamic of being able to pan stuff left and right, so I put the idea on ice for a little bit.
Then I remembered I had iYM21511, and so this sort of happened.
I stuck to the general idea I'd had in the first place- taking melodies and sequences from songs across the games' score and reworking them all to fit together- but the end result wound up much dancier then the original M2K sketch. Whilst I'd also changed the key slightly in that sketch, I went with an even more dramatic one this go around, something that really becomes evident in the final section before the outro (which is entirely based on the main House Of The Dead leitmotif). I'm still very much a novice with iYM2151 as well, so the synth programming isn't quite as tight as it could be. Overall, though, for something that came together very quickly with limited time/on a different program then the norm, I'm honestly fairly pleased with the result.
Happy 20th, House Of The Dead~!
YOU CAN PURCHASE/DOWNLOAD THE TRACK AT THE BANDCAMP LINK BELOW
~ Decon (31/10/16)