ReMix: Star Fox 'Fortuna Favors the Funk'
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So, there's been quite a bit of Final Fantasy and Squaresoft lately, and funk mixes are pretty thin on the ground season-round, so hopefully this synth funk take on Starfox's unappreciated Fortuna theme is well-timed. This was very much a spur of the moment thing for me, and only took a week to complete, working on and off, which is well under the more intermittent and spanned mixing schedule I've fallen into the last two years, where mixes would take months to complete, even if I only spent a couple hours every other week. One of the reasons this went a bit quicker is that instead of creating it on my full studio upstairs, I pieced the whole thing together on a sort of "mini-studio" I've set up on my main computer downstairs. It's pretty barebones - no Yamaha Motif, no mixer, no monitors, no microphone, etc. - but working entirely with softsynths also has its advantages in terms of organization and convenience. The arrangement itself in similar in spirit to the Revenge of Shinobi mix I did a little over a year ago, especially in terms of instrumentation (synth lead, clavinet, rhodes, etc.), but this track is more old school, flavor-wise, and features an electric bass rather than synth. It also incorporates a mixture of ambient effects intended to keep something of the constant hum of starwings present in the original, but give more of a general space/sci-fi vibe instead of specifically conjuring engines. Everything's played live, and some of the bits, particularly the synth lead, could not have been quantized afterwards to any extent and retained the feel I was shooting for. I spent a good deal of time on the bassline, which employs Spectrasonics Trilogy, making sure it varied things up and introducing slides and falls in transitions.
I've been watching the finals closely the last couple weeks, cheering for San Antonio and Detroit, and I actually think the rhythm and flow of basketball influenced this mix. Or at least Ben Wallace's afro. I've actually wanted to do a Fortuna mix for a couple years, ever since I was looking for material at one point and decided to investigate whether Starfox had anything groovy that had not yet been covered. It's a relatively minimal original, groove-oriented, and there's no bridge or underlying melodic direction, just some funky patterns, so I think what was holding me back all this time was lack of an idea where to take it. That sorta fell into place when I began buiding things up, piece by piece. One big element was throwing in a small piece of the chord progression from Corneria for a bridge at 1'13", which gave me a way to move back into the funky intro clavinet pattern and have it work as a chorus, with a slower, minimal original melody laid on top. The real reason this mix even exists, however, is that I was able to find the EXACT samples I wanted for the individual parts - a double-phased clavinet from Sonik Synth 2, a monophonic synth lead with zero glide for some ripping effects, a glassy, monophonic secondary synth lead for the solo halfway through, and the particular bass patch I needed to make the whole thing work. It's not that the samples make the mix - don't get me wrong - but the right tools for the job can certainly be an inspiration. When you have a sound in your mind, and you can get almost exactly the same thing in reality, at your fingertips, it can greatly facilitate the compositional process. I wouldn't have been enthusiastic about this mix if I couldn't have gotten the bass working the way I wanted, and that required a sample with some velocity-switching and articulation fx.
So yes, I've talked a good deal more about the creative process for this mix than I have for any other of my own, and hope I haven't bored anyone to tears. It didn't happen the same way the last few mixes happened, which made it unique from my perspective, at least. I'm personally just happy that we now have a Fortuna mix, and that it turned out much as I'd mentally envisioned it. I tweaked the modulation for the clav and leads pretty extensively, did innumerable retakes, and had fun with transitions and solo parts especially. For some reason, maybe because of the truncated timeline or just because it's finally summer and the weather is congenial, this mix was a lot of fun to put together, and if even a portion of that is conveyed and shared, I'm happy.
Discussion: Latest 15 comments/reviews; view the - paperCrane on December 20, 2006
- meccaneer on October 9, 2005
- metaphist on August 6, 2005
BlueMage wrote: Y'know, DJP's getting on, and I was beginning to think he just might've been over it ... then I heard this track :) The man still has it, and we are all better off for it.
ROFL! 25 and over the fuckin' hill! Yeah, I had lost all faith in that man until he funked it with this track! [DarkeSword] :roll: [/DarkeSword]
- Liontamer on August 1, 2005
iPod rating: 5 stars
- BlueMage on August 1, 2005
- playingtokrush on July 1, 2005
Scrabble_Ship wrote: Djpretzel needs an apprentice or something so we can more funk songs than once a year.
I totally agree. Djp brings the awesome funk, and we need more. This song is the shit.
- PlastikBag on June 17, 2005
DJP mixes are great.
DJP Starfox mixes are the best.
- supremespleen on June 14, 2005
My new fav. djp mix for sure.
- Mustin on June 14, 2005
- qwertycho on June 13, 2005
- Scrabble_Ship on June 12, 2005
- mike_cliffe on June 9, 2005
i'm still grounded. awesome stuff. we want the funk indeed.
- Burger Deluxe on June 7, 2005
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