ReMix:Castlevania "Of Whips and Strings" 6:02

By Super Guitar Bros.

acoustic-guitar duet duration-long live-recording medley

Arranging the music of 5 songs...

"Heart of Fire (Dracula's Castle Main Building BGM)", "Poison Mind (Boss BGM)", "Prologue (Start BGM)", "Vampire Killer (Breaking Into the Castle BGM)", "Voyager (Ending)"

Primary Game: Castlevania (Konami , 1986, NES), music by Kinuyo Yamashita, Satoe Terashima

Posted 2012-08-17, evaluated by the judges panel

From Vampire Variations, a Castlevania series tribute album well worth checking out, comes this acoustic guitar duet medley from the Super Guitar Brothers. Who they? Let's read:

"The Super Guitar Bros are not actually brothers – they’re bros! Steve met Sam back in 2007 at a local coffee shop he was performing at with a mutual friend. After seeing Sam’s incredible classical skills, Steve knew the two of them had to start making music. After their first jam session together you could tell the two of them just clicked. They’ve been playing together ever since. Not only do they both love making video game covers, they have been working on many original songs, which they plan to share further down the road. http://www.youtube.com/user/SuperGuitarBros"

So brothers from another Super Guitar mother, then... cool. But what about the mix?

"From beginning to end it took us probably about 2 months to learn each of the songs, figure out how we would arrange them together, practice the hell out of it, and then finally recording and mixing the song. As with all the other songs we've done, this one is played from beginning to end in one take: No cuts, no punch ins, no copy/paste, just a straight performance. Because of this we've spent many late nights trying to record the song with as little mistakes as possible. It took us at least 60+ takes before we finally got one we were satisfied with. It was a fun but also incredibly frustrating experience - same with all the other videos we've done so far."

Damn son(s), u crazy... That's gotta be a lot of work, but it also has the added benefit of more-or-less ensuring performability & further honing of killer guitar chops. There are a lot of nice touches that really take advantage of the instrument, good separation between the two guitars that allows for some cool call/answer bits, and medleyitis is always mitigated with fewer instruments - plus transitions are handled intelligently. Bottom line? If you were gonna set out to do a badass acoustic guitar arrangement + performance + recording of highlights from the original Castlevania soundtrack, while staying pretty close to the material, I think you'd be damn proud if you ended up with something this good.

Judges were initially very concerned that this arrangement was too conservative, but that offered us the opportunity to clarify that instrumental adaptations - when done well - usually end up changing enough aspects of the source to work within our standards. Don't get me wrong: this is an arrangement that plays it fairly safe & literal, and I definitely would have preferred more interpretation, but I also think there's enough here, especially given the excellent performances that are dripping with character, that they made it their own. And, bonus, they also made it sound fantastic, and the single-take aspect is all the more impressive. I'd love to see more submissions from the SGB, with a bit more "unleashed" approach to arrangement, but I'm thinking a LOT of people will dig this quite a bit, as I do.

― djpretzel

Discussion

Latest 13 comments/reviews; view the complete thread or post your own.
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TillyFun
on 2016-02-18 18:19:49

Nice and relaxing. :) Great take on the source.

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Black_Doom
on 2015-12-11 08:54:41

Oh... This is so charming :) The arrangement may be simple a little, but the track overall has a very cool warm sounding to it. Especially love the Vampire Killer Part at the beginning - that was groovy! Incredible job as always :D

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Crulex
on 2014-01-14 10:43:21

There's something about acoustic guitar that gives a song character that it wouldn't have with some other instruments, and even though this has bits of conservative and melody playing, it's that character and the arrangement idea that makes this shine. Very glad this got accepted, because a dual acoustic guitar arrangement of this many CastleVania tracks is something special the way it was played. Damn good stuff, fellas.

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Magellanic
on 2012-08-30 16:49:49

WOO, Super Guitar Bros. Great to see this finally posted. Gorgeous performance and love the arrangement. Listening to this always inspires to play my acoustic.

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gandalf0987
on 2012-08-27 22:57:48

Surprisingly calm.:-)

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Super Guitar Bros.
on 2012-08-23 23:50:17

OH MAN! I can't believe it's finally up!! I was beginning to worry that it would never get posted but not anymore!

Thank you guys so much!! I'm really glad you like it. And yeah, we'll have to start posting up more songs. Though I know it will be tough since most of them are pretty straight forward covers. I guess with future songs we can try experimenting a little bit more.

By the way for those of you who haven't seen the video version of this performance you should really check it out. We went all out for it - black hoods, candles, Death in the background... It's pretty cool.

Here you go ---

Thanks again for all the nice comments and everything! And a big WASSUP to my VV brothers!!

Steve

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danileigh79
on 2012-08-23 10:19:13

As usual, another great cover by the SGBs... It's not really a "ReMix" per se, but anyone who can pull of cramming a whole bunch of themes into one 2-5 minute long track with nothing but two acoustic guitars really deserves to be here on OCR. As Happydude007 said, their Ninja Gaiden 1 2 - Duet of Ninjas (medley) rocks as well, and I'd love to see more of them here on OCR

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happydude007
on 2012-08-18 12:28:17

Check out their Ninja Gaiden 12 - Duet of Ninjas (medley)

INSANE!

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Drakken
on 2012-08-18 10:28:40

Mmm, love love love this. Excellent playing and tone to the guitars, and I actually like the fact that it sticks close to the source tunes. Glad the judges didn't reject it for being "conservative", that would have been a real shame.

I need to find more acoustic guitar arrangements...

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Guifrog
on 2012-08-17 20:18:21

Ha! A VV track :mrgreen:

Fantastic. That's all.

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urdailywater
on 2012-08-17 18:54:15

Awesome! I'm really digging all the guitar duet / solo guitar songs we get on OCR. Utopia, all of Pot Hocket's works, and this.

The performance is probably the best thing about this song - that along with the arrangement makes for something unique. 6 + minutes of guitar love, this is an instant download in my book.

You've got yourselves another follower Super Guitar Bros! Excellent stuff here.

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Chernabogue
on 2012-08-17 18:30:35

One of my favs from the album. The SGB did an excellent work here, the quality is really impressive. :nicework:

And it's nice to see VV featured on OCR. :)

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djpretzel
on 2012-08-17 18:25:21

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

Sources Arranged (5 Songs)


Primary Game:
Castlevania (Konami , 1986, NES)
Music by Kinuyo Yamashita,Satoe Terashima
Songs:
"Heart of Fire (Dracula's Castle Main Building BGM)"
"Poison Mind (Boss BGM)"
"Prologue (Start BGM)"
"Vampire Killer (Breaking Into the Castle BGM)"
"Voyager (Ending)"

Tags (5)


Genre:
Mood:
Instrumentation:
Acoustic Guitar
Additional:
Arrangement > Duet
Arrangement > Medley
Production > Live Recording
Time > Duration: Long

File Information


Name:
Castlevania_Of_Whips_and_Strings_OC_ReMix.mp3
Size:
9,844,922 bytes
MD5:
8a2b6afa22c77bd70868f88e1cce3ddf
Bitrate:
215Kbps
Duration:
6:02
Featured on album...

Vampire Variations: A Musical Tribute to Castlevania

album cover
Published 2015-10-31
By OverClocked ReMix
Arrangement

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