Mazedude

Believe it or not, Dale North - Right Out of the Blue. http://dalenorth.com/blue.html An entire CD of ballads. If you're into that sort of thing. But trust me, if you're trying to set the mood...... this works.

Ooh, another Cool Spot mix. Nice. Tallarico will be pleased. Cool grooves, nice effects, and I agree that a certain Christmasy feeling does come across. I like it. Well done. Mazedude PS - I'm quite amused that people are comparing this to the ultra-silly very-short Cool Spot remix I posted so long ago. Of course this is better.

An excuse to make a whole bunch of Doom-esque original music? Well, I'm semi-interested. I don't really have any free time these days, but maybe I can contribute a couple things. E-mail me at mazedude@aol.com with more details as to a tracklist that you're looking to fill, and perhaps I can help. Just for fun. - Mazedude

Hmm, certainly a different take on the material. Less of a "relentless driving machine" like the original, and more ethereal, more spaced out. I dig the special effects (all the cool reversed noises and such), and the guitar work is excellent. I wasn't a huge fan of the weird arc the song seemed to take though. Lots of swelling and dimming without an overall feel of things growing and building. Didn't really seem to climax... kinda like it got loud, it got soft, it got loud, it got soft, it got loud again, then it ended. Nice job with the notes on the pizzicato though; ya stayed a little truer to the tonality of the middle section than I did with my version. And I'm pleased to see other people tackle Doom 2 at long last. - Mazedude

All this time and still looking for more people, eh? I'm afraid your problem lies in that most of Tim Follin's music falls into a category of "it's already so good, it's damn hard to make a remix that's better than the original." I've already made one Plok remix, and I don't even know if I succeeded in that regard. Regardless, I'm interested in helping, and will give the tunes a listen. No promises, but I'm always up for remix projects when the material catches my interest. - Mazedude

Mazedude will be there.

Hey guys, thanks for checking out the site! As to the music for download, I haven't decided yet. My ultimate goal is to take the songs I've written so far as develop them into full-length pieces... and then release an album through the site. So, I don't know if I want everyone having the rough-draft versions of the songs, so to speak, on their computer. Then again, if it gives them a reason to add it to their playlists, get into it, and then want more when the CD's done, then I suppose it's not a bad idea. And geez, the site says nothing along the lines of "six easy lessons," and it's common sense that learning how to do the moves is only a small part of learning how to do the martial art. The best way to learn is from a teacher and by playing in the roda, and it still takes several years to get good. But, tons of people all over the world don't have teachers or rodas. So, we're doing what we can for those people. And thanks for blogging and spreading the word around - keep it up! This whole project has been a huge labor of love, and a ton of hard work. We're going to be adding new moves to the site soon too, so stay tuned. Mazedude PS - Yes, I do know Henry Iglesias. He's a good friend of mine; we've worked together several times. E-mail me at mazedude@aol.com if you have any questions or anything you want to say about him.

Greetings from Mazedude, one and all. I am very proud and excited to announce the launching of a new website. It is the first of its kind - to teach the martial art of Capoeira via Instructional Videos on the Internet. I am even more delighted to share the kickass news that I am the composer for the website, and all of their video productions. For those who are not aware, Capoeira is from Brazil, and the music that accompanies the martial art is very unique and ethnic. The vocals are in Portugese, and the beats are performed by such instruments as the berimbau, atabaque, and pandeiro. I play each of these instruments, and am fluent in the various traditional beats and songs. However, for this project I have been given the freedom to fuse the traditional style with that of my own, and I've had just oodles of fun putting it together. I invite everyone to check it out: http://www.capoeiranation.com Even better examples can be heard in the Promo videos: http://www.myspace.com/capoeiranation Enjoy the music, but furthermore, enjoy the site. If you're at all interested in learning Capoeira, but don't have any teachers near you, well, that's what this website solves! All the best, Mazedude

I concur. I just beat this game as well, and listening now after the fact is pretty cool. Excellent arrangement.

The odds are very good that I'll actually be in New York at that time... hmm. Ironic, eh? If I'm in town I'll try and stop by. Otherwise you guys have a blast!

Hehe, Mickey Mousecapade. I owned that one back in the day. The Adventures of Bayou Billy. I remember one day I got in the zone, and I actually beat it. And it only happened once. But man, was that sweet.

Mazedude digs. Mazedude's wife also digs. Excellent blending of preserving both the original material and bringing in new improvised sweetness. Killer work with a classic theme that doesn't get enough attention. - Mazedude

Indeed, very nice work. Oftentimes when playing the game I would pick this as the music over the typical theme. The speed and movement of the melody made for more of a frenetic play, especially once ya hit the higher levels and those pieces just kept getting faster, faster, faster... I was impressed. Very nice pacing, and - as has been said - it definitely felt like a story amongst itself, and that's a very good thing. Excellent orchestration, good variety in balance as to who had the melody vs the accompaniment, and so on. And definitely a great original theme to apply this style too. Good work. -Mazedude

As one of the few who has tackled the style, I am quite pleased to see more industrial remixage on the site. Definitely quality stuff here. Very nice balancing of the effects vs the percussion vs the arpeggios vs the chunk guitar and so on. Very nice buildup throughout the overall piece too, pulsing in and out, getting a bit bigger and heavier each time. That's hard to pull off without it going overboard, so good job. Only 2 small notes of constructive criticism... 1, the melody line. It was always "behind" the groove. I was really hoping that atleast once it would take the forefront via a screaming lead, or an electric guitar solo, or even in some manner of distortion of the original flute sound, but... nope. Didn't happen. Ah well. And 2, the ending seemed just a tiny bit anti-climactic. At first it sounded like it was fading out, and I was like "what?!" ... but then it kinda mellowed out and died out with some soft melodic stuff. For a piece like this I dunno, I just kinda felt like it needed a loud "boom!" at the end, or atleast one last powerful chunky guitar hit or something. Anyways, that's my 2 cents. Again, I'm very happy to see more industrial mixage on the site. I wonder if this will make good driving music? I'll have to find out. -Mazedude

I'd like to announce that I have in fact used this incredible music in a stunt demo, for a new website I just designed. This is the first time I've edited to a game remix; usually I pick kickass hard rock and commercial techno for that kinda work, so kudos Prot. Enjoy. http://www.latrampolinerental.com for the site http://www.latrampolinerental.com/video/TrampolineDemoMQ.mpg for the video Mazedude

Aha, sweet. Awesome. Very nice mix - put a big ol' smile on my face. I played these games way back when, but seeing a mix here caused a little of the "oh - wait - I played that game, I remember, but... dang I can't remember the music". And the mix brought it all back, thank you! Dang, I've mixed a ton of Robert Prince stuff, yet I forgot he did this. Heh, neato. -Mazedude

Take a sec a read the description on www.mazedude.com guys - this track is supposed to be a direct mimic and homage to Jeroen Tel, aka "Wave". Why do ya think I called it Turtle "Wave", hmm? -Mazedude

For any trackers who are curious to see how this was constructed, I have posted the original IT file on www.mazedude.com. Considering the samples, it's not as huge as most of my files, and it's kinda a fun one to watch, hehe. -Mazedude

Hmm, methinks I'll do a little bit of explaining here, to answer the unasked questions - The reason it's called Oldskool is because it's done entirely with 8-bit low quality samples from the oldschool tracking days of the late 80s and early 90s. Pioneers like Skaven and Purple Motion rocked the demoscene with songs such as these: they didn't use the highest quality sounds, but they used a LOT of them, and often with so much attention to detail and such speed and accuracy that it was mind-boggling. That's what I tried to do here... I don't think I made ANY of the sounds in this - they were all swiped from the songs of the now non-existent "Demoscene". And thus, they were all used with everchanging patterns and sporadic intermittence, completely with the also-oldschool screaming synth lines... (that are so, SO fun to make, hehe). So, that explains the style - it's really more of an inside joke to me and my tracker brethren than the remixing community, but I gave it a nice industrial edge to still make it satisfying. And regarding the ending - has anyone noticed that if you're listening to this in the background and you hear a fadeout, you can't help but ask "wait a sec - which fadeout is this? The real one or the fake one?" They're identical baby! I fake ya out once, then I do it for real the next time. I dunno, I think it's a unique way to end a tune. I like it. So there's what Mazedude has to say on his own tune. Hope I've been somewhat informative - if you want to hear any original oldschool tracks, go to www.hornet.org and search for Future Crew, Skaven, Purple Motion, or Necros, and check out their tracks. You'll see. Later dudes! -Mazedude http://listen.to/mazedude

Hmm, well - given all that's been said, perhaps I'll say a few words about this piece myself... Firstly, massive thanks for all the fan comments so far, both good and bad; I totally appreciate 'em and always bear them in mind for the future. That said, this piece right here wasn't intended to be one everyone would like, or even intended to be better than my others, but rather; it was a ton of experiments all at once. To start off, I was kinda happy at the prospect of creating the first Wolf 3D mix on the site, as I really loved the game back in the day. I designed my own levels and everything... ah yeah, good times. And, it was the predecessor to Doom, which I've also covered plenty of, so it makes sense. Secondly, I was responding to numerous requests. Some people wanted intense Nazi militaristic mayhem, some people wanted a sad and touching rendition of the War theme, some people wanted me to do something like Blood Bath (combining different game themes into 1 mix), and what I personally wanted to do was to dabble into the film-score genre of electronica-orchestral. If you listen to the Title theme of the movie "The Negotiator", by Graeme Revell, you'll be able to see how I kinda modeled this after that, loosely. Thirdly, in conjunction with the style, I needed to experiment with my new orchestral samples. Having worked with real orchestras, I personally am not a huge fan of synthesizing orchestral material, because even with the best of samples it still always sounds fake. But, I got these new Gigasamples, and felt it was worth a try. Eh, parts sound good, parts don't. Ah well, it was a first experiment. Also, I wrote this piece in 2 days. Sequenced it one night, post-produced it the next day. In retrospect, I shoulda taken a little more time to give the electronic beat a bit more variety, and the ProTools post-production isn't layered 100% to my satisfaction... but, ya know, for just a video-game remix, I'm not gonna make a big deal out of that. Maybe later I'll go back and fix that. Regarding the usage of Hitler, well - actually, that speech was part of a bunch of war sound clips I gathered for a Rush-n-Attack mix I had in mind but never got around to. When writing this one, it just seemed like the perfect icing to the cake, so to speak. Huge thanks to Compyfox for giving me a translation - I was vaguely worried that it was going to contain some blatently horrible insults like "Death to the Jews", or something that I certainly wouldn't want to put in a released remix, heh. As it is, I'm fine with it, and have no quams about using it. As mentioned, it's merely History. On the same token, jabs can be made at American history that we certainly aren't proud of, so it's in no way a present-day National or cultural jab. And besides, Hitler was IN Wolfenstein 3D, so... it works. So... there ya go, there's what Mazedude has to say on his own remix. It was a multi-level experiment, I and think I pulled it off pretty well. Not super-great or anything, but pretty good. For now, I like it. -Mazedude http://listen.to/mazedude

When it suddenly breaks to fast mode, the bass and the low piano double on the bassline to Level 1. Other than that, helluva good job guys. -Mazedude

Haha, nice, I've been hoping for a Guile mix for a while now. I started one myself, but never got around to finishing it. However, I must say the OneUp Mushrooms did a kick-ass job of the theme live in Concert at MAGFest. As for this mix, I like it, for the most part. I kinda woulda liked it a touch more aggressive, but for what it is it's good techno. Nice mix from a production standpoint, enough variety throughout... personally I woulda like a bit more variety and counter-melody work on the lead, or even some harmony here and there. It's great the first time it's presented, but if it had come in a second time with all sounds of adlibbing screaming synth line going on, that woulda been sweet. All in all, nice work. I woulda liked it a lot more if it had gotten more intense percussion-wise and melodically as it went on, but ah well. And DJP - please finish your mix too. I might be doing some SF2 stuff sometime here myself as well. Nobody's done Sagat's theme. Rayza, I really did your Credits Theme mix too. More than this one, actually, just for your reference. Flash kick! -Mazedude

Hey hey, no one bash this classic piece of DJP goodness! Ya ever look at the "favorite mixes" threads this sucker always pops up. It's original, hilarious, and funny too! Stands out nicely from DJP's other stuff too. Yeah, this is a great, a classic, a distinctive OCR timepiece, and always puts a big ol' smile on my face. Rather surprised there aren't more reviews of this one. -Mazedude

Aye, this is quite nice. The first time I heard it was a little taken aback by the soft intro, but after hearing it on the whole and stuff - very good. The orchestral/breakbeat fusion can be hard to pull off, but he did it nicely. I even got this tune on a roadmix now. Nice driving music, depending on the mood. Good work man! -Mazedude

Hmm - there shouldn't be that clipping noise you mentioned at 2:15 Ryckster - try redownloading it from http://listen.to/mazedude and see if it's still there - coulda just been a downloading glitch. It happens. As far as releasing my samples - oh ho ho... I only do that if asked REALLY nicely man, I fashion a ton of those completely from scratch. And, some I take from CDs and flip 'em around, add effects, etc... And some I steal. Those I don't mind sharing. Just e-mail the Mazedude@aol.com and cross your fingers. As to the rest of the comments - thanks a bunch guys. Keep it up and I might do yet another Doom 2 mix one of these days, bwuhahaha! -Mazedude -http://listen.to/mazedude