Muuurgh

The event last weekend was really successful! All of the bands had killer sets, and raised $1,700 on our GoFundMe campaign. If you tuned in, thank you! Everyone's Twitch streams will still be up for another week, and then I hope to archive the event on YouTube. Easiest way to access after the fact is by going to our schedule page here. If anyone has any feedback after watching the event, I'd love to hear it. Also, our GoFundMe will remain open for another week. With the amount raised to date, we were able to get to $50/person for all of the artists involved and about $740 for the AbleGamers charity. Any further donations will go straight to AbleGamers, and I'm hoping that we can get to a round $800 for them at least (would need $65 in donations, and the minimum donation is just $5!).

Hi, everyone! On August 31 from 6-11pm EDT, five VGM jazz groups are teaming up to bring you FREE PLAY, a free, international music festival that will be streaming on Twitch. The bands participating are: - VGM Collective (New York) - The 8-Bit Jazz Heroes (California) - Nice! Edmond is Super Sumo-wrestler (Tokyo) - The Consouls (Sydney) - The Hard Modes (Virginia) We'll be playing back-to-back hour-long sets in what will be the first strictly online international music festival (I think! if not, the first strictly online VGM and/or jazz festival, but happy to stand corrected ). Also, alongside bringing some great live music to you, we're raising money for the AbleGamers charity! We hope that you'll tune in! I'll leave this post short, but for more information please head to: 1. Our corresponding GoFundMe 2. The official website 3. The event on Facebook

Reviving this thread since we did a studio recording of this tune and made a corresponding video! Hope y'all like it.

Finished up a 2nd video using footage from our recording session from late April. This time we play Shoji Meguro's "Beneath the Mask" from Persona 5, which is both a favorite of ours to play as well as a crowd favorite from our shows. Over the last year I've digested more of Meguro's catalog than any other video game composer--I'm excited to have completed this particular work and released it for your enjoyment. Also, similar to my "Corridors of Time" arrangement, I snuck in a quote from another one of this game's tracks, as well--let me know if you catch it!

Hey, everyone! Late last year I posted some live clips from my VGM/jazz group, The Hard Modes. Since then I've written a bunch of new arrangements for the group that we've been playing locally, and about a month ago we recorded some of our repertoire. I wanted to share the first of the bunch with you--the beloved "Corridors of Time" from Chrono Trigger, written by Yasunori Mitsuda: I never really intended to arrange this tune, especially because it seems like a lot of people cover it (and cover it well!). But, I kept hearing it while I was at MAGFest this year and was infected by the groove so much that I felt like I had to give making something unique a shot. The resulting arrangement is pretty straight forward with the exception of some harmonic variation and the incorporation of 3 additional Chrono Trigger melodies therein. Hope you enjoy, and would love to hear your feedback. Thanks for listening!

Haha that's awesome. The challenges (*RIP*) used to give me my yearly dose of humbling. At the end of every year I thought that surely I'd come back stronger and crush some of the new ones faster than I would have before... never happened XD

Here's to hoping I've played enough Gundam Versus on PS4 to win a few matches this year...... Do you all ever get something happening together in the jam space? Considering bringing my horn again this year, but when I had in years past I found myself doing other things rather than just showing up at random.

Haven't listened to the whole thing to give you a track list, but you can at least tell which game the tracks are from via the pop-ups in the bottom left. On the bottom line before the closed bracket it'll have a roman numeral (as long as it's from one of the core series and not the first FF game). It reads: "From [Final Fantasy (number)]" (to avoid confusion, "from" is the word that's on the right side of the brackets").

Debuted this arrangement back on 9/30 with my jazz/VGM group, The Hard Modes (I'm playing sax). I counted it in a hair too fast and ultimately rushed the melody--the groove definitely could have benefitted from us laying back a bit more. My excuse is going to be that this was the second-to-last tune of the show and I was amped up from how the night had gone to that point Also, fun fact: the groove was influenced by Bernard Purdie's work on Steely Dan's Home at Last. If you'd like to read more about the project as a whole you can also check out my website. Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much! I'm fortunate to have some great players in the group--they brought it for the whole performance and especially kept things on high octane for this tune. Definitely looking forward to writing more and sharing it with you all.

These recordings came from the premiere of my VGM-based jazz group, The Hard Modes, on 9/30 (same as my last post). This particular arrangement was inspired not only by Uematsu's original cut, but also by the ridiculously awesome cut from the piano collections album. Enjoy! If you'd like to read more about the project as a whole you can also check out my website. Thanks for listening!

Hey man, this rocks for sure. Arguably the hippest part of the tune is the beginning with those sweet subdivisions, though, so I'd recommend adding that in. May be tough to get the hang of, but would be totally worth mastering.

Thanks, Wiesty--totally down to collaborate with you guys sometime!

Hi, everyone! I recently completed an important phase of a long-term jazz/vgm arrangement project that I have going on called The Hard Modes. I wanted to share it with you all and get your feedback. I premiered 7 arrangements at a live show a couple of weeks ago and recorded the show using a Zoom H2 recorder as well as a no-frills camcorder. I'll be posting the tracks individually over time, but if you like what you hear you can always check out the other parts of the set through SoundCloud or YouTube (though we didn't capture 2 of the arrangements on video). First up is my arrangement of Austin Wintory's I Was Born For This from Journey, which was actually the last tune of our set. Some notes: The sound quality isn't great on either medium, but the sound recording sounds better than the video. That's me on tenor sax! The throwback near the end of the tune was a surprise even for the band; the spot just called for an open solo. My original arrangement was inspired by Ornette Coleman's work, although to get the work together for the show we had to simplify some of the sections a bit, which is why I labeled this a Work in Progress (ultimately, the arrangement should be freer than it is--we'll get there!). And without further adieu... enjoy! If you'd like to read more about the project as a whole you can also check out my website. Thanks for listening!