Hey, so this is sort of a weird and complicated thing, but I figured if there’s anyone I should share it with, it’s OCR. So let’s dive right in.
I got into game music around 2005 or 2006 (owing in no small part to Super Smash Brothers), and started exploring it on sites like OverClocked ReMix. Before long, my younger brother and I were putting VGM, with other favorite songs, on CDs for our summer road trips and having a grand old time. Now, those early CDs were not, perhaps, the best work out there, but they sparked something in my mind.
A few years went by. My brother drifted off to other things, but I kept making these collections. And then I got inspired to make one with some thematic unity behind it. I had ideas about water, about sailing the ocean blue, and I had a few songs that evoked images along those lines. And when I put them together with a bunch of my other favorite songs from OCR and other places, something clicked. I listened to the album over and over again, and realized that these songs, together, felt like they were telling a story. I wanted to continue that story, and find out what happened next. So I did.
Today I have around seventeen homemade albums under my belt, and I thought I’d share them with the OCR community, since so much of their content comes from OCR and the great VGM arrangers of the world. (Along with a handful of other songs that people have recommended to me and that I personally like—mostly prog rock.) Each album is designed to tell a story and/or explore a particular theme, and they come complete with very spritey CD art depicting the songs and games referenced in that story. I started making them for my own amusement, but given the amount of time I’ve poured into them, I figured I should share. I also thought OCRemixers might like to know what a huge role their work has played in my life and how I’ve interpreted it.
In some ways, it’s a big tribute to VGM and the composers, games, and arrangers I love. It bears my selective biases, of course, but you could probably get a pretty good sense of the great themes of VGM and the awesome arrangers in the current scene just from listening through these albums.
It’s also a big experiment in exploring layers of meaning through mix CDs. One of the things I love about game music is that it has this referential quality: it reminds you of certain characters, images, scenes and ideas. By bringing all these game ideas together with my own motifs, my goal has been to create something open to wide interpretation which still possesses a unifying energy and sense of story. The goal for the listener is to develop his or her own interpretation of what the story is while drawing on the motifs and personal experiences with the games involved.
In other words, I lay out some groundwork, but other than that, each album can be whatever you want it to be!
The track listings are all up on my blog; I figure I’ll just link you to each post there since I doubt I could fit them all in a single post here. There you’ll find more info, CD art, more of my thoughts, etc. Or you could skip those and just jump straight in!
The Book of Changes:
This is my longest and most complete project so far. It consists of eight albums, each patterned after a different element of the world. These elements are taken, rather loosely, from the trigrams of the I Ching. The idea of each album is that it tells the story of a group of heroes in a fantastic world, on an epic journey that brings them into conflict with the forces of darkness. Each album tells of a different stage of that quest: Sapphire is a voyage by sea, Ruby is a war, and so on, culminating in Revelation and Apocalypse by the Lapis Lazuli album.
The Sapphire Collection (Winter 2010)
Element: Water
A tale of Depth.
The Ruby Collection (Spring 2010)
Element: Fire
A tale of War.
The Amber Collection (Summer 2010)
Element: Lightning
A tale of Revolution.
The Amethyst Collection (Fall 2010)
Element: Moon
A tale of the Mind.
The Obsidian Collection (Winter 2011)
Element: Mountain
A tale of Ascent.
The Diamond Collection (Spring 2011)
Element: Wind
A tale of a City in the Sky.
The Opal Collection (Summer 2011)
Element: Earth
A tale of the World.
The Lapis Lazuli Collection (Fall 2011)
Element: Heaven
A tale of Apocalypse.
Thematic Albums:
These tend to be a little less story-focused and have more of their own individual identity, though you can still interpret their stories however you like. (Some, like the Zelda album, do try to capture a particular game’s journey.) They also tend to feature OCR songs way more exclusively. In some ways, they’re my way of exploring and interpreting OCR’s giant archive.
Song of Hyrule: A Hero’s Tale
Based on the Legend of Zelda series, featuring primarily orchestral and organic arrangements.
200X: A Robot at War
Based on the Mega Man series, featuring primarily electronic arrangements.
Variations on a Plumber: A Tribute to Mario
Based on the Mario series, featuring a wide variety of styles.
Chronometrics: A Temporal Journey
Based on the game Chrono Trigger, featuring a variety of styles and a division into present, past, and future.
The Piano Collection
A musical movement composed of some of the best piano arrangements OCR has given game music.
The Jazz Collection
A musical movement featuring some of OCR’s best jazz tracks.
I have some more ideas for these that might get used eventually; for instance there’s almost definitely going to be a Piano Collection Volume Two at some point.
The Circle of Tales:
This is the current series I’m working on. I’m keeping myself to a lot less strict of a schedule than the Book of Changes albums—more of a “whenever I feel like it” basis. The motif is the western zodiac, and the idea is to create twelve albums, each based on the story of a particular character. Instead of telling a linear story, these characters exist in roughly the same time frame, and their actions have consequences for their neighbors before and after them on the zodiac, creating a great circle of interlocking tales. So far, there’s three:
The Mariner’s Tale
Sign: Aquarius
A tale of one who would seek revenge, in a journey across the sea.
The Deep Ruler’s Tale
Sign: Pisces
A tale of one who would send aid, dreams, and visions from the bottom of the sea.
The Shepherd’s Tale
Sign: Aries
A tale of one who, inspired, would lead the people out of the darkness and into the light.
Still to come are (names subject to change) the Plowman’s Tale, the Brother and Sister’s Tale, the Hermit’s Tale, the Beast’s Tale, the Maiden’s Tale, the Lawyer’s Tale, the Assassin’s Tale, the Archer’s Tale, and the Minstrel’s Tale. I’ll post more as I make ‘em.
A few further notes. You may notice there are MIDIs on some of these albums. GASP! The story behind that is that I used to hang around on VGMusic.com almost as much as OCR. Even though most of the stuff on there is pretty basic, every so often, I’d come across a surprisingly interesting and clever arrangement, and some of those made their way onto the albums. (Anyone want to take a crack at updating them to a more OCR-quality instrumentation? Anyone? …Okay, I’ll shut up.)
You should also know that the albums are kind of a closed canon: I’m unlikely to add or take away anything that I did years ago, because each individual song has its own meaning and relevance that I wouldn’t want to upset, you know. I have been known to tweak the thematic albums from time to time, but I think I’ve got ‘em how I like ‘em for now.
That said, I’m eager to hear your thoughts, interpretations, and suggestions for songs for future albums. Thanks for the awesome music, and if you care to check out what I’ve done with it, thanks for that, too! Hope you enjoy.
-Daidalos
