Street Fighter Alpha 2 - "Take Flight! Rising Dragon!" (Theme of Ryu)

[Native Dialect]

When I created my first remix of Ryu's theme ("Fūrinkazan"), I told myself I would not revisit the theme again because there are literally hundreds of remixes of Ryu's theme Street Fighter II theme, and I felt that I had nothing more to add to that musical conversation. Then I started replaying the Street Fighter Alpha series thanks to my recent purchase of the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection for the Nintendo Switch

Playing the older games got me in the mood to listen to the remixes, and to my surprise, very few people have done remixes of Ryu's theme from the first two Street Fighter Alpha games. Although Ryu's Alpha theme incorporates the motifs established in Yoko Shimomura's original composition from Street Fighter II, the genre change by Setsuo Yamamoto (who arranged the theme for Street Fighter Alpha and Alpha 2) took the theme in a different enough direction to where I didn't feel like it would be redundant for me to try my hand a remix

Rather than introduce new measures to the song, or change the genre, I stuck with creating something largely faithful, but with as much live instrumentation as possible, and better samples than what were available for the CPS2 hardware the game originally ran on. The only significant change I made was to the staccato notes accompanying the melody starting around 0:34. That part of the composition was originally written for electric guitar, but I reinterpreted it for koto as a nod to Ryu's Japanese heritage. Otherwise, my remix was about imagining what the theme would have sounded like had Yamamoto been able to use live instruments when he made the arrangement

 

Song Title: "Take Flight! Rising Dragon!" (Ryu Theme Remix)

Originally Composed By: Setsuo Yamamoto

Arranged and Performed By: The Native Dialect

BPM: 135

Style: Rock

Hardware: iMac, Ibanez Talmon 

Software: GarageBand, Audacity 

 

"Take Flight! Rising Dragon!"

 

Source

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Native Dialect

[H36T]

Honestly I really dig the approach. I especially like the horns and what you did with em. Really funky and I'm getting almost like a marvel vs Capcom vibe or some type of late 90s early 2000s Capcom 2D game. 

Personally the staccato notes you added don't do it for me or maybe it's just the instrument/synth being used for them. May I suggest something like Spitfire Labs' mandolin or moon guitar? And maybe make it less straight forward? Like a eighth and two sixteenths type of beat with maybe some twang on it as well. It could definitely just be my ears but as it is now it just sounds distracting. 

Besides that though I like this. It's definitely got me jamming a bit. Thanks for sharing and I'd like to hear more!