Emunator Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 (edited) Name: Michael Hudak Game: The Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild Arrangement Name: Guardian Phase Original Song: Guardian Battle This is a phasing music piece that repeats the riff from "Guardian Battle" over and over, which I think reflects nicely the relentlessness of the Guardians themselves - hunter robots that chase and chase until they're somehow destroyed or escaped from. Or they get ya... About phasing: Phasing is an approach to minimalist composition in which two identical tracks start playing at the exact same time and tempo, but slowly move out of phase with each other as one track speeds up or slows down while the other remains the same. As they begin to slide out of phase, first you hear a doubling effect, then a delay that becomes more and more pronounced, and then finally they become totally de-synced as new rhythms appear and different combinations of notes overlap. Steve Reich popularized (some say came up with) the idea in the 1960s with his piece "It's Gonna Rain". He took two tape machines with the same tape, started them at the same time, and after a few minutes they began to move out of phase due to one of the machines playing very slightly faster than the other - "process music" as he called it. He would expand on this idea over the next several years with "Come Out", "Piano Phase", "Violin Phase", "Clapping Music", and "Drumming". Reich would become arguably the most influential American composer of the 20th century in large part to his phasing music pieces, having a huge impact on pop and electronic music in particular. Personally, if through some monkey's paw scenario I had to only listen to one composer for the rest of my life, it would (hopefully) be Reich. About this piece: Obviously a DAW will play a loop perfectly for as long as you want, so I started with a ~4-minute loop at 160 bpm, and another starting at 160 but eventually ending at 158 using an almost flat tempo automation ramp. I wanted to get a vintage tape machine sound like in "It's Gonna Rain" and "Come Out", but also the reverb of the orchestral space in "Piano Phase", so I tried to combine those lo-fi and hi-fi sounds (this also reflects the Guardians in BotW being revived ancient tech, more advanced than modern tech...the juxtaposition of themes from the game - old circuits vs new forests - really fits here). I ended up creating two more identical tracks by filtering out the low end and bringing up the white noise. The hissing, more airy tracks slowly pan out as the more midrange-y tracks pan in, and vice-versa. There are some very slight granular effects but overall I REALLY had to resist the urge to add more bells and whistles, and to just rely on the purity of my initial idea of Reich + Guardian riff. As for source usage, it's 100%. The bit from 0:04 in the source is used repeatedly until the end of the remix. although it's not obvious for much of the piece if you don't realize what's happening. For ~15 seconds at the start it's played by both tracks at once, and again for ~15 seconds at 3:25 after everything comes back into phase. At any time, though, you can adjust your ears and refocus on the source riff (done easier with headphones, focussing on one ear). It's always there. 3:32 has the only appearance of the melody that happens in the source at 0:12. In the end, I couldn't resist adding it. Thanks for taking the time to read this long write-up, and for considering another left-field submission. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq3nncuA1Ak Edited January 21, 2022 by Emunator Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 The arrangement aspect of it is just too minimal. Just two repeating lines of the stripped down source tune that desync and wind up back in sync. A fun audio gimmick, but not a developed arrangement by any stretch. And that’s OK, it just falls outside of our arrangement standards. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkSim Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 (edited) Certainly an interesting experiment in phasing. Whilst I wasn't aware of Steve Reich or "It's Gonna Rain", this technique was familiar to me from Orbital's tracks "Time Becomes" and "Input Out". Unfortunately, it isn't much beyond an academic exercise, and although it does serve a purpose and holds some level of intrigue, it's not fleshed out enough for OCR. NO Edited November 25, 2021 by DarkSim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted December 6, 2021 Share Posted December 6, 2021 stamping this. i love the idea of phases and i'd love to hear an album of distinct phases that are based around game themes, but this doesn't fit OCR's guidelines for posting because it simply isn't transformative enough (i get that's a weighty word but that's the guidelines). would be a great project track IMO however, and is better suited to that scope as well. as an aside, i would argue that adding the original melodic section actually harms this work as it breaks the immersion that phases generate. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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