ReMix:Kingdom Hearts "The Slums of Traverse" 3:04

Absolutely ***gorgeous*** Kingdom Hearts piano/sax duet from newcomer PhrygianFingers (Zach Marzec) & oldcomer/judge prophetik music (Brad Burr) - the former writes:

"My friend and I recorded this some time ago. I am playing the piano (used Reason 3.0, put a few basic effects, some reverb, just kept it simple). My friend, who on OCR is prophetik music, is playing sax.

To be honest, this mix was like a "Hey, let's record 'Traverse Town' in minor." "okay." We weren't really thinking too much about all the details, we wanted to get something scratch down. I really like what we did here.

I wanted to call this "The Slums of Traverse" because it sticks in minor the entire time, but I wanted to give it more of a desolate feel."

Transition to minor sometimes just works sooo well, for certain tunes, and this is an instance where a straightforward conversion & emotive, stirring duet on two instruments is more than enough to capitalize on that potential. This has a somber, pensive, staring-out-the-window vibe that's relatively appropriate for the current state of the world, and both musicians imbue their performances with soul & grace. Brad provides additional backstory:

"zach and i recorded this track over christmas break in 2007 according to my file dates. we were goofing around with some music software one evening and he started playing the Traverse theme in a minor key. i recognized it and pulled out my sax, and we recorded it in one take. it honestly was, too - zach was noodling and played the opening few chords, and i was like, 'hey, i know this song! let's record it!' he literally came up with this stuff on the fly. he's that good. =)

due to some software limitations at the time, the keyboard MIDI data was in Reason 3 (!!!), and we exported that and dropped the WAV of my sax into FL and mastered it there. we had been meaning to come back to it for years and it just never became a thing. a little while later, i got married and moved away, and we fell out of touch.

imagine my surprise when i happened across this arrangement on a fan Tumblr account last year with tens of thousands of plays, and tons of comments about how much they enjoyed it! that brought it back into the front of my memory, and i went looking for the files in my (far too large) collection of old hard drives but couldn't find it. time passed and another forum-goer who i used to interact with a bunch 10+ years ago messaged to say hello, and ask what happened to this track. well, i went looking again, and this time i found my original files. i asked around for someone to help extract the MIDI data, and then did some crunching in the keyboard part to fix some sour notes and odd articulations. and here we are! probably not the first 13-year remix in the history of the site, but still a fun journey.

from a mechanical standpoint, it's an alto sax, but if you want specifics it's a Selmer series III alto saxophone (Paris, not USA), with a Vandoren Optimum mouthpiece and ligature, with Vandoren 3 reeds. this uses Komplete for the keyboards, some Melodyne 5 Studio to fix a few notes in the sax part, and FL 20 as the DAW. i tried to keep as much of the ensemble feel as possible in the keys, which allows for some lilt in the tempo without quantizing out what made the piano part so organic and fun. looking forward to hearing what people think."

Quite the journey, from inception to being posted today. Obviously the arrangement has been enjoyed in an earlier form by thousands, so hopefully this more polished version reaches additional ears; as Brad says, not the first mix we've seen with an epic, decade+ evolution & compelling origin story, but it's always a cool development... plus the end result here deserved & benefited from the tweaking, so nothing takes you out of the hypnotic, immersive interplay between the two instruments. Judges were unanimous, though some of the audible key presses (I thought they added intimacy/character!) were nitpicked; MindWanderer writes:

"The delicious sax work immediately caught my attention. Superb piano work, too. The interpretation is simple but effective, an excellent demonstration of how less can be more. I'm with Larry on the sounds of the sax mechanism being a detraction, especially around 1:55-2:05 and 2:23-2:40; the blip at 2:41 actually sounds like one of those rather than a recording issue. There's also some weirdness in 2:10-2:40 where the piano and sax are both improvising timing a little bit, in different ways, and it's resulting in some conflicts.

The issues are minor, though. Overall this is delightful."

I'll second that; even if this weren't a revitalized resurrection of a Reason 3.0 project comprised of two different performances from many moons ago, it would still be smooth enough for me. YMMV, but I happen to enjoy some of the audible performance artifacts, imperfections, and occasional friction between the two parts; keeps it real. Moreover, the emotion & general vibe are striking, captured with nuance & flow, and make for an engrossing, somber-but-enjoyable listen. Bravo to both artists!