ReMix:The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword "Timeshift" 3:54

Sending our congrats & well wishes to the RTA in Japan staff, players, and fans, who just called "TIME!" on another speedrunning event a hemisphere away with their Winter 2023 stream. OC ReMixes were the background music of choice during the breaks, and it's an honor to be a small part of keeping folks tuned in and hyped for the worthy charity fundraising on behalf of Doctors Without Borders. Now the time's come for all of us to close the book on this year and shift to the next -- a mastering engineer and OCR judge is gonna handle that around these parts courtesy Chimpazilla's mystical, beat-driven, reggaeton-inspired timehop through Lanayru from Zelda: Skyward Sword! A loyal Hylian (Hyrulian?) with a ton of completed titles under her belt, Kris was bitten by the bug to arrange her personal favorite Skyward Sword song:

"Hi, guys! In July of 2021, I replayed Skyward Sword when they ported it for the Switch. This was only my second playthrough of Skyward Sword, in comparison to some other Zelda games that I have replayed billions of times (Ocarina of Time, Breath of the Wild, Link Between Worlds, Phantom Hourglass). Skyward Sword is not my favorite game in the franchise for multiple reasons, not the least of which is the use of the master sword via motion controls. (The Switch version gives us the option of mapping the sword to the control sticks instead, but I can't quite get on board with that!) Still, it's a great game and important in the Zelda timeline, starting off the enormous saga.

Skyward Sword does, however, have some amazing music. I have several favorites, but the best one for me is the "Lanayru Mining Facility" theme. I have a fondness for deserty-sounding themes, and this one is so haunting. I love the game mechanic of using the timeshift stones in the Lanayru region to change from the present (old and busted) to the past (new hotness), and I love how the musical theme changes as well, from the present (old, busted, empty, simplistic, and heavily filtered) to the past (new, hot, full, rich with detail).

Listening to this source theme with fresh ears, I hear it with a reggaeton beat, so much so that a remix formed in my mind right away and I knew I had to make this a reality. (Listen to the source starting at 1:30 and fill in the reggaeton beat in your mind! It's there!) I also wanted to incorporate some filtering into the intro, breakdown, and outro, to highlight the "timeshift" feature in the game. You will also hear some clock-ticking percussion throughout the piece, to accent the time theme. I wanted to have some vocal chops in this mix as well, because luscious vocal chops are awesome, and I think I found some good ones! Hope you agree!"

Man, I love when a good concept pulls together. It wouldn't have dawned on most to go in a reggaeton direction (it would have for José the Bronx Rican, but I digress), yet when you hear that two millimeter shift, it makes total sense and fits so comfortably! The changeup in the beats at 1:01 is so sick, and combines so nicely with the subtle bassline here. Shockingly, Kris had a musical conundrum with said bassline nearly kibosh this whole thing. (:-O I know, right?!?) As she clarified to us though, nevertheless, she persisted:

"One huge challenge for writing this remix was the bassline. The harmonic structure of this source tune is strange. At 1:20 in the source, as the "past" version starts, you hear a one-note drone bassline. That same one-note drone bass plays a continuous G throughout almost all of the "past" version, even as the leads and bells/metals shift up a half-step (up until 2:22). The musicians at Nintendo made that work, because they wrote the song with a ton of nebulous bell and metallic instruments that hide the dissonance, and because they are all dark wizards over there at Nintendo. If you try to make a cover or remix of this tune using that one-note drone G bass, you end up with a harmonic hot mess. I searched for other remixes of this source to see how others handled the bassline writing, and I found a few, but none of them made the bassline work, in my opinion. So, it took me a bit of effort to write a proper bassline that captured the reggaeton feel and worked well with all the various arpeggios and leads in the source theme. The arp notes also needed to be altered somewhat to fit the new bassline, and also because, even without the drone bass, the actual arps, when reconstructed verbatim with less metallic instruments, is also a hot mess. I nearly rage-quit this process multiple times, and I took days off in between attempts, but once I got it working, I liked it and I was inspired to continue to completion. Hope you dig it!"

Diggin' it, lovin' it, vibin' with it! A surprising yet natural creative extension of the "Lanayru Mining Facility" theme, a theme already so loopable and catchy that when Chimpa's beat arrives at :21, it feels like a gift on top of a gift! Three minutes later during the close, we even get a nod to the classic Legend of Zelda theme (which is only found in Skyward Sword's credits, its own special reward for a job well done). A fantastic way to end OCR's year in style with a complementary Skyward Sword bookend to "The Beginning" by RebeccaETripp, which started us off in January. See you on the other side of the calendar!