ReMix:The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time "Forever Spirit" 3:53

Michael Hudak's back with another experimental attack! Michael manipulates the motif of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's 6-note "Requiem of Spirit", starting off subtractive, affecting it in all sorts of weird sound design murk, as well as reversing the notes and altering the rhythms to stretch your understanding. Hudak says he didn't overthink the arrangement, but I'll say *you* may end up doing so if you're not listening carefully:

"Tried not to overthink the arrangement here, and instead poured everything into the sound design. This is partially because the source tune is very short, making a potential remix fairly repetitive, at least without inserting a half-dozen different solos into it.

The whole thing is played in free-time on one Europa combinator patch called "Antiformant Juno Voices" -- Europa is one of Reason's wavetable synth plugins (similar to Serum, I think), with seemingly hundreds of different parameters to automate. And automate them I did. At length. Lots of envelopes and filters opening slowly as the song progresses, with tons of flourishes about, some subtle and some not.

I wanted a washy kind of sound at the climax without it getting extra harsh. My definition of "harsh" is... harsher than a lot of people's though, so, hopefully, it's just on the cusp of being offensive without going over the edge. There are some send effects here and there, but, for the most part, I wanted to wring everything out of the synth itself (including the ocarina sound at 2:34, which I found accidentally from modifying the wave shape of one of Europa's engines).

The source melody is very simple. At first, I played a turned-around version starting at 0:37 and going to 2:00. After that, it's played straight until the end of the song, including a washed-out, reversed section to close it out. Huge thanks, as usual."

Judge prophetik music broke things down pretty well, because, while "Requiem of Spirit" isn't melodically overhauled, it's mucked with enough that you may need to hold his hand to understand:

"starts out with some block chords that feel pretty out of time. took a second to wrap my head around that. the initial pattern (1 3 5 1) matches the pattern of the melodic line (la, do la mi, do, la) in a chorded fashion, and then we see it in retrograde (la mi do la). again at 0:37 we see a very slow version of the motif (clearer example: 0:58.5-1:04.5). this is an example of fragmentation, another motivic arrangement technique. the underlying rhythmic pattern is used regularly (1 note, 3 notes, 1 note, 1 note) as well. it continues to be spread out and weird and gets longer and longer in note value until 2:03. the remixer tones back the filter opening at 2:04 for one last motivic representation (this time with the rhythm normal but the notes in retrograde) before playing it straighter at 2:19. mister hu then hits the patch randomizer for the next several instances of this motif. there's some chordal changes, like at 3:27, but overall this is pretty straight in representation.

this took a few listens to really understand what was going on, but once i recognized how the remixer boiled the motif down to component parts (the basic rhythm content, the ascending pattern following the minor i chord), then i started recognizing the different set theory techniques used to represent it."

If you didn't get all of that, which I readily admit I don't, believe us that the theme's there, just discombobulated a lil' bit. :-D proph described the theme usage from 1:28-2:04 as "tenuous", though it was a case of Hudak taking the repeating 6-note motif and effectively making it five notes. Since the first & last notes were both la, Hudak used them to start AND end the motif in that segment; understandably more difficult to grok because Hudak did it while simultaneously lagging the pattern (la, do la... mi, do, la, do la... mi, do). Judge Chimpazilla felt it was more overt, which makes sense with her being our Zelda guru and all:

"I know this source like the back of my hand, and yes the motif is hugely obscured in the first half. Larry's timestamp did help, but I can clearly hear the notes being played, in a totally different way from the source; the emphasis is on a different note than in the original (up until 2:13 at which point the source motif playthroughs are more straightforward). I generally love Michael's work and this track is no exception. I love the sparseness and the interesting sound design, as well as the reversed bits of motif. As Larry said, fun little audio experiment. I'm on board."

Catching the melody in the simple rhythmic changes was straightforward enough, so it wasn't too difficult to recognize the source in play most of the way; that allowed me to sit back and enjoy the simple-yet-complex ride, Hudak's spirited transformation where no two instances of the melody ever sound the same. All hail Michael Hudak, OCR's audio equivalent of Mr. Wizard! :-)