ReMix:The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening "Mysterious Forest: Witch's Strut" 3:06

I was hoping they'd be back! For their sophomore ReMix, maj7's jneen collective shows the peeps how it's not about the tools, it's the skills, with a strut through Z:LA's Mysterious Forest! Lots of manual manipulation of the timing to get everything feeling funky fresh, according to jneen:

"Finally ready to toss in this arrangement of "Mysterious Forest" from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. I've also included reference to a couple of tracks that a player will encounter when playing through this region of the game, namely "Witch's Hut" and "Power-Up" (the annoying music that interrupts "Mysterious Forest's" natural groove... but it's OK, I kept the bassline going in this version).

Like pretty much all my music, this was made in Renoise, with classic MIDI sounds dressed up for a more modern aesthetic. I do my best to keep my tracker music having a *tight* feel, which involves mostly making sure note-offs are very carefully set, including for drums. This involved a lot of sub-line shenanigans, which I'm starting to use more for that kind of feel.

The swing was accomplished with manual note-delay commands, which I find gives me the most flexibility. Global swing is convenient, but it's hard to make exceptions to for things like the prominent 32nd-note run in the melody, or sometimes notes that want to swing a little differently.

The different source tracks in here were weirdly easy to combine, as they pretty much all employ the same half-step-planing harmony, albeit with slightly different harmonic rhythm. Only a few places needed to be fudged to fit. In fact, with one notable exception, the whole thing was diatonic enough that I could use (approximately) 6-diminished voicings to create rich harmonizations of the various melody lines.

Folks in the Discord were very helpful in nailing down a more satisfying ending than what I originally had. Much thanks to pixelseph and Ronald Poe for their feedback. Hope you enjoy it!"

I'll echo the sentiment on our Discord being a great place to get feedback (don't be shy, come on by!) While judge Chimpazilla noted the fixed groove, she also warmly welcomed jneen's substantial development of the source tune as the piece unfolded:

"What an interesting, simplistic style, but so much has been done with it, it's really impressive. The soundscape feels so repetitive as the drum and bass groove stays the same almost all the way through. The sounds are all so ridiculously fake, but it's all consistent, and the arrangement is groovy as hell, and there are great instrument and writing additions as the piece moves along. [...] This is just too cool not to go with just as it is. It sounds like an actual video game source tune. I like it!"

Not sure who's gonna be ready for those epic runs at 2:24(!), but you're gonna be won over for sure if you're somehow still on the fence by then. Fellow judge Hemophiliac was initially skeptical of General MIDI (I've been there), but eventually -- and enthusiastically -- landed on the side of the angels:

"Had to really go through the rabbit hole of decision making on this for myself.

At first I was down on the idea of using GM samples, but I came to realize that you have sophisticated them in a very unique way. Playing with their note-offs and releases has created a very tight sound that created a lot of space. [...]

The arrangement is excellent and there is so much good work on swinging the rhythm and making that classic bassline funky. 1:55-2:06 is a particular highlight for me in how you lead into the wacky Witches' hut source.

This is a crazy and wacky piece, but with excellence of execution in the personalization of the source and sequencing of the parts. Great work!"

Indeed, a great way to end quite the productive year around here! The claps are clappy, the bassline's groovin', and the runs are lively... Props to jneen for the attention to detail that maximized this minimalist soundset for some FONKY results! :-)