The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask "Do You See?" 7:04

Happy 25th U.S. anniversary to The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask! We made sure to celebrate with a ReMix for Ocarina of Time's 25th birthday, and we're equally excited to celebrate this occasion with a pair of Majora's Mask ReMixes. :-) Let's kick it off with Michael Hudak and then turn it over to Hudak himself for his POV on another major(a) undertaking! First, Michael Hudak slows down "Astral Observatory" and asks us "Do You See?":

"October 26th of this year will be 25 years since Majora's Mask was released in the US, and I wanted to make something for that milestone. The source is "Astral Observatory" by Koji Kondo. You may know of him. "Astral Observatory" has a beautiful chord progression that I figured could lend itself well to the post-rock/ambient/whatever experimentation I've been doing recently. A major influence here was the album The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid (which might be a good alternate title for this remix...) by Stars of the Lid.

There are two halves that juxtapose each other in intensity and mood. I don't think one side would work without the other with how I mixed and arranged them. I worked to get Pt. 1 to sound analog and not synth pad-y; there are pianos, trumpets, and strings run through several reverbs (Reason's RV7000, Synapse's DR-1, Valhalla Shimmer), with external LFOs slowly altering settings like diffusion rate and pre-delay time. I took only the wet signals and blended them and then processed them further. I needed the chords to do the carrying while I focused on timbre and texture. Pt. 2 is a second movement of sorts, and has the piano playing (and altering) the melody.

The "AO" chords are played throughout the entire song, albeit very slowly, aside from a brief detour from 1:10 to 1:22, and then from 6:40 to the end. Long fade-out, but I think it fits the tempo. Listening again, maybe I could've made this even slower...

Hopefully, the chord progression is noticeable enough to pass, but I will leave that up to the judges, of course."

Title-wise, we also would have accepted "Abstract Observatory". :-) Yeah, we've had slowdowns/timestretches throw the panel for a loop before, so he wasn't wrong to hedge his bets. That said, it was still smooth sailing for this one from us judges, including jnWake:

"Well, this is definitely different...

Begins with a warm pad of sounds doing the main 2 chords of the source, each chord lasting around 15-16 seconds. Soundscape is sparse but there seems to be a lot of intention in how the sound changes during each chord. We continue with more chords from the source, although some of them are pretty modified (like 1:11 and 1:36 onwards). As a random fact, the chords and how they evolve kind of remind me of the Protoss themes from StarCraft 1. Some of the chords are very intense and even overwhelming (around 2:30 especially), but it's an interesting sound. At 3:33 the pads and pianos become clearer and the main melody from the source can be heard (played veeery slow on piano). I really like the sound effects you added here, like some sparse reversed piano notes (I believe). Chord at 4:44 is haunting, here the melody gets a bit liberal but the chord progression is clearly identifiable. We continue on the same vibe until the end [...]

This is a very interesting piece and can be mostly described as ambient since it moves very slow, letting almost every chord and note breathe for a while. With this in mind, arrangement does its work, changing from peaceful chords to tense ones, driving the need for resolution. Source usage is mostly chords, which is something we have questioned in the past for other remixes, but in this particular case the source is, in fact, mostly chords, so it's acceptable.

Production also serves the track's purpose, there's not many elements so there's no need for a complex mix. However, you nailed the sound design, I find the description of how you achieved the track pretty cool in fact.

Overall, a very unique piece!"

After the straightforward albeit slowed down intro, ~1:10-3:30 felt more abstract and disconnected from the source, which aligned with where Wake was seeing things, but then the second half stayed based on the melody until nearly the end, so the overall approach was grounded and mostly recognizable despite the much slower tempo. prophetik music compared Hudak's approach to another very cool timestretching example:

"this immediately reminded me of 800% justin bieber, actually - the super-wet strung out chords sound a lot like a paulstretch demo. [...] i think that the vehicle here is dramatic and unique - the broad washes of sound are beautiful and cold, and remind me very much of looking out a window at a winter landscape."

Though I'm not in the Justin Bieber demo, I enjoyed hearing him 800% slower, it was a trip you should take! For Hudak's slowed down piece, I had to 2X this to more readily identify the otherwise straightforward "Astral Observatory" chords. And because I also listened to this at 200% speed, when you double-speed the glassy lil' piano accents starting at 3:38, it sounds like the connecting SFX in Sokobond, and anything that makes me think of Dualryan is cool with me! (You should arrange of one his soundtracks, Michael, e.g. The Yawgh.) This definitely isn't for everyone, but as a piece of sound design, it's dank, dark, and something to swim in. A very fitting tribute to arguably the series darkest, most ominous Zelda entry for its 25th stateside anniversary. Keep that moon away from us! :-)

And now, I'm honored to turn over the second half of the Majora's Mask celebration to Hudak, who literally told me LXE's "Song of Healing" arrangement was "one of the best things I've heard in years", a huge compliment from such a creative sound designer...