The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess "Midi's Lament" 3:54

After Thanksgiving most folks are lamenting overdoing it with the stuffing, but here at OCR were thankful for the overabundance of musical talent in the community! A perfect example of music to be grateful for: Treyt and Chimpazilla team up once again for their mutual love of The Legend of Zelda, in this case morphing "Midna's Lament" with a very un-general approach. ;-) This time around, Treyt kicked things off:

"----It keeps happening! I keep collaborating with Chimpa and I can't stop!----

----Don't send help ;)----

Twilight Princess was a special game for my brother and I, and the part of the game accompanied by "Midna's Lament" even moreso. The game came out when we were 12 and 14, respectively, and, between schooling at home or fixing up a project house my parents had bought, we spent a lot of time together playing through it.

We were a good team, with our own strengths making up for the other's weaknesses.

Now, nearly 20 years later, I find the same comparison in this project that takes me back to earlier days, yet speaks volumes about the paths we've walked to be here, where we are today. Chimpa's resourcefulness and creativity is a joy to experience firsthand, and her strengths in production and mastering help her take our collabs to the next level every single time.

I'm extremely happy with our latest remix, and I look forward to the next project we share."

I love that in the here and now, Treyt's also overjoyed in having a musical colleague that helps manifest his musical ideas and really ratchets up his creative output. And thinking back on ye olden vidya games, my twin brother and I played so many nostalgia titles together in the 8- and 16-bit days, with Nintendo was the lion's share of those, so even my cold, cold heart is warmed hearkening back to those bygone days of gaming. :-) Beyond her excitement at another successful team-up, Chimpazilla also shared her formative gaming memories:

"I'm happy to submit yet another Treytzilla collab, and this one is really something special. Treyt chose the "Midna" source and sent me an amazing initial WIP, and off we went. This one is HUGE. The soundscape is enormous, and the track boasts THREE completely unique (and, dare I say, incredible) drops!

As usual, Treyt is a joy to work with and he's so unbelievably talented. Looking through my files, I'm surprised at how few versions of the project I have, and how few masters I did. This means the production and mastering of the track were super-smooth. We each liked everything the other added and there were very few changes made; the track wrote itself almost effortlessly.

The "Midna" vocals were a collaborative effort. I found some perfect vocals, we each tweaked them a bit with some tools, and Treyt sequenced them into the piece. I think they are fabulous!

I completely forgot to mention what Twilight Princess means to me. It was the first video game I played all the way through, in 2007. My son and I played it together. He was only three at the time, but he already had serious gaming skills (the kid turns 21 next month, where did the time go!). The game is so dark and emotional and it holds a very special place in my heart. It was my favorite Zelda game for years, until Breath of the Wild (and eventually Tears of the Kingdom) took its place. I still hope Nintendo will port Twilight Princess for the Switch, I'd play it again in a heartbeat!

As I always say, there will be more Treytzilla collabs on the horizon, as we really enjoy working together and the results just keep getting better and better. We hope you enjoy "Midi's Lament" as much as we do!"

The same way we don't criticize people who find OCR these days as being "late", we'd never apply that to gaming either. The party's always going, so (as we've said before) "Welcome to the party, pal!" :-) Chimpa being delivered to the VGM scene after uniting with gaming as an adult has been a huge win for our collective ears, a sentiment implicit in prophetik music's effusive praise for this collab:

"opens with some really beautiful arpeggios with just a hint of flutter on them. the sfx and minimal percs help set the scene really nicely. things start to really kick at 0:40, and 0:54's initial hit is dark and foreboding and interesting. loads of stuff going on in there that's fun to catch. 1:23's the first real breakdown, and the vocal elements washing in the background behind the panned hats and other sweeps sound great. the entrance of the guitar to get it moving forward sounds great also - really nice intensification element. there's an offbeat keyboard in the background at 1:50ish that really enhances the head-bobbing funky feel that's going on there.

another big dropoff at 2:13, and the artists do a nice job keeping a rhythmic feel through a section with no percussion to keep it moving. 2:55 introduces some really interesting chromaticism to drive it forward into the big hit at 3:09 - love that. there's a big downbeat honk using what sounds like low brass that occurs few bars in this section [...]

there's one final big drop right before you'd expect it, and we get a melodic snippet to send us off.

what a ride! super fun approach. i really appreciate the ways that you subvert expectations, like by adding chromaticism at 2:55, or adding the guitar right before the big hit to amp up the energy at 1:46. really enjoyable track, another instant classic."

As Chimpa elaborated in the judging thread: ""Big downbeat honk using what sounds like low brass..." Just to clarify, this "honk" has a name, it is called a "braaam" and it is very common in EDM productions. It is indeed a low brass blast. And yes the braaams do sound like they've been heavily sidechained... and the reason for that is... they have been heavily sidechained! :D HONK HONK!" Fellow judge Hemophiliac kept the big honkin' kudos going, this time geared toward Treyt for his musical improvement:

"I've heard everything that Treyt has put together since he started submitting to OCR. This is by far the most mature and developed arrangement I've heard from him. This is an excellent example of being inspired by the source and expanding and developing it into your own thing. The departures from the source are well noted, but always come back to dancing around it and never fully stating the source melody in its entirety.

The sound design is excellent and production is immaculate.

This is great. I dunno what midi has to lament over, but my ears don't lament after listening to it!"

Yes, sir, what a nice smorgasbord o' sounds here! Without intending to mean that this was hugely unorthodox, I absolutely didn't expect anything along these lines, genre-wise. Excellent variations on the source tune alongside the time sig shift. Very dynamic! 3 collabs so far, 3 excellent end results for Treytzilla. :-)