Topic: Attn Wii Music Fans!

I definitely prefer the new one. I think the song benefits greatly from the openness of this drum in lieu of the rock set.

If you sent it to me, I didn't get it either, Chicken. (Hence my silly reply.)

Alright...I guess it didn't go through then. I'll hook up the Wii shortly and try it again.

I got it this time -- twice, in fact, so maybe that other one was out there but hadn't shown up for me yet. Nice work! I've always found SMB to be one of the hardest songs in the set to bend past the original, for I can always hear the Mario undercurrent no matter how much I obfuscate; but here, it would seem that your rhythmic alteration made a real change in its feel possible. I like the bits with the galactic guitar. As usual, the whole vibe of it is unmistakably yours; we each have our styles it would seem.

A had a similar problem with Chariots of Fire, always hearing that damn overbearing chord progression underneath anything, so the one Adam and I were talking about was actually made possible by just shifting everything half a measure, which made the chord progression an entirely different beast, and enabled the powerful middle section to ring out over some dissonance. I didn't load yours into the editor yet to see what sort of rhythmic changes you made, but it sounds like they were more fundamental than that.

I've been out of town all weekend so I have no idea what you guys are talking about. You'll have to send me this stuff if you haven't already. Should be getting back into it tomorrow though--I'm going to try to do a "Videotape" inspired song (Wario will know what I'm talking about) with a piano chord and an increasingly complicated drum beat.

And Adam, I need your code. I'll try to put my code in my Sig. If you do the same it will be easier for all who haven't registered you yet.

Oh and Chicken, have you listened to any of the stuff I sent you? Just wondering what you thought.

8132-6694-3602-2375. What's yours? I can't remember if I added you or not already. Now that I own the game, I guess I ought to put it in my signature, actually.

@Kid_A

I'll certainly be interested in hearing your Videotape attempt. Which version of that song do you prefer? They played it differently during their live tour when I saw them, prior to the album's release, and I was a bit disappointed with the album cut. The little soft drum rolls aren't as dynamic as the drums they did live (here, for example), particularly at the end of the song, which has a feeling of a complete shift in rhythm in the live version.

I sent you two versions of the video I was talking to Adam about, which only differ in their percussion. Sounds like I'm going to get rid of the first and consider the second my completed cut.

Hang on. I'm catching up on all the Late Night with Conan O'Brien's that I missed when I was gone. I'll have it in my sig before I go to bed hopefully

Not sure if you saw this news item, but you could catch up on Conan on your Wii, if you install Playon and use it to access Hulu.

At first I was with you on preferring the 2006 version which your talking about. However, after listening to the album version a bunch, and seeing them play it live last year on the In Rainbows tour I now vastly preferr the album version. I'm going for something similar to the album version on my next Wii Music track (I'm interested in trying to do something similar to the percussion. You know the drum roll sounding bit?).

Here's a REALLY good live verison of Videotape (the best version of the song IMO)--this is what I'm going for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlHHMPT-XmY

You know that video link I posted up there? Well I command all of you to listen to it. Tell me that's not the most insanely beautiful song you've ever heard.

Definitely not the most insanely beautiful song I've ever heard, haha, but I very much liked it nonetheless! If pressed for a quick answer, I'd nominate Sigur Ros's Staralfur for most insanely beautiful song, but I might choose better if I thought about it longer.

I've always liked Radiohead, but the only CD I ever got was the one with There, There, and I got tired of that album pretty quickly, so I never got any of the others. Every time I hear one of their songs on Youtube or wherever, I get the impression I just picked the wrong CD.

I'd go with In Rainbows or OK Computer or The Bends if you're looking to get into Radiohead.
I tried experimenting with that Videotape idea, but I just wasn't feeling it tonight. I'll try again tomorrow.

Anyway, my Wii Number is 7234-3284-7284-1045
I'll register you now.

Just watched Wario and Chicken's latest stuff. I don't know how you come up with that brilliant stuff, guys. Seriously. How do you get it to sound so...musical? Whenever I try to create my own tempo and play a totally different song, I can never get it to sound coherant. What's the secret?

Thanks guys! I do intend to give it a better run-through at some point, but I don't know if I can. I tried to re-record the bass (as it got sloppy toward the end) but I couldn't get the same notes out of it the next time through. I guess I just got lucky that when I was swinging the Wiimote, it happened to trigger the exact notes I wanted, even if I was slightly off-beat.

But maybe I'll try again. It was a fun experiment. I really like the opening section, leading up to the first chorus.

Regarding Kid_A's question: yeah, it's pretty tough to get it to sound coherent, and sometimes, try as I might, I can't. But if you experiment long enough, you'll stumble on to a happy accident, and you can always build off of that. All of my favorite tracks I've made were happy accidents that blossomed into something much better than I could have planned. But it's very discouraging when you try five or six experiments in a row, and the only accidents you get are unhappy ones. Which is basically where I am right now...

When I play with the song's time signature / measure, I usually do so in such a way so that it still maps in some consistent way to the original measure: I might just shift every measure over a couple of beats so that my measure run from beats 3 through 2 of the originals, or I might slow down the original but cram in 3 measures for every two, etc. That way, any melodic motif I come up with can actually be repeated, because the notes will fall in an unusual but consistent way within the original score that determines each note; it also means that I can map to some alteration of the original chord progression, rather than giving that up to randomness. That's what I did with my latest one, Chariots of Fire; that little repeating melodic bit on the violin is only possible by shifting the measures that way.

If I try just leaving the original behind completely and not mapping to it in any consistent way, it's more difficult to establish some sort of continuity, etc. But that's just my way of doing it; I believe Chicken is interested in going a bit further away from the original.

Also: Kid A, your newest recording is wonderful; once again you've teased out a very nice pattern from the chord arpeggio, and the percussion is incredible. Regarding Videotape, I do greatly enjoy the Basement version (that entire concert is fantastic), and it does make me more amenable to the album cut the more I listen to it... I still feel like something was lost from the live version, particularly where I want it to pick up a bit at the end instead of just trailing off. But I look forward to seeing you try something with it--those rolls would be pretty tough in this game.

(By the way, Kid A, you're supposed to pick which version of that song I keep--the one with the drum set or the one with just the big bass drum. Probably the latter is better... but I might try a third variation eventually.)

I haven't started a new song yet, but when I rented it, my first two songs somehow managed to be happy accidents, and nothing else I tried afterwards for the remainder of the rental period managed to be half as good. The game probably was not intended to have the songs broken to our will in this way (well, in the way Chicken does, and I try to emulate), so it can be hard to control the results. When you do get a good end product though, it's worth all the desperate waggling.

I added you to my Wii friends, by the way, Kid A. I think we both have to log into Wii Music before we can send videos though, so I'll have to send you some later on. Hopefully I'll have something new to show by then, too, though I have approximately a bazillion games to play right now (mostly VC), so no telling.

There is that, yes, but there's also the fact that you're probably much, much, much more musically-minded than I am. When I learned to play (first guitar, then piano, with harmonica, ocarina, and a few other oddities somewhere in between) I could only ever learn "by ear." Books didn't help, tutors didn't help, even a college course didn't help. I just don't have a mind for theory, and I end up getting frustrated.

I do just fine on my own (nothing brilliant, but always serviceable at least), but I don't have the vocabulary or the theory to get any further than that. And I think it shows in our compositions here, Wario...mine is all seat-of-the-pants, laid-back groove stuff, and yours has an obvious and deliberate structure.

We're like Felix and Oscar, only we don't live together, and we play too many video games.

You and BB King. The best part of U2's Rattle and Hum is when they're talking with BB backstage before going out to play When Love Came to Town and they're talking about keys and such and he tells them he can't read music so just play and he'll come in as needed to which they look at him with stunned expressions!

I do love music theory--the downside is indeed that I have never felt that I'm all that good with pure originality, ie. I can only achieve anything interesting when I'm explicitly thinking about the structure and other matters. Back when I used to play guitar or keyboard with others more (even fiery electric guitar with friends back in undergrad, something I left behind ages ago), I could come up with some great lines technically but I could never just close my eyes and play, instead it was always a matter of racing thoughts almost like a puzzle game... "oh, the next chord is a hinge to switch the emphasis back to the relative minor, so I should run through notes X and Y" and so forth. That works great for analysis, but in performance you can only get so far without the fundamental creative spark or melodic gift.

Also, we already have a QFT for Adam's remark about experimenting with Philzo cheerleaders... but this is QFT2, if you ask me:

We're like Felix and Oscar, only we don't live together, and we play too many video games.

@Wario
I like your Chariots of Fire with the balance board drums the most.The percussion in that one is much more interesting IMO.