What better way to release some new music than this – a remix of one of my favorite rock themes.  Video game battle themes have moved away from orchestral themes in recent years, opting instead to use a lot more guitars and drums.

Thus we have the newly remixed Defiance.  Soundfonts have been used to render the entire song, and a new intro lends itself more to classic RPG boss battle themes.  The end of the song has also been remixed, including more than 60 seconds of new material.  This remix originally appeared in the TGP/TLA project of 2000-2001, but I’ve never released it online.

So here you go!  Enjoy the new tune, and if you’d like to compare it to its predecessor, the old Defiance theme is available here:

http://www.tannerhelland.com/music/defiance/

After reading Eragon by Christopher Paolini, I was struck by the American-ness of a teenager making the New York Times Bestseller list with his first novel.  If that’s not living the “American Dream,” I don’t know what is.

Anyway, the book is quite good and I am very impressed by Chris’s accomplishment.  So in honor of him and his first novel, I’ve written a piano tribute to my two favorite parts of the book: the world of Alagaesia and the protagonist Eragon.  This piano piece begins and ends with an Alagaesian theme while the middle section is a tribute to Eragon.  I hope it does both justice.

This was recorded off my old Roland HP-30006 keyboard and synthesized via a very nice piano soundfont.  A live recording would fix a lot of the volume and velocity woes (keyboards emphasize certain notes funnily), but this will do until I can afford a Yamaha Disklavier…  ;)

(Originally posted on THIS 1.0 on 24 Aug 2006)

Note: The original “Faith” can be found here: http://www.tannerhelland.com/music/song-faith/

I’ve played with many ideas for adding a melody to “Faith’s” original simple vi-IV-I-V (or i-VI-III-VII in natural minor) progression, but invariably none of them were epic enough to match the scope and majesty of the original arrangement.  Eventually I settled on a couple ideas that I liked, so I decided to arrange the song in a more peaceful, quiet setting.  Thus we get “Faith’s” Love Remix.

The key to writing a good remix is to maintain enough of the original that it sounds familiar, but to add enough new/changed material that it’s not just a rip-off variation.  I wanted this to be a literal “re-mixing” of the original “Faith” theme and I’m pleased with how it turned out.  Nothing spectacularly technical here – just some simple arrangements of a couple simple themes.  Nothing as majestic as the original, but – then again – a sequel never is, eh?

(Originally posted on THIS 1.0 on 25 Apr 2005)

DragonFyre was the second composer working on the score of the legendary TGP/TLA VBRPG project.  His music has a crazy ambient vibe to it (something foreign to my traditional line of composition) so I wanted to take one of his songs and rework it in classic Helland style.  ”White Knights” seemed the best choice as it was one of DragonFyre’s more thematic songs.

I retained the drums from the original mix but almost everything else has been modified (and the only reason I kept the drums is because at the time, I didn’t have software that could imitate that kind of velocity shift).  I really enjoy the new countermelodies in the final bars of the song.

This piece still has a strange feel to it – eerie but soothing, distant but imminent.  I enjoy DragonFyre’s work and it was a treat to fiddle with one of his compositions.

(Originally posted on THIS 1.0 on 24 Apr 2005)

Although I’ve never played any of the Castlevania games (shame on me), I’ve long been a fan of their stellar soundtracks.  So it seemed appropriate to contribute a modernized remix in honor of a series of great, great music.

“Bloody Tears” is one of my favorite Castlevania MIDIs and although I didn’t write this song (full composition credit goes to the Konami Kukeica Club) or sequence this particular arrangement (Ricoberto Dones deserves full credit for that), I did arrange the instruments and fill out much of the accompaniment. I don’t know how this song sounds in the actual Castlevania II game, but this remix is pretty loud…

Hope you like it, and kudos to Kenichi Matsubara, Masahiro Ikariko, Kazuhiko Uehara, and T-San for their brilliant original rendition.