[UPDATE] Cue’s Multitrack Madness and Odd Song Emporium
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Hello everybody! I’m Cue, your average rhythm game fan turned musician, turned RBN author, turned custom author. Where I’m from or who I am isn’t really important though, you’re here to see what the haps is with these skittles placed to music, yes? Well, here’s the deal, yo: (TL;DR warning.)
I’m a little bit…different from your normal custom author and ‘hardcore’ Rock Band fan. Typically I’ve noticed that many RB fans-turned-custom authors are geared more towards the difficult side of the spectrum, the toughest songs not yet tackled by Guitar Hero, Rock Band or the RBN. I used to be the same way, but as I evolved as a musician on my own works, I tended to find more enjoyment in the musical side of things. For example, I’d prefer to play a ‘boring’ song that I find sounds great (ex. E-Pro by Beck) than a typically insane one with a billion-jillion notes-per-second. I’m there for the musical journey, not the difficulty, I guess! That’s not to say I find any problem with the other way of doing it, or that insane instrumentation isn’t musical, it’s just not how I’m geared to work I suppose.
Why do I mention all of that? Well, it’s because I tend to author songs that I find enjoyable to listen to, regardless of the overall difficulty. Often my songs won’t reach the nightmare tier, but will sit comfortably in the moderate or challenging spectrum. I usually author the lower difficulties in all of my customs as well, since most of the friends I play with aren’t “expert-inclined”. Gotta look out for the medium rockers, y’know?
Back when Rock Band and Guitar Hero were in their hayday, and I was beginning as a musician, one of my favorite things about the games were the fact that they used multitrack stems in them. On my own songs it was always so fun for me to figure out what would be the “optimal” guitar part for a hypothetical Rock Band or Guitar Hero note track, and mix the song accordingly down into stems for it. Imagine my joys when I actually had to do that for my songs in RBN! Getting to work with other artist’s songs and bring out previously unheard instrument parts was my favorite part of that whole experience, as well as remixing in endings for songs that originally faded out. Gosh, the nostalgia…!
Why do you bore us so with this story of years passed, Cue? Well, once again it’s important to the topic at hand my fellow plastic instrumentalists! The customs I make often have at least partial multitracks, but usually sway towards the full multitrack experience. I’ve got my ways of acquiring the stems to many songs that most wouldn’t even think of putting in the game, and have amassed a large library of stems to many of my favorite tracks, just to play around with them or listen to the intricacies of each instrument.
TL;DR: Cue is a weirdo who digs easier tracks and has the stems for a large portion of the customs he intends to release.
So here I am, making this topic. Lately I’ve been focusing on video game music since that’s what the friends that play Rock Band/Phase Shift with me request and are into, and also it’s largely untapped by Rock Band Network due to complicated licensing. I do have multitracks for most of the songs and whatnot as well. I’m a little bit of a newb when it comes to finding a reliable host for this kind of thing, so I’ve asked a friend of mine to help with the hosting.
Currently I’m working on:
Koji Kondo – Water (Dire Dire Docks) – Super Mario 64 Original Sound Track
Preview:
This is a slight edit of the song to highlight the playable pieces, have a proper ending, and make the track more enjoyable as a “Rock Band” experience. Due to that, should I list it as a “Re-Recording” from 2013 when the edit was made…?
Progress:
Drums: All Difficulties finished.
Bass: Expert finished.
Guitar: All Difficulties finished.
Keyboard: All Difficulties finished.
Pro Keys: Expert finished.
Vocals/Harmonies: N/A
Venue: Is it customary to have a finished venue before considering a project “complete”? Usually I don’t bother too much with venues for customs as I mostly play them in Phase Shift.
Issues:
What the heck genre should I list this as?! Nothing seems to fit, I have it listed as Chiptune since it uses an N64 chip to create the sounds I suppose, but that doesn’t feel right…
Hideki Naganuma – Bomber Barbara – Sonic Rush: Original Groove Rush
Audio Preview:
(The track has been remixed to include a proper ending and an additional chorus)
Progress:
Drums: NOPE.
Bass: Expert is finished, no OD or animations yet.
Guitar: All difficulties finished.
Keyboard: Expert/Hard are finished, no OD or animations yet.
Pro Keys: Nothing yet.
Vocals/Harmonies: Not sure if I’m going to do the vocals to this, honestly.
Venue: Nothing yet.
Issues:
THE DRUMS. There are 3 layers of beats plastered ontop of one another to create a flurry of insane drums that I just can’t figure out how to author correctly. In addition, one of the drum stems I received has some popping going on in it, distorting it just a bit. Might be fixable. Trying to get a good feel on the keyboard note placement right now as well, so I’ve been messing around with different gem combos to make sure to make it playable without being hand-cramp’y, but alas to keep the track accurate and consistent, I’ve run into issues with that.
…Also figuring out how to author the electronically stuttered vocals has been a fun experience, haha.
I’m working on other things as well, but they’ve been on and off, or I don’t have anything to show for it right now. Speaking of that, I’m short a capture card that works and would love to present preview videos of these tracks, but alas my computer doesn’t like to agree with me when it comes to capturing video from REAPER, oftentimes it won’t capture the audio… What to do, what to do…
But indeed. There’s my contribution for now! I’ll try to keep this as updated as possible and provide some finished oddball tracks if you guys are interested in my weird choices! At the very least, it’s fun to play around with stems, right? Haha! After I’ve gotten some rest I should see about tidying up some of the .RPP files? My apologies for the lack of them right now…!
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