[Sygenysis]

Really glad that we were able to finish the full self-titled Dr. Mastermind album, which is the first full album that we’ve charted all the songs for, as well as my current C3 profile picture. A bit of a history lesson, I suppose, this was a Shrapnel Records project with a collaboration between Matt McCourt, most famously of the band Wild Dogs, from Oregon, the “Dr. Mastermind”, if you will, famous (and infamous as well) session drummer Deen Castronovo, also of Wild Dogs, and Kurt James, who took up guitar duties, and was meant to showcase his guitar playing. This was effectively a one-off album, in the same vain as the Cacophony albums and the other Shrapnel shred-a-thons, but featured Matt’s songwriting and vocals, which gives it a more distinct sound than the rest of the catalogue at the time, and has more opportunities to feature the other instruments, even though based on the difficulty values, guitar is the highlight.

 

Matt still plays the old music to this day, with a new live band that focuses on the Dr. Mastermind and Wild Dogs tracks, and everything he touches is gold, in my opinion, which I’d love to do more stuff that are a part of his many projects. I also had the good fortune to speak to him on Facebook, which honestly just reinforced in my mind how cool the man is. There’s one other studio album (non-compilation album) released under the Dr. Mastermind name with a completely different lineup, and a sound that’s more like hard rock, more akin to the track Haunted that we did, also with Matt performing.

 

These are some of the hardest guitar charts that I’ve ever made, and every song has at least one balls to the wall guitar solo, but also have extremely short track times, with the two we previously released, and now updated, The Villa (2631), and I Don’t Wanna Die being the only exceptions, which are also the least formulaic of the rest of the songs. Most of them fit the same sort of song structure, like intro drum fiesta, opening guitar solo, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, main guitar solo, chorus, then outro solo, then big rock ending, with a bit of variation, but are mostly pretty similar.

 

All the songs are amazing, in my opinion, and work together and form what I think is my favorite album of all time, although the not-so-interesting vocals, seemingly overly-similar sounding songs, and relentless speed/difficulty might be a turn off for some people. I thought Shocktober was a perfect opportunity to get the full album done, as most of the songs fit the mood quite well.

 

Seriously, these songs are all ridiculous on guitar, but my personal recommendations would be Domination, Man of the Year, Black Leather Maniac, (easiest song on the album by far) as those three have the most interesting parts to me, but I Don’t Wanna Die and The Villa (2631), despite their difficulty, on drums and guitar, respectively, would fall under what I’d recommend as well, but if only for sheer difficulty.

 

Don’t feel obligated to check these tracks out, but if you want a challenge, I’d absolutely recommend every song!

[Sygenysis]

I’ll always recommend the ATV Offroad Fury series of games music (especially considering we’ve done a ton of songs off of the first two games’ soundtracks):

 

From the first game: Alice in Chains – Them Bones, Primus – Jerry Was a Race Car Driver, Soundgarden – Spoonman, Bender – Superfly

 

From the second: Cypress Hill – Amplified, Deadsy – The Key to Gramercy Park, Lostprophets – Shinobi vs. Dragon Ninja, Mekon – What’s Goin’ On?

[Sygenysis]

Glad to have made it on the list! I’d rather not vote for something that Nunchuck or I did to start things off, so my first vote goes to Chicago – I’m a Man [AJFOne23].

[Sygenysis]

It’s been a little over a year since I last updated this thread, I guess annual updates sound good? I added every song that I’ve got at least one completed instrument (has everything charted up to the day this reply was made) on to the main post, and added what instruments every song has, as well. I’m open to collaborations and conversions of this stuff still, and can supply any of it if PM’d (please note that every song, unless converted, is only available for Phase Shift format, so only has a notes.mid and audio file).

 

Besides that, Nunchuck and I are working on getting pitched vocal/harmony upgrades done, as well as chart fixes for the songs that need them, (and believe me, there’s a lot) but that’s neither here nor there at the moment, so I’ll come up with a compiled list of which already released songs need what at a later date. For now, this thread just has whatever songs that are in my Frets on Fire thread and aren’t yet full band.

[Sygenysis]

Haven’t made a post here in a while about the songs, so here goes for this week’s stuff. Even if you’re not a Kid Rock fan, his music has a lot of focus on guitar, and all three songs we did are pretty damn fun on it as a result. Fuck Off is mostly riffs that repeat, but Cowboy has a lot of improv guitar stuff that goes from the third verse to the end of the song, and on Keys, has some really fast trills in its own solo. All Summer Long also has a fairly long solo with some pretty tricky parts, and the less obvious Skynyrd influence of Free Bird comes through with some of the patterns played.

 

For the bonus tracks, I heard Don’t Fear the Winter last week looking for a song by Rage for a FoF.net project, and was hooked on it ever since. It’s pretty damn catchy, with its constant key changes in the verses, and a great chorus, as well as two pretty fast solos, nearly back to back.

 

Street Rock’n Roller is a song we released a few years ago, and is some great NWOBHM-influenced heavy metal with fantastic guitar work, with some really fast flourishes before every verse, and a really fast solo, complete with syncopated riffs and beats on every instrument. Vocals are quite fun on both of the bonus tracks, and a decent challenge on both, but I’m not the greatest judge of vocal difficulties, so they might be a little bit overtiered. Regardless, everything should be pretty good to play.

[Sygenysis]

Not going to say that i just spent the last half hour looking at the Decibel Hall of Fame list and cross-examining Wikipedia to see how many albums each artist had, because that’d be kind of pathetic, but my guess is Slip by Quicksand.

[Sygenysis]

Just to clarify, but the now-Single Version of Purple Rain is completely unchanged besides its title, but the full length version has instrumental changes to everything in the Single Version parts (everything before the solo, basically). Kick Out the Jams also uses the C3 version’s lead vocals as a base, but appropriate changes were made where necessary, so pitches are mostly the same, but the track isn’t identical. The harmonies done on it differ from the re-recording, and were done from scratch, along with all the other instruments on the song. The bass track on it is tiered correctly, and surprisingly challenging, with some fast strumming flourishes and lots of chords; for some reason, the re-recording version isn’t as nearly as hard on bass.

[Sygenysis]

Here’s Alice Cooper – Welcome to My Nightmare, just not posted in the database. Mostly just a convert of the GH DLC, with fixed drums, can’t comment on any other specifics on it.

 

I have Savatage – 24 Hours Ago and Symphony X – The Lords of Chaos (technically on Iconoclast) started already, with 24 Hours Ago being fairly close to done.

[Sygenysis]

You’re right, Sunburnt Love will get fixed in the morning.

[Sygenysis]

Everything this week is a song that I’ve wanted a ton for a while now. Half of them are songs from when I grew up, and the other half are songs that I only heard recently, but felt like charting, anyway.

 

Roses, Switch, and Smash Sumthin’ make up a sort of early 2000’s hip-hop pack. Switch didn’t end up being as instrumentally involved as I originally thought, so it’s a bit bare, but it has full harms, regardless. Roses is Roses, which I think is probably the highlight from the Speakerbox/Love Below album, at least to me. It’s not too instrumentally involved, and doesn’t have harms, but has decent variation on bass, and keys have the only solo in the song. Smash Sumthin’ has a break-beat drum rhythm, and is pretty tricky to play, and guitar is the other instrument that has any kick to it on the song.

 

Fast Car is a classic folk rock song that sounds way ahead of its time. There’s not too much instrumental variation on it, besides drums, which have some ghost note stuff all throughout the verses, and vocals, which are super fun to play, and pretty challenging, as well.

 

Little Willy is a Sweet classic, which I did my best on harms for. The instruments are pretty simple, besides drums, which have some pedal and fill shenanigans going on, and a disco flip section for good measure.

 

Down from the Sky is the last planned song that we did, and has great instruments, and some good challenge for every instrument. Vocals and harms are surprisingly fun on it, even though there’s some harsh vocal sections with no pitches. Drums are pretty tricky, with the tom sections near the middle and end of the song, and some good 2x bass rhythms to play, as well. Guitar has a tricky solo, and another mini-solo near the end.

 

For the two bonus songs, Sin was a song that I did for a few different FoF.net projects. All of the instruments are challenging on it, and it’s probably my favorite song off of the album. Guitar has two great solos, the first being a super fast sweeping showcase, and the second one being an awesome melodic and tremolo strumming solo. Drums are extremely fun on it, as well, with some fast fills and a main punk rock-type beat. Pretty catchy, too, if I must say so myself.

 

The last song is Malukah – Reignite, which is a Mass Effect tribute song from an artist whose work has been featured in a ton of video games. She has a great voice, and the song takes a lot of motifs from other works in the ME series. Only has guitar and keys, which are both pretty easy, so vocals is the highlight on it, I’d say.

 

I hope that you enjoy this birthday gift, even though it’s mostly to myself, I’ll admit. Regardless, I wanted to do something a bit different for my big day, and I hope that you guys enjoy these!

[Sygenysis]

Hey there, with the re-release (as of two minutes ago) of our upgrade for …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – Open Doors, I thought I’d follow up with an announcement that I’ve been planning on making for a while. I’d say that this is important to the way that the Funhouse will operate in the near future, and I hope that it doesn’t go ignored.

 

Well, here goes, to summarize, I haven’t been feeling great about charting for the past year or so, I haven’t had too many ideas for songs for us to do, and I’ve had to work full time for a good half of the year. On that note, hats off to everyone who works and still manages to find time to work on authoring, you’re the unsung heroes of the site, for sure. However, I’m not good at managing my time at all, and adhering to a work schedule, then coming back to our authoring schedule feels like I’m working two jobs, and the stress piles up.

 

Basically, what I’m saying is, is that I’m “retiring”, in quotes, because I don’t think I could stop charting music if I tried. This was a purely personal decision, and Nunchuck has my full support. It’s just that I’ve just had so many other personal projects I wanted to do, but I have no sense of time going into them, on top of that, I have to spend a certain amount of time working on songs every day, which really disrupts the flow and leaves me leading mostly unproductive days when I’m off work.

 

Just so there’s no confusion, Funhouse releases will continue, but we’ll be cutting down the amount of planned songs each week from 6 to 3. If you haven’t noticed, we’ve been slowly re-releasing our songs to include pitched vocals and harmonies. I plan to do it for all of our songs, and make appropriate changes to all instruments, where needed. This stems from how myself, too; I’m always being critical of our customs, and doing customs as fast as we do leaves a lot of room for errors to come up. There’s some songs that I’m definitely not proud of in their current state, and I’ve always felt insecure about releasing songs with unpitched vocals. Additionally, i want to work on making my off-site work from FoF.net full band and available on this site, because making all my stuff full band was always my mission, but with 6 songs per week, there was never really too much time to work on them.

 

The changes to the Funhouse will go in effect on the release of March 4th. We don’t want any of the holidays/events/milestones in the months of January and February to be affected by this change, so that will be the day we start releasing 3 (again, planned) songs per week.

 

Sorry for the master’s thesis wall of text, but I feel like it’s necessary. The Funhouse is hardly over, we’re basically just under new management, and I hope that you’ll like what we have in store in these coming weeks and for however long we go ’til.

[Sygenysis]

I’ve got a feeling that #2 is I Mother Earth – Another Sunday, great band, good song.

[Sygenysis]

There’s something sort of related to this that I’m guilty of, actually. There’s a song that Nunchuck posted in the database that received either a 1 or 2 star rating that I thought was pretty unjustified, so I rated it 5 stars to compensate. I don’t even remember the song, but it’s on record, probably, unless reviews for songs that you’re listed as a contributing author for don’t count and it was changed back. Obviously not a great thing to do, so my apologies for doing it.

 

Also, I don’t think that I’ve rated anything 1 stars, but in case I did, I’m ready to be publicly shamed.

[Sygenysis]

Any charting decisions are on me, and I opted to keep the drums on Montego Bay simple, and the “bass” you hear is some sort of horn, maybe tuba, which we could’ve charted to the bass part, but I chose not to. I prefer realism over everything, as far as charting whichever instrument goes in the mix, and I’m sure that some people would’ve disagreed.

 

I’m also listening to the Phase Shift conversion of Crazy for You as I’m typing this, which uses the CON audio as a base, and there’s no skips or anything at all.

[Sygenysis]

Elva is one of my favorite albums, so we’ll end up doing more songs off of it, for sure.

[Author]

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