Gaming (reggae) music

Gaming (Reggae) Music is a project that explores the different genres that developed from Reggae Music, such as Rock/Reggae, Dub Reggae, and Dance Hall, and use them to arrange three themes from three different video games to generate three arrangements that re-contextualized these piece and bring them closer to the idea of a popular product without leaving aside their video game essence. The themes we decided to use are part of the Official Sound Track (OST) of the games: Bajo Kazooie, Hollow Knight, and Castlevania II: Simon's Quest.

Click clock wood

Click Clock Wood is the name of the last stage in the video game Banjo Kazooie before the final boss fight. This stage has a particularity in that is divided into the four seasons that describe the weather during the year in the North and South hemispheres. Each season has its own variation of the theme Click Clock Wood and resembles perfectly each one of those weathers. For this arrangement, we decided to use the Winter Variation and create a musical piece based on the musical genre of Reggae with some Rock elements. The instrumentation of the piece resembles the standard instrumentation used by Reggae groups: Trumpet, Saxophones, Trombone, Bass, Piano, Guitar, and Drums. The final result is a very happy and layback track that keeps what makes the winter variation of the theme so memorable but at the same time, it adds that layback Reggae feels with some Rock/Reggae Drum patterns.

Hornet

Hornet is the name of one of the only few companions you have during Hollow Knight, the first game to be released by Team Cherry, an Indie Video Game Studio from Adelaide, South Australia. Her music and the music of the entire game has a unique Classical style that helps bring the world of Hollow Knight to life. When Christopher Larkin decided to create this OST, he wanted to make the Piano and the Cello the main instruments, and this gave the whole project a very warm and emotional aspect and sensation. This song, which is the musical theme of Hornet, was a challenge to arrange, mostly because adapting a Classical Musical Piece into a Dance Hall brought with it some issues that had to be resolved to create what we wanted. The instrumentation, the tempo, and the main riff had to be modified in a way that it could maintain the original idea while fitting perfectly into a musical genre that has nothing to do with the original one. The final result is one of the best arrangements that we have done and one of our favorite. The use of Electronic sound and instruments, mixed with everything makes the original piece great, resulting in a spectacular and very original piece that will take you back to Hollownest in a new, unique and exciting way.

bloody tears

Bloody Tears is one of the most iconic songs not only in the Castlevania series but also in the whole video game industry. This song debuted in  Castlevania II: Simon's Quest and since then has made an appearance in almost every Castlevania game in the franchise.  The song has a very characteristic melody and is one of the most recognizable musical pieces in video games. Since the song has had a lot of arrangements, we decided to work with the original one, which was composed using only chiptunes. This arrangement was not so difficult to develop and the song really adapts well to almost any musical genre. In this case, we decided to work with Dub, more specifically, Dub-Reggae which is a sub-genre of Reggae music. This genre consists predominantly of instrumental remixes of existing recordings and is achieved by significantly manipulating and reshaping the recordings, usually by removing the vocals from an existing music piece and emphasizing the drum and bass parts.