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Woo woo! Thanks! I won't be able to run the next tune contest so if anyone wants to step to the plate by all means.

Thanks. What kind of games are you talking about?

Heeey, this is right up my alley. I'm gonna post a couple since this is the first time the contest has meshed with my own interests so strongly, but just assume the first one I post is my actual entry.

Besaid Island from FFX: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxJE6SSX-aw
My arrangement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3g591tLJ6c

Or if that was a little too abstract

The Ballad of Freddy Pharkas from Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRSUoN6Jdt0
My arrangement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElAKtkQDQI8&hd=1

So those were two that I think give an idea of the style I play in...though if I were to have to choose my FAVORITE game song it would have to be this one

Star Light Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mqmN6mw4R8
My arrangement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otBqOkdsl0Q

Well, I've listened to both entries and they are both fantastic.

If I were to choose one that best expresses the theme, I am going to go with bicilotti. While I think Woltaire's is more musically challenging and engaging, I feel like bicilotti's brings for a vision of ice and snow and cold more directly.

So, congratualions bicilotti!   

It's that time of year, where you huddle around the fire drinking hot chocolate and trying to keep warm.

The theme of this tune contest is: Winter.

Come up with a piece of music that will make me shiver. You can write about the blustering snow of a blizzard, the icey stillness of a snowed in morning. You can write about Christmas and santa and all the joys that come at this time of year. It's completely up to you.

It has to at least be 1 minute in length.

Any instruments and groupings are acceptable.

Any format is fine, be it midi, mp3, ogg, etc.

This might be a hard time of year with traveling and all that, so the deadline can be extended if requested.

Good luck!

yeah awesome job ptp, that fits the theme much much more than mine. great job.

I pictured fighting a giant, virtual, Shiva. Like flying through a virtual reality space and having to fight this enormous Shiva figure made out of points and light or whatever, kind of in the style of the game "Rez." I had only just brought in some Sitars before I ran out of time. Ah well.

http://www.gametabs.net/files/user/Kabukibear/shiva.mp3

Well, Ogon, it looks like you win. Sorry for lack of competition. If I ever do another one I'll have to come up with a better theme.

Anyone else planning on entering? No one likes winning by default. XP

EDIT: I AM NOT ENTERING BUT I had a request to post a few examples of the sort of thing I'm looking for. They'll be at the bottom of this post. Feel free to completely ignore them if you want!

I love arrangements. I love how familiar, but also how new and surprising they can be. Even though it's based on something already written, there are always ways to express your own voice and your own ideas in the context of the music that's there.

So that is your task. I want you to arrange a piece of music, with a few stipulations, of course.

- You may base your arrangement on any piece, even another arrangement.

- Your arrangement must be at least 1 minute in length.

- You may NOT use MORE than 20 measures of music to be arranged from. This means you will have to either use a very short piece, or a section of a larger work. How you extend the piece is up to you but never forget that this is an arrangement contest as well as a composition contest, meaning that what I am going to be looking at is how you creatively arrange the piece you're using in addition to what you add of your own. Your composing shouldn't overshadow the piece you're arranging, only enhance it.

- Whatever piece or section of music you choose, it must have a clearly definable melody. This means no taking a chord progression and just soloing over top of it. You can play around with the melody as you extend the piece, but I don't want an entirely original piece that uses just the bass line or something. Make your composing mesh with the style and feel of the original. Feel free to have extended sections that are entirely your composition, as long as they fit the feel of the piece. Just don't forget that your own composition is only half of this competition.

- You must share the original piece you are going to arrange. It doesn't have to be the exact version you will be basing your arrangement off of but I want to be able to compare your arrangement with something.

- If you think it will help, you can explain what you did (if the arrangement is very drastic.) I will probably be able to appreciate your work, but if you would like to explain more subtle things you've done, feel free. This won't count against you if you don't, however.

- Your arrangement can be in any form you'd like. There are no limitations on instrumentation, style, structure, etc. If you've ever wondered what some Lady Gaga would sound like as a string quartet, or maybe Hip-Hop J.S. Bach, now's your chance to shine.

That's it! Hope to hear some great arrangements!

============================================
These are just examples, not entries.

1. Donkey Kong level 1
Original piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMMXHZ5Aqdg
The music I am arranging starts at 0:35 and continues repeating the same 5 notes over and over. Hee hee!
Arrangement: "DK In Love"
http://two.xthost.info/kabukibear/Dk%20In%20Love.mp3

This one is a pretty liberal interpretation so I'll post something of an explanation. So, in the arrangement, the initial statement of the theme is in the accented notes at the beginning, note for note, with a few extra notes thrown in to make it slightly more interesting. After that the bass progresses down while still holding on to the rhytmic feel the theme presented and then finishes up with a little bit of my own writing to flesh out a bit of movement and drive the music back up to the original theme. Once the melody comes in you'll notice that the melody is actually the main theme, pushed up an octave and augmented so as to stretch the theme out into a melodic line while it accompanies itself in the rhytmic pattern you heard in the intro.

This moves into a slightly altered section where the rhythm is familiar, but the theme has now been moved up and augmented even further, allowing me to play around with some chords before each note of the theme appears. I eventually kick it into a fun little bridge that brings me back to the main theme. The reason I kept jumping back to the main theme was to provide a ground to the next severe altering of the theme. The next is the most of all in the piece, where it becomes almost unrecognizable, but the notes and order of notes are still there.

It ends with a recapitulation of the theme to draw in all the loose ends.

2. Amazing Grace
Original piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkLXOWimMY8
Arrangement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxU8NOcb1ts

This one is a little more straightfoward that the previous. I just played around with rhythms and harmony to change the feel of Amazing Grace from sad and somber to bouncy and light. Key change before the flute reclaims the theme for a little dramatic effect. The piano was fun to write for in this one.

3. The Kingdom of San d'Oria from FFXI
Original piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaGaGqejQqI
I use the section from 0:13-0:26 and 0:53-1:16ish

Arrangement: "While San d'Oria Sleeps"
http://user.xthost.info/kabukibear/WhileSandoriaSleeps.mp3

Sleepy intro, then go into the theme. From there my own stuff then back to the theme. Which moves into the music heard at 0:53 in the original. End with the same intro.

Awesome! Thanks so much! It was a lot of fun!

I'm gonna throw my lot in with Jon. It's easy to just vote for myself, but Jon's definitely sounds like something right out of a Sierra game so I can't not love it. XD

I call this "The Mad Man's Lament," because I pictured some insane scientist hunched over the body of his loved one in his lab trying to bring her back to life.

I just tried going for something sad but also a little disturbed. I'm not very fast at composing so I had to cut it short to make it in time but hopefully you'll get an idea of what I was going for. Thanks!

http://shutupload.com/dl/2b4d3ade8a15/

edit: nevermind I got it.

Sorry, I'm running a bit late! It's done, I just need to upload it. I'll have it done when I come home from college today, so a few hours if that's okay? Thanks!

Edit:

Here we go! Sorry about it being in MIDI, but I don't have any good string VSTs or anything.

(btw I wrote this about breaking up with my gf, which happened a few weeks ago. Walked in on her and another guy :/ Women, who needs 'em haha?)

YO, That mediafire link is setting off my virus shield. You wanna check that out?

Do acoustic guitars count as strings?

Eh, I think not in the sense that he was referring to. Don't make me whip out the classical!

This is one called Chasing Fireflies.
http://www.mediafire.com/?v8xnxa7sqp4ex04

It starts out with a a starless dusk sky and slowly pans down to a neighborhood. It slowly focuses a house on the edge of some woods, and then into the back yard. You see two children playing, a girl and a boy. (0:33)

A firefly appears and circles them, bobbing lazily around them. (1:06) It floats into the woods. The kids watch it for a moment and then run into the woods after it. (1:40)

They come across a clearing with the firefly in the center and just as they reach it it vanishes. (2:13)

Suddenly, the ground around them begins to light up. (2:15) It's a circle of tiny lights that beings to expand more and more until the entire clearing is full of light.

The lights, thousands and thousands of fireflies begin to take flight. (2:49) The children watch in amazement. They begin laughing and spinning with their eyes closed and hands outstretched in the sea of tiny twinkling lights.

Just as suddenly as it started, the lights go out. (3:23) The children open their eyes and they are alone in the clearing except for the single firefly. The sky is now full of stars. The firefly bobs once and then flies up into the sky as a new star appears. (3:43)

Hope you like it.

Anyone wanna step in? Or know how to contact ptp?

Heh, yeah that's why I asked...sometimes there can be a long delay between the next announcement. I thought I could help nudge it along.