Speaking of Zelda, here's a bit more orchestrated and extended play on a piece from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. This is a game you either love or hate. I happen to love it. For its time, it was rather bold and innovative, unlike the more recent titles in the series that are just another rehash of the games that came before.
On the music side, I changed the lead wave to trumpet. Initially when editing in Anvil, I used a combination of percussive organ with timpani with the bass wave, then added a buzz style bass synth on Cakewalk.For the chordal arpeggiated wave, a harp synth seemed appropriate. The original MIDI had no drums, so I added a fairly basic trap set rhythm that follows the bass line. The combination of bass drum, timpani, buzz bass, and percussive organ are what gives the sound that's like an orchestra hit, just not as one synth, which I really like in a composition. Yes, you can 'cheat' and use an orchestral hit synth in a piece, and it will save space and time of having to put in the layers for one manually, but this piece wasn't really that demanding to need to cut any corners on the layering. Plus it's fun to do the laying and feels so rewarding when you can hear the hits that organically fall into place because of the layering. Other than that, the extended play comes from giving a little more time for the bass, rhythm, and arpeggiation to build up to the trumpet's melody. Then there was the drop of the layers to leave the trumped 'naked' and out in the open before returning, first to the harp's arpeggiation, then the bass and percussive organ, adding back in the timpani and trap set, and one last play of the trumpet's melody to cap things off at the end.
Reviving these MIDI pieces, and adding a bit of re-arrangement of the synths and layers, is part of the fun for me. It gives me an appreciation for the initial composers that created the music, as well as for those musical fan composers that made the MIDI sequences. I make the best efforts possible to learn who the original composer is, and name them below for others that might be interested in the people that were behind the scenes creating the music that made some of these games so iconic. Also enjoyable is updating the synths from their original sounds made on the respective console they were composing for. It ought to be appreciated how difficult it could be to make game music on the NES, and especially to make it sound good and become so memorable. That one can translate them to more modern synths today is a tribute to, not only the genius of what was made then on a minimal amount of musical resource, that it can be revived and arranged for more realistic instruments today. It's also a tribute to MIDI music, and showing how it remains a vital part of composing music even today.
I found this MIDI here: https://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/comments/3ajwe4/the_largest_midi_collection_on_the_internet/
The original composer for the song is Akito Nakatsuka.
Software Used:
For Music:
Anvil Studio 64, (Current Version 2019.10.02 64-bit) Copyright © 1997-2019 Willow Software, http://www.anvilstudio.com/
Cakewalk by BandLab (Version 2020.01 BUILD 28, 64 bit)
Copyright © 2020 BandLab
Audacity 2019.3.1 64-bit
copyright © 1999-2019 Audacity Team.
Audacity is a registered trademark of Dominic Mazzoni
http://www.audacityteam.org/
For Picture:
Paint.NET (Current Version: 4.2.10).
Copyright © 2020 dotPDN LLC, Rick Brewster, and contributors -
Official website: http://www.getpaint.net/
For Movie Compilation:
OpenShot Video Editor 2.4.1 .
Copyright 2008 - 2018 by OpenShot Studios, LLC
https://www.openshot.org/
