Vandahlia - Ballblazer - Song of the Grid

1 other remix of Ballblazer

Yes, it's a pretty long remix as a few people have pointed out - but thank you LaLa for the objective review and constructive criticism!

I strive to improve, and I learn as I go.

So the question is: Why is this remix so long?
Well… Allow me to provide some remixing details.

First of all, here are some facts about the original music, taken from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballblazer):

Ballblazer's theme music, called Song of the Grid and heard between matches, was algorithmically generated, a technique designed by Lucasfilm Games team leader Peter Langston and called riffology. The lead melody is assembled from a predefined set of 32 eight-note melody fragments, or riffs, which are put together randomly by an algorithm that also makes choices on several parameters including how fast to play the riff, how loud to play it, when to omit or elide notes, when to insert a rhythmic break. The melody is accompanied by bassline, drums and chords, which are also assembled on the fly by a simplified version of the above approach. In effect the music plays forever, without repeating itself but without straying too far from the original theme.

I've honestly never heard about riffology before, and I thought it was interesting that such a thing was possible back in the 80s, so I decided to try and make a kind of minimal yet modernized Ballblazer theme remix with a few melodic additions of my own. Plus, I was in a jazzy kind of mood, so this is what happened… 😃

Not one of my better remixes perhaps, but the length of this particular remix is directly connected to the fact that I tried to stay as true to the original music as possible and include an accurate translation of the above menitoned rifflology.

If you listen to the original Ballblazer SID found in the High Voltage SID Collection, you'll be able to hear that the riffs do vary in sound and length every time the melody fades back in, so it's not really a short SID. It's goes on, and on, and on…

This remix contains four complete riffology parts, each one different, and all the notes for each SID channel as well as each riff segment were tracked completely by ear. No kind of automated note transcription tools were used - I don't use tools like that at all since it would take the fun out of the remixing process, so all my remixes are made using ears and hands only.

But anyhow, there you go. That's why it's a 7 minute remix. This is my nod to riffology. 😊

Cheers!