Tribute to Camel

I finally forced myself to finish the Camel tribute I've been working on. Here's the link:

http://8bitcollective.com/members/arise_shine/

And here's some background:

The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was a video game console that gained worldwide popularity in the latter half of the 80's into the 90's, well-known for "classic" games like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. Most of you probably already know that. The system brought many innovations into the video game world, including graphics, gameplay, and sound. It was one of the first systems to feature actual musical "soundtracks" for most games. Musical themes from these games became ingrained in the consciousness of millions of video game freaks like myself.

Camel is a band whose heyday was in the mid-70's at the tail end of the British progressive rock "scene." They played a melodic kind of rock, sometimes rockin', sometimes mellow, sometimes goofy, sometimes intricately composed, sometimes jammin' ... often all in the space of one album. My favorite album of theirs is 1976's Moonmadness, which showcases some of the best of the band's composition and playing.

Eventually, someone had the brilliant idea of doing a rock band that plays video game music. One of my favorite bands, Minibosses, has done this to near-perfection. Parallel to that, someone else got the brilliant idea of composing new music for old video game systems. Thus the "chiptunes" "scene" was born.

As a long-time hobbyist musician, I've dabbled in computer-aided music composition, and I was intrigued by this whole thing. I discovered a program called FamiTracker created specifically for the purpose of composing music for the NES, and I just had to give it a try! One of the first things I tried to do was the opening melody from Camel's "Song Within a Song" (from Moonmadness). With user-submitted tablature and MIDI files as a guide, I eventually did the whole song, and I was quite pleased with the result. I listened to the whole album a few times, and I decided to rearrange the whole album in FamiTracker. And so I did! I call it "moonmadNES".

Most of it didn't take me that long to do. Looking at my profile page on 8bc, I finished the first 6 songs in 2-3 months. The last song, "Lunar Sea," is a 9-minute space-rock epic characterized by soaring melodic leads, spacy synth washes, and a persistent 5/8 beat. I completed most of it pretty quickly, but I got majorly stuck on the last part, which is a rip-roarin' full-speed guitar solo from Andy Latimer. I had a fairly easy time with the slower melodic leads with regular rhythmic timings, but that last guitar solo is filled with fast runs up, down, and all around the blues-rock scale. I had the tablature, which showed me exactly what notes are being played, but not the rhythmic timing. I was quickly dismayed that he didn't just use straight-forward 16th-note patterns (or any other multiple-of-2 patterns), but lots of free-flowing bursts of notes. I had to slow it down in Media Player and listen to it again and again, often taking an hour just to get one measure right. And even then, I had to just make stuff up for some of the faster runs. That's what took up the bulk of the last 5 months, that one freakin' guitar solo.

Anyway, so I procrastinated for a LONG time. But I forced myself to work on it one measure at a time (sometimes just one note at a time), and eventually I got 'er done. Well, it's not DONE done, but it's "done enough" for now. I plan on adding some "spiff" to the whole thing (mostly the drum parts), doing some "artwork" for it, doing a longer writeup, and "releasing" it in some fashion.

Thanks to everyone who helped and/or encouraged me on this thing: the uploaders of tablatures and/or MIDI files for many of the songs, fellow chiptune artists--mostly from The Shizz, the FamiTracker support board, the 8bc support board, and friends and farmily.

Despair

An analogy:

I am in an infernal valley of miserable, suffocating heat. The only way up is a slow, tedious, treacherous climb up a winding narrow path hugging the rugged mountainside. At any time, if I slip, I fall down, bouncing off the rocks like a nightmarish Pachinko. I'm not sure if the path ever goes anywhere, but people tell me the important thing is staying on the path. It's very stressful, and there's no real safety mechanism in place--only my will not to step off the path.

I've been doing this for over half a decade. Climbing the path, falling back down, bouncing between suffocating misery, maddening stress, staggering pain, and aches and bruises that never seem to fully heal. Actually, if you count the rest of the time I've spent in the infernal valley, I've been in this scenario for most of my life that I can remember.

"Alara Reborn" Launch Party

I went to the Magic: the Gathering "Alara Reborn" release event today. Highlights were getting a bunch of new cards, getting to play a few games, and scoring my first non-loss (a 1-1-1 tie), and my first win (2-1). Yay! There's hope for me yet.

The main event was a "sealed" thingy. Everyone gets 6 booster packs (3 "Shards of Alara" and 3 of the newst expansion, "Alara Reborn"), and a half an hour to throw together a 40+ card deck. Nothing in my packs really jumped out at me as being super duper "I gotta play this!" awesome, so I grabbed a few cards that looked interesting and put together a deck. I proceeded to get my butt kicked the first two matches, extending my perfect losing record to 0-7.

My two more experienced opponents gave me some pointers, and I scaled my deck back significantly, going from 4 colors to 3. The result was a much more consistent mana base, and I was actually able to play some of my cards!

The result being, I eked out my first non-loss. He won one, I won one, and we ran out of time before he could finish me off in Game 3. So we tied. Yay! Then in the last match, my opponent had consistent mana problems, and I was able to win 2-1 pretty easily. Cool! So I went 1-2-1 for the day, bringing me to 1-5-1 overall. Not bad. :)

Yeah, it was fun. I was a nervous wreck emotionally, but the mental workout was worth it. I found that the strategy of building and tweaking a deck is very intellectually stimulating. Studying all the different cards, learning each color's "personality," thinking about how it all works together. And the game itself is a lot of fun, even though I spent much of the time reading all the cards as they were played (since I'm not familiar with what they do). Good stuff.

I played more often around 1994-95, and I had a good time, but then all my Magic-playing friends scattered to the four winds. As I mentioned earlier, I became interested again, and I've been enjoying it. I just wish I could find a group to play with where I don't have to pay $15 to play a small number of matches at a store. And that's where the weight of social awkwardness drags me down. Sigh...

Oh well, it's still fun. :)

Insight

So here I am, trudging the proverbial road. I've backed away from my addiction, and I'm experiencing the downs and ups of sober life. Mostly downs, but I'm getting glimpses of ups, and it's kinda cool.

I'm finding there are (at least) two distinct sides of me with little overlap. There's the despair, lonely, frustrated, depressed, terrified, unmotivated, doom, gloom, etc. part of me. Everything seems hopeless, frustrating, dark ... And then there's the more even, lucid, positive, open, "free" side of me. Things seem more "sane," possible, surmountable, manageable. When I'm in one or the other, it's hard for me to see the other side.

Kinda like the "light world" and "dark world" from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the SNES, if you remember that. In the game, there was the normal "Hyrule" world, and a dark, gloomy, decaying "dark world," that was similar to the "light world," but, well, darker. More dangerous, treacherous, etc. While he was in the dark world, he faced monsters, dungeons, etc. strictly belonging to the dark world, with no interaction with the light world. And vice-versa. Link had a mirror that he could use to magically transport himself from the dark world back to the light world. I need something like that.. when I find myself overwhelmed in my own dark world, to magically transport myself back into "the light" of sanity and manageability.