Forever Famicom - Diamond Edition

Alright, I have like 15 things to announce this week alone. But let me start with this one and it's BIG! Mega Ran and K-Murdock just released TODAY the Diamond Edition of Forever Famicom which I helped co-produce, recreating all the original samples using chiptune plugins, a Prophet 5 and a Rhodes. 

This project, 15 tracks in all, took me about a solid month. I've never quite done anything like this. I'm truly quite proud to have worked on this.

So, a bit about this album, Forever Famicom was first released over 10 years ago and was one of the first rap records to be primarily based off of video game samples. It was pretty revolutionary. And Mega Ran's lyrics brilliantly capture unique perspectives on video games, video game characters, stories and just life in general. 

Last year I had the great privilege to better know and work with Mega Ran, going on tour with him on the west coast, playing everything from small clubs to huge-ass conventions. As I learned the music, and watched him perform and freestyle, I gained a ton of respect for him as a person, his work ethic and his cultivated talent. The whole tour was the proverbial blast. 

On the tour, I got to share a little bit of the non-video-game-piano music covers that I was becoming known for in the VGM world, and played him some original movie scores and my original soundtrack for the VR game, STRAYLIGHT. And that led to K-Murdock asking me to recreate the samples for Forever Famicom. 

The original album is already great. So trying to improve upon it would be tough and inevitably subjective. Instead we went for just giving it a fresh coat of paint, so to speak. With each track, I transcribed the original samples using a combination of software and my ear. Then, recreated the sounds using Plogue's Chipsounds plugins for 8-bit sounds, and Prophet 5 and Rhodes for other elements of the album. I took some liberties and added or changed parts as I saw fit. 

Overall, I'm really happy with album and excited to see that it's out! I hope you give the whole thing a listen but here's one of favorite tracks from the record. :) Thank you for reading and listening!