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Kong in Concert - Donkey Kong Country Arrangements
Digital Coma writes "Kong in Concert, a project directed by myself and coordinated by familiar artists of the unofficial game music arrangement community, has been released at
http://dkcproject.ocremix.org and spotlighted at OverClocked ReMix. Its purpose is to pay respects to the excellent Donkey Kong Country SNES soundtrack and honor its composers with 22 rearrangements (or ReMixes) of every song from the game in high quality MP3 and OGG. We also have a BitTorrent distribution of the album's whole WAV compilation. If you like the idea of free, non-commercial videogame remixes, check us out."
Where's my banana-shaped lighter?? ("Freebird, I mean "FreeChimp"!!)
Did you have to pay any kind of lisencing fees to Nintendo? If so, how much did that cost?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Need some clarification, though; does this mean my band can do a cool cover version of the theme without worry?
I know this is probably a very simple question, but if you're taking someone else's work and remixing it, doesn't that mean you have some obligation to the original composer? What's to prevent Nintendo from sending in the lawyers to stop this?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a bad idea or anything, (it's not my thing) but just wanted some clarification...
Perhaps the /. community could support this project by having Cowboy Neal stand on a tall ledge and throw barrells at people.
I had no idea other people thought the DKC music was good - I used to leave my SNES on, sit idle in various levels, and blast the music through the stereo with the TV off.
No joke.
This is one game that I believe had underrated music. I'll have to check this out when I get home. OCRemix has a streaming radio station at oc.ormgas.com, if you don't mind all the Final Fantasy and Sonic music they play.
Also, for Commodore/Atari ST fans, there's Nectarine Radio.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
This isn't the first time the Overclocked Remix guys have come together to make a tribute album for a Super Nintendo game. I highly recommend checking out Relics of the Chozo, which is their soundtrack tribute to the game Super Metroid. VERY good stuff, if I do say so myself.
Just my $.02...
Because DKC had such a ground breaking storyline?
FYI: It's 1 re-arrangement of each of the 22 songs, not 22 of each song like I anticipated when I followed the link =P
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
"If you like the idea of free, non-commercial videogame remixes, check us out."
translates to:
"If you want to hear the one genre of music guaranteed not to get you laid, check us out."
stuff |
...P. Diddy Kong?
Try here: http://www.zophar.net/zsnes/spc/
Then go here for the Winamp SPC plugin: http://www.zophar.net/utilities/spc.html
I hate to be a wet blanket, and a redundant one at that, but unfortunately, this is a derivative work and as such the original owners can demand royalties.
The USA has a concept called "mandatory licensing" when it comes to music. This means for some uses, such as using clips from many pieces in a compilation work or playing a song on the air, the owners cannot STOP you outright. However, they can demand payment.
There was a case in the '40s or '50s or maybe early '60s where an artist took clips from a bunch of other songs and made a compilation work. The rights-holders of the original works sued to block it. The new work's artist claimed free speech and claimed Congress could not create a copyright law that would infringe his right to be creative. The US Supreme Court basically said no, Congress could not create a law to STOP him from being creative, but that the original artists were entitled to compensation.
Source: Some radio program in the last year or two. I think I heard it on a public radio station but don't quote me on that.
The bottom line:
Assuming this is still the law, Nintendo may come after you, but if you've got the money to pay them off you can make them go away and keep distributing your creative work.
Nintendo may be able to prevent you from distributing in or to certain other countries, I don't know the law worldwide.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You can find them under the videos link at http://www.ebaumsworld.com
The Commodore 64 remix scene is very active, in fact there was a live C64 remix concert in London, UK last Saturday (Sept 11th), and a fantastic event it was too.
It was organised by a guy called Chris Abbott, and his company C64Audio.com now represents many of original 1980's C64 musicians and licenses their music. To date he's paid over £20,000 in royalites to the original musicians.
So the C64 scene shows you can have a vibrant remix community, whilst giving credit to the original composers and paying them royalties.
under australian copyright law afaik, this is legal as long as a maximum of 10% of the original work is used, anything more and they'll owe rights.
For Project Majestic Mix, a fan-tribute album for Final Fantasy music (http://www.kfssstudios.com/), the people needed to get what is called a mechanical license, which is a royalty-based license when someone wants play rearranged/remixed versions of the original music.
Sure. 'Cause the RIAA feels the same way about P2P filesharing, I'm sure. I'll buy that piracy - real piracy - in Asia & Eastern Europe is cutting into their [hugely inflated] profit margin, but not P2P, remixes. etc.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Didn't you see that academic paper? 'Hermeneutics and the Narrative Discourse in Donkey Kong Country - A Feminist Perspective'.
If you happen to be a C= fan, then check out http://remix.kwed.org/ for some great stuff.
There's also a webradio of this stuff: Slay Radio
Real life is overrated.
I downloaded all the tracks directly (BT was going very slow, and I'm impatient) and am listening to them right now. I'm impressed. Some of them don't sound like they were done on synths, they sound orchestrated.
Anyways, since all the tracks from the game are in this mix, why not hack or devise some way to be able to play the orginal game to this new music?
I've done some light ROM hacking before and I don't even know if this is possible, but I'm just saying, it would be cool to have the new music in the game. It would certainly add some new depth.
I doubt a group making and giving away video game remixes would pay for an ad on Slashdot. And besides, computers have been around for a while, but you probably won't be complaining when they anounce the next 128-bit Ultra-Super-Duper-Amanamegatron CPU.
The one thing I found interesting about Donkey Kong Country's music is that a lot of the samples that were sound effects in the game were also music samples. These included the piano, which was the jingle when you got an extra life as well as the lead instrument in the first level. Another example I can think of is the heavy, metallic sounds in the industrial level music which also served as the sound the mine cart made when you landed back on the tracks.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
NIN never did a Zelda cover. Look it up. Someone else just renamed their work to show it off. It's a common thing on P2P.
People on there also seem to think that Weird Al did every funny song ever, and System of a Down did a Zelda remix too(They didn't, the original's on OCR and has a statement from the band itself that it's not them)
Hell, Terra in Black has been credited to Madonna a few times on P2P networks. There's tons of other examples as well.
I can't believe you people, you call yourself nerds and dont' even have one nice thing to say about this. These people are releaseing some awsome music.Are you such slaves to the top 40 charts that you can't see that? I for one welcome our DJ Pretzel overlord.
Whew, for a second I thought Donkey Kong was going to be singing Achey Brakey heart or something. What a relief.
If you think all game music is repetitive MIDI stuff on a level with Pong...Then you haven't listened to the right games. There are many, many titles out there with wonderful music - often RPG's(Final Fantasy series, Xenogears, Chrono Trigger, etc.), and some of the newer fighting and action games will have decent rock-type soundtracks as well.
Experiment a bit, listen to tracks on places like OCRemix, you might be suprised what you find.
I'm guessing this is a buddy of someone on slashdot or VA, or they are paying for the advertisement.
:)
well as one of the guys who worked on this project, I can tell you now, none of us know any of the slashdot editors.
I actually urged the project leader not to submit this story to slashdot -- because I've been here a while and I didn't feel this was slashdot material.
Looks like I was wrong! Maybe Hemos is a DKC fan
cheers.