Category Archives: Music

High Quality Video Game Rips

Music

SiIvaGunner is a Youtube channel that uploads video game music that has been altered in some way. People would open their videos, expecting regular video game music, and the song would be completely different, such as Super Mario 64’s Slider theme having the Flintstones melody, or Megalovania continually descending and never actually getting past the intro, or the vocalist in Live & Learn holding the same note throughout the entire song.

I was a huge fan of what they were doing, and for a period of time I was clicking every video they released (they uploaded hourly at the time.) I started submitting my own rips via email, and after a while somebody in SiIvaGunner noticed that they were seeing my name a lot. In September, I was invited to join the team.

While working for SiIvaGunner, I was able to force my own jokes on the channel, such as the doctor from Captain Novolin, 8-Bit Beast’s Haunted House, and a few other specific jokes. I met a lot of cool folks there, and the team still constantly surprises me with how talented and funny they are.

Here is a list of what I believe to be the highest quality rips that I produced for the channel:

Want to see more? You can find a playlist of all my rips here.

MAGFest 2020 – Open Mic performance

Music, , , , ,

Here’s footage of my only Chipspace Open Mic performance in 2020, courtesy of Nerdfit. I didn’t have a set theme this year, but I made sure to play the 2020 version of my All Star remix, a new version of my Gourmet Race/Superman cover with SimpleFlips memes, and by Sam Mulligan‘s request, my ChipWINter Wilderness track. The full set list is as follows:

00:36 – Haunted Mouth
04:01 – 1-2 Superman
08:32 – Spaghetti in my Stocking

ChipWIN Bonus Tracks

Music, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Chiptunes = WIN was an online community and music label that would put out large compilation albums of chiptunes. Since 2012, the label released a big annual album, as well as a few side-albums. My friend Ap0c was a judge for Volume 5, so I decided it would be funny to submit a joke rendition of 8-Bit Beast’s Haunted House, disguised as a popular chiptune artist, Bit Shifter. At first the album organizers were mad, but when they figured out it was my doing, they decided to use it as a hidden gag track. We tweaked the artist’s name a bit, and thus began my job as the bonus track guy.

Before this point, Haunted House was an inside joke amongst a handful of folks in the chip scene. After Volume 5, I went on to use the song in SiIvaGunner rips, where people started recognizing it, pushing it to meme status. ChipWIN even went on to release a Haunted House-themed album (after we teased that the joke was retired), and SiIvaGunner themselves even teamed up with me to create a grand bonus Fusion Collab. After which, following Ap0c’s suggestion, I started submitting covers of the Matlock theme instead.

ChipWIN has presumably been shut down since 2020, and unfortunately there isn’t an archive of the albums anywhere, to my knowledge. However, I was able to gather my joke tracks and release an album. So… Here’s that. Highlights include an Auxcide-themed Haunted House/Sandstorm mashup, a seven minute Christmas medley of a wave channel singing “dick butt,” and a spaghetti western rendition of the Matlock theme.

The Beast Awakens

LSDJ, Music, , , ,

This track was featured on the ChipWIN April Fools album 8-Bit Best, an album comprised entirely of Haunted House remixes. I tried to capture the essence of Haunted House’s weird time signatures, and attempted to make them seem more… Intentional. I also tried to tell a story with ambience and sound effects, almost like a cutscene in an NES or Game Boy game. I even turned the lead instrument (which I refer to as a “gadunk”) into 8-Bit Beast’s laugh. To bring the whole thing home, I sprinkled in some references to Cache Boss, my first ChipWIN bonus track.

Mario at a Crab Rave

LSDJ, Music, ,

This is an LSDJ cover of Crab Rave, by Monstercat. This started as a joke over on Twitter, where I combined the sarcastic text Crab Rave memes with a meme from the chip music community, “chiptune is dead.” I wrote the hook in LSDJ, crushed the video into Game Boy-esque graphics (160 x 144px, 4 colors, pea green tint), and added a caption using the LSDJ pixel font. The tweet started gaining traction, so I finished fleshing out the cover and put it on SoundCloud. I used custom waveforms to recreate the steel drums from the original song, and layered waveforms to create a double-octave effect.

Chiptune is Dead!

Gourmet Skate

LSDJ, Music, ,

This begins as a straightforward cover of Gourmet Race from Kirby Super Star, but becomes a cover of Superman by Goldfinger. This same joke could have been explored as a SiIvaGunner rip, but I was already working on a cover of Gourmet Race and decided it would be fun to perform at Chipspace Open Mic.

The following year, I performed a version where the Gourmet Race portion of the song has 1-2 Oatmeal samples. You can hear that set here.

Character Select – EverQuest

High Quality Video Game Rip, Music

This is the music that plays at the character select screen in classic EverQuest, but the melody and chords have been replaced with the main theme from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The joke is that both songs can be heard from character selection menus, but mostly I wanted an excuse to create more EverQuest rips, and Smash Ultimate was topical at the time. This was uploaded during the Grinch Takeover event, where one of the accepted themes was Super Smash Bros.

This rip was featured on Dr. Pavel’s How the Grinch Took Over SiIvaGunner.

Spaghetti in my Stocking

LSDJ, Music,

This track was featured on the ChipWIN Winter-themed album ChipWINter Wilderness. I started writing this song under the title “Spaghettaboutit,” but I only had the title and melody down, and that I wanted the mood to be happy. It was going to be about the feeling of being awkward and embarrassing myself (or “dropping my spaghetti“), and shaking that feeling off and having fun. I had trouble progressing on the song, so I set it aside for a few years… And then I was approached to create a winter track. I started fleshing the song out with Christmas music tropes (sleigh bells, church bells, generic chord progressions, etc.) and this was the result.

Sound familiar? You may recognize this song from my demo reel. If not, go check that out!

Float Islands (Beta Mix)

High Quality Video Game Rip, Music

This is the song that plays in the third stage of Kirby’s Dream Land, but the melody and chords have been replaced with Peach Beach/Daisy Cruiser from Mario Kart: Double Dash. An old, popular rip of Peach Beach had been recently taken down, and I decided to submit a rip commemorating it. I already recreated Float Islands in LSDJ for a scrapped rip, and since both are island tunes, they fit together perfectly.

This rip was featured on SiIvaGunner’s Highest Quality Rips Volume A.

Scarlet O’Hara? – Uninvited

High Quality Video Game Rip, Music,

This is the theme that plays during the ghost lady’s scene in Uninvited, but with the melody and bassline replaced with Basket Case by Green Day, and later Superman by Goldfinger. I used Basket Case because the first few notes and chords sounded so similar. I used Superman because there are parts of that which sound very similar to Basket Case. Since the source is an NES song, I had to learn to use FamiTracker to make this rip.

This rip was featured on SiIvaGunner’s Highest Quality Rips Volume A.