The Parodius Symphony

It may not always be easy to pick an MSX tune to remake. While RPG's from Falcom and Micro Cabin feature lengthy compositions, many famous action songs from Konami's early MSX days are rather short and feature endless loops. In order to create a cover with some scope and length of such songs, Wolf tried something new. Rather than making a 1:1 cover with perfect copies of all the original notes, he's made a new composition based on some of the themes featured in Parodius. The result is The Parodius Symphony.

The SCC music of Parodius was, of course, classic - which refers to both its quality and its origins. As such, the music in The Parodius Symphony could be described as second generation evolutions of music that was performed in concert halls, a great many years back into the past. If only the original composers would know of all this..

This particular project has been resting in Wolf's project folder for roughly one and a half year. Perhaps it was all the talk about musical influences in MSX games and Japanese game composers that has revived the project and brought it into the mixing phase. According to Wolf, he has more (lengthy) projects waiting to get mixed at some point, nothing has been scheduled yet, though. So until the next release, The Parodius Symphony will have to do - and it will!

Relevant link: The Parodius Symphony

Comments (13)

By Meits

Scribe (6458)

07-09-2012, 17:44

Hopla... It's playing... Thankness...

By mesiasmsx

Prophet (3339)

07-09-2012, 18:53

Thanks!

By Samor

Prophet (2106)

07-09-2012, 23:50

Parodius the movie, it is
(btw. _wolf, do you know the Macross Frontier soundtrack? You might like it)

By Randam

Paragon (1416)

08-09-2012, 16:42

Great symphony!!!

By Gradius2

Hero (626)

08-09-2012, 22:55

Damn it mp3!

Thanks for audio anyway.

By Paulbrk

Hero (611)

09-09-2012, 11:36

Thanks Wolf, for make so good music and covers, you are one of my best chiptune composeres ever

By Jorito

Mr. Ambassadors (1771)

09-09-2012, 12:16

This is hardly chiptune tho

By wolf_

Ambassador_ (9903)

09-09-2012, 12:38

Barely. ^^ For those interested, the ensemble:

Flute
Oboe
Clarinet
Bassoon

Piccolo trumpet
Trombones
Bass trombone
Contrabass trombone
Tuba
Horns

Piano
Harp
Timpani
Orchestral bass drum
Orchestral snare
Orchestral cymbals
Orchestral percussion
Glockenspiel
Celesta
Choir

First violins
Second violins
Violas
Cellos
Double Basses

09-09-2012, 14:25

For your next song, why not do something different than symphonic/orchestral? Variation is good (my next song won't be as guitar rich at least).

By nanochess

Master (222)

09-09-2012, 18:39

I liked it very much!

Sounds pretty epic! It inspired me

A good modern game with this kind of orchestral music would make an instant classic.

09-09-2012, 20:51

JRT: I prefer to do what I do best, which can be split up into two sections: pure-symphonic, and synthy. I did release some synthy stuff in the past, like the four Psycho World tracks and the Solid Snake music. And some are hybrids between synth and symphonic, such as Technotris and Twinbee.

By tfh

Prophet (2999)

07-09-2016, 11:46

I know tjhis is a 4 year old post, but still... I always get an "Efteling" feeling when I listen to this symphony

07-09-2016, 15:21

I get that a lot, you know. And I think it has nothing to do with that cover/remake in itself, but with the one who's listening.

This is a bit of a mix between Romanticism, Impressionism and film music. Film music, unless it's Star Wars, is barely heard consciously. It's functional for what it is, and can be very beautiful, but a film is no concerto. So, the film music link is weak with many people. Impressionism music (though composer Debussy hated that term) is often dreamy and fantasy-like in its orchestrations, but it somehow isn't very famous. At least not as famous as some songs from the Baroque, Classical and Romanticism era. Romanticism is often story'ish music, not really background music. Not always practical as background music so to speak. Then the classical music is not really dreamy, and colour-wise a bit more 'stiff' compared to impressionism.

So, you are an Efteling (for non-NL people: a fairytale themepark), you need to choose the right music for a theme ride. Classic is not the right tone. Romanticism may not 100% be the right tone for background music. Film music is the great unknown because people often don't realise there's music behind a film. Impressionism has the right tone, but chances are that such people only know such music from that theme ride. It may be a bit of a forgotten genre, could be becuase it was bordering 20st century music (film, theatre, pop).

Try Daphnis et Chloe (Ravel)

Also try La Mer, Jeux (Debussy)

That may be the kind of music you'd also link with the Efteling.

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