Apex 2015: This Is the Moment Comments from album director Shariq Ansari (DarkeSword) and ReMixers Album freely available at http://apex.ocremix.org Another year, another Apex album! As always, I'm excited to present another entry into our FGC-oriented album series. Players from all over the world train all year and travel from far and wide to find their moment at Apex, so this year's album is called "This Is the Moment" and it's all about everything they do and all the hard work they put in culminating in a battle of epic proportions. This year, we've got lots of great remixes from your favorite artists, covering old games and new games alike, with some killer album artwork to boot (from our Mega Man 25th anniversary album artist, rnn!). We always have such a great time heading out to Apex and watching all the players absolutely destroy at Smash and all the other games out there, and every year the event only gets bigger and better. We're looking forward to doing more albums in the future, but for now, enjoy "This Is the Moment," and GET HYPE!! - Shariq Ansari (DarkeSword) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01. John Ryan - Main Theme of Apex 2015 "This Is the Moment" 02. DusK - Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 "A Day Like No Other" Source: "Character Select Screen for UMVC3" Original Composer: Hideyuki Fukasawa DusK: A little while after talking with DarkeSword on OCR Talkback about the Apex project and making my claim, I thought about how I wanted the remix to sound. I really wanted to give it this sort of "pump-up" feel. I wanted this to be someone's fight song. I think I delivered. Enjoy. 03. DarkeSword - Super Smash Bros. for Wii U "Got My Mind on My Money Match" Sources: ''Super Smash Bros. for Wii U'' - "Menu"; ''Super Smash Bros. Brawl'' - "Main Theme" Original Composers: Junichi Nakatsuru, Nobuo Uematsu DarkeSword: One of my favorite memories from Apex was when we were selling some stuff at our table and one of the attendees came up to our booth and was interested in buying something. When Deia told him the price, he looked in his wallet and saw he didn't have enough, so he said, "Alright, Imma go money match for 5 bucks real quick!" and he ran off. The dubiousness of money matches aside, it was a hilarious moment and it was great seeing someone so matter-of-factly confident about his skills. This track has a lot of fun stuff going on, the foremost being the percussion track that uses a random arpeggiator to provide dynamically-generated variations to the drum patterns. This is a technique I used before in my Eevee EP remix, and at this point it feels like an indispensable part of my repertoire. I wanted to develop a very serious, dark energy at the start, which is why chords don't actually change until the second time through the melody. I used the Brawl theme as a backing track to the solo section because it's always been my favorite Smash theme and it has a simplicity that lets it sit underneath more complicated melodic lines without sounding messy. I really enjoyed how this mix came out, and I hope everyone else does too. 04. CJthemusicdude - Super Smash Bros. Melee "Smashed Fridge Bits" Source: "Menu 1" Original Composer: Hirokazu Ando 05. Amphibious - Pokémon X and Y "Forest Fire" Sources: "Santalune Forest," "It's a Pokémon Battle!" Original Composer: Shota Kageyama DarkeSword: Pokémon at a fighting game tournament?! WHAAAT? Apparently that's how they roll at Apex. You won't hear any complaints from me though. Jordan knocked this outta the park. Solid beats and I love that crunchy, side-chained guitar, which is something you don't usually hear. Pokémon battles are usually a little slower paced than the typical fighting game fare you usually get at Apex, but this track still has a driving energy that keeps you hyped up. Love it!! Amphibious: This mix was an interesting new style to me. I've been dabbling in more hard-hitting electronic tracks lately, but this one seemed pretty unique compared to some of the other stuff I've tried. As much as I loved working on my chillout track last year, this was a nice change of pace. The "Stantalune Forest" theme was a cool one to work with. I definitely made it way more intense at times, but during the bridge section I tried to keep the mysterious feel of the original intact. Overall, I was pretty happy with how this turned out, and I'm glad to be a part of the Apex album once again! 06. DjjD - Super Smash Bros. Melee "Bull in a China Shop" Source: "Targets!" Original Composers: Hirokazu Ando, Tadashi Ikegami, Shogo Sakai, Takuto Kitsuta DjjD: This mix came together pretty quickly, I'd say about 3-4 days total after Shariq reminded me about the Apex album. I was going for a trancy-breakbeat-y song with some stuff, hope you guys enjoy. :D 07. Sixto Sounds - Super Smash Bros. Brawl "Falcon DREAM!!" Source: "Dream Chaser" (from F-Zero X) Original Composer: Taro Bando 08. WillRock - Killer Instinct "Filler Instinct" Source: "The Instinct" Original Composers: Robin Beanland, Mick Gordon DarkeSword: Holy crap. This might be one of Will's best remixes yet. I feel like I should write a lot, but, honestly, I can't really think of more to say than this rocks hard. Appropriately killer performance all around, amazing driving energy all throughout. Fantastic! WillRock: The idea here was to take a track and turn it into a Joe Satriani-style jam. I had quite a bit of fun with mucking around with the original source. At points, I felt I might have changed it a little too much, but the result was too good to cut, so I kept it all in. 09. Neblix - Ultra Street Fighter IV "Girl from Another World" Source: "Theme of Decapre" Original Composer: Hideyuki Fukasawa Neblix: I did this remix in about 12 hours total of work. It's sort of a synthetic cinematic take (for those who remember my Impulse remix, this is my personal favorite kind of texture) on Decapre's theme. I haven't played this specific version of SFIV, and I know nothing about Decapre, but to me, she looked like some alternate universe version of Cammy, so I rolled with some kind of sci-fi fantasy vibe, even if it's not very accurate. :-P It's grounded in a basic dance rhythm, and has some syncopated elements on top of it. I tried to keep a very spacious, cool temperature sound design and I think the inclusion of strings and piano were enhanced by the bluer and blacker colors. The arrangement is pretty simple, a far leap from my more maximalist take on Guile's theme, but I don't think that's to any detriment. I do feel at times the arrangement doesn't ever reach a specific climaxing point and seems to kind of go on, but I think I managed to provide enough dynamic contrast to have it be interesting to listen to. I was also taking a course on arrangement at school, so I learned all about techniques of voicing and line-writing which helped me use my sounds, especially the string sections, to my advantage without any fear of busying the soundscape or writing some lousy parts. I think the result, as opposed to my other mixes, shows a lot more attention to part independence and clarity, and it's much easier to pick out the layers of instruments I'm using. I chose strings because at the time I was also watching a lot of Gundam Build Fighters, and the cool sound of the electronic elements like pads and filtered arps mixed with orchestration really struck me as a great texture for sort of emotional high-tech fantasy. I actually bought Studio One 2 Pro and u-He Diva right before making this remix as well. S1 is a really nice DAW and has a similar piano roll to FL, but its linear fashion and lane-based writing has some advantages to me that I just can't tap through FL (the automation and MIDI capabilities are superior to FL, no question, but I still ReWired FL in for the drum programming and access to some of my favored plug-ins). Those guys did a really good job designing a ground-up DAW, and this is basically the first thing I did in it. As far as Diva, I'm giving a shoutout to my boy Jordan "bLiNd" Aguirre for giving me some delicious presets that he personally cooked up. This really is a stellar synthesizer, with a good library of *musically useful* presets and an intuitive interface. 10. Ivan Hakštok - Guilty Gear Xrd "May the Stars Light Your Way" Source: "Starry Story (May's Theme)" Original Composer: Daisuke Ishiwatari Ivan Hakštok: Last time I've played a Guilty Gear game was around 10 years ago, so I can't really claim to be a big fan of the series. But some people have been comparing my music to the music from Guilty Gear, so I guess it's kinda fitting that I remix it... in a style that couldn't be more different from Guilty Gear music! This song is a result of my recent obsession with Yamaha DX7 sounds and jazz fusion bands like Casiopea and T-Square. I've tried to build upon the great melody and rhythmic changes in the source, while going for a more relaxed feeling. I hope it worked!