Tom 7 Radar: Death Row Candyland

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Death Row Candyland (12 Sep 2009 at 11:32)

Here's a new Tom 7 Entertainment System song, Death Row Candyland. It's possibly most ambitious one ever, except for the cover art:

Tom 7 Entertainment System - Death Row Candyland

I couldn't figure out how to easily get that diagonal candy cane stripe look in 10 minutes, so instead purely vertical bands which are like their own mini prison inside the letters.

Now you want to hear me overanalyze? This song is kinda like theme from rt2i in that I spent a lot of time on it (like multiple nights), a lot of which was on texture. This is highly unusual for me. I'd go back and listen to it and think, hmm, this particular transition seems to lose too much bass, and then fix it. I didn't stop until I listened through the whole thing and thought there were no undesired jarring moments, cheesefest notes, boring off-pace repeats, or missed opportunities. (Usually I just crap it out in an hour or two binge with all default settings, and hope for the best.) I like the song better than rt2i though because I feel like the basic tune is more sound. I started with what you hear in measures 1–28 (intro, intrigue theme, main echo theme) which loop so nicely and which would easily have been the whole song in 1999-era T7ES. I really liked the twisty uneasiness of the chords and (especially) the echo theme. So I decided to embrace and extend, and the end product has at least 5 distinct parts, and maybe counting the counterpoint something like 9 or 10.

Another way this is similar to rt2i is the way that the melody from the main echo theme shows up in 3 totally different places, changing its meaning each time. I am in love with this trick these days. (For sure it's in Zürich bigtime.) It is a good challenge to pull it off (usually it means adjusting something rhythmically or melodically, and can easily lead to a muddle if clumsy) and I think that the self-reference is so damn satisfying. IMO the part in the coda where the echo theme comes back (gently telegraphed in the square waves in the prior pattern) is completely fucking epic. To me in the narrative of the song it's like something odd but familiar finally making sense.

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Max (adsl-76-194-83-68.dsl.wlfrct.sbcglobal.net) – 09.23.09 11:24:21

Pretty badass. The last 30 seconds are face-melting for sure.

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Tom 7 (63.161.156.66.customer.sprintlink.com) – 09.24.09 10:24:21

Thanks Max!

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SeriousMF (s0106001cdf72f707.ed.shawcable.net) – 10.01.09 08:08:13

Jai ho! A very satisfying conclusive note! Original and thought provoking chord structures. Honestly, contemporary Chiptune at its finest.
Tom, I'm Ryan! I've already remixed both 'Theme from rt2i' and 'Zurich' among others. I've released an AAD; posted and submitted. One day I'll use your mailing address to mail you Real Packaged Content! I did all this without knowing that you had a fairly substantial following. From here on your's shall be one of the selected elite blogs that I read consistently. Keep up the success! I'll post my remixes and my second AAD when I quit my job and start investing my time instead of just spending it. Thanks for the quality. Happy birthday!

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Tom 7 (h-67-100-132-149.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 10.03.09 11:43:20

Good day good sir! Please do send me your remixes, I love remixes to the max. Unfortunately I believe the AAD submission form goes into a black hole right now. Feel free to e-mail me if you want to make sure I know about your album; I've been meaning to fix the AAD page for so long, but sometimes I am a bad, bad man...

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Adhesion (cpe-74-74-185-170.rochester.res.rr.com) – 10.05.09 22:43:18

Yeah, this is pretty damn well composed, though I might disagree on the immediate tunefulness of stuff like the intro. The polyrhythm section in the middle, the material right after it, and the reuse of polyrhythm later, are definitely great though. I'm a sucker for "dramatic return", and I tend to (ab)use it a decent amount. Repeating a melody in a different harmonic context (like major instead of minor) can be really intense too - the first movement of Oubliées by Debussy is a great example of this.

To make a terribly lofty comparison: you know how someone (supposedly Brian Eno) said not very many people bought the first Velvet Underground record, but everyone who did started a band? This is the kind of song that makes me want to write music.

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SeriousMF (s0106001cdf72f707.ed.shawcable.net) – 10.20.09 07:23:15

Good times. Update your blog, Tom! jk; I know doctors are busy. I long for your updates. Here's some remixes of a couple of your chiptunes and such and such.

http://www.archive.org/details/VariationsInChiptuneTechnology

Keep on rocking in the constitutional representative democracy world.

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Tom 7 (h-67-100-132-251.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 10.20.09 23:59:04

Thanks, they're great! I love remixes and I've never heard ones like yours before. Neat. Please send more if you end up making any. If you want MIDI files, I'm happy to share, just name that tune(s).

Alumna is my favorite. Is that Many Happy Returns? I can't even tell. I didn't hear Theme from Zurich anywhere, so maybe that's it.

Theme from Robots in General is definitely the most remixed T7es tune now; see also MAT64's cover (http://www.myspace.com/mat64music).

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matus (adsl-75-11-161-183.dsl.sndg02.sbcglobal.net) – 10.29.09 08:24:27

I enjoy these music, thanks you

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Tom 7 (h-66-167-250-115.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 10.31.09 01:17:56

Thanks!

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