CarboHydroMusic - Music and Sound Design by Christophe Blondel

Time for some updates

It's already been a year since the last time I posted a write-up here, and since some of the things I invested time in are about to move, I figured I should talk a bit about those. I hope you're having a good summer there ? Pick-up a nice fresh drink, and here we go for some music news !

The 8-bit Time Paradox

Italian composer Giovanni Rotondo recruited me near the end of last year for one of his many projects, a collaborative album of game music arrangements and a sequel to his 2015 release called "The 8-bit Time Machine", whose concept was to rearrange music of modern games in an older, 8-bit flavour, and this way creating a sense of time travel.

This next album is called "The 8-bit Time Paradox", and this time is centered around the idea of paradox, so any game music arranged inside has to be deeply altered in style. The cover art of "The 8-bit Time Paradox" (on the right here), was created by the talented Jeff Langevin.

Other than Giovanni himself, 7 other artists from Youtube, including yours truly, will bring their very own music styles and instruments of choice (piano, guitar, harp, woodwinds...) to the table, and cover game music of their choice. I can already tell you that the style I went for here is the very guitar-driven one most of you know me for. The source material will remain a surprise though !

Let's bid our time, as if all goes well the production plan for the album will start around September this year. I will keep you posted of course.

Battle Verses

I never got to announce it here but if you follow me on one of my social network outlets, you probably heard of it already and this will be old news.

Last year I finally released some of my game soundtrack material, from the elusive Divided Infinity RPG project. At the time of writing the development of the game seems to be on hold, but I was still allowed to release a small album featuring some of my best guitar-driven battle theme tracks : Battle Verses.

Battle Verses by CarboHydroM

It's available on Bandcamp and other major music stores for your enjoyment, feel free to check it out if metal battle themes are your thing ! I have yet to upload it completely to Youtube.

A tribute to Kain Lacroix (1980-2017)

In May this year, Kain Lacroix, great musician and one of the original creators of the Dwelling of Duels community which I belong to, took his own life. Instead of offering moments of silence, it was decided that rocking out to music from his favorite video games was the best way to send him off. So we all gathered and played songs for him.

Max "Wild_Cat" Noël, who knew him well, and I teamed up to arrange the credits theme from Castlevania 3.

The only time I had the chance to work with Kain on a song was for the Chronicles Of Time Chrono Trigger tribute album, where he performed the drums magnificently :

I will never forget that by being one of the creators of the Dwelling of Duels more than 14 years ago, Kain indirectly nurtured the improvement of many musicians over the following decade, and my own.

Chiptunes = WIN, Volume 6

Moving on to some happier news now. Chiptunes = WIN, the yearly original chip music compilation, has just released its volume 6 roster, and one of my songs will be part of the album ! I look forward to hearing what everybody else did, and we are many (51 tracks in total) ! The listening party will happen on August the 11th, at 7:30PM CDT, during my sleep time but I'll do my best to attend. Join us !

I will post more information about my track later, both the style it's written in and the context of its creation are special.

And that's it for this update. Stay cool !

Catching up at the end of summer

Mario Kart 8 - Avalanche Speed

My Mario Kart 8 Mount Wario arrangement called "Avalanche Speed", that I released a few months ago already, and that you probably already heard, was scheduled to go live on Loudr so that it can legally reach stores like iTunes, Google Play, and others, in all its lossless glory. But it won't happen for now as it seems that Nintendo has not officially released the soundtrack in the US. I hope they will sooner or later !

For those of you unaware yet, it's a collaboration with Matt "HatTrax" Mukerjee on bass, Michaela "mklachu" Nachtigall on violin and Marc Papeghin on brass. It took several months between when I first started working on the arrangement, and the final master of the song got back to my hands. Speaking of which, mastering was done by Studio Karma, a good local friend of mine in Marseille.

Wild Arms 2 - Trailblazers

The guy whom I commissioned to draw the cover art for Avalanche Speed's release on Loudr, is the same who drew Prime Legacy's, and actually suggested to me a few years back to cover the intro from Wild Arms 2 : HeavyMetalHanzo. He decided this year to draw the cover art to my arrangement of that song if I were to do it. So that's another of the projects we worked on together during the past months, and in case you missed it, Trailblazers is up on Loudr.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - Speed Of The Free

In 12 years of public releases, I did only 2 arrangements of music from this mainstream series. Why ? I don't know. I've always been fond of the music from these games. Perhaps there is too much material to pick from. I want to change that and give the blue blur some attention. I took the first step last month by squeezing a short arrangement among my other tasks, a revisited version of my Sonic 2 ending punk arrangement of 2004.

A Nintendo 64 tribute album

Brought to you by the team who created the Super VG Christmas Party and Sound Waves Ecco The Dolphin tribute compilations, a Nintendo 64 Anniversary tribute album is now in the making. I'm part of the roaster, and have submitted 2 finished tracks, respectively with Matheus Manente and my MAGFest XIV performance band Prime Legion. The release of the album is scheduled for September the 29th, so save the date and stay on the look out for news in the coming weeks !

MAGFest XIV, and spring post !

Back from my second overseas trip to MAGFest, and it took me a while to post this (it was pretty much one month ago), because of all the catching up I had to do on multiple fronts. Honestly this second time was the best of the two by far. Instead of focusing on official events I wanted to attend, I had a minimal plan and stayed in touch with friends, meeting them by chance at events or in the hallway, and hanging-out with them as much as I could. I ended up enjoying myself much more this way. Here we go for a totally non-exhaustive list of the little things that made my trip.

Best memories

Sharing the room and having great laughs with the coolest guys, once again : djantir, FoxxDragon, Cory Johnson, Chris Sherrif and my friend HeavyMetalHanzo, who made the trip this year with me.
Having coffee together with my old friend and session bassist of choice Wild_Cat every morning.
MAGUnderground Saturday, or MAGFest within MAGFest : some of the great people from the Shizz message board put this full day event together, and it was an amazing idea. I hope it happens next year as well. Lots of small bands were there too.
Speaking of which, Prime Legion : Mike Montemarano and Erich Beckmann, both performers in Kirby's Dream Band and Vic Viper, as well as Wild_Cat, had convinced me to perform songs off Prime Legacy and Powerdrift with them on stage this year. We did it at MAGUnderground on Saturday, and I had so much fun with them while practicing and performing that I could barely stop myself from jumping around out of excitation. It easily balanced out my performing stress. Perhaps that also explains how I could withstand so well the severe sleep deprivation during the festival. Anyway, now I want to say that Prime Legion is not a one-time thing. Thanks a whole lot to all of you who were there, and get ready for more next year !
Some other concerts that I absolutely loved :
- Twice Bit Brigade ! For those of you who don't know these guys, they play the music to a live speedrun performance, meaning you get to see a game they chose from start to finish during a whole set, and they adapt to whatever is on the screen at all times. This year they did Mega Man 2 and Ninja Gaiden, and it was mind-blowing.
- Metroid Metal. These guys need no introduction and it's not the first time I mention them here, that's for sure. They were not scheduled to play last year, but this year they were. MM is one of my favorite VG bands ever, and I was truly happy to see them this time.
- Vic Viper, during MAGUnderground. It was all very reminiscent of the Minibosses of old, as they play the music from the games note for note, but with a keyboard and a guitar instead of two guitars.
- Gimmick, also during MAGU, was one of the most fun I attended during the whole festival. They actually performed right after Prime Legion.
- Two sets of Marshall Art ! And with Cory Johnson on second guitar in one of them, as a bonus ! They drove the most emotional sets of the festival, like last year.
- Super Soul Bros and their insane musical stamina. Their secret nightly show was awesome. I wish I could improvise as easily as they all are able to, it's very inspiring to watch them play.
- The OneUps' hyper-groove, and Mustin's hilarious MC'ing, that could finally meet in the hallway later. They also did a shared performance with Robby from the Super Soul Bros, and the way they blended together seamlessly was just jaw-dropping.
- The infinite no-earplug pleasure of listening to the Super Guitar Bros, while sitting on the ground. That was the most intimate show of the whole festival. They even invited Lauren The Flute and Jer Roque on stage for a really cool performance.
Sharing quality hang-out time with friends from the Shizz message board, getting myself beat up at Smash Bros Melee, chatting, laughing and drinking beer at the lively suite, taking a spot in the big family picture, and also joining a comfy MAGU afterparty hosted by Brenna Wilkes, with stagg throat burns and baklava cooling. Great times !
The Live Dwelling of Duels listening party, that's still the most awesome way to put myself into the same timezone as everybody on the first day - coming from France, it's like pulling an all-nighter on the first day after another very short night just to catch the plane ! Also, check out that new web site ! It's been up for a short while, and it's a lot easier to browse through the artists and the massive amount of songs that has been stacked there over the years.
Hanging out during a whole night with the Henri bros and MM's drummer Kevin "Cheddar" Lawrence. Thinking of nicknames for the drummers in the community : "Fastest Drummer In The West" goes to Erich, "Assassin" goes to Kevin, and "Crazy Hammer" goes to Adam Henri.
Meeting more people at the chip suite, hanging out with President Hoodie and the lovely Erin, the most fun Chiptune = WIN ambassadors, and discussing language accents with them along with Chipzel.
The arcade/console/indie area in all its free gaming glory, getting to credit feed my favorite genre (vertical scrolling bullet-hell shmups), two players pinball and the inevitable FUTURE FUTBOL for 4 players until totally unreasonable hours.
Getting my custom-painted 3DS signed by Manami Matsumae and boasting about it to everyone I could find during the whole evening.
A heroic, almost full-time jamming Sunday, with joyful and totally unplanned performances with Daemon9623 from the Shizz (I tried to play drums ?!), Jer Roque, Lauren the Flute, Ben Briggs, Jameson Sutton and many others until the very last minutes of jamspace. That was glorious. Peter Kim's (Materia) Stratocaster is the tightest single-coil guitar I've ever played. I wish I could have jammed together with him though. At 5AM on Monday it was too late !
Having some of the best laughs in my recent memory while recording crappy covers on a whim with Daemon9623, Sam, clansmaneddie, MagicalYardgnome, and Michael Hoffmann, in our rooms during Sunday evening. Spontaneous, and just amazing. I laughed so hard that I cried.
Room gaming : Uniracers and two-on-one-controller Street Fighter 2 and Super Mario Kart, with roommates and friends. We yelled super loud and yet HeavyMetalHanzo slept without hearing us at all !
Still more hang-outs and long conversations with Daniel Floyd from Extra Credits, Geoff Thew from Mother's Basement, Michael Hoffmann, the Kelly bros and the Marcato bros.
Meeting old and new friends by chance in the hallway or at concerts : Nario, Luiza, Zyko, Alyssa Menes, Jonathan Parecki.
That very informative legal panel with Sam Castree and Wild_Cat as a guest, that was also very fun to attend, thanks to all the anecdotes the guests had to tell.
Staying connected to people via texts during the whole week-end. I learnt my lesson of last year and got a simcard as soon as I landed. It was a bit expensive, but really helpful. I'll do the same next time.

The Not So Best

Uh-oh, my guitar wasn't in tune during the Prime Legion set and I noticed it when watching the 8bitX stream videos. I had tons of fun with my boys, but it's still a slight bummer. Well, in any case it means that if you enjoyed it, it could have been better. Also playing with a capo is definitely not something I like to do at all. Lessons learnt !
I missed X-Hunters and Mountain Chiefs even though I wanted to see them, because of overlaps with other scheduled stuff in the festival. I heard that their sets were good though !
I wish I could have jammed with even more people. There was only one guitar amp available on Sunday too, so it wasn't possible to play guitar together with Daemon9623, or as I said earlier, Peter Kim. I also missed the opportunity to play with the Henri bros when they got to jamspace to perform their Chrono Trigger song.
To any of you whose ears I might have hurt by shouting because my earplugs are too damn strong, I deeply apologize.

What now ?

All in all, I had an amazing time in National Harbor, and I look forward to going again next year ! In the meantime, let's go back to working on music and games. As I said when starting this write-up, I had a ton of catching-up to do. Several arrangements are already in the works, most of them are collabs, so it takes more time for me to release them. But you don't want to miss that Mario Kart 8 song I've been working on !

And well, I'm also still working on those two indie games, namely Second Legacy and Lives Out. Stay tuned !

Music for the holidays

It's been a few months with no new song, but as you can guess, I've been working behind the scenes on a few new tracks, and most of them being part of bigger albums we have to wait for the full projects to be released. The good news is that it's happening sometime this month, for most of them. So what have we got so far, and what's to expect next ?

Ghost Blade arrange

Last year I released "One Ship To Lead Them All" an 80s-style rock arrangement covering music from DUX, an indie Dreamcast game by Hucast. Well these guys had another game in development, a vertical scrolling shooter called "Ghost Blade" and it was actually released a few months ago. I worked on 2 remixes back in 2013, and patiently waited for the game to come out before letting you guys hear them. And here they are now.

In fact, these two songs are based on the same source material, the first stage theme, which I could hear back then in an unlisted gameplay video. But I had fun arranging them in two completely different ways. So the first one is called "Rock Blade" and is a techno-rock variation of the aforementioned theme, while the second one, that I've just released a few days ago, is called "Funk Blade", and I guess you can tell what genre it is in. I hope you enjoy the cool contrast between those two.

Bundle of WIN, or chiptune presents under your tree

For those of you who enjoy the chiptune side of my musical arsenal, you might be interested in getting your hands on an amazing Groupees bundle that is on sale right now and will be until December 22nd, for only $2.

Among a still growing number of albums (several bonus have been unlocked at the time of writing), it contains Prime Legacy, and a brand new chiprock track of mine called "Milky Way Train", very much in the same style as the former's tracks.

Sound Waves, Ecco The Dolphin

The team behind the Super VG Christmas Party album project of last year announced this summer a new project, also scheduled for release in December : Sound Waves, an Ecco The Dolphin tribute album.

Although, the one track I would have arranged myself had already been claimed, I still contributed to it with a few guitar parts, hence teaming up with his owner, Matheus Manente, who had also taken part in the Super VG Christmas Party compilation, but whose music I was completely unfamiliar with. I got to meet another of these hidden musician gems who wander around the Internet without anybody knowing. And with our track and this whole Ecco album, you guys will soon get to hear the chillest songs ever.

Chronicles Of Time, Chrono Trigger

Next upcoming track ? I have actually contributed two to the upcoming Chrono Trigger tribute album "Chronicles Of Time", one of which is already available for listen and called "In The Presence Of More Ennemies". I took care of guitars only on this one, as part of the "Hindsight" virtual band, together with Kain Lacroix (drums), Maxime Noël (arrangement / bass), and Bryan Hakim (lead guitars).

Watch out for the release of the full album, if all goes well later this month. An insane amount of songs in various styles are yet to be heard !

Leaked info about a new arrangement ?

Back in November, I was invited again by Stephen and Bryan Kelly, this time to their new OverClocked ReMix podcast, to talk about an old song of mine, ie Mega Man 9's "A New Beginning". If you haven't had a chance to give it a listen, feel free to, as we also mention matters such as my arranging approach, what tools I use, and time turkeys !

Some critically interesting information was leaked too, as I randomly told them about the next arrangement I'm preparing. And that it might be a collab' too. Probable release date later this month ? We'll see !

Lives Out

Now here come the gamedev news ! Have you heard of the Asylum Jam ? It's a special game jam event that took place in November this year, and where game developers must create horror games. I teamed up with my friend Sébastien "Khnoum" Canovas to create a short storytelling game in less than 48 hours.

We did not finish in time, and took rather 72 hours to complete our entry, that you can try out here. After that we fixed a couple bugs, and started thinking about expanding the gameplay and changing this small and linear game into a richer experience, where the story continues... A huge pile of work awaits !

The soundtrack is available for listen on Soundcloud, and should you try the game, feel free to let me know what you thought !

Second Legacy

So yeah, we're approaching the end of the year, the approximate time when back in 2014 I started mentioning that little doujin shmup I'm building piece by piece alone in my cave. You may have seen a title-screen shot, or watched that teaser video I released in July. Now what if I released a playable demo ?... I just need some more time this month to cut out stuff that is not working yet and fix a few things, but we're getting there. I look forward to showing it to you guys.

Generally-speaking the game is still far from being finished, but as far as gameplay mechanics go, it should give you a pretty good idea of where we are going. In 2016 I'll be working mostly on the game content, adding more stages, true graphics, final pieces of music and SFX, etc...

Summer crunch !

I could ask if you are ready for some news from my music front, but I've also been working on two indie game projects as a developer, so today I'll be giving mixed news instead ! Let's start with stuff bound to happen soon !

Chiptunes = WIN Volume 4

Back at MAGFest earlier this year, one of my roomies and good friend Nate "FoxxDragon" Horsfall, who has been doing the cover art for the chiptunes-driven compilation "Chiptunes = WIN" for the last couple years, introduced me to President Hoodie and his fellow chiplovers, and suggested that I send an entry myself this year, as my work on Prime Legacy was highly compatible.

And that's exactly what I did. During May, I spent one week-end quickly putting together a song in the very style of my little chiprock album, but with more groove - like more dancy and less shmuppy - and finished just in time for the submission deadline.

The good news is that it made it to the 51 tracks roster, out of 153 qualifying submissions. The album is scheduled for release on July 20th and will be available on Bandcamp as a free/name-your-price download. If you like the chiptune genre, this is a no-brainer !

For those who are interested and can make it, there will be a fun listening party to celebrate the release (checkout the Facebook event). It will happen in the middle of the night for me though, so I'll only be able to hear the full compilation after you guys !

Chrono Trigger tribute album

This year, I joined forces with the team behind the Spectrum of Mana Secret of Mana tribute album team, as they were tackling their next target, the soundtrack from Chrono Trigger. During the first half of the year, I've been working on two arrangements for this album, and both are collaborative efforts, hence the long development time.

The first track was chosen by my friend and regular session bassist Wild_Cat, who planned the structure of the song and wrote a preliminary arrangement, before handling the bass. I refined the arrangement and wrote drums for it, then recorded rhythm guitars and a few leads. The main guitarist from my former local band, Hattori Hanzo, handled the leads on most of the song, and Kain Xiorcal joined us to replace my sequenced drums by his live ones ! That one song was finalised in early June, and you may be able to hear it later this year. As soon as I know more, I'll spread the news.

The other track is the one I initially chose for myself because it was the most attractive to me. I worked on it alone for the most part, but LuIzA, whom I had already punked up some Tales of Symphonia music before with, may join me later to perform the bass. It will soon be completed.

It's very likely that news about the album will be posted on the Spectrum of Mana Facebook page, before anywhere else, so make sure you keep an eye out for it.

Second Legacy

Very early this year, I announced this new project of mine, in the form of a real game to stand as a spiritual sequel to Prime Legacy. "Second Legacy" might just be a development code name, and when the storyline is set in stone I'll probably change the title to a better fit. But for now it works just fine.

Here's a sneak peek :

As you can see, it's a very CAVE-like, but simplified 2D manic shooter. Like, all enemies look the same for now, and I will definitely replace that ugly design by cooler ones. To make up for the lack of background graphics, I've programmed a parallax scrolling asteroid field, that speeds up according to the player score. Generally-speaking, what the game lacks the most for now is decent graphics and animation. And in the next few months, I will be doing a lot of pixel art in my spare time to fill the blanks as honorably as possible.

Other than that, the game features two battle ships for the player to pick (I planned to include a two players game later), and obviously swarms of bullets and explosions. As for the music and SFX, I'd say that half of the work is done. The game mechanics are not entirely set in stone yet, so I'll tell you more about that later. Stay tuned, I probably gather everything on a dedicated web page.

Of attractive tracks

Or rather, of game music that gives me the urge to arrange it.

Although I stopped long ago working on specific game songs on people requests, I still like being introduced to game soundtracks I don't know about yet via suggestions. The thing is, I turn a lot of suggestions down too, and pretty much always the same way : "This song is not the sort I like to arrange". I figured I should probably shed some light over this matter and my peculiar tastes, as it sometimes sounds pretty paradoxal - I mean some of you sometimes serve "rock-ready" songs to me. I can never explain why I don't pick them in just one sentence.

So what's the sort of song I like to arrange after all ? Let's figure it out, going through a few well-chosen examples from what I've already covered.

1. Relief, happy endings

If I go back to the roots, I fell in love with game music back in the NES era. The first time I reached the credits of Mega Man, the melody I heard then struck a chord within me (thank you Manami Matsumae !). For the record, I covered it twice - listen to "See You Tomorrow" and "Heart Cannon" - and truth be told, I would not mind covering it again and again.

After hearing that one song, I wanted to beat every game I got my hands on, just to be able to hear how the credits, or ending song sounded like. And nowadays, even though I play a lot less than I used to in the past, I still yearn for that feeling of deep relief, or what I think my fellow remixer and friend Rexy spoke once as the "everybody's-buddies-again" theme.

Now if you have a look at the tracks I've arranged in the past, you can see a lot of such songs. Too many for it to be just a coincidence ! Not just credits songs of course, sometimes stage songs with a similar feeling to them as well (Pop n' Twinbee has a lot of those for example). Here are a few really good ones :

Those songs are often overlooked by guitar arrangers, who mostly go for more rock appealing songs (see my 2nd criteria below), hence why I've often been tagged as the guy who covers upbeat and cheerful songs, and I don't mind at all.

Some themes that fall into that category and that I plan on covering in the future :

Sparkster / Rocket Knight Adventure : Ending part 2
Little Nemo : Ending

2. Epic stuff, final battle-ish, or utter-desperate !

Before going further, let me just say that by an "epic song" I mean a song that sounds heroic, with very powerful feelings going on. I insist on that because it seems to be an overused adjective nowadays.

If you're familiar with how I turned into a guitar arranger of game music, you probably know that the first rock arrangement I ever heard, and that lead me to do it myself a few years later, is none other than a ridiculously good 90's TV show opening, Televisator 2's version of the Street Fighter 2 title screen theme. This song has that heroic feel I'm talking about, and when arranged for guitar, it's magnified a hundred times. I just love that sort of vibe in music. Noticing that encouraged me to look for this in other game soundtracks. Below are a few arrangements of such songs :

And sometimes it gets over the top. I've become fond of final battle music where that heroic vibe mixes together with a desperate touch, like the fate of the universe depends on this very moment. These songs are often personal favorites of mine :

Seriously, the "Justice Ray" themes that were written by Hyakutaro Tsukumo, parts 1 to 5, are probably the most perfect embodiments of what really gives me thrills in music. I've only covered 2 of them, but that was before I heard there were others, otherwise I'd probably have done a full Justice Ray medley !

I have more stuff like that in my "bingo list" of course, like :

Shadow Of The Colossus : Resurrected Power
Final Fantasy IV : Final Battle
Gradius 2 : Burning Heat

For the fun of it

By now you probably know better how I pick most of my source material. There are exceptions of course. Collaborations for example, lead me to cover stuff that I'd probably not cover if it was me alone. The most important thing after all, is to have fun.

Stay tuned, more music will come this year for sure !

MAGFest XIII

Saying that I'm a nerd would be an understatement, as I just went to the US for the first time ever, for MAGFest only. This is a fact, I did go to the other end of the world to attend a video game music festival, but above all else, meet many online friends, some of which I've known for more than 10 years. All these years, I've read their stories about the festival, and today I can finally get to tell you mine ! It is truly a wonderful experience, one that I want to live again as soon as I can.

Going to MAGFest and back, as a foreigner newbie

My coming to the festival was a bit adventurous. I love going on a trip with little to no intel, and searching for my way on the go, improvising. That's exactly what happened. I had packed in a rush because of lots of stuff to take care of before my departure; my flight from Marseille was initially cancelled a few hours before leaving my place, and fortunately I was registered on another. Things started to become fun once I entered the US, with my being kept too long in the passport check line, and missing the last buses from one of the metro stations that could lead me to the Gaylord center. After some trial and error, I finally arrived at the giant hotel, and it was night already.

Then on the way back at the end of the week-end, more fun happened. I basically had to take the same itinerary but reverse. I just once again missed a few details, like where the bus stops were located. I was in a hurry, after taking some extra time to hang out with the awesome Kirby's Dream Band crew at lunch. I missed the bus at one stop and had to run in town to reach the other one. After that I waited at the wrong spot in Washington DC, until I thought something was not right... Anyway, it all worked out in the end !

I've gathered tips to avoid the pitfalls I faced myself this time, see below.

Steps to get to the Gaylord center (when landing at Dulles International Airport)

Take the 5A silver line express bus from Dulles to L'Enfant Plaza station in Washington DC. You have to wait for it at stop 2E, which is a short walk on the right after exiting the terminal through door 4. The trip fare is 7$, so you might want to have at least this amount of change in your wallet.
Once at L'Enfant Plaza station, purchase a Smartrip card from one of the available distributors, it's the payment option that is recognized by the NH1 bus that you'll have to take later. Also, don't know if it'll be the case for you by the time you do it, but the Smartrip machine was like, really slow to give me one. Keep cool.
Take the green metro train toward South, and reach Branch Avenue station.
Take the NH1 bus to National Harbor and get off at Waterfront Street. From here, it's a short walk to the Gaylord center !

Steps to go back to Dulles from the Gaylord center

Take the NH1 bus at the St George Bvd stop or the Waterfront Street one and get off at Branch Avenue metro station.
Take the green metro train until you reach L'Enfant Plaza station.
Board the 5A silver line express bus (on D & 7th street only) and you'll reach Dulles International Aiport again.

Great memories never to be forgotten

First, MAGFest is all about people that you get to meet. And I was totally spoiled. Not only did I get to share a suite with the kindest of people, but pretty much as soon as I got to the festival, I kept shaking hands and hugging long time online friends I had never seen in the flesh, and whose music had been so dear to me during the past 10 years. I made new friends too, as the place was crawling with video game music enthusiasts and extremely talented musicians. I got the pleasure to hang out with guys and gals I knew from the VGMix 2.0 era and OverClocked ReMix community, but especially from the Shizz bulletin board, where I sometimes lurk, and where the Dwelling of Duels, my favorite music competition, was born in 2003. I can't describe how intense it was for me. I can't wait to go back and hang out with them again, play games together, and jam whenever we can. I'll miss them for a whole year.

Second, MAGFest is about panels and concerts, about video games and their music. I had my share of great stuff to see, believe me. About the bands I finally got to see live on stage, relentlessly headbanging to their performances until my neck breaks, here are a couple ones :

Triforce Quartet on the terrace.
Adam Henri's show in chipspace, and his awesome dual Nintendo-DS driven setup.
Machinae Supremacy, that saved me the money to go see them in Paris.
Kirby's Dream Band, firing insane amounts of bliss into my ears with their ultra-melodic punky-dancy songs. They also had a jamspace set as "Vic Viper", with guests taking instrument spots on each song, which was super cool.
Descendants of Erdrick, taking me by surprise by going all progressive on one of my favorite game soundtracks of all time.
LonelyRollingStars, whose set culminated in "LONELYROLLINGSTARS.BAT" being served to Katamari Damacy's composer with a merry-go-round that I was caught into.
Super Guitar Bros, who to my great pleasure had added new songs to their set (Castlevania 3 !).
Marshall Art's emotion packed gig.
Bit Brigade, who I really wanted to see after all I had been told, and who made up for the much missed Metroid Metal show in their very own way. They also played original songs as "Double Ferrari" later during the festival.
Super Soul Bros, whose incredible jamming stamina finished my hands, that I could barely clap by the end of their last night secret set.
The Tiberian Sons, who kindly offered me to attend one of their suite rehearsals, and who almost summoned Kefka to the real world.
Viking Guitar Live, who managed to kill it, even while having terrible mixing issues. These five fellows are musician monsters, and I'm so happy I could be there to see them perform this year.
Danimal Cannon, who really is the stage beast I've heard of.
virt, a.k.a. VGMix's founder and composer of many fantastic game soundtracks, who blew me away with rainbows of shovelry and orchestral stereoscopy

As for panels, I did not get to see a lot of them, but made sure I could attend at least :

OverClocked ReMix staff's
virt's Q&A
Of course, Extra Credits' !

Like every year, a special live Dwelling of Duels listening party took place, and this time I was there too. The theme was "Dancing", so everybody arranged game music in a dancy way, and it was a blast, although I did not enter the contest myself.

Last but not least, even though I had not brought an instrument with me, I still got to borrow one here or there and jam with friends on video game tunes for a little while.

To do next time

Going to MAGFest without knowing the ins and outs of the festival lead me to miss out on stuff. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the main stuff I'll have to think about for next time.

Aim at a early arriving flight, so that I can hang out more with my friends before the festival kicks off. Now that I know the way to get to the Gaylord center, it'll be easier.
Have a real mean to contact anybody at anytime - and not just my sporadically wifi connected tablet, with Twitter direct messages...
Enter the Dwelling of Duels and join the live fun !
Obviously, bring my guitar so that I can jam with every musician I find on my path !
Avoid talking to people in concerts room, and wait for quieter hang outs, instead of hurting their ears while I'm wearing earplugs !
See the gigs I could not this time because of overlapping schedules.
Aim at a later departure after the festival so that I can hang out a bit more with my friends and properly say good bye.

At the end of the day

I had the time of my life, and came back home 10 years younger. I should have sold all my belongings to go earlier. I feel so lucky to be part of such a great community. I'll go again next year, better prepared for everything. I've got to start saving money now !

Wrapping up 2014, what next ?

It sure has been a little quiet during the second half of last year, considering the few notable releases I did during the first one ! The main cause is that after one year and a half my full time composer activity was not sustainable and I had to go back to working as a software developer at the same time. I'll try again later !

I did not stop making music though, and since mid-December I've started rolling out some of my backlog at last. So if you think you've missed something since Prime Legacy and the resurrected Unsealed, which both reached the major online music stores by now, read on to catch up !

Unsealed Video

First, the big one ! It's the main thing that has been holding me from posting stuff here to be honest. A few days ago, I finally posted the long awaited game footage video for Unsealed online. It's basically made of specially arranged scenes from A Link to the Past, so that each part of my long medley can be well illustrated. Staying true to the motto I introduced back in May when the album version came out, I called it a "musical playthrough". Of course we're speaking of Unsealed, and it's a 20 minutes movie, but with images from the game, I think it's a lot more fun to listen to it all the way through. Anyway, the thing is up on Youtube, check it out !

DownRight Fierce

A project by a friend of mine from California, Eddy Fettig, aiming at producing a graphic novel concept inspired by series like Street Fighter, Avatar, and Kill La Kill. I wrote some music for its Kickstarter campaign, but unfortunately, it was not funded. The project is still alive, but it will take more time for the story to come out. In the meantime, you can get familiar with it and listen to the funky synth song I wrote here on Youtube.

Zombie Night Terror

Zombie Night Terror is a stunning pixel-art-driven lemmings-like indie game that is actively being developed by people from my very town, Marseille. After bringing some music and (quiet) sound effects to its debut trailer, I brought some more to the game prototype before it was submitted to the Indie Game Festival behind the scenes. Now wait and see.

Road Warrior

If you're into chiptune, this is for you. In October 2014, the Russian netlabel 8081 released its final compilation, and one of my original songs is in the tracklist. You can listen to it (or even download it, it's free) on Soundcloud. I wrote it with a racing game in mind, with melodic accents inspired by Mega Man games, and it can be played by NES hardware too.

Super VG Christmas Party

Have you heard of this super compilation called "Super VG Christmas Party" that was released in December before the holidays ? It was produced by Ian Luckey, and features more than 100 artists, for a total of 42 songs. Being part of that massive lineup, I took the opportunity to rework one of my favorite themes from Mega Man on NES : the Ice Man stage's. The song is called "Flight Of Santa Man" (just imagining Ice Man in red with a beard being pulled in the night sky by mecha-reindeers did the trick), and let me tell you, it's quite groovy !

Divided Infinity

Coded Emotion is a young team of video game enthusiasts, and it's been a few years since I've started making music for one of their most ambitious project, a story-based RPGMaker game called Divided Infinity. Although by now the project has been announced publicly, there is still little information available around. But I should be able to release a couple original songs I wrote for the game pretty soon, if all goes well. I'll tell you more by then.

Second Legacy

If you liked Prime Legacy, perhaps at some point you wished the game was real. I still want to leave people free to imagine their own version of this fictional shooter, so that the experience remains personal. But what if there was a sequel to it ? Why not make a real game this time ?

Hence the name. Second Legacy is the spiritual sequel to Prime Legacy, except this time the game actually exists. I've written the whole thing, without relying on a game engine, and although it does not have fancy graphics or polished audio, it's already quite... playable. I'll post updates here whenever interesting stuff happens !

MAGFest!

Hehe I saved this for last, because of my excitement. For years, I've wanted to go, well something like 8 years I think. This year all planets are aligned, I can go, and I will. If you also make it to the festival, meet you there !

10 years already !

The day has come ! This is official, I've been rearranging music from video games for 10 years now. I can't believe how fast time has passed, since my debut release on VGMix back in 2004, "The Imprisoning War". It was a punk-ish version of the Hyrule Castle theme from The Legend of Zelda : A Link to the Past, and the reception I got on that day was pretty overwhelming.

I remade that song in "Unsealed" in 2005, and yesterday evening, on Arecibo Radio and during KyleJCrb's Nitro Game Injection show, a full-fledged 2014 version of it was streamed, in celebration of this 10th Anniversary, along with other arrangements of mine, and the long awaited Prime Legacy, which is, at the time of writing, best-selling on Bandcamp (see the screenshot here ?) ! Isn't that awesome ?

So speaking of Prime Legacy, it's now out for everybody to enjoy, and available on Bandcamp, Loudr and OverClocked Records. You can pick your favorite platform, all of them are good for musicians and the future of music in general.

Speaking of Unsealed, why is it not yet available ? Well I intend to release it as an actual EP using Loudr's awesome cover licensing platform. So an artwork is in the works, and taking the licensing delay into account, you guys will still have to wait for a bit longer. But don't fret, it's only a matter of days !

Well well. Now what ? Nobody can tell how these next 10 years will be, but I'll make sure you guys can keep enjoying more music, that's for sure ! Thanks to all of you for sticking with me, and as usual, stay tuned !

Prime Legacy pre-release listening party announced !

Prime Legacy, my upcoming chiptune rock album, will be finally out on May 19th, the exact day when I submitted my first VGM guitar arrangement on VGMix, 10 years earlier ! It was "The Imprisoning War", a very poorly mixed punk take on the Hyrule Castle theme from The Legend of Zelda : A Link to the Past.

Now, in celebration of all these past years rocking out to video game tunes, we'll be holding a pre-release listening party on Arecibo Radio, on May 18th, 6PM EST, and the awesome KyleJCrb will host it ! Those of you who join us there will get to hear Prime Legacy in full before its official release to the world, as well as this mysterious revisited arrangement from the past !

For your comfort, a Facebook event is up. Either way, hoping to see you there !

Prime Legacy pre-release trailer

Exciting news today ! Prime Legacy, my upcoming chiprock EP, is complete ! I've started dealing with release-related stuff and will announce the D day soon. I can already tell you that there will be a pre-release listening party, so if you want to listen to the album even before it is out, stay on the lookout.

In the meantime, I'm of course working on this special VGM arrangement that I plan to unleash at about the same time. As I said in my previous posts, the original plan was for me to aim at sometime mid-May, so I think we are right on track. I'm basically working on it in the same "all-out mode" than last year, when I threw everything I had into "Dwelling Of Heroes", my entry for the Dwelling of Duels 10th Anniversary competition. You don't want to miss that.

Celebrations are for soon now, but the wait will still be long. To make up for it, as promised, you can watch the Prime Legacy pre-release trailer, that I've uploaded today. You will get to see the mysterious artwork that my friend Hanzo drew for it, and hear parts of a new track featured by the album, the opening one, called "Fire Curtain" !

As usual, take care and stay tuned, more music is coming !

Crunch time !

So we have entered April, my most busy month in 2014 yet, and it's time to give you guys an overview of how things are going so far.

Latest news from Other Side

As you may already know, Other Side (concept art shown) is a fun 2D multiplayer "dash 'n' catch" game, that I helped out creating back in January this year. The game has been making steady progress lately, and the development team is requesting feedback from the gaming community ! A permanent server is up so that you can try the game for FREE at your leisure. Tell your friends !

To help further spreading the word about the game, I've also made this guitar arrangement of the music from the game. It's based on the gameplay trailer music that I wrote for it. Enjoy !

TMNT4 Turles In Time album : Shell Shocked

I spoke a bit of it earlier this year : this album gathering many great musicians from the VGM community to arrange the soundtrack from Turtle In Time (both the SNES and Sega Genesis versions), and directed by Kyle Crouse, is finally out for everybody to enjoy !

You won't directly see my usual remixer name on it by the way, as I'm part of the virtual VGM band called "The Snugglemen" (SnappleMan, Omigadrive, Wild_Cat, and myself). Our song is a monstrous medley blazing full speed through many themes from the games, namely Sky Palace, Starbase ~ Where No Turtle Has Gone Before (Stage 9 BGM), Theme of Half Shell, and Tournament Opening.

I sneaked into the lineup really two weeks before the final deadline, to help finishing the arrangement SnappleMan and Omigadrive had started, mostly glue it together with nicely programmed drums, record most of the guitars (Omigadrive played leads with me during the duelling solos though) and mix the whole thing. That was back in November last year.

Get the album for FREE from OverClocked ReMix and if possible listen to it while eating pizza (it will make it taste better !).

Prime Legacy status

1. Title Screen - "Fire Curtain"	100%
2. Menu - "Oath"	10%
3. Chapter 1 - "Unbreakable Wings"	100%
4. Chapter 1 Boss - "Hypnosis"	100%
5. Chapter 2 - "Deep Blue Dreams"	100%
6. Chapter 2 Boss - "Asphyxia"	100%
7. Chapter 3 - "Primordial Soup"	100%
8. Chapter 3 Boss - "Thanatophobia"	100%
9. Chapter 4 - "Final Departure"	100%
10. Chapter 4 Boss - "Catharsis"	100%
11. Epilogue - "Everlasting"	0%
12. Credits - "Shining Ashes"	100%
Artwork	0%

As of now, everything is still going the way I planned it. Only 2 tracks and the cover art remain to be done, and they should be by the end of April, leaving a couple weeks free to manage various release related stuff before the target date, sometime in May.

Perhaps you noticed that some track contexts in the album have changed. Track 11 and 12 were originally meant to be the "credits" and "ranking" themes respectively, but in order to make the listening experience more interesting, I decided to make an "epilogue" theme, and close the album with the "credits" one.

In other news related to Prime Legacy, after attempting to contact several labels, I'm happy to announce that the album will in the end go to OverClocked Records. Now all I have to do is to crunch enough time within what remains of this month to make sure that I hit the deadline !

And about this so-called 10th Anniversary thingy ?

I saved it for last ! Well it's still a bit early to say more as I'm still in the process of recording it at the moment, but a very special VGM arrangement is coming your way. It's got something to do with my very first appearance on VGMix, back in 2004. If all goes well, I'll put together a trailer before the end of the month to get you guys at least half as excited as I am !

Looking forward to letting you guys hear all this music ! In the meantime, please bear with me !

February updates

I hope February's been good to you, at least as good as it was to me. I have a few things to talk about today, let's take them into order.

Incoming chiprock awesomeness : an album title !

1. Title Screen	0%
2. Menu	0%
3. Chapter 1	100%
4. Chapter 1 Boss	100%
5. Chapter 2	100%
6. Chapter 2 Boss	100%
7. Chapter 3	100%
8. Chapter 3 Boss	100%
9. Chapter 4	100%
10. Chapter 4 Boss	10%
11. Credits	0%
12. Rankings	0%

Prime Legacy.

That's the title of this album of combined NES chiptunes and guitars that I've been working on like crazy during the past two months. And this is how I'll refer to it from now on, instead of "Project C".

So how is the project doing ? It's tough to keep up with everything going on but so far everything went rather smoothly, I'm still right on schedule and aiming at a release mid-May.

This album is written like the soundtrack of an old-school arcade shooter game (my favorite game genre ever), with tracks for a few of the key settings you usually find in them. And as you can see here, I have already all the "stage" music down, and sometime in March, all the "boss" one will be done too. So this is definitely going very well.

New remixes home page goes live !

This is very fresh news. This month I worked on a new, leaner version of my good old CarboHydroM arrangements home page. Most people go to Youtube to listen to these nowadays and my site is left for download purpose only, so I figured it would be more practical to have everything gathered on a single page.

Now you hit the home page, you can immediately download the song of your choice. Go have a look !

New social link : Facebook

After Twitter last year, and after a couple people told me I should have a Facebook page, well I finally yielded and got one ! You can go there for inside news if it's more convenient for you, I'll post stuff as often as I can. It's up there in the social links hub bar, along with the others.

Celebrations for 10 years of remixes

Now back to more fun. As I said in an earlier post, this year I'll be celebrating the 10th Anniversary of my CarboHydroM video game music arrangements. Although I started making remixes in my little corner of Earth way before that, it's really in 2004 that I first posted an audio song on VGMix (May), and entered my long loved Dwelling of Duels competition (December).

I've made up my mind about releasing cool stuff for the occasion, and I actually started working on it, so this is taking shape seriously this time. Gather clues here and there and you may be able to guess ! Either way, you can expect a teaser of some sort during the next months, which will feature bits of audio delight - both about this project and the Prime Legacy.

All in all : stay tuned !

Global Game Jam 2014 : FUN !

After catching up to my severe lack of sleep, I can finally tell you more about this event I attended this week-end : the Global Game Jam 2014 !

For those who don't know about this event, it's a world-wide game development competition, hosted in various countries, that lasts 48 hours. On start, a theme is decided upon by the organisers, and all the registered entrants are to make a game related to it, in a way or another. On top of putting your skills to the test, it's a great way to meet other talented people and have fun together for a short time.

So I teamed up with Ludonkey Games and other awesome guys. We made a fun multiplayer chase/scoring game called "Other Side". If you want to try it out, go ahead, there are builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Make sure you do with friends on a network, it's really fun when you are 3-4 players or more. Also, bear with us, there are BUGS !

The rules are as follow :

You play either an angel or a demon
If you play an angel, you must collect holy crosses in order to win points
If you play a demon, you must catch angels to win points
When caught, an angel turns into a demon, and the demon turns into an angel
The world and music change whether you are an angel or a demon

As a composer/SFX designer, I did my part by writing catchy 8bit tunes for the game (sticking up a melody in all my teammates' heads : success), but I also played a role as a game designer, and ended up putting up some side-graphics too. With such limited time, it's a given that you will have to help your team in any way you can to get results !

Anyway, you are perhaps interested in what I did with the soundtrack, aren't you ? If so, you can go listen to the whole thing here or on Soundcloud.

That was very fun, and I will enter again for sure ! Also the whole team enjoyed making this game and playing it so much that we want to continue developing it and polish it as much as we can.

Now to go back to all the on-going stuff... and also get more sleep back !

An album in the making ! Working title : "Project C"

It's always when I'm in the middle of something else, and usually something important - here making a sound design demo with stuff I recorded in the field during Christmas holidays - that inspiration strikes.

Since it's been a few days now and I have almost 3 tracks down, I can safely say that I'm past the point of no return, and that it's really turning into an original album affair. Remember the NES-rock demo I released lately, called "Unbreakable Wings" ? Imagine an album made of songs with this same vibe, and you know more or less what I have in mind !

For convenience, starting now let's call it "Project C" (like in chiptunes) as a working title. The concept is as follow : 12 tracks, each of these standing as the hypothetic background music to a specific setting in a retro-shmup game that does not exist !

1. Title Screen
2. Menu
3. Chapter 1
4. Chapter 1 Boss
5. Chapter 2
6. Chapter 2 Boss
7. Chapter 3
8. Chapter 3 Boss
9. Chapter 4
10. Final Boss
11. Credits
12. Rankings

At the current time, tracks #3 ("Unbreakable Wings" that I mentioned above) and #4 are complete, and track #5 is about mid-done, so I know where this is going. And I can tell that I'm not going to sleep much this year !!

2013 retrospective and 2014 take-off !

Welcome !

What better day than the first of the year to launch this new home page ? I've been working on it like crazy during the Christmas holidays so that it's good to go.

Why a new website ? As you perhaps already know, during the past years, I was working as a sysadmin during the day and sometimes produced video game remixes, that I released here. I left my job earlier in 2013 and am now taking my chances working as a full time music composer. Hence this new home page, where you will find everything you want to know and more.

Browsing the site is pretty straightforward. You can use the top bar menu to reach either of the three sections available, or one of those other networks I'm being active on as well. The most relevant area of the site would of course be the audio page, where you can listen to selections of my work, past and present - at least what I'm authorised to share to date. With time, more and more tracks will be there. On the about page, I've assembled relevant information for anybody curious.

So once again welcome !

Samples from last year :

What was this past year like, musically-speaking ? First with the releases :

Post-MAGFest, I started out by releasing "Trinity Rush" a collaboration arrangement with two of my friends, the bassist Wild-Cat and guitarist Hattori Hanzo, covering the "Shooting" stage music from Sparkster / Rocket Knight Adventures on SNES.
"Dino Racer Turbo Mega Destructor" , the short animation by David Carron for which I've scored a fast-paced and epic metal soundtrack got out.
Metroid Metal celebrated its 10 years, and to show my appreciation I collaborated once again with Wild_Cat on a cover of the "Ending", featured on an album with a few of these tributes.
To mark my departure from my sysadmin job, I released "Planetarium", an arrangement of the Rainbow Road theme from Mario Kart 7 on 3DS.
I've got my hands on a video camera and started capturing myself performing my own songs, with two of those vids making it to Youtube, "Rising Sun" and "Shell Rider".
To honor the Dwelling of Duels contest which I've been regularly entering for the past 9 years, I've released an all-out Gunstar Heroes music medley with Wild_Cat, "Dwelling Of Heroes".
As a Christmas gift to my followers on social networks, I released one of the game soundtrack demos that I worked on during the year : "Unbreakable Wings", showing publicly for the first time how my usual guitars blended with NES chip sounds sounded like.

What else ? Oh yeah, there was also this interview in June, by Rufo & Co, that I translated later to English (you need to enable captions to see subtitles).

But that's not all. I actually cumulated a fair amount of unreleased material, stacking up to 72 minutes of music, for games that are not yet out :

2 tracks of background music for an indie mobile puzzle-game by Roguish Exploits.
2 remixes (metal and funk) of Ghost Blade music, an upcoming Dreamcast game by Hucast.
Lots of almost blind-composing original music for the Encycle Project (working title), an RPG-Maker VX based game by Coded Emotion.
A crunch-time collaboration arrangement with Snappleman, Omigadrive and Wild_Cat (we labeled ourselves "The Snugglemen") that will be featured on the KNGI/OverClocked ReMix TMNT4 album, "Shell Shocked", to be released in early 2014.
The main theme of an hypothetic support soundtrack for the Volt comic-book project by my friend HeavyMetalHanzo.
More demos... there are never enough of them !

So now, what can we expect from 2014 ?

Simply put, more music ! And yeah, like, lots of it. I already have a couple remixes ideas going, and I intend to work on more original material. In parallel, I'll upload guitar performance videos from time to time, to make my past works shine in a ridiculous new way.

Also, we are now in 2014, and I just want to point out that it's been exactly ten years since I started releasing music on the Internet, as CarboHydroM on VGMix (2004)... A proper celebration would be nice don't you think ? Holy crap, when I think that some of you have been sticking with me for so many years, I feel SO grateful ! Thanks a lot my friends !

And it's in excited anticipation that before signing off, I wish you all a great year ! Take care of yourselves, and stay healthy ! Stay tuned !