Marathon Tempus Irae Redux #16 Gauntlet, 2024-06-18
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Tempus Irae Redux still hasn’t
Tempus Irae Redux still hasn’t been released; not only are a few bug fixes still left, but I’ve temporarily taken leave of my senses and decided to compose some original level music for it. This video previews the first such track. (Note: The mix is not final.)
Being coy about my influences is not in my nature, so I’ve named it “Ambiēns aquātica”. This is Latin for “Aquatic Ambience”, the name of a legendary David Wise track from Donkey Kong Country that directly inspired it.
I have a confession: I’ve never played a Donkey Kong Country game, and only first heard “Aquatic Ambience” on 2024-06-11 because of a Charles Cornell video that was ostensibly about Kōji Kondō’s (also brilliant) music for “Dire Dire Docks” from Super Mario 64. Cornell actually spends more than half the runtime gushing about Wise’s track, for perfectly understandable reasons: Why This ICONIC Mario Music Just SOUN...
“Aquatic Ambience” resonated with my exact mood at that moment to such an extent that I immediately fired up Logic Pro and sought out to emulate its mood and atmosphere while amping up its energy level. I’d be surprised if I’d even heard the entire composition twice at that point; had I been more familiar with it, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable attempting such a close soundalike for fear of plagiarism, but I didn’t yet have a clear enough recollection of its melody or arrangement to be able to copy more than its overall feeling.
That said, I intentionally opened with the exact two chords that open “Aquatic Ambience”: C minor 9 and A♭ major 11. (Cornell specifically mentioned that Wise opened with these two chords in his video.) I felt comfortable opening with this sequence because some of my previous compositions have used similar sequences – a piece I wrote in 1998 opens with A minor 7 and F major 9 (i.e., the same chords transposed down three half steps and without their upper notes).
By noon on 2024-06-12, I’d completed the chords, melodies, arrangement, and rough mix of “Ambiēns aquātica”; at this point, I felt comfortable listening to Wise’s piece more. I want to be clear: “Aquatic Ambience” is obviously one of the best game tracks ever composed, and I don’t seriously think I’ve touched its quality (especially since Wise pulled it off using a SNES sound chip). I felt pleased, though, at how close I’d come to its mood and atmosphere. (What atmosphere? It’s underwater, hyuk, hyuk, hyuk.)
That said, I don’t consider myself an objective judge of my own music… but a listener to whom I sent “Ambiēns aquātica” wrote this:
“I think you really captured the spirit of the OG while still giving it a danceable (beat, rhythm, etc not sure on the vocab). It’s got more energy than the source material 🙂”
Which was very satisfying to read, since that was my precise goal.
I’ve written one other piece for Tempus Irae Redux that’s mostly finished¹, a second that’s nearing completion², and a third that’s well under way³, and I’ll write a few more if inspiration strikes quickly enough – if possible, I’d like us to be able to release the game before I (probably) move next month.
In this video, I play through “Gauntlet” on Total Carnage using Vidmaster rules, showing all secrets, and killing all enemies. The enemy counter is a little bit janky because I forgot to exclude the Juggernauts Borzz used to generate the explosions. This has been added to my “fix this” list.
Tempus Irae Redux will be released when it’s finished.
¹I’ve tentatively called it “Disco Apocalypse in 5/4 (co-starring the delicious talents of Logic Pro)” – it was an experiment to see if disco needed to be in 4/4 to sound like disco (the answer, it turns out, is no). The name is a take-off on “Apocalypse in 9/8 (co-starring the delicious talents of Gabble Ratchet)”, the sixth movement of Genesis’ “Supper’s Ready”.
²I’m actually planning to have two very different arrangements of this one; I’m tentatively planning to name the full band arrangement “Pfhor Pfhōrī lupus” (roughly “Pfhor [is]⁴ a wolf to Pfhor”) and the orchestral arrangement “Dōnā eī requiem” (“grant him rest”). Both titles are, unsurprisingly, twists on familiar Latin phrases: “homō hominī lupus” (“man [is]⁴ a wolf to man”) in the former case and “dōnā eīs requiem” (“grant them rest”) in the latter.
³I’ve tentatively titled it “Ὁ θρῆνος τῆς Λοκρῐ́δος” (romanized: Ho thrênos tês Lokrídos), which is ancient Greek for “Locrian Lament”. As the title suggests, it is primarily in the Locrian mode.
⁴As with most Latin proverbs, the copulative “est” (“is”) is implicit in the sentence structure; it does not actually appear. This grammatical device is called a zero copula (plural: zero copulae). English uses it occasionally as well (“the more, the merrier”, “you coming to the party?”, most newspaper headlines).
Being coy about my influences is not in my nature, so I’ve named it “Ambiēns aquātica”. This is Latin for “Aquatic Ambience”, the name of a legendary David Wise track from Donkey Kong Country that directly inspired it.
I have a confession: I’ve never played a Donkey Kong Country game, and only first heard “Aquatic Ambience” on 2024-06-11 because of a Charles Cornell video that was ostensibly about Kōji Kondō’s (also brilliant) music for “Dire Dire Docks” from Super Mario 64. Cornell actually spends more than half the runtime gushing about Wise’s track, for perfectly understandable reasons: Why This ICONIC Mario Music Just SOUN...
“Aquatic Ambience” resonated with my exact mood at that moment to such an extent that I immediately fired up Logic Pro and sought out to emulate its mood and atmosphere while amping up its energy level. I’d be surprised if I’d even heard the entire composition twice at that point; had I been more familiar with it, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable attempting such a close soundalike for fear of plagiarism, but I didn’t yet have a clear enough recollection of its melody or arrangement to be able to copy more than its overall feeling.
That said, I intentionally opened with the exact two chords that open “Aquatic Ambience”: C minor 9 and A♭ major 11. (Cornell specifically mentioned that Wise opened with these two chords in his video.) I felt comfortable opening with this sequence because some of my previous compositions have used similar sequences – a piece I wrote in 1998 opens with A minor 7 and F major 9 (i.e., the same chords transposed down three half steps and without their upper notes).
By noon on 2024-06-12, I’d completed the chords, melodies, arrangement, and rough mix of “Ambiēns aquātica”; at this point, I felt comfortable listening to Wise’s piece more. I want to be clear: “Aquatic Ambience” is obviously one of the best game tracks ever composed, and I don’t seriously think I’ve touched its quality (especially since Wise pulled it off using a SNES sound chip). I felt pleased, though, at how close I’d come to its mood and atmosphere. (What atmosphere? It’s underwater, hyuk, hyuk, hyuk.)
That said, I don’t consider myself an objective judge of my own music… but a listener to whom I sent “Ambiēns aquātica” wrote this:
“I think you really captured the spirit of the OG while still giving it a danceable (beat, rhythm, etc not sure on the vocab). It’s got more energy than the source material 🙂”
Which was very satisfying to read, since that was my precise goal.
I’ve written one other piece for Tempus Irae Redux that’s mostly finished¹, a second that’s nearing completion², and a third that’s well under way³, and I’ll write a few more if inspiration strikes quickly enough – if possible, I’d like us to be able to release the game before I (probably) move next month.
In this video, I play through “Gauntlet” on Total Carnage using Vidmaster rules, showing all secrets, and killing all enemies. The enemy counter is a little bit janky because I forgot to exclude the Juggernauts Borzz used to generate the explosions. This has been added to my “fix this” list.
Tempus Irae Redux will be released when it’s finished.
¹I’ve tentatively called it “Disco Apocalypse in 5/4 (co-starring the delicious talents of Logic Pro)” – it was an experiment to see if disco needed to be in 4/4 to sound like disco (the answer, it turns out, is no). The name is a take-off on “Apocalypse in 9/8 (co-starring the delicious talents of Gabble Ratchet)”, the sixth movement of Genesis’ “Supper’s Ready”.
²I’m actually planning to have two very different arrangements of this one; I’m tentatively planning to name the full band arrangement “Pfhor Pfhōrī lupus” (roughly “Pfhor [is]⁴ a wolf to Pfhor”) and the orchestral arrangement “Dōnā eī requiem” (“grant him rest”). Both titles are, unsurprisingly, twists on familiar Latin phrases: “homō hominī lupus” (“man [is]⁴ a wolf to man”) in the former case and “dōnā eīs requiem” (“grant them rest”) in the latter.
³I’ve tentatively titled it “Ὁ θρῆνος τῆς Λοκρῐ́δος” (romanized: Ho thrênos tês Lokrídos), which is ancient Greek for “Locrian Lament”. As the title suggests, it is primarily in the Locrian mode.
⁴As with most Latin proverbs, the copulative “est” (“is”) is implicit in the sentence structure; it does not actually appear. This grammatical device is called a zero copula (plural: zero copulae). English uses it occasionally as well (“the more, the merrier”, “you coming to the party?”, most newspaper headlines).
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