Secret of Mana - Flight Into the Unknown remix - "Beyond the Big Infinity"
16Arrangement, production: Jorito
Guitars: Sagnewshreds (http://soundcloud.com/sagnewshreds)
Originally someone else claimed this track for the Secret of Mana album, but due to time constraints he wasn’t able to do a full remix in time. Since I felt that this was an iconic track we needed to have on the album, I offered him to collaborate, with me taking the lead in the track and Sam (Sagnewshreds) helping out with guitar parts.
We started talking about his original idea, which was chiptune with guitars. I tried some things, but couldn’t come up with anything good. In stead I opted to take a different route, and after my first synthwave track “Shovel Power” I felt it would be interesting to explore the genre further. I started out with the ‘chorus’ part from the source track because I figured that’d make excellent material for the typical Italo/synthwave staple background synth stabs. After I added some gated Linn drums, some typical bassline patterns for the genre and messed around with the melody from the source, the rest fell into place very naturally.
Of course I couldn’t resist and try to add some chiptune anyway, and that was a perfect excuse to incorporate a chiptune solo too. Since I knew that Sam is a great guitar player, I also added some guitar leads in there, and as he requested I reserved a nice space in the arrangement for the kickass guitar solo he cooked up. Add copious amounts of reverb for that 80s vibe, slice it until it grooves, season it with some more cheesy synth sounds, et voila: 80s synthpop cheese! Bon apetit :)