You said that you could come back to the mario RPG series. That a really good ITS podcast.

Hope your doing great.

Thanks for writing - to be honest, I doubt it. However, I’m sure that somebody has painstakingly transcribed a MIDI version of it. From that, you could boost it into a notation program like Finale/Sibelius and print off the parts. I can’t promise you that they’d be right, but you never know!

Let me know how it goes!
Cheers,
Kenley

http://infiniteammo.ca/blog/aquaria-ost-launches-saturday-w-live-pj-jam/#comments

One thing I love about ITS is that even when you’re delving into topics that aren’t necessarily my favorites, you still manage to hit upon something new and interesting to me. I’m passingly familiar with baroque/classical/romantic music, but it hadn’t occurred to me before to think about how the chords we use as basic building-blocks today first arose as more of a side-effect of early polyphonic music than as something that was used intentionally. Pretty cool.

One technical note - I think you might want to play with the balance of the podcast, especially when there’s a lot of orchestral clips as in this episode. I know you don’t want to mix the music too high to avoid clipping, but I found myself repeatedly turning my volume way up - say, to catch subtleties in what the strings were doing - only to find myself confronting Very Loud Kenley after the clip was over. It wasn’t about to blow out my speakers or anything, but it was a bit disconcerting.

Anyway, minor quibbles aside, the podcast is still awesome. Keep it up!

There is also a character in the game called “Jenka” whose theme is a well-known folk tune from Finland (”Letka Jenka”). I only know this from living in Finland, but I wonder how the guy who made the game and music got to know this, and why it was included.

Anyway, without writing the episode for you, I hope you’ll choose to focus on “Cave Story” on your podcast soon.

m a t t - thanks! It’s important to pick up scores from some indie and underground games, because sometimes there’s magic I fell in love with Aquaria and I hope that you pick it up, it’s like “Super Metroid” underwater and is a gloriously engaging game. ALSO, the soundtrack is SO beautiful! I think that the game is only $30 (maybe $40), but it’s really worth it! Also, I haven’t played “Cave Story,” but I’ve heard that it’s terrific - should I pick it up? Again, thanks for your kind words!

Atreus - I’m glad that you found your way over here! Thanks for listening and please feel free to comment on further posts!

Cheers, team! Talk soon!
Kenley

I haven’t played it a while, but I wonder if Cave Story would be a good subject, if you’d like to do another indie game?

Anyway, keep it up, KK, this is a podcast worth waiting for!

- m a t t

Thanks again for all you do!

applo - You’re right about the expectations thing - it’s way more fun (and exciting) to be surprised, it’s just that, at that period in time, everything that was dissonant was often resolved. When the Romantic Era came along, all was different (which is one, among many, reasons that I like it better :P). And yeah, I wonder who could be next… though, I don’t ever wish to know the answer to that!

Richard - thanks for the nice words too! If you have ideas for shows, then send me an email at kenley@intothescore.com - I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions!

i don’t necessarily agree on the point of expectations for a song being met a good thing. i prefer to have my guesses outwitted (a reason why i avoid a lot of baroque music, with its rigorous devotion to a canon of sound deemed “pleasing” by monarchy).

and, yeah, sugiyama is pretty old. i wonder who square-enix is going to have take his spot when he’s gone. i believe the dragon quest title for the wii had an additional composer who emulated his methods.

cheers!

Parker - y’all is crasy, bra see you in a bit!

Welcome back. Can’t wait to hear that Dragon Quest VIII post. You’ll definitely have my tentative ear for that podcast.

Every thought to do a special or mini for Wild Arms? You would have me captivated for hours on that game series alone.

I’m not sure what all the fuss is about using the chiptune as the “instrument” when arranging other works. I’m just curious as in to when people began to speak up about the album negatively. Was it done prior to the album’s release, or was it done right after? I’ll have to search around for that answer, but if there was some bad vibes coming only after the album’s release, then that’s just silly.

Just noticed that I referred to chiptun as “the chiptune”, and I’m not going to change it for great justice. Anyways, good post again.