A long, long time ago I created a bunch of MIDI’s that were, in fact, transcriptions of the music from Kirby’s Dream Land, the very first Kirby game ever released. While they were made purely out of nostalgia, they did serve as my starting point as a trasncriber and semi-songwriter, teaching me how to use the program that I would use for the next several years to create and transcribe music.

However, now that I’m on a Mac, I can no longer use that program. It seems only fitting that I should take one of those MIDI’s and rearrange it in Logic Pro, my new composition software, and see what I come out with. In addition, I should write a new ending to the MIDI to set it apart from it’s older brother, and to give it the panache and style that I think it should have, being sent from a shiny new Mac. The result is something that sounds two hundred times better than the old version, due to the more precise control I have over the audio in Logic Pro, and a song that actually has a cadence as well.

So, I present the new version of Float Islands from Kirby’s Dream Land - Floatin’ Paradise.

Listen to it now,

and then compare it to the old version.

I’m sure you’ll recall that a while back I transcribed the song Hide and Seek by artist Imogen Heap for my school’s A Cappella choir. While the motion to have us all sing it fell through when many members abandoned the project, the sheet music still stands as pretty flawless, a perfect match-up of the original Hide and Seek song. I’ve actually put the sheet music up on TJE and made it available for download. If you want the sheet music to Hide and Seek, just go to http://thejasoneffect.net/music/SheetMusic/Hide and Seek/ and download the pages.

However, Imogen Heap has now come out with another version of her popular song, aptly named “Hide and Seek 2.” Will I be transcribing it? No, but the song itself is a veritable confirmation that my transcription is highly accurate.

You see, Hide and Seek 2 is just a single vocal part, and a background harmony. it does eventually divide, but at its greatest dividend is it split only into three parts, and never reaches the tenacity of the notes that were hit in its more digitally altered cousin. I say this because Hide and Seek 2 does not rely nearly as much on digital effects as Hide and Seek did. Hide and Seek was, in effect, completely a Vox filter - I was pretty sure every part was played by Imogen herself, but with the pitches of her voice altered to be either extremely low or high. Which was why the choir had a bit of trouble performing my transcription - the notes were inhumanly high because they had been digitally altered to be so in the song.

But no more. Hide and Seek 2 lacks this type of alteration, forcing Imogen to sing within the one range she has. And, when you listen to it, you’ll find that it’s almost note-for-note accurate to my transcription of the Alto melody line. Some notes overlap with the Soprano part I wrote, but only because the melody dances around each part and Imogen had to combine them somehow.

On an unrelated note, the harmonies that DO exist are changed in Hide and Seek 2. The overall feel has gone from “strange digital mess” to “African tribal music”. All of the chords are now quite happy, moved to major keys.

Buy it from the iTunes music store - it’s in the album “Songs for Tibet.”

Yes, I’m proud of myself. ;)

It’s this extension for Firefox that… well, let’s you enter a blog post from anywhere in firefox. And it’s quite nice. Hopefully this post will work.

Now, back to studying AP’s with me. And finishing artwork, yadda yadda. You shall see soon an influx of about twenty pieces coming in for no apparent reason this week. In addition, to test out my spiffy new headset, I have recorded myself singing Stand By Me. The verdict? I need to figure out how to lower the sensitivity on the headset, because doing it in Windows sure didn’t help.

Listen to Stand By Me. Woo!

I’ve been playing this song ever since I wrote Spawn. It was actually the song I listened to writing the entire second half, starting with the Westendorf scenes. Once I started listening to it, I couldn’t stop, and I eventually taught it to myself by ear on the piano. Now I play it nonstop. I didn’t record it because I knew that once I did, I would probably stop playing it on the piano. But now that I’ve read through Spawn and I know that it isn’t a pile of crap (yay! now onto making the 2nd draft), I felt it was time to put this thing to MP3.

• Hear the piano version, intentionally muted-sounding.

• Or hear the Gamelimba version, which sounds much closer to the original song.

The song is by Yuki Kajiura, and appears in Noir. The Noir OST’s were all I listened to while writing Spawn.

(Hint: It’s a song called Erev Shel Shoshanim! I loved it so much, I made my own synthesized version.)

Listen to it now!

A lot has happened in the last month, and I’ve abstained from posting because I didn’t want to hurt my schooling. But now that schooling is over, I can do whatever I want. And that means you get the entire month of June, plus a bit of early July, in one giant post. And yeah, you will have to read on to actually read more.

Read the rest of this entry »

After forever and a half, you can now download THE ENTIRE SOUNDTRACK, plus extra tracks! I’m incredibly happy to see it done. Took a few hours to finalize everything, but it’s over - they’re all downloadable right now on the Golden Sun Soundtrack page.All files are, as usual, encoded in 80kbps MP3. I’ve listened to them, and they sound great - way better than what I had previously. So, I hope you’ll like them as well.

There are some people, however, I should thank for introducing me to this quick, high quality method of getting the soundtrack. The first is holyice7, who taught me how to take CaitSith2’s game audio rips and make them into lossless WAV format, making the entire “recording” part of the recording moot. I, of course, must thank CaitSith2 and give him credit for ripping the files initially. The soundtrack wouldn’t have been done for MONTHS if not for his rips and holy’s tips. Thanks to both of you, truly. I do believe thanking Cindy from Golden Sun Realm goes without saying - she made the original soundtrack, and since then we’ve become good friends, even if her track naming isn’t spot on. ;)

And yes, holy, I can’t wait to see what you do with your own soundtrack that you’re making ;)…

So, now not only will they be linked to on Golden Sun Realm as originally planned, but as not originally planned may be used for a jukebox project by Max of Golden Sun Syndicate. GSS is the other Golden Sun authority on the ‘net, and I hear frequent talk of collaborations between GSR and GSS, even a possible merge, though I can’t speak for the webmasters at all. However, it seems like the soundtrack will be put to good use!

And don’t worry about my bandwidth - I’ve got so much I don’t know what to do with it, and unless I suddenly become one of the internet’s top Web 2.0 sites, I won’t be running out anytime soon. Download as much as you want (but don’t KILL me). Oh, and if you really don’t want to waste your time downloading each track one by one, go get yourself a healthy serving of Firefox with some DownThemAll on the side.

UPDATE: Now you can download it via BitTorrent! Go to the Soundtrack’s page and download it either from Demonoid.com or from The Jason Effect - both are the same. PLEASE SEED THE TORRENT!

And lastly, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy…

~ Jason.

I’m not going waste words: I’m re-redoing the soundtrack. Sound bad? Actually, it’s good. I realized that I’d recorded all of my previous 53 tracks WRONGLY… in short, they’re not the quality they should be. That’s always bad. I had forgot to change the sound setting on VisualBoy Advance from 22Hz to 44Hz, basically halfing the quality that I wanted. I’d been wondering why they sounded just like Cindy’s old tracks… and now I know.

So, the soundtrack is going in a different direction. I will not be re-recording every single track. Instead, thanks to a user who I will credit once I’m done in a nice “I give thanks to these kickass people” speech, I’ll be using the actual game audio files! I had originally intended to make the soundtrack this way, but couldn’t figure out how to convert them into any real audio format. Now I can convert them to WAV, which is very nice. And they sound great. So, I sacraficed complete pride in myself for quality, because that’s what I care about most - it doesn’t matter if it was recorded by me (well, yes to a point), but it does matter if the end user gets something that’s of great quality, and in order to do that, I’m using the game rips, even if it makes my job a helluva lot easier.

It also means that the soundtrack will be done… today! So, be patient as I wrap things up in the next few hours!

~ Jase

It seems like I only post here with soundtrack updates and announcements that I’m going on vacation. So, I’m here to announce both. One is the cause of the other; no, I am not taking a vacation because I updated the soundtrack :P…

I’ve waited about five years for this trip. Our family is going on a cruise - the Freedom of the Seas, to be precise. It’s like a floating mall, but with on-board surfing and ice cream dispensers all over the place. The occasion for such a vacation? Well, it’s something very special, as well as the reason why we’ve waited five years for this trip. You see, it’s my brother’s (Max Rappaport’s) bar mitzvah, and since my own bar mitzvah five years ago, I’ve waited for the next bar mitzvah vacation. So happy bar mitzvah, little bro!

Two vacations have gone great in a row - third time’s the charm! So, with the great spirits watching over us, we will have an awesome vacation yet again. I’m all jittery and excited; I’m already packed.

But I thought I wasn’t the only one who deserved a treat. So I made sure to finish a large chunk of the Golden Sun OST before I left, since once I was gone it wouldn’t see any service for another week. Enjoy all 53 tracks that have now been recorded - it’s over half done now! Huzzah!

I’ll see all you schmoes in a week, then! Ta-ta!

Those of you who have been waiting, the Maple Story OST finally has a big update! Over ten new tracks! Whoopee!

Some of the names of the unknown tracks have changed, a BIG amount of them are brand-spankin’-new, and a good load of them were finally sorted into their respective CD’s.

Enjoy!