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Kong in Concert - Donkey Kong Country Arrangements 199

Digital Coma writes "Kong in Concert, a project directed by myself and coordinated by familiar artists of the unofficial game music arrangement community, has been released at http://dkcproject.ocremix.org and spotlighted at OverClocked ReMix. Its purpose is to pay respects to the excellent Donkey Kong Country SNES soundtrack and honor its composers with 22 rearrangements (or ReMixes) of every song from the game in high quality MP3 and OGG. We also have a BitTorrent distribution of the album's whole WAV compilation. If you like the idea of free, non-commercial videogame remixes, check us out."
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Kong in Concert - Donkey Kong Country Arrangements

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  • WooHoo! (Score:5, Funny)

    by grunt107 ( 739510 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:28AM (#10236007)
    Where's my banana-shaped lighter?? ("Freebird, I mean "FreeChimp"!!)
  • One Question: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:28AM (#10236008) Homepage
    Did you have to pay any kind of lisencing fees to Nintendo? If so, how much did that cost?
    • And also, although the music is non-commercial, what's the licensing for the tracks that have been made available? Perhaps I've overlooked something but I've read the site and can't work out if they are available under a Creative Commons license or something similar.
      • Re:One Question: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        They have no licensing because they don't follow the US copyright law in the first place. They figure that since they're not making any money directly or indirectly off their "derivative works," they won't get any legal trouble. Personally, I think it would be a disaster if Nintendo took legal action. As far as I know there have been positive responses from other original video game composers. Some of them even contributed their own arrangements. But corporations are not people..
    • by Rxke ( 644923 )
      And to the band Kong? http://www.kong.nl/bio.html

      Fortunately for youthey stopped. Great band though.
    • Re:One Question: (Score:5, Informative)

      by aaron p. matthews ( 96130 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @02:32PM (#10238184) Homepage Journal
      Hi, I'm one of the guys who worked on this project. (I did the ice cave track)

      This project is not licensed. We didn't ask for permission.
      This is a project done by fans, for fans.

      Nintendo is 100% within their rights to send us a cease-and-desist order if they choose to. However, Nintendo has shown no animosity towards such projects in the past and I suppose they won't show any towards this one either.
      But who knows? just enjoy the music. :)

      cheers.
  • Quite Cool.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GolgOSatsumA ( 645361 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:29AM (#10236017)
    Need some clarification, though; does this mean my band can do a cool cover version of the theme without worry?
  • Free? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ideatrack ( 702667 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:29AM (#10236024)
    I know this is probably a very simple question, but if you're taking someone else's work and remixing it, doesn't that mean you have some obligation to the original composer? What's to prevent Nintendo from sending in the lawyers to stop this?

    Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a bad idea or anything, (it's not my thing) but just wanted some clarification...
    • Re:Free? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cjpez ( 148000 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:41AM (#10236141) Homepage Journal
      (I'm not them, of course, but...)
      doesn't that mean you have some obligation to the original composer?
      Yep.
      What's to prevent Nintendo from sending in the lawyers to stop this?
      Nothing.

      It's the same situation as ProdigyRemixed.com [prodigyremixed.com]... I believe that getting permission from the artists whose work has been sampled is quite mandatory in order to stay in compliance with the law. A lot of this underground remixing-for-free stuff seems to do pretty well and not get prosecuted, but you're right, there's really nothing stopping the lawyers from (at the least) sending a C+D, or (at the worst) suing their asses into oblivion.

      Here's hoping they don't do that, though. If they're smart they'll realize that, while it's a clear case of copyright infringement, there's no way this is going to cut into their actual product sales at all.

      • RIAA (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Venner ( 59051 )
        Here's hoping they don't [sue], though. If they're smart they'll realize that, while it's a clear case of copyright infringement, there's no way this is going to cut into their actual product sales at all.


        Sure. 'Cause the RIAA feels the same way about P2P filesharing, I'm sure. I'll buy that piracy - real piracy - in Asia & Eastern Europe is cutting into their [hugely inflated] profit margin, but not P2P, remixes. etc.
      • Re:Free? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by SCHecklerX ( 229973 ) <greg@gksnetworks.com> on Monday September 13, 2004 @12:23PM (#10236553) Homepage
        Interesting, I just read of something similar happening in the demoscene yesterday when I decided to rebuild my old mod collection. Apparently there was some guy who was performing purple motion's (future crew) old stuff, and selling it as his own.

        More about it here: http://www.modarchive.com/rippers.shtml [modarchive.com]

    • The Commodore 64 remix scene is very active, in fact there was a live C64 remix concert in London, UK last Saturday (Sept 11th), and a fantastic event it was too.

      It was organised by a guy called Chris Abbott, and his company C64Audio.com [c64audio.com] now represents many of original 1980's C64 musicians and licenses their music. To date he's paid over £20,000 in royalites to the original musicians.

      So the C64 scene shows you can have a vibrant remix community, whilst giving credit to the original composers and
    • For Project Majestic Mix, a fan-tribute album for Final Fantasy music (http://www.kfssstudios.com/), the people needed to get what is called a mechanical license, which is a royalty-based license when someone wants play rearranged/remixed versions of the original music.
    • Why would they? It's not like they're making money off of these tracks, and it's not like Nintendo is losing anything.

      Overclocked Remix [ocremix.org] has been around for a few years, and I don't think they've ever had a lawsuit.
      • I've seen hundred (if not thousand) of game sountracks sold on audio CDs (imported from Japan) and Nintendo could say they lose money because of these projects. And for the licensing issues, it's purely commercial: you can't remix Britney Spears for free, you can't remix Nintendo (or Sony...) for free.
  • WTF? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 )
    Umm... Minibosses are a rock band who play NES songs, gamingfm is a streaming site to hear game songs (or remixes).

    The point is, stuff like this isn't remotely new or news. I'm guessing this is a buddy of someone on slashdot or VA, or they are paying for the advertisement.
    • Another band that does this is The Advantage - they have lots of older Nintendo games done with instruments instead of synth. The Duck Takes game song brings a tear to my eye every time I hear it :-D
    • Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kogase ( 811902 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @12:09PM (#10236415)
      I doubt a group making and giving away video game remixes would pay for an ad on Slashdot. And besides, computers have been around for a while, but you probably won't be complaining when they anounce the next 128-bit Ultra-Super-Duper-Amanamegatron CPU.
    • This is certainly news to me, and welcome news I might add.
    • Umm... Minibosses are a rock band who play NES songs, gamingfm is a streaming site to hear game songs (or remixes). The point is, stuff like this isn't remotely new or news. I'm guessing this is a buddy of someone on slashdot or VA, or they are paying for the advertisement.

      The point is not to highlight covers or remixes of BGM as a new concept, but to indicate a new release of material within that genre.

      If I were as conspiratorial as you I would insinuate that you were a fan/flunky of one of the other

    • nope... (Score:2, Informative)

      I'm guessing this is a buddy of someone on slashdot or VA, or they are paying for the advertisement.

      well as one of the guys who worked on this project, I can tell you now, none of us know any of the slashdot editors.

      I actually urged the project leader not to submit this story to slashdot -- because I've been here a while and I didn't feel this was slashdot material.

      Looks like I was wrong! Maybe Hemos is a DKC fan :)

      cheers.
      • I meant no insult to you, nor your group. You guys do good work. I meant it for the editors, cause it isn't really news for this site (and I'm saying it as a fan of the old console music and remixes of them).
    • See that little "Submit Story" link on the sidebar there when you load the site? Well, clinking on that link will allow you to "submit" your "stories" to the webmasters of the site. They, in turn, will look at all of the submissions and choose ones to post that they find interesting. The creators of this Donkey Kong remix submitted their site, and got accepted for posting.

      Maybe if you would like to plug your favorite game songs site, then you can and it might also be posted. Fairly simple, I think. Not eve
  • I used to play this game nonstop. I remember a few weekends where I would lock myself in my room and play for 18 hours straight. Did the same thing with Super Mario RPG, DKC2, Super Mario 64 and Sonic Adventure.

    It's been a while since I actually found a game that interested me. Most games nowadays are all graphics and little story, or if there is a story, it sucks.

    I miss the old days.
    • Re:DKC... (Score:5, Funny)

      by mozingod ( 738108 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:33AM (#10236069)
      Because DKC had such a ground breaking storyline?
    • Yes.
  • by D-Cypell ( 446534 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:29AM (#10236029)
    Perhaps the /. community could support this project by having Cowboy Neal stand on a tall ledge and throw barrells at people.
  • by Andorion ( 526481 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:30AM (#10236034)
    I had no idea other people thought the DKC music was good - I used to leave my SNES on, sit idle in various levels, and blast the music through the stereo with the TV off.

    No joke.
    • He made the music for DKC and DKC2... some of the best stuff to ever come out of a SNES, _ever_.

      I'm surprised he hasn't released any solo CDs, because he's awesome.
    • Yeah, I'll admit I taped a lot of the soundtrack too. The underwater music was very nice, and comparable to Brian Eno's An Ending (Ascent) in terms of sublime background music.

    • My first journey to the cool new-fangled music compression systems was when I tried to record DKC music through the sound card line-in. I compressed the files in Linux using the MPEG reference encoder to Layer II at 64 kbps. The songs fit nicely on floppy =)

      Can't remember exactly when this was, but this was back in the Era Before Napster... anyway, it was in the time when the king in the MP3 encoding was l3enc, shareware, the only alternative to use - and I was desperately waiting for a GPL'd MP3 encoder.

  • Huh? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by bwalling ( 195998 )
    If you like the idea of free, non-commercial videogame remixes, check us out.

    That's the funniest thing I've heard all day!
  • Game music (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zorilla ( 791636 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:31AM (#10236043)
    This is one game that I believe had underrated music. I'll have to check this out when I get home. OCRemix has a streaming radio station at oc.ormgas.com [ormgas.com], if you don't mind all the Final Fantasy and Sonic music they play.

    Also, for Commodore/Atari ST fans, there's Nectarine Radio. [scenemusic.net]
    • Re:Game music (Score:4, Informative)

      by spellraiser ( 764337 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:47AM (#10236199) Journal
      I feel obliged to plug one of my favorite bands here.

      If you haven't heard of Machinae Supremacy [machinaesupremacy.com] yet, I recommend you check them out. They are a very cool Swedish band who mix different styles, play with synths a lot, and are self-professed gaming nuts.

      In the current context, The Great Gianna Sisters [machinaesupremacy.com] is particularily salient. It's a remix of / tribute to the theme song of the C64 game of the same name. Excellent stuff.

      • I actually have them in my CD changer in my car, although I've had to give that CD a break because I can only stand the lead singer's harsh voice for so long. Naturally, my favorites are the ones without lyrics, such as the Giana Sisters remix, SIDology (Part 1, I think, the one that starts off as Cybernoid II), and Anthem Apocolyptica.
    • Also give Kohina [kohina.com] a try...
  • Relics of the Chozo (Score:5, Informative)

    by D'Arque Bishop ( 84624 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:32AM (#10236061) Homepage
    This isn't the first time the Overclocked Remix guys have come together to make a tribute album for a Super Nintendo game. I highly recommend checking out Relics of the Chozo [ocremix.org], which is their soundtrack tribute to the game Super Metroid. VERY good stuff, if I do say so myself.

    Just my $.02...
    • I wish they'd distribute in MP3 as well as OGG. Rant about open standards all you like, but having to remember to install an extra codec on a clean machine, as well as having to push OGG on anyone who I'd like to send a sample to (i have several ocremix fan friends) is a hassle
      • having to remember to install an extra codec on a clean machine, as well as having to push OGG on anyone who I'd like to send a sample to (i have several ocremix fan friends) is a hassle

        Not in my experience. Anybody who has recent Nullsoft Winamp already has an Ogg Vorbis decoder.

      • Get the WAV files from, the Bittorrent and encode them yourself. Quite frankly, I don't trust other people to encode MP3s properly. I use the recommended LAME from Hydrogen Audio.
    • This isn't the first time the Overclocked Remix guys have come together to make a tribute album for a Super Nintendo game.

      Indeed, and that's why it's so strange this got a Slashdot story. ocremix.org/remix.overclocked.org has been hosting any number of similar projects for years now (since 2000 at least).

      A story to the effect, "hey look, someone remixed an SNES soundtrack!" at this point seems a bit silly.
  • Has to be one of my fave video game music tracks. In fact any game that bears even a remote resemblence to Mule has me "boink-a-dink-a"ing the soundtrack while I play. If you're familiar with the game, then the "boink-a-dink-a" comment won't sound quite as odd it would otherwise. Well, okay, it still sounds odd, but hey...

  • by Andorion ( 526481 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:34AM (#10236077)
    FYI: It's 1 re-arrangement of each of the 22 songs, not 22 of each song like I anticipated when I followed the link =P
    • Although I'm sure "Bloody Tears" from Castlevania II (and IV, Bloodlines, and Dracula X) has been remixed at least 22 times. At least five times by Konami themselves when you count the version in the Dracula Battle Perfect soundtrack.

      Not that I'm against remixing this song...
  • No FLACs? (Score:4, Informative)

    by abischof ( 255 ) * <alex&spamcop,net> on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:35AM (#10236087) Homepage

    We also have a BitTorrent distribution [ocremix.org] of the album's whole WAV compilation.

    If their goal is to allow people to burn a CD of their work (which would appear to be the case), why not distribute FLACs as well? For those unaware, FLAC [sourceforge.net] is an open source codec which stands for "Free Lossless Audio Codec". It's like WAVs in that it's lossless but the files are much smaller since they're compressed :).
    • Re:No FLACs? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Venner ( 59051 )

      For those unaware, FLAC is an open source codec which stands for "Free Lossless Audio Codec". It's like WAVs in that it's lossless but the files are much smaller since they're compressed :).

      Eh, not much smaller. About 1/3 to 1/2 the size of the wave. Still, that's 2-3x the number of losslessly ripped albums you can store. I rip FLAC for my favorite albums, and Ogg for everything else. And yes, I do hear the difference over by 24/96 sound card, nice HK receiver, & good speakers*.

      *my friend had me do a b

    • Seems like a good point to me. Until such a file is released, I suggest we all slam the torrent. ;)

      -Bullseye
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Not at all. The FLAC algorithmn is different from other generic lossless compression types. It understands what it's compressing, and treats it as a serires of audio samples, not random binary data.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • (slightly offtopic, but...)

    I have been searching high and low for two videos I saw in the past but do not posess. One is a video of a japanese guy doing the super mario soundtrack on a piano while blindfolded. The other is a different guy doing parts of the same soundtrack on an electric guitar.

    If anyone has a bittorrent/direct link to these, I (and I bet many other slashdotters) would really like to lay my hands on them...

    • You can find them under the videos link at http://www.ebaumsworld.com
      • DOH!

        I swear I looked through that whole site. I SWEAR IT!

        KHANNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!

        (Thanks for the confirmation on location, I will crawl into my hidey-hole of ineptitude now...)
    • E-mail me if you want sheet music to Grassland Level Two from Super Mario Bros. 3. I've got Level One as well, but it doesn't work quite as well for solo piano.
    • One is a video of a japanese guy doing the super mario soundtrack on a piano while blindfolded.

      I'm not quite sure why people are so impressed by this. Playing the piano is very much based on muscle memory. A pianist knows where the keys are by touch. If you need to look at the keys to figure out where you're going next, you won't be able to play the thing.

      Think of it this way. If you're playing CounterStrike against a guy who has to keep looking at the keyboard to find whatever key he needs next, d

  • "If you like the idea of free, non-commercial videogame remixes, check us out."

    translates to:

    "If you want to hear the one genre of music guaranteed not to get you laid, check us out."
  • by scotay ( 195240 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:40AM (#10236128)
    ...P. Diddy Kong?
  • by Andorion ( 526481 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:41AM (#10236138)
    Try here: http://www.zophar.net/zsnes/spc/ [zophar.net]

    Then go here for the Winamp SPC plugin: http://www.zophar.net/utilities/spc.html [zophar.net]
  • Licensing issues (Score:4, Interesting)

    by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @11:44AM (#10236163) Homepage Journal
    I hate to be a wet blanket, and a redundant one at that, but unfortunately, this is a derivative work and as such the original owners can demand royalties.

    The USA has a concept called "mandatory licensing" when it comes to music. This means for some uses, such as using clips from many pieces in a compilation work or playing a song on the air, the owners cannot STOP you outright. However, they can demand payment.

    There was a case in the '40s or '50s or maybe early '60s where an artist took clips from a bunch of other songs and made a compilation work. The rights-holders of the original works sued to block it. The new work's artist claimed free speech and claimed Congress could not create a copyright law that would infringe his right to be creative. The US Supreme Court basically said no, Congress could not create a law to STOP him from being creative, but that the original artists were entitled to compensation.

    Source: Some radio program in the last year or two. I think I heard it on a public radio station but don't quote me on that.

    The bottom line:
    Assuming this is still the law, Nintendo may come after you, but if you've got the money to pay them off you can make them go away and keep distributing your creative work.
    Nintendo may be able to prevent you from distributing in or to certain other countries, I don't know the law worldwide.
    • For more information about what copyright law calls compulsory licensing of musical works for mechanical reproduction, go look up "mechanical licensing" or "Harry Fox Agency" on Google. It costs about 8.5 cents per song per copy.

      • Just kidding, I'm sure Apple's cost per song is more than 8.5 cents.

        It would be very nice to know how much - or how little - of an iTunes purchase is going back to the record companies and to artists residuals, and how much goes to cover Apple's costs and profit.
        • I thought Apple basically made little-to-no profit on iTunes, relying on it mainly to sell iPods, which *do* have a high profit margin. Most of the money from iTunes probably goes to the record companies.
        • If I recall correctly, the music store gets about a third of the sale price. The songwriter (who is not always the recording artist) and his publisher get the statutory 8.5 cents. The codec developer gets a few cents. The record label gets the rest and (allegedly pretends to) give some to the recording artist.

        • 65 cents on a 99 cent song goes to the RIAA.
          34 cents is used by Apple for hardware, bandwidth, maintenance, and development.

          They allegedly make no profit at all, and use it as a marketing venue for iPods, which still leaves them feeling pretty happy about it at the end of the day.
    • And the incentive for Nintendo for going after an "artist" making $0 from the remix would be...? Pissing off their fans who are so decidated that they make music remixes of crappy games from the 90s?
      • They have their own remix in the works and don't want the competition.

        A *NICE* company would simply pay the freelance remixer to withdraw his work or better yet pay him to distribute his work commercially.

        I doubt it will happen, but it would be sweet if Nintendo signed a contract with this guy letting him distribute his songs for free for non-commercial users, but have Nintendo sub-license the songs for commercial uses.

        Even sweeter if Nintendo included the remix as a bonus item in a future game.

        Not gonn
    • Since this is being distributed for free, and is derived from a dead console, do you really believe Nintendo would do anything other than bask in the love of their fanboys? The SNES music composers are probably beaming with pride that their babies are still being appreciated to this day.

      Props to the original composers of this and many other games though. SNES Midi stuff has elicited more emotion from me then any of the crap from x-box or ps2 games. "Oh cool, another bad european techno song"
  • We all heard of googles text ads, but since when are slashdot posts advertisments for your own personal website?
  • People with way too much time on their hands.
  • Australian law (Score:2, Informative)

    by DMJC-L ( 800240 )
    under australian copyright law afaik, this is legal as long as a maximum of 10% of the original work is used, anything more and they'll owe rights.
  • Its ok to say that dk sound track made the game imersive/good/fun as it is, since the game stile and its history are simple as shigeru always does. Simple history, easy controls etc. Dk was not the first scrolling game released, but its noticeable wish to make the game play interesting as possible is what made it a huge succes.
  • by dabadab ( 126782 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @12:09PM (#10236407)
    If you happen to be a C= fan, then check out http://remix.kwed.org/ [kwed.org] for some great stuff.
    There's also a webradio of this stuff: Slay Radio [c64.org]
  • I downloaded all the tracks directly (BT was going very slow, and I'm impatient) and am listening to them right now. I'm impressed. Some of them don't sound like they were done on synths, they sound orchestrated.

    Anyways, since all the tracks from the game are in this mix, why not hack or devise some way to be able to play the orginal game to this new music?

    I've done some light ROM hacking before and I don't even know if this is possible, but I'm just saying, it would be cool to have the new music in the
    • By "Hack or devise some way to be able to play the original game to this new music", do you mean "turn down the tv volume and turn up the stereo volume"? That's the layman's solution -- we all use it to play real heavy metal over games with nu-metal or "hello kitty on speed"-type soundtracks. It's almost as good as putting heavy metal tapes in Teddy Ruxpin dolls.
  • It would be nice if they had made torrents for the mp3 and ogg files as well. I don't have any download the entire set as wav files, but downloading each song one-by-one is a pain. And now that it's been slashdotted, the mirrors are getting slow, too. I downloaded the first few before this was posted, but now they're really starting to crawl.
  • by Zorilla ( 791636 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @12:12PM (#10236438)
    The one thing I found interesting about Donkey Kong Country's music is that a lot of the samples that were sound effects in the game were also music samples. These included the piano, which was the jingle when you got an extra life as well as the lead instrument in the first level. Another example I can think of is the heavy, metallic sounds in the industrial level music which also served as the sound the mine cart made when you landed back on the tracks.
  • by genner ( 694963 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @12:39PM (#10236746)
    I can't believe you people, you call yourself nerds and dont' even have one nice thing to say about this. These people are releaseing some awsome music.Are you such slaves to the top 40 charts that you can't see that? I for one welcome our DJ Pretzel overlord.
  • Fantastic site, just way too much FF and Chrono crap (I dislike both series). I never relised they did full projects like this and thought they were just random people submitting...

    I don't see how this is front page news but good luck guys and good luck in the future projects. Cough do secret of mana or Donkey kong country 2 cough :)
  • Donkey Kong: Country Arrangements?

    Whew, for a second I thought Donkey Kong was going to be singing Achey Brakey heart or something. What a relief.

  • I think the whole copyright issue is the problem, not a lack of people remixing. I've remixed the Streets of Rage theme (Streets of Rage has a great soundtrack and wonderful example of what can be done with just a few channels of FM synthesis and one of PCM samples), and I know someone who's remixed the Bubble Bobble theme. If companies would state that this kind of thing is OK when it's not for profit, we'd all see a lot of old remixes for the first time as well as many new ones.

    Now a live jazz band play

  • Some more... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Yoweigh116 ( 185130 )
    I've got an insanely large collection of video game remix MP3s, mostly from OCRemix. I've got a few suggestions for anyone interested in this sort of stuff:
    • The Minibosses [minibosses.com], of course.
    • Check out Project X [zebox.com]. They've got full renditions of the Mega Man 2 and 3 soundtracks.
    • This has already been mentioned, but Relics of the Chozo [ocremix.org] is an excellent cover of the Super Metroid soundtrack.
    • Poke around at OC Remix [ocremix.org]. You're sure to find something you like there.

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