Vandahlia - Ballblazer - Song of the Grid

1 other remix of Ballblazer

Here are some interesting facts about the original Ballblazer music, taken from Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballblazer):

Ballblazer's theme music, called Song of the Grid and heard between matches, was algorithmically generated, a technique designed by Lucasfilm Games team leader Peter Langston and called riffology. The lead melody is assembled from a predefined set of 32 eight-note melody fragments, or riffs, which are put together randomly by an algorithm that also makes choices on several parameters including how fast to play the riff, how loud to play it, when to omit or elide notes, when to insert a rhythmic break. The melody is accompanied by bassline, drums and chords, which are also assembled on the fly by a simplified version of the above approach. In effect the music plays forever, without repeating itself but without straying too far from the original theme.

I've honestly never heard of riffology before, and I thought it was interesting that such a thing was possible back in the 80s, so I decided to try and make a kind of minimal yet modernized Ballblazer theme remix with a few melodic additions of my own. Plus, I was in a jazzy kind of mood, so this is what happened… 😃

Not one of my better remixes perhaps, but the length of this particular remix is directly connected to the fact that I tried to stay as true to the original music as possible and include an accurate translation of the above menitoned rifflology.

This remix contains four complete riffology parts, each one different, and all the notes for each SID channel as well as each riff segment were tracked completely by ear. No kind of automated note transcription tools were used.

This is my nod to riffology. 😊

Cheers!