Like a lot of my fellow gamers, I've been marked forever by the soundtracks of the games I played. I'm a musician at heart and I can play the guitar, so I rearrange video game music to make it sound as if a rock band was performing it. It's my own way of thanking all the talented composers that originally created it.
You can read more about CarboHydroM's story here.
News archive
Happy 10 years Metroid Metal ! The project has gone such a long way since the very first track was released back in 2003, and Stemage's metal reinterpretations of the series' soundtrack have always been among my very favorites. If you're not familiar with his work and are into this genre, you don't want to miss that.
Anyway, when my friend Wild_Cat mentioned the idea of joining a common effort to pay a great tribute to Metroid Metal for the 10-years anniversary that was coming up, I obviously said yes, even though I was already way too much booked over other projects !
The result is a collab' cover of "Ending", the MM arrangement of the ending theme from the very first game from the series, Metroid on NES. We called it "Supernova". And you can listen to the tribute album here.
It's finally up, David Carron's video whom I wrote a part of the soundtrack last year has been released. Here it is :
The music I've written starts during the snail scene, right after the beginning of the race.
Happy new year everyone !
For me, 2012 was dedicated to original music. I spent most of my time working on soundtracks, and only one of them is out so far. I look forward to letting you hear more, as soon as I can.
Still, during the end of last year, Wild_Cat, Hattori Hanzo and myself worked together on an arrangement of the "Shooting" theme from Sparkster (SNES). Wild_Cat came up with a draft of the song, that we improved together, before recording each of our parts separately. I mixed the whole thing in the end and we submitted it to MAGFest 2013 Dwelling of Duels, where it placed 4th.
Wild_Cat is the former bassist of my local band Shadow Broker, and Hattori Hanzo is none other than the other guitarist of the band, who makes here his very debut in the video game music arrangement scene !
Enjoy "Trinity Rush" !
In my previous update in October this year, I announced the release of an original song for soon. Well the video clip I wrote this for is not out yet, but still, the day has come.
It's called "Chain Reaction", and it's the soundtrack to a short and funny animation made by David Carron. I'll post a link to the video when it's available for watching. In the meantime you can get the song on my Bandcamp page. It's the very first song I post there, but there will be more !
On a side note, I'm preparing new tabs for you guys (they'll be out in the next few days), and a brand new video game arrangement is currently in the works. It's a collab', and we're aiming at a release in January 2013. Stay tuned !
I could finally take some time this week-end with a guitar on my knees to go back and see how I played the leads in "Sweet Memories Of Earth", and as it was on par with "White Feather In The Storm" as the most wanted track when it comes to tabbing, I hope these brand new tabs will help the guitarists who fancy this song !
Next time I get the chance, I'll take care of my Super Mario Galaxy 2 arrangement.
And now for something completely different. If you perhaps missed the update on Youtube, I posted a new video showing one of the many original songs I've written this year, and which is to be used in the soundtrack of a short animation clip that will be posted on Youtube as well.
It's actually not yet downloadable, sorry for that, but as soon as I can make some cool artwork for it, it will be available on Bandcamp ! In the meantime, enjoy this new one, and stay tuned !
Is it for real ? Yup, it's never too late : I released a few minutes ago some tabs for "If I Had Wheels". Who on Earth uses his holidays to work on transcribing his own songs years after ? Me. Go get a life CHM ! Dear fellow guitarists, this song is really easy to learn, and really fun to play !
Until I can get some time to work on my next arrangement, I'll write the tabs for at least the most wanted songs, whenever I get the chance. Stay tuned !
Still busy soundtracking, I'm not releasing any new stuff today unfortunately. I've started recording again the leads of Impossible Staircase, my collaboration work with Wild_Cat for the Dwelling of Duels Tornado of Solos competition of last year, as I now feel much more comfortable with their complicated fingerplay. I'm adding harmonies and other stuff to make it more interesting, and I'm aiming at a full release of the song in the next months.
Anyway, the real new thing today is that you don't have any more to download every single track one by one if you want to get one whole album. A few people wrote to me to ask, so I added links on the album pages to full album archives !
Each album archive contains all the tracks in Ogg Vorbis format, as well as the cover artwork, if there is one for that album.
It's been too long since I last worked on a video game music remix ! And yet I have tons of ideas. But since the beginning of the year I've been focusing on composing stuff for my local band and the soundtrack of an indie RPG maker VX driven game. I intend to make one or two other arrangements at some point this year though.
Speaking of my local band, that goes by the name of Shadow Broker (FR), I had not yet written about this, but the idea of performing CarboHydroM tunes on stage is more and more making its way through ! Interesting development isn't it ? For now, we have only added Let The Pain Out to our playlist, mostly because it's among the simplest to learn, but you can expect a few others to come later on !
You will be able to watch these live performances either on my Youtube channel or Shadow Broker's.
It's a late Happy New Year gift, but I was waiting for the results of the Dwelling of Duels competition to come out, yet again ! I cannot reveal my song here before, otherwise it would be disqualified.
Anyway, the first song that I'm releasing this year is called "Return To The Void" and covers the 7th stage music from Thunder Force III on Sega Genesis, as well as the final boss theme from the same game.
I wish you all a great year and always a lot of great music of course !
The long awaited results of the shredding competition called "Tornado of Solos", and hosted by the Dwelling of Duels were released yesterday.
And although a lot of people were interested by the contest and about to enter - I was expecting the turnout to be huge - only 3 entries were submitted, and that was a bit of a disappointment, even though this way I was sure I could reach the top 3 (with no glory at all). Then again, it's just bad luck, those who were missed had their reasons. Anyway, I finally got 2nd place, along with my buddy Wild_Cat, who collaborated with me and performed the bass.
More about the song itself. You can grab it from the contest page here, it's called "Impossible Staircase". I'm not releasing it here yet because as I did with Far Beyond Heavens earlier this year, I need to polish it and train a lot more to perform it with more confidence ! This is to date the most difficult song I've attempted to cover, and I feel that my skills are getting better.
Maxime "Wild_Cat" Noël is the bassist for the French video game music cover band "GrosPixels", and we also play in the same band right now, so it was possible for us to train together on the song, live. We definitely had fun trying to figure out how to play the most difficult parts, and headbanging like crazy. Kudos to him for pushing his limits further, you can especially pay attention to his bass solo in the middle of the song.
This is the result of my short summer holidays. I changed my mind yet again and after a few years with the old 'keep-it-small' design (and I truly used to be very happy with it), I went back to the idea of having some thoughts written about each songs, and wanted to fill all the white space that was left unused for display. At the very least I sort of wanted to try out new things for a change.
Everything should be mostly working, I tested each area of the site for a while, but of course if you encounter any issue I could have forgotten to fix, you can email me about it, and I'll see what I can do.
And now for something completely different, I'll be entering the Tornado of Solos competition this year. It's a special event that takes place in the Dwelling of Duels community, and where contestants focus on... live instrument skills. Simply put, if you enter, you need to shred ! If you're used to my works, you already know that I'm not much of a guitar shredder, but I'll do my best to do something good. The source material all contestants must cover is the "Dwelling of Doom" song from Castlevania 2 (NES), and I already know that a few VERY STRONG people will be battling. The deadline is November 15th. It will be fun !
Yesterday, k-wix's Back in Blue album project at OCR finally came out. It's an album covering the soundtrack from the Mega Man 9 game, available on Wiiware. I was (obviously) in charge of the credits theme, and my arrangement of this track is what I'm releasing here today. Some of you might have listened to it already, as I had posted it on Youtube before for streaming only. In terms of production we have here what I was able to do two years ago, as the song has been sleeping on my hard drive until now. This is "A New Beginning" (NL Version). Have a nice listen !
In the meantime, I'm also working on a new version of the site, with a management database for songs and news entries. I figured it would be way handier than directly editing html files, now that I have all these songs on my hands ! When will it be finished ? I don't know.
I did not intend to enter again the Dwelling of Duels competition for a couple months, but in August, the theme was all about paying tribute to the work of another remixer, and I absolutely wanted to be part of this. So I hesitated a lot before picking a song to remake, and I finally landed on George "norg" Nowik's "Inhabitants of the Dwelling".
This is the story : norg started working on his song during the Magfest festival back in January, right before the competition officially started there. And during that insanely short timespan he wrote a 17 minutes arrangement introducing the Dwelling of Duels and a couple of its contestants, by impersonating their style with a scary precision, and a great dose of humor. I knew the guy was extremely talented, but I think at that time I realized what he was able to do was not of this world.
I was among the people he tenderly mocked in his mega-medley, and I wanted to thank him for that. So this new song I'm releasing today is my interpretation of the first part of norg's medley, covering the introduction and title screen themes from Mega Man 2. It's called "Heart Cannon" (NL version). Thank you George !
Today I proudly release the result of a great collaboration with my fellow French remixer Scaredsim, that took us almost one year and a half to complete. It's an arrangement of the main themes featured by Metal Gear Solid I & II on PS1 and PS2, as well as the infiltration theme from Metal Gear on NES.
During the preparation of the arrangement, Scaredsim helped me a lot by bringing ideas and advice. When the structure of the song was set, we started recordings our parts and each time submitted it to the other for approval. My partner recorded all synths and also the acoustic lead guitar during the break near the end of the song. On my end, I recorded all guitars and the bass, and programmed the drums, before taking care of the final mixing.
Scaredsim is the one who found a title that fits perfectly this song : it's called"Sounds Of Liberty" (NL version).
Oh yes this one has been long to come out ! The whole story is that I started working on this song a few months ago and submitted it to the monthly Dwelling of Duels competition, in April 2011. It ranked 2nd place, although it was only a roughly mixed, temporary track. Because of a new neighborhood context, way less favorable for loud mic'd guitar recording, I had to get my hands on new hardware, with up to date capabilities in amp modeling.
But now the wait is over. Here it is for you to enjoy, "Far Beyond Heavens" (NL version). It covers two of the greatest themes featured by the soundtracks of the Thunder Force series, parts 2 and 3 of "The Justice Ray".
On a side note, I've released a simple album cover art for anybody who needs to keep music well organized in software of their choice. You can find it on the music page.
The next song will be released very soon, in early August ! It will be something pretty big, covering the soundtrack from another great game series. Stay tuned !
Hello everybody ! It's a bit later than when I intended to, as in the very beginning, it was supposed to be released for Christmas 2010, but I ended up entering the Dwelling of Duels again, and you're not allowed releasing your entry before the results. Anyway, today I'm finally posting my take on my favorite battle theme ever, the final Bowser battle one in Super Mario Galaxy 2 on Wii. Perhaps one of the most epic piece of music that I've heard in a long time. It's pretty rare that I get the urge of covering something that bad, and it happened here.
So here comes "Nemesis" (NL version). Feel free to have a listen, it's not too long but it's pretty intense.
Ok this is a good way to start off in 2011. I'm not sure about what will come next yet. I may enter the Dwelling of Duels again this month if I find a good idea for a 3rd level game music as source material. But I'm also working on non VG music related stuff, and moving to a new home at the same time. Stay tuned !
Hi all ! Summer was productive this year, although I spent most of my days off far from home and also far from any musical instrument. Today after entering the Dwelling of Duels contest (which has a brand new site by the way) with it, I can finally release a track covering the Asteroid Belt theme from the soundtrack of Super Aleste (also known as Space Megaforce) shooter on SNES. You can either listen to it on Youtube, or get it here. The title is "Starshine On The Rocks" (NL Version).
The artist who made this great artwork featured by the video is Orioto. Don't you think it looks like images from the game have almost become real ? Check out his other video game "remixes" in his DeviantArt gallery !
It's also time to release two new tabs files for older songs :
Finally, I took the chance of updating a bit the about and FAQ pages, because some time has passed and some things in there had reached the expiry date. Feel free to have a look around.
Get ready : the next song will cover something from Super Mario Galaxy 2 !
Yes. I started uploading there simple videos (basically, each song with a single picture fitting the game covered, or the feeling). This way, if all you want is have a listen to what I released without going through the trouble of downloading the songs, you can.
But on top of that, after many many people asked and I always turned them down, because of my extreme laziness, I finally got working on tabs ! It's true that if you ever wanted to have fun with the backing tracks, it would sometimes be a great help to give you some clues about how to play the leads on top of them, I'd never deny that. Then again, tabs are a pain to write, so this is going to take a long time.
Anyway, the first one is Toward The Downfall. Feel free to tell me if you have any complain or suggestion about it, I'll do what I can to help.
It's been a while now since I started thinking about recording guitars in a more realistic fashion, and although I already had mics and a preamp to play with, I had not found proper settings to produce songs with them... until a month ago.
So, the song I've been working on in March is a cover of the title screen theme from Double Dragon 2 on NES. I have not played much the game since I only borrowed it from a friend, way back, but its soundtrack is such a great classic !
Let me introduce "Call Out The Dragon". Guitars were taken in stereo mic recording, so the tone is a bit different to what I was used to mix, but it all sounds clearer than before. As usual, a backing track and a MP3 version are available as well. Have fun !
I hope summer went well for all of you. Marseilles is definitely too hot for me. Anyway, this song has been out on OverClocked ReMix for a while now, and you very probably know it already. But as the song was available here on the special page for donators before the Summoning of Spirits 'Tales Of' ReMix album came out, I completely forgot to release it on the main music page.
If you have not heard of that yet, this work is a collaborative effort between LuIzA and I, and that we did quite a long time ago now. I know almost nothing of the 'Tales Of' series and was not much motivated by contributing alone. Then LuIzA asked me if I wanted to work on a song with her, and as I knew she was seeking a similar style, it suddenly got interesting and I decided to do it.
The truth is that we remade this song once, to improve it a little bit. I wrote parts of the song, programmed the drums and recorded half of the guitars. LuIzA reworked the song with me, played the bass, recorded the other (with more shredding by the way) guitars, and mixed the whole stuff down in the end.
It's called "Strike Of The Devil's Axes". Have a nice listen !
Finally, I would like to thank three people who donated during these months, namely OrcRys, Tanner Lee and KWarp. Thanks a lot for all your support, even though I have not produced video game related thing since March. I actually joined Dustin "k-wix" Kulwicki in his Mega Man 9 remix album project, and took the credits theme track. The song is ready now, and is available for donators on the special page. I will release it soon after his project is out on OCR.
It's been a while. Let's get back to business with this brand new song covering my favorite theme from Super Mario Galaxy on Wii : Wind Garden.
In that level, you can fly from one planet to another using ascending air streams. The music is so good there that it's not a big deal if you fall, and start over from the beginning.
The song is called "White Feather In The Storm" (NL version). Feel free to download it and listen to it as much as you want.
Thanks to RockmanX and Elrong Mcbong for their kind donations these last months.
Have you ever played the legendary GoldenEye 007 ? Although I'm generally more fond of older games, this one really caught me back then. It was really fun playing it with friends or family.
I've wanted to cover one theme especially, for a long time : the Antenna Cradle final fight level theme. And now it's finally done. It's a simple song, no adds except the ending, that I worked out a bit. I hope you like it, it's called "Let The Pain Out" (NL version).
OtherSteve, who runs a cool radio here, and Rexy, another video game arranger that you probably already know, kindly donated, and I'm really thankful to both of them for that.
The last title of the album is called "Move On" (NL version). It's a cover of the ending theme from the game. Surprisingly, although I'm usually very attracted by credits themes and their happy feeling, this one never got me really interested, mostly because I didn't have any idea of how to cover it. In the end I'm much more satisfied with the result than I expected to.
Thanks a bunch to Jay and Akibaru for donating during these few months.
This is not a game I used to play during the old times. But I sure fell in love with its music. Lifeforce really deserves the legend that people have created around it.
So today the release is a tribute to one of the most epic themes in the Lifeforce soundtrack, "Planet Ratis". It's called "Desperate Chase" (NL version).
This month it's Eiswuxe that I'm thanking for his kind donation.
At last. One week of vacation, and a new song is out. Well it's not completely new since it uses directions already taken in "Excalibur's Awakening", but with the means I have today. On top of that, the dungeon theme is being covered as well in there and makes a cool interlude in the middle of the song.
So this one is called "Sword Of Hope" (NL version). I made it using a new guitar, that I don't have mastered yet : an Ibanez RGR320EX.
Also, a new section has been added to the site for the generous donators who offered a few pennies to support me : the special page. It features unreleased stuff or easter eggs. See the donation page for more information.
Big thanks go to those kind people who have donated since January, namely the samareaye, lanez, ctbx, Chris The Highlander, La Boulette and iby.
This is my entry for the Dwelling of Duels, December 2007. And this is a new track for the Pop'n Twinbee covering album that has been in the works since 2004 (!). It's called "Ground Split" (NL version).
The theme being covered here is the one taken from the 6th level of the game. This is perhaps one of my favorites in any game I've played. In this level, the bees fly over a deep gorge, with cool parallax scrolling. That's where the title came from.
Anyway, only one song left until the album is finished. At least, now we have the 7 levels all done !
On a side note, I would like to thank Gustav XIII for donating a bit. Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it !
I wish you all a happy 2008 !
Merry Christmas to everybody ! A few months with no release at all. This is what trying to record proper vocals for an original song takes... Ok so I've got a couple things to say today.
First, you may have noticed a few updates on the site. I removed the Pictures section that I won't be using any more, and changed a bit the front page, so that the news are listed in another section.
Then, and sorry for the wait, this is the release of "Until Day Break". Grab the NL version if you want. That's the song from the Dwelling of Duels, October 2007, you may have heard it already. It's a cover of the "Evergreen" and "Vampire Killer" themes from Castlevania 3 (NES).
Finally, I've made my mind about bringing to the site a donation option. Of course, it's completely up to you to use it or not. It's something I've been thinking of lately. For more information about it, please go to the donation page.
Well, that's all for today. I may be back by the New Year for a little something... See you soon !
Still trying to keep up a steady pace of one song per month, this is a brand new track that I'm releasing here today. A lot of people happen to say that the megaman series have some of the best tunes ever composed for games. Wily's fortress in Megaman 2 and the intro theme from Megaman 3, both on NES, are some that I especially dig. I did a cover called "Ego Curse" before, but I seriously wanted to make a better tribute to those series. Here it is, a longer track packing the two themes I mentioned above together : "Killer Pawn". A NL version is also available. Have a nice listen !
Lately I've received a couple emails from people who happen to use MP3 players that don't support the Ogg Vorbis format, used here for most if not all of the audio files. Ogg Vorbis aware players do exist, but only freaks like me have them ! So I made my mind and uploaded tagged MP3 versions of all of the songs that came after the VG Rocks album. These were made using constant bitrate, hence the size of some of them (Unsealed 27MB ouch !).
Now you can choose between both formats, I won't force you anymore to use Ogg Vorbis or do your own OGG to MP3 lossy conversion !
Today I'm taking one more step toward finishing what I have started with the covering of the Pop'n Twinbee soundtrack. A new track is available for download, and this time it's about the 4th level theme in the game : "Flying Fortress". The name comes from the fact that you had to take down ennemies on a huge armed plane in the sky. A NL version is also available as usual now. Have a nice listen !
This means that I'm nearer the completion of the album, as I only intended in the beginning to remix three more tracks : the 6th level, credits and continue ones.
