Dr. Chaos (NES) - Title Screen and Room Themes (All Instrument Cover)

This is a medley of the title screen and room themes from 1987's fairly strange proto-survival horror platformer, Dr. Chaos! I rediscovered this game while looking originally searching for Dragon Warrior songs, when I saw Dr. Chaos listed in the D section and it spurred a vague memory. I looked up a playthrough video and thereafter recalled this was a rather weird Goonies 2-esque game that in the age before the internet, was extremely difficult to make progress on! You play as a character called Michael Chaos, searching for his lost brother Dr. Chaos, who evidently went missing after opening a whole bunch of warp zones in his mansion, real esoteric stuff.
Anyway, the main reason I decided to put together these tunes (aside from actually recalling the room theme when I watched a playthrough video!), was listening to the Title Screen theme, there's a dissonance which really caught my ear. The song, to my ear, sounds like it is E, but during the verse of the main theme, it modulates and emphasizes an Eb, which sounds quite spicy! When it hits the chorus, it again seems to be in E, but then modulates in an Eb and an F#, and finally modulating in a G# for the turnaround. I always get a kick out of discovering these old NES tunes that borrow out of key notes to create interesting stepwise motion, cool stuff.
Anyway, for tracking, I did the usual drum mic setup, bass direct in, and guitar double tracked through the Fender Cybertwin with an sm57, although I rolled back the parallel compression quite a bit more than as of late. I also layered a fair amount of keyboard parts, leveraging the Surge XT synth plug, Spitfire Audio Cello, Spitfire Audio Vox Humana, Tyrell N6 synth plugin, and stock keyboard strings and contrabass. Lastly, to tie the two tracks together, I reimagined the intro run from the title screen as two polyrhythmic guitar parts (one in 6, the other in 8), and played a 3 against 4 drum part to really dial up some Chaos!
Hopefully you got a kick out of hearing this tune, and maybe even recalled a distant memory of this weird weird game!
If you liked what you heard and would like to help grow the channel, please subscribe!
Follow me on facebook!
/ thesosomusician