Journey to Silius is a game from late in the life cycle of the NES released in 1990 that I never played, but recently discovered the soundtrack is simply top notch! Bass lines in the proper register for bass, big melodic hooks, and legit arrangement of percussion tracks, what more could you want on an NES soundtrack!

The arrangement of this song is somewhat straightforward melodically in B Minor, but contains alot of detailed nuance, particularly on the percussion arrangement. The song is essentially split into three different parts, an intro, a melodic verse type section, and a delay chorus type part, which takes three full sequences to cycle. This is pretty epic length for a song on the NES. The bass line is melodically simple, but it's broken into a number of different 16th note patterns, with an occasional octave up note accent. It's reminiscent of old school funk style bass line, but with a very aggressive driving 16th note pulse. The lead melody, while fairly minimalist, is extremely memorable in all three of its cycles.

For tracking, I double tracked the guitar melody through the Fender Cybertwin, and added a third tapped guitar direct into Reaper for the delay sequence. Bass was also direct into Reaper. I opted to play the bass part with a double thumb because I couldn't grab the octave note accents any other way. The original percussion part of the song on the NES contains an unusually complex kick drum part during the verse sections that contains at least 4 different iterations. I opted to simplify the part into something slightly more traditional but tried to keep key accents on the open hihat, and to keep the snare rolls and imply similar drum fills over the delay section.

Hopefully you enjoyed this hidden gem of an NES tune!

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