Donkey Kong Country Midi Arrangements

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DKC Midi Arrangements

Donkey Kong Country Midi Arrangements

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I'm a big fan of the music found in the Donkey Kong Country video game trilogy for Super Nintendo (DKC 2 in particular). I'm also a big fan of playing the games, of course. Anyway, I love the music so much that I like to rewrite the songs with a program called Voyetra, all completely by ear. I think these are very cool. I hope you do too :)

I've transcribed all these to MIDI's, so they should load much faster now and sound much more clear.

Donkey Kong Country 2 - Boss Bossanova

* Boss Bossanova - Real Thing *

Donkey Kong Country 2 - Welcome to Crocodile Isle

*Listen to some of the real thing*

Donkey Kong Country 2 - Lockjaw's Saga

*Listen to some of the real thing*

Donkey Kong Country 2 - Flight of the Zinger

*Listen to the real thing*

I'm here, August 8, 2003, a year later from arranging DKC pieces and I've now composed at least 10 pieces for the string orchestra, of which 4 have been performed in concert, a duet and a trio. I owe all this success to my obsession with Donkey Kong Country. That's so weird... but arranging DKC music openned me up to all the string instruments and their capabilities. Thanks to D. Wise, E. Sischer, and K. Beanland, the composers and arrangers of the DKC soundtrack.

Donkey Kong Country 2 - Krook's March
I spent about 2 full days on this. On Saturday from 11AM to 11PM, and on Sunday from 10AM to 4:30PM. That's 19 hours and 30 minutes. I even worked on it while eating. This was my greatest challenge yet, and the last 12 measures were so cantakerous I was about to quit, but I didn't, of course. See a picture of an excerpt of 6 of these chaotic measures somewhere down below.

Krook's March

* Krook's March Real Thing 1 *

* Krook's March Real Thing 2 *

After rewriting Krook's March on my computer, I began to arrange it to be played by the string orchestra. A couple weeks after, I asked my orchestra teacher if we could play it in class, as I was curious as to what it would sound like. He said yes with enthusiasm, and asked if I could write a score for the piece. So I did. We played it in class, and that was the start of my composing (or in this case, arranging) career. I was able to explore writing music for different instruments, and decided to take on composing my own creations for the orchestra.

Donkey Kong 64 - K. Lumsy's Island
I know this isn't from the DKC trilogy, and I don't have DK64, but I liked the midi so I rewrote the song from listening to that. It's also 10 beats-per-minutes faster than the original.

This is the midi from which I wrote the song, but it isn't the real thing.

K. Lumsy's Island - midi

... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...

Here's a neat site with midis of many of the songs from the DKC trilogy.

The following picture is of measures 40 through 45, 12 measures from the end of Krook's March. It was very confusing, not to mention listening to the video game for over 19 hours over and over and over again to figure this out. It deserves your appraisal! Please listen to it if you haven't already. (See above right.)

TaciturnEternity@aol.com