Local musician’s album soundtracks video gameDate: 5/21/2015 EAST?LONGMEADOW – Jules Conroy, a 23-year-old resident, has been operating a YouTube channel for the past several years where he arranges metal guitar versions of video game music. This year he was invited to create a metal soundtrack for an independent video game called “Crypt of the Necrodancer.”
Conroy, who goes under the name FamilyJules7x, told Reminder Publications his metal record, “Aria’s Ascent,” was one of the top selling albums in the genre of metal during its first week on Bandcamp.com. The album was released on April 29.
“Crypt of the Necrodancer” is a combination rhythm game, a music themed game that challenges a player’s sense of rhythm, and a 2D dungeon crawler, a fantasy role playing game in which players navigate through labyrinthine environments, similar to “old school” games in Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series, except that in order the characters must be moved to the beat of the soundtrack, he added.
“You can switch the soundtrack at any time, but different characters that you play throughout the game have specific soundtracks for them,” Conroy said. “So the first character you play as has the original soundtrack, but once you beat the game you get the second character to play through the game [and you get another soundtrack],”
“The last one, which is the hardest challenge; it’s something like if you miss a beat you die, you don’t get any good weapons, and if you get hit once you die,” he continued. “It’s just the hardest thing and you have to go through the entire game like that and that’s my soundtrack.”
The original soundtrack to the game features metal as well as electronic music and was created by Danny Baranowsky of Seattle, WA, the game’s composer who also wrote the music for indie game “The Binding of Isaac,” Conroy explained. The second soundtrack was an arrangement of electronic dance music by hip-hop and electronic rapper A _ Rival from San Francisco, CA.
“I hope to draw in people who might not enjoy metal; people who shy away because of the scream vocals or the loudness,” Conroy added. “There’s a lot of different styles on it and it had to be because it’s a public game. Generally, I feel like people who like electronic dance music is going to pick up [the game] as opposed to metal.”
Baranowsky invited Conroy to play guitar on the song for the final boss battle in “The Binding of Isaac” after he saw metal arrangements Conroy had done of songs from his game “Super Meat Boy,” Conroy said.
“For ‘Crypt of the Necrodancer,’ I know he’d been working on it for a while and he’d always joked about, ‘I can’t wait to hear your remixes of this,’ assuming I was going to do it because I’ve done all his other work,” Conroy added. “In secret, I did metal arrangements of the first free tracks. I pretty much showed everybody I knew but him. He knew that something was up, but just didn’t know what.”
Conroy sent the tracks to Baranowsky, who wanted Conroy to create an entire metal soundtrack arrangement. The player can switch between all of the game’s albums at any point, which was Baranowsky’s idea, Conroy noted.
“I love [the game],” Conroy said. “It feels like the coolest idea for a rhythm game. Obviously, you have Rock Band and Guitar Hero as rhythm games. There’s a Donkey Kong bongo game or something like that, but none of the games gave you the thrill of fighting enemies [and] feeling in control of that while you’re playing to a rhythm.”
The story continues after the player beats the game multiple times, he added.
“The difference [with my soundtrack] is that usually you’re going down the crypt; you’re going lower and lower down all these zones and levels,” Conroy said. “Aria has to go up. So, she’s at the bottom and has to work her way all the way back up.”
He added that he worked on “Aria’s Ascent” during the past seven months and it features full metal band arrangements and a total of 28 tracks. One song on the album is the last, “Not Today,” which has a classical guitar arrangement and vocals by Adriana Figueroa.
“One song called ‘Stronger Konga (King Konga)’ has Latin percussion that’s mixed with metal,” Conroy said. “The ranges of [the album] range from hard rock to a lot more progressive and polyrhythmic metal, just to make it hard on people trying to keep a beat.”
“Crypt of the Necrodancer” is available on Steam.com for digital download. Conroy’s soundtrack for the game can be found at www.familyjules7x.bandcamp.com. For more information about Conroy visit his YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/FamilyJules7X.
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