The new album is finally here and is available for free for a limited time! I know what you are saying... FREE!???... It must be good! Here are the previews of some of the tracks included...
I was lucky enough to license all of these tracks to video games.
Prince gave away one of his CDs in the local sunday newspaper. If Prince can't sell cds, Redshirt Theory will not sell cds.
You should be rewarded for landing on this abstract blog. Its like winning the lotto with how hard it is to find! Sorry that your prize is only a zip folder of the album :(
So if you follow this link you will be able to download a zip folder of the new album "I Think It's Gonna Rain" in 320 mp3 format STEREO!
If you want a hard copy, click on the album art at the start of this blog. You can get one for just 4$ plus shipping.
This album will be on itunes in about 3-4 weeks, and at that time all the free downloads will be taken down... So get it while you can!
FlatOut is a popular video game series that has had some impressive titles to its name. So when I was contacted to possibly write some music for the game, I was extremely humbled.
I began to listen to past Flatout soundtracks for some inspiration. With such huge bands as "Yellowcard", "Audioslave", "Zebrahead", "Motley Crue" and more; I knew I wouldn't be able to compete with the past soundtracks. Surely fans of the series will be expecting another ass-kicking soundtrack. It will be impossible for a relatively unknown artist to meet those expectations, so I knew I just had to write something I was proud of and let the chips fall where they may.
Deciding how to approach the soundtrack was a tough decision. On the one hand, most of the series' past music has been decidedly "rock". I wouldn't describe my music as rock, but instead "rock influenced".
I decided to take those rock influences and exploit them, while keeping true to my electronic big beat roots. Since I enjoyed writing the music for Calvin Tucker's Farm Animal Racing Tournament's soundtrack so much, I decided to call my dad up and request some "rock riffs". Rock riffs are certainly more up his alley than playing the banjo was.
My pops sent over 1 large wav file of over 15 minutes of improvisational rock guitar work. As he put it, "I just hit record and started playing some shit, I hope you like something."
Unfortunately, my dad chose not to record to a beat click track. This meant countless hours of editing the rock riffs with a fine tooth comb. Computers are very unforgiving if the guitar is not 100% exactly on the beat. But since the sound my dad achieved was very pleasing to my ear, I battled through the tedious process of micro-sampling.
At first I didn't have any vocals in this track, nor did I think a vocal was necessary. Unexpectedly I was shifting through old samples and came across a vocal that was recorded for one of my older songs "Traveling Man". I never thought the vocal was the right fit for Traveling Man so I never used it. Luckily I didn't delete the vocal file as (like locusts) it sat idle for years. When I heard the vocal sample again I immediately recognized that it would be a great fit for the song. The vocal added a bit of a neo-punk vibe to the track which really spruced it up. One minor vocal pitch correction later, "I Think It's Gonna Rain" had vocals, and a title :)
On a side note, the new album is all done! It will include all of the Flatout soundtrack titles and a few new mixes of some older songs---Like this new mix of Bring it Down... Bring it Down 2010 mix by Redshirt Theory
The album will be uploaded as a zip pack and available for a free download to all my facebook followers.
Back in January 2010, I was approached with an email that simply said “Aaron, do you perhaps have any redneck style music?”
What the video game company didn’t realize is that they just inadvertently unlocked a fond and nostalgic memory. I remember my dad playing the banjo when I was around 10 years old… I wondered if he still had that banjo.
One call later, my dad was dusting off the banjo that he hadn’t played for years. After about a month of practicing, he was ready to start recording. I bought him an external digital recorder and we were in business.
Up until this point, my dad and I had always been talking about collaborating but we just never seemed to get it done. Now we had a strict deadline and had to finish 8 songs in 8 weeks. Quite the task. At this point, he didn’t even have an email. Since we lived in different states, this had to change in order for him to send me his recordings in a timely fashion. I set him up his first email and walked him through attaching a file and sending it. Below is the first track we did for the game. My dad came up with this melody and sent it over as an attachment (his first attachment email ever!) His first reaction after hearing what I did with it, “Well I’ll be damn. How the hell did you get me to sound like that?”
Another challenge is that we had to write redneck music to specific themed levels. For example, there was an Egyptian themed level, a Celtic/Medieval themed level, Calypso themed level, a polar themed level and so on. As I’m sure the reader can believe, mixing Egyptian and calypso themes with “redneck” themes isn’t exactly easy.
The game went on to become “Calvin Tucker’s Redneck: Farm Animal Racing Tournament”. Yes, the acronym was on purpose. The developer is from the Netherlands, so when I got the first game footage and the file was simply called “FART”, I wondered if there was a language barrier occurring. Nope…this fart was intentional :)
I’ve played the game and I can say that it is very fun. It is a racing kart game in the mold of Mario Kart. Each character can receive certain power ups that they can use on opponents during the race. You race with the Wii remote sideways in a steering position. The controls are nice and responsive. Oh ya, and the music is great ;)
I think because it is associated with the "Calvin Tucker" franchise it might unfairly get dumped on before people even play it. The graphics are excellent, the gameplay is fun and I found myself laughing quite a bit with friends during the split screen races. Here is some gameplay
The new album is finally here and is available for free for a limited time! I know what you are saying... FREE!???... It must be good! Here are the previews of some of the tracks included...
