What every level variation of Gruntilda's Lair sounds like in Donkey Kong 64

Every variation of Gruntilda's Lair in Banjo-Kazooie (aside from the main, underwater, and the top) ported to Donkey Kong 64
You can listen to these in DK64 with the power of dk64randomizer.com
Read below for an extremely long winded explanation of all the differences!
0:00 - Mumbo's Mountain
The differences here are pretty obvious, DK64 doesn't have the brush samples so I decided to use the samples from the Production Room in Frantic Factory instead.
2:00 - Treasure Trove Cove
DK64 has no accordion so I made a substitute for it by using two instrument unique to DK64, that being the muted trumpet and an unused instrument left in memory we call the english horn (some others call it a shehnai, we don't really know what it is lol. this is by far the most different than the original.
3:55 - Clanker's Cavern
Pretty straightforward except for one thing (which you might've noticed in TTC and what you'll see in a lot more songs) which is the tambourine. DK64 has no tambourine whatsoever and all us converters weep. This is pretty much the closest we'll ever get to it: a pitched-up open hi-hat overlayed with a very soft triangle sample. The pitched-up trick was actually something I learned from Wibdiwoh, probably the most prolific converter on the team (taught me most of what I know.) Its pretty much what it sounds like, it really give the percussion in this game a lot more versatility.
5:49 - Bubblegloop Swamp
Now this one may shock you, but these glub samples actually come from the puzzle variant of the song, not the main loading zone. I decided to use these in the stead on the frog ribbits since DK64 doesn't have them.
7:42 - Freezeezy Peak
Now here we can talk about the original games vs. the randomizer. The original game midis have these events called CC102 and 103. These are utilised as looping information for the game, a channel will read CC103 and loop that channel back to CC102 indefinitely. This is used (aside from saving space) to intentionally desync samples such as the water drops, animal noises, or in this case wind, to give the whole song a more organic feel. For the sake of the rando though we remove these events and have every channel loop at the same time. So I phoned up another donk converter OnlySpaghettiCode (OSC for short) to extend these samples to last through the whole song. He is very experienced in FL Studio which is a much easier process as opposed to SynthFont (the DAW I primarily use.)
9:37 - Gobi's Valley
Speaking of OSC and FL Studio, shoutouts to him for engineering this substitute for the melody instrument here, (he also extended the wind sample here too). He used a combo of two different english horns with an applied pitch oscillation to them, one is an octave lower and louder than the other. But don't worry, I contributed to this one as well lol. In BK, there's these very low rock crumbling samples that are absent in DK64. So instead I decided to use a snapping fingers sample (used in Snide's HQ) and pitched it down by a ton and I think it sounds not too shabby.
11:31 - Mad Monster Mansion
The last time we'll be seeing OSC's wind samples extension. He really helped me a lot getting all of these done, but he'd probably just downplay it and say it was nothing lol. (Check out his own stuff on the pack builder btw, he's been working a lot on FFVI conversion lately.)
Anyway, back to when I said that the puzzle room areas are different than the main loading zones, the puzzle variant doesn't have the wolf sample and I only realised until the last second that I was using the wrong one lol.As far as I know, BGS and MMM are the only ones with these big differences.
13:24 - Rusty Bucket Bay
Now these samples were actually pretty easy replicate in SF the volume, pan and pitch bends (of both the sea waves and the seagulls) are all just straight line and didn't take very long, as opposed to FP, GV and MMM where they were also curved waves and such. An annoying thing that SynthFont does when you are messing with volume changes is that it will place events on every tick which jacks up file size. This is due to a thing called ppq (pulses per quarter.) The short version of it is that if any event is on a tick that doesn't divide nicely, it has to keep that value in mind when reading it. Whereas if it didn't, the midi would just divide are the tick values by the greatest common denominator, thus saving on file size. (probably a very butchered explanation but oh well.)
15:18 - Click Clock Wood
This was by far the easiest to convert, no substitutes just extending a bunch of small bird tweets. Not much to say here honestly.
17:11 - Furnace Fun
This one is probably the one I had heard the least in my original playthrough, but now coming back to it, this is probably my favourite one. Ballaam himself seemed to agree when I said I wanted to put this one in the initial PR lol.
Thank you for reading lol, If you're at all interested in donk custom music check out the rando and the discord!

[@schwartzghandi]

enjoy DK lazily photoshoped in to these highly cinematic shots of the level entrances brought to you by noclip.website.

[@mistahzeddtheabbasavant5368]

Might be good go animate backgrounds

[@RonZhang]

Donkey Kong saw what you did. He saw perfection.

[@StatickyCat]

I love how DK is staring at you the whole time.

[@platinumuschannel]

No surprise that they mostly sound the same, with exception to the percussion. Kirkhope had a very distinctive style in those days. Also note that Gruntilda's laugh is missing (duh)- I've been saying it for years now that all of the OSTs I've seen listen on YT have them needlessly because after Gruntilda is defeated, her cackle is absent.

[@DerpDerp3001_plays]

Because of him stuck with the same sound library.

[@Ninblasto]

It’s cool how songs like Bubblegloop Swamp and Click Clock Wood sound the same, but Gobi’s Valley sounds very different

[@darkxzmasterloquendo1996]

The themes that are identical are Bubblegloop Swamp (except for the fact there is no "ribbit" from frogs), Mad Monster Mansion, Rusty Bucket Bay, Click Clock Wood and Grunty's Furnace Fun

[@BL-mf3jp]

Man this game had some incredible level entrances. The click clock wood one in particular is so atmospheric.

[@SealMeall]

It is sad that the entrance areas are so shockingly short, but still has themes. They should have had more platforming and puzzles in their entrances just to prolong the themes effect.

[@FriedChckn13]

If it makes you feel any better, you also listen to the theme while near the jigsaw puzzle for each world, and also: - Mumbo’s Mountain is the first level of the game and has that jiggy ontop of the level entrance, so players will like hear nearly the whole song. - Treasure Trove Cove, Clanker’s Cavern, Bubblegloop Swamp, Mad Monster Mansion, and Click Clock Wood themes play in the whole rooms they are located in, with a good amount of platforming. - Freezeezy Peak has a good amount of platforming for some secrets around its location. - Gobi’s Valley only really needs you around for a short amount of time, so valid disappointment, but it’s not as bad as… - Rusty Bucket Bay is barely even heard, since many players will only enter the stage after raising the water level twice anyway. And after you raise it twice, the RBB theme is replaced with the underwater theme. So you’d only hear it in the very tiny RBB puzzle room.

[@ChaoThing]

This is super cool. Thank you!

[@LegatoSkyheart]

I would expect it to sound similar since it's the N64 game made by Rare so I can't imagine the sound chip being all that different

[@Joshinken]

Sound chip doesnt matter on the n64, its playing samples from a sound font. Its just mapping the banjo kazooie instruments to instruments in dk64

[@SonicJrandSarah]

Hardly any difference with most of them, but the differences are there. To me, the one for Gobi's Valley was the most obvious.

[@CHARADIUS]

The DK soundfonts go harder

[@mistahzeddtheabbasavant5368]

I’d like to hear in these in a banjo kongzooie version of the original banjo game.

[@thebrustkid7080]

Man thinks he’s Waldo

[@Gruntilda-Winkybunion]

awesome!

[@entropy-cat]

I mean... Yeah I guess having non-DK64 songs play is quite random, indeed... I need to try and learn more about randomizer culture.

[@TheSalamanderMenace4]

bubblegloop is the exact same, whoa!

[@stormysplaylists]

so basically the crystal jiggy

[@PatrickFromWiiSports]

Can you do what if banjo kazooie and Toole swapped worlds(as in make kazooie worlds into isle o hags and tooie into Gruntilda’s lair)

[@Gruntilda-Winkybunion]

Great Idea

[@Ryan-Petre]

So they would sound pretty much exactly the same?

[@schwartzghandi]

the key is in the "pretty much" It is true that the goal is to make them sound as similar as possible, but the fun part trying to adapt the non-shared instruments it in the best way possible! And there sure were a lot of adaptations made, I almost hit the character limit in the description trying to list them all lol, definitely give it a read if you're interested!

[@DarkestMarlin74]

Does the "Top of the Lair" theme count as a variation or would it count as its own thing? Because if it would count as a variation of the Lair theme then that would make 3 versions not in this video.

[@schwartzghandi]

yknow what, thats a very good point. I should probably mention that in the description lol personally, i would classify it as its own song; seeing as it has a slower tempo to it as well as just having a different structure to it. If you are interested to hear what it (as well as the main theme) sounds like, Ballaam (another donk convertor and head honcho over at DK64 Randomizer) already converted them take a listen here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Zp-ulZyaiqitqMk kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5DLgIWioc2Iq80 (spoiler arlert they're practically the same to the original lol)

[@Koops2245]

Can you sense the fragrance of each area's entrance??

[@lajeandom]

u should make a comparison

[@dylanwilson4221]

I feel like this mostly sounds the same.