Mario Kart Mini Mix
Racing into the sounds of the retro Mario Kart days!
Summary
Mario Kart Mini Mix is a single component project that features a mix of music from retro Mario Kart titles such as Mario Kart Super Circuit and Mario Kart Double Dash. What originally started off as a compositional exploration for a hypothetical sequel to the Game Boy Advance title, Mario Kart Super Circuit, ended up turning into a multi-track mix that combined some of the most iconic songs from the older Mario Kart titles. This mix entered its first versions of production sometime shortly after the original version of my Sonic 3D X-Treme How to Play Theme edit. All of the components of this project can be viewed through the Mario Kart Mini Mix YouTube Playlist where Arcmaevotix is home to the original versions and Nehrpsyznet is home to the remade versions.
Process
Putting together the mix was a natural discovery as I was originally preparing to compose an original music track in the vein of the Mario Kart Super Circuit title theme. When I was researching the composition of that track, I became interested in lining up some of the composition from the original Super Mario Kart with Mario Kart Super Circuit (which in some ways is sort of a remake of Super Mario Kart and an aesthetic extension of Mario Kart 64). That is when I then became interested in mixing various pieces of Mario Kart music from older titles that either had relation to the title theme or menu themes. What was originally supposed to be a single track music composition then turned into a music mixing project where I experimented with tempo, pitch, and other elements of basic beat matching that became the foundation of my music mixing skillset.
Reflection
This was an interesting project to pursue simply because of how it came about. It was entirely unplanned, but lead to me eventually picking up music mixing as a regular practice where I then would combine music of different genres, blend video game soundtracks with albums of matching genres, or create aesthetic soundscapes that involved heavy sampling and editing like a maniac.