ZREO, and How I Fell in Love (with ZREO's Music) (part of Gaming Review)

It's ZREO, not ZERO. I don't care how much you love the number 0, it's ZREO. What exactly is ZREO? No, it's not the number after infinity (which is technically not a number). No. It's Zelda Reorchestrated! I bolded those letters so you could see where the name comes from.

Originally started in 2004 under the name Project Z.R.E.O., ZREO began with the goal of completely "reorchestrating" the OoT soundtrack. Using expensive equipment, ZREO began its work. Before long, however, ZREO decided to begin reorchestrating the soundtracks of other Zelda games. Soon, it had at least one song reorchestrated from the soundtrack of every Zelda game to date.

Today, ZREO has a massive fan base, and has reorchestrated over 150 songs from throughout the LoZ series. After the site went down in 2006 and came back up in 2007, the standards for songs were set higher, so all songs produced today are of higher quality than that of those produced before the site went down 3 years ago. A new song is released (they are released in no particular order; one week they could release the final boss music from PH, the next week they could release the Forest Temple music from TP, and the third week they could release the intro music from OoS, just as an example) every 1-3 weeks or so. ZREO's OoT soundtrack is complete, so time is now spent working on other soundtracks, obviously. The music from the trailer of ST has also already been reorchestrated.

The really amazing part of ZREO is how brilliant their arrangements and recordings are...and how there is no actual orchestra involved! The expensive equipment I mentioned earlier is all computer stuff!

ZREO is also responsible for the Legend of Zelda: Soundscapes series, a trilogy of albums in which each track adds sound effects to the ZREO reorchestration for that track. Each "Soundscape" depicts a landscape or moment in time from throughout the LoZ series, even including tracks from Termina and The Great Sea (MM and WW, respectively)! The release of the first Soundscapes album brought the ZREO website 3 million hits within its first week! ZREO is also doing the ZREO Open Symphony, where an orchestra actually is involved, as well as LoZ: Battlescapes, a music- and voice acting-driven story about the bloody battles of Hyrule.

ZREO's website is http://www.zreomusic.com/.

* * *

I've known about ZREO for about a year, but I'd pretty much ignored it and forgotten about it until I heard it mentioned on the October 2009 ZUCast. I decided to check it out again about three weeks ago. When I first heard the crash of "cymbals" and the great fanfare in the "Hyrule Castle" track from ZREO's ALttP soundtrack, I "fell in love." I proceeded to download a few other songs from that soundtrack and discovered ZREO for what it really is: amazing!

The work the ZREO team puts into arranging and recording their music and the time they set aside is proof of their profound dedication to delivering reorchestrated versions of all the songs in the Zelda universe to their fans and the rest of the Zelda community! You wonder why it takes at least a week to release a new song? It's because ZREO does so much planning and takes so much time recording to make each song as perfect as possible!

ZREO was recently featured (next to the Nintendo World booth!) at the VGXpo and displayed music for visitors to listen to and even handed out special albums! No doubt this has and will continue to bring an increased number of visitors to ZREO's website.

Another feature I find useful is ZREO's e-mail newsletter, which lets you know when a new song has been released (and what it is/what album it is in), as well as any other ZREO-related news. In addition to its newsletter, ZREO also runs a podcast from which you can find out about the latest song (and get a sampling of it), ZREO-related, WZMR (World Zelda Music Radio) news, and Zentendo (a Nintendo fansite) news, plus other stuff.

There are some songs, such as "Temple of Time" and "Lost Woods" from OoT, that I prefer the originals to, but there are others, such as "Light World Dungeon" from ALttP and "Midna Suite" (which is actually 2 songs in one, an arrangement exclusively by ZREO!) from TP, that I prefer ZREO's reorchestrations to the originals.

Overall, ZREO is not a website to be missed if you are a Zelda fan and you love the music of Koji Kondo! Although I wish there were more songs, I know that they will come out eventually. Plus, all the OoT songs are already there! One more thing I forgot to comment on: ZREO's album art. The album art is all beautifully done by ZREO's Master of Zelda, and is available for copying and pasting into iTunes, etc. All the album art is very intricate and finely made!

Visit Zelda Reorchestrated now! Or else...YES!!!!!

You can download all of ZREO's tracks either as whole albums, individual tracks, or complete collection (all of ZREO's albums in one, but may not be completely up-to-date when you download). They are all completely free, but, like ZU, ZREO gladly accepts all donations.

This is EzloSpirit, for Gaming Review, signing off! And remember, big things come in little packages! And hats!



Sources:
http://www.zreomusic.com/
http://www.podcast.zreomusic.com/
http://www.zeldawiki.org/Zelda_Reorchestrated


More from Gaming Review:
"Online Gaming, We Love You! <3" (October 2009)
"Animal Crossing: City Folk, and Why it Doesn't Work" (Pilot)

Am I a bad person for not liking their work?

ZREO is nice and all but their music usually lacks that something that make the original tunes likable. For instance, the "re-orchestrated" 8-bit tunes lack that awesome oomph, or bass, that the original tunes have. The same goes for the other games, a lot of the impact that is present in the original music is gone.. it sounds too.. thin.

Originally Posted by EzloSpirit

The really amazing part of ZREO is how brilliant their arrangements and recordings are...and how there is no actual orchestra involved! The expensive equipment I mentioned earlier is all computer stuff!

The whole "re-orchestrated" bit does bug me a bit. Most of the music does sound like something you'd make on a computer. A lot of it even sounds like high quality MIDI like in TP. Orchestrated? I think not. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they use an orchestra/real instruments. If that's the case, it sounds horrible.

Anyway, anyone who devotes that amount of time re-making Zelda tunes and making them better deserves an applause. Nice job.

No, you're not a bad person. And no, there are no real instruments (except in their Open Symphony album). And they do deserve a round of applause since they spend at least a week on each individual song! And why are you saying nice job to me? Or are you saying it to ZREO quite indirectly.

How do you pronounce ZREO anyway? I pronounce it Zee-Ree-Oh. Like Oreo, but with a Z.

I've been a fan of their work for a while now. I have the majority of their songs on my MP3. (Also, listen to the Shadow Temple theme veeeeery carefully. There is a hilarious little easter egg that I caught a wile back)

Haha. I dated FireGS a long time back. (lol in retrospect i'm editing this part out, sry)
And that's all I have to say about it.

I did enjoy getting to hear the releases early though. =P

And yeah, what they do isn't that hard, at all.

Originally Posted by EzloSpirit

And why are you saying nice job to me? Or are you saying it to ZREO quite indirectly.

Indirectly.

The Open Symphony thing sounds interesting, might be worth looking into.

They make some damn good remakes.

Originally Posted by Senap

The Open Symphony thing sounds interesting, might be worth looking into.

Yeah, but there are only 2 songs right now. Not sure if ZREO is still working on it or not.

Originally Posted by LinksShadow66

They make some damn good remakes.

Yes, they do. Oh, yes, they do.


BTW, people ZREO just released (earlier today) "Inside a House" on their PH soundtrack! Just wanted to point it out. And I realized that ZREO HAS NOT MADE A SOUNDTRACK OF EVERY GAME!!!! THEY ARE MISSING OoS!

Originally Posted by Senap

Am I a bad person for not liking their work?

ZREO is nice and all but their music usually lacks that something that make the original tunes likable. For instance, the "re-orchestrated" 8-bit tunes lack that awesome oomph, or bass, that the original tunes have. The same goes for the other games, a lot of the impact that is present in the original music is gone.. it sounds too.. thin.



The whole "re-orchestrated" bit does bug me a bit. Most of the music does sound like something you'd make on a computer. A lot of it even sounds like high quality MIDI like in TP. Orchestrated? I think not. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they use an orchestra/real instruments. If that's the case, it sounds horrible.

Anyway, anyone who devotes that amount of time re-making Zelda tunes and making them better deserves an applause. Nice job.

Yup. This.

Originally Posted by Double A

Yup. This.

You know what's sad? I saw you posted here, and my first though was "Oh, Double A. I wonder what he's complaining about this time."
And I was right.

I'm also a big fan of ZREO. I like the reorchestrated soundtrack they had, especially the soundscapes. Maybe this was why I was disappointed when TP's soundtrack was MIDI...

Originally Posted by Senap

Am I a bad person for not liking their work?

ZREO is nice and all but their music usually lacks that something that make the original tunes likable. For instance, the "re-orchestrated" 8-bit tunes lack that awesome oomph, or bass, that the original tunes have. The same goes for the other games, a lot of the impact that is present in the original music is gone.. it sounds too.. thin.

The whole "re-orchestrated" bit does bug me a bit. Most of the music does sound like something you'd make on a computer. A lot of it even sounds like high quality MIDI like in TP. Orchestrated? I think not. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they use an orchestra/real instruments. If that's the case, it sounds horrible.

Anyway, anyone who devotes that amount of time re-making Zelda tunes and making them better deserves an applause. Nice job.

I'm with you on this. I give them props for remaking Zelda tunes, but I can't say I like their work. Their stuff is good, yeah, but not something that should be hailed as fantastic fan work. You want great Zelda music? Look up the individual works of Nixdorux, Bogus Red, Disco Dan, and Eeriechan.

I like their work. Not because of the quality, but because I love Zelda.

^Amen! Although, I also like the quality.