Mozzaratti

We are incredibly proud to be placing a spotlight on the talented musician, Mozzaratti, who contributed his work to our Harmony of a Hunter and Harmony of Heroes projects. Mozzaratti’s work was popular with fans, and in this Community Spotlight, he shares his inspirations, discusses the equipment he uses to create his awesome video game remixes and shares his thoughts on the Harmony albums he was a valued member of.

Mozzaratti

I am a child of the 80s who hummed through a kazoo and beat cardboard boxes with Lincoln Logs, recording into cassette players until I saved up for my first electronic keyboard. I also was never much for popular bands or radio like everyone else. Instead, I collected soundtracks from movies and games, largely from sticking that same cassette recorder against a TV speaker. Thank you, Nintendo Power, for so many sound test codes! So I grew up with Zimmer and Williams and Sylvestri and Yuzo and Nobuo and Kondo. I was writing music for imaginary video games more often than learning other pieces of music. I did that too. Murdering some of our favorite gaming tunes with fumbling semi-dyslexic fingers on instruments that often couldn’t handle more than 4 keys held down at a time.

Over the years, I upgraded equipment frequently, often giving obscure black sheep keyboards a shot like the Peavey DPM4 or the General Music SK88. There was a creative dry spell for almost a decade because of the limitations and the inevitable crashes of that constrained technology. I still played music in a few bands but rarely wrote anything myself. This eventually lead me to the OpenLabs Neko in 2007 and it changed everything. I had officially jumped from sequencing tracks on keyboards to working with music studio equipment, where the boundaries were much more accommodating. String and guitars and drums sounded so much more realistic and I had so much freedom to go and edit things without needing to re-record entire tracks. Going from 64k of sequencer memory to 2GB of RAM was absolutely amazing, let me tell you!

I started braving out beyond local ears to YouTube and sites like MySpace and a very successful stint on the all but defunct T61. Along the way, I was doing more video game remixes than original music because people just were drawn to it. Even some of my early professional work then was on fan albums and fan games, most of which never surfaced, a trend that sadly continues to this day. However, the right ears heard the tunes I was able to post and Shinesparkers recruited me to contribute to that amazing first Harmony of the Hunters album and I’ve been happy to be a part of the incredible cast of musicians who have made the Shinesparkers albums ever since.

At the time of writing, it’s now 2020. A date that used to be just in sci-fi movies. I’m still working a quasi-career in music. I had a hiatus from remixes while I moved and married and rolled well over that hill of middle age, but I’m back to doing covers again, challenging myself with requests and unusual “no one ever remixes” songs. I love music. I adore video game music. I find a sort of zen in being able to share that love with others who love it too. So I thank everyone who’s enjoyed the work I do and hope I can continue to grow and please for the futuristic decades to come. Now… where’s my flying cars at, 2020?!

Our Thoughts

Darren

Mozzaratti is someone I will always consider a vauable member of the Harmony of a Hunter and Harmony of Heroes projects. His work was incredibly popular at the time of release, and I really appreciated how easy it was to work with him. He would accomodate my suggestions and create some fantastic music. One of my favourite pieces of music he worked on was Hostile Shadows from Harmony of a Hunter, a track that combined boss themes from Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. He did such a good job, and I was so happy that we could represent some (in my opinion) underappreciated arrangements. I have nothing but respect for Mozzaratti, and I am so happy to see that he has continued to keep music in his life. Thank you for everything you contributed, and keep up the great work!

Videos