Last week, Major Nelson released the “rare achievement sound effect” (the sound that triggers in an Xbox game when you unlock an achievement that 10% or less of players have unlocked). Upon hearing it, I noticed a layer of musicality. I chose to challenge myself to remix the rare achievement sound effect into a song using only the raw audio as a source. This meant no synths and no other samples.

Every instrument in my remix, called “A Rare Achievement”, is created using the rare achievement sound effect and a ton of effects. I used Ableton Live 9 and Native Instruments’ Kontakt sampler. I chopped the main achievement sound into little bits and found the parts that sounded the best to be drums (kick, snare, hats, crash, ride) and made a beat. Then I sampled a portion to be the “bass” instrument. From there I added different parts and tried to compose it like an electronic music track.

If you’d like to download it, you can do that here.
A Rare Achievement