game music

BEHOLD (some kind of crossover rpg fighting game… has a name now?)

Posted by sara-garrard

I mean, the name is ridiculous and I dunno if I’ll stick with it – but I probably should. Ridiculous is absolutely fine for this. My some kind of crossover rpg fighting game soundtrack is nearly ready. And we’re going with Shadows/Infinity: Battle Zone, I guess. (Capitalistion is not confirmed, but high level of specific punctuation seems quite in-genre. And it comes from Shadows of Fortune, my first imaginary game series from my teenage years, x Infinity Crystal and Infinity Crisis. Plus “battle” because it’s a fighting game.)

And now… a listening page!

Go here to hear previews of the 29 tracks!

— and let me know any issues with playing these on various devices as well as whatever general feedback 🙂 Getting back into my webpage making and figuring out audio (…did you know the silent mode/physical mute button on the iPhone works in a REALLY INCONSISTENT WAY? Yeah.)

These are pre any final mixing and mastering (and only excerpts anyway), but here’s the general idea! Do you like the track art? 😀 it’s mostly from artbreeder.

Some kind of rpg crossover fighting game soundtrack UPDATE

Posted by sara-garrard

Earlier post here.

I was putting all the tracks so far onto a playlist and iTunes, and it’s just tipped over the 1 hour mark, which is a nice mark, but aside from which… I think we’re just about if not completely done with this “OST”! …with the composing of it anyway, still in any case will have to go over everything and then do a little mastering and getting everything leveled and lined up and decide how looped I want to present things.

Here are some more clips of the tracks I’ve done since then! They’re a mix of battle themes and walking/story themes, often but not always based on Main Themes or World Map types.

set #3
  1. River Walk
  2. The Absolute — remastered version of the penultimate track on the ANGEL BIRD soundtrack
  3. Infinity Crystal Main Theme WINTER — twinkly wintery version of Infinity Crystal‘s main theme. The original of this was a more standard FFVII style slow orchestral piece — rather similar to:
  4. Shadows of Fortune II Main Theme — early 2000s, originally a midi, this piece has one of the more faithful to the original remakes

What is this? As I explained/vaguely alluded to:

Continue reading →

Episode JADE

Posted by sara-garrard
Infinity Crisis: Episode Jade (reveal trailer theme)

Taking a little break from work on my some-kind-of-crossover-rpg-fighting-game soundtrack to return to the sounds of last year’s Infinity Crisis OST…

This is — imagining there’s a sequel or kind of DLC adventure… I’m imagining it covers the story of main character’s love interest who spends quite a lot of time separated and doing her own thing off-screen during the first game…  So now we see her side of the story!  Or something. I have no immediate plans to actually write a whole nother soundtrack for this, but it’s in the back of my mind as a possibility.  

For now, here’s a one-off: a slow ish thematic piece with the same soundset except changing out the electric cello from Crisis with an erhu.  

The end has a little quote from ‘Stay Thy Tears’.

Updates on the top secret crossover fighting game/RPG soundtrack

Posted by sara-garrard

It started out just as a way to write more upbeat fight music and then morphed into a project to rearrange old themes…

Talking through the process of revamping a 2003 battle theme:

Samples:

First set, all new ideas

  1. Voyaging (story mode mission select loop)
  2. Main menu (VERY EXCITED AND BOMBASTIC and orchestral)
  3. Battle Stage 5 (ALSO EXCITED AND BOMBASTIC but x rock band)
  4. Another battle stage feat. piano quintet (in prog)
  5. Sad/story segment 

Second set

  1. ‘A voice on the wind’ — character/world map theme originally a midi from ?2004
  2. ‘Rosalie’ — character theme string quartet version, originally a piano piece, from 2010
  3. ‘Warriors of Orpheus’ — original midi from 2002!!
  4. ‘Forest Path’ — original from 2002, even earlier
  5. ‘Arrow to the Sky’ — the original of this was day 6 of pianowrimo last month
  6. ‘Goblin Song’ — original from 2003

Also includes Long Road Ahead, which was also originally a wrimo piece from last month:

Cloud Smiles (FFVII Advent Children) – oboe and piano

Posted by sara-garrard

The last thing I filmed before Christmas, this gorgeous piece from the end of the Advent Children movie, by Nobuo Uematsu. I watched Advent Children last Christmas Eve, for the first time since it came out (and in the Complete version which I guess I hadn’t seen) and honestly loved it this time round. Also felt like I’d been missing out on the soundtrack all these years. I’ve made a ff7 soundfont version, a music box version, and now…

The first melody is on the oboe in the full orchestral version too so I wanted to see how an oboe and piano take would sound.

I had to practise that piano part quite a bit!! (And even then don’t expect me to ever manage it live.) And the oboe, phew, a lot of sustaining needed.

Long Road Ahead (pianowrimo arrange)

Posted by sara-garrard

I took November 28th’s piano piece:

…and arranged it out for a few more instruments

The original inspiration was pretty much Takeharu Ishimoto’s Crisis Core sound and we continue with that idea here… (Not exactly similar, and I’m not sure the string quartet was ever combined with the rock band there, but here ’tis.)

I historically haven’t been very into “developing” or “revising” my older pieces, tending to just think of them as done and move on to the next thing, but lately I’ve been doing a few things like like this… I think it’s because of arranging a lot of beloved vgm pieces this year, and that’s made me approach my old stuff (okay, in this instance it’s not at all old, but there’s others) not in terms of developing or revising but doing a different, new arrangement.