Oh this is always my ‘when in doubt’, but it’s been a while since I did something this messing about with a fuller sound set, rather than just piano or some retro sounds. Broadly “game music”/story-evoking type pieces, done quickly this evening.
game music
That’s right it’s …
…more music boxes. I will do something else at some point (as well as more music boxes. Actually I’m off and on thinking about how to do some bigger piece including a music box.)
One of these days I might make a post outlining “tips and tricks” of how to do these because I feel like I’ve racked up a bunch of things I could have used earlier. But at the same time I don’t think I’m anywhere near done discovering really obvious things, and I’m still having trouble making the tape feed smoothly as a main thing, so maybe not quite yet.
Anyway, absolutely loving the 30 note music box. It offers a LOT of potential and flexibility, and with the recent two (you can see a little preview of these) especially I’ve been trying to make more of the potential of the box and its kind of characteristic style.
This one is an arrangement of a piece in a really very different style, so that was fun! also involves winding the handle VERY FAST. Collapsed Expressway by Mitsuto Suzuki.
Things to come? Ahead On Our Way and Cloud Smiles by Nobuo Uematsu. Hear those runs! and octaves!
Further Cats
- another soundfont emulation of another old sound module
- something simply based around a Chord Sequence that 14-year-old me would have appreciated. oh and “Cool bassline” on my bingo card.
- cats! (cats by naobim on pixabay, ‘animated’ by me.)
Cute Loops 2
While on my holiday I sketched some mostly strictly 16 bar loops (5, 7, and 10 are longer), with 1-3 instruments. These are available as game music on itch:
or for listening pleasure here on youtube:
Tifa’s Theme music box
I have a new music box … with 30 notes! Which means slightly bigger range than the 15 note but really more importantly, some chromatics. Tifa’s Theme from FFVII is the one I always wanted to do and really couldn’t with only diatonic notes, so I’m very happy to finally have made this. It also has a really nice tone, I think ❤️
Big project from last week — a mashup of Ignition Flame from FFVII Remake and Vivaldi: the Presto from Summer. Because they really fit together! The other thing I was working on here was the production and and sound, trying to make it sound like it would fit with the Remake tracks (in terms of sound anyway, some of it remains unrepentantly classical, or rather baroque, and that’s fine.)
I’m realising that mashups / combinations / syntheses(?) of things are clearly something I’m very interested in! …I ahah can actually tie this back in to my thesis, heh, and all the collage of song texts I started doing, which was also an Old Hispanic liturgical composition technique………….
INFINITY CRISIS: First listen
I was just looking up when I did the Infinity Crystal soundtrack last year — it was a little later in Spring. Which is just as well because this new sequel/prequel/spinoff project I have in mind might take a little longer than that did… but it’s hopefully coming sometime… soon… this Spring?
Another RPG soundtrack (that I plan to put on itch.io as well as bandcamp and streaming etc, so people can use it in their games), this time with a slightly different sound and style. Something a little more “action” and also with more fancy/realistic sounds …. but mainly …. I had the idea to do a score that included:
- taiko drums
- electric cello
And I’m really pleased how well that’s actually working! Taiko (..and though I’m also looking into the genre and music for real on the side, I’m not writing accurate or drum-only music here; if it’s slightly more in the realms of reality than most of what’s written with like EPIC TRAILER TAIKOS!!!11 that’s good though) broadened into including a few more traditional Japanese instruments (making up something like the ensemble Japan Marvelous Drummers uses for softer numbers). And electric cello brought a general rock band with it, so I also want to feature massive fun electric guitars for this kind of mood.
Now is the cherry I actually wrote first as a song! and have recorded and played a couple ways. it’s gonna be a recurring theme in this game and go with some of the relationships/characters 🙂
Midi -> live!
A very silly and fun video where I make a multitrack video of a piece I originally wrote for midi
— using instruments i have in my house, which can include anything that produces sound, whether or not I have any prior… expertise…
Angel Bird: Space Combat
So, remember “aerial combat” one of the midi tracks I did last week? I’ve made this a whole thing, a whole mini soundtrack thing.
It’s inspired in a general way (and name-wise!) by Keiki Kobayashi’s Ace Combat soundtracks which I hear are really really good, but I’ve so far only listened to one track of them, and the track he did for FFVII:R, The Valkyrie. Then I wrote “The Absolute”, from this soundtrack, decided this was a fighter pilot/space shooter thing and wrote the rest. So I’m not sure how similar Space Combat is to Ace Combat, but…
Mainly, it’s all about the 1990s midi sounds 😀