game music

an orchestration excercise

‘Searching for Friends’ from Final Fantasy (Nobuo Uematsu) in as close as possible to the style of ‘What Shall We Die For?’ (Hans Zimmer) from Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

It’s kind of an active/interactive way to analyse a piece’s arrangement/orchestration!

(This is from years and years ago; I’ve done something similar a few other times, but maybe I’ll do more again soon. It certainly will be a lot easier on the old CPU/RAM than it was back then, whew, that was struggle.)

More game music..

The remake of Final Fantasy VII has come out recently! Only part 1 of who knows how many thought… I can’t actually play it and don’t own it, but perhaps in honour of that, here’s some tunes. FFVII and the music were massively important in getting me composing a lot as a teenager.

Two quick pieces from yesterday then–using some RealFont and other old samples once again, though I spent just a little longer working on the sound, within those constraints, this time.

Ominous music..
Character theme…

more Realfont goodies

3x noodlings from last night:

jolly
mood: cor anglais solo
compound time, lilting

I think I’ve posted some like this before, but to recap — RealFont is a soundfont (sf2) from 2004. It is still available to download for free.

It’s interesting/something that the (circa 2004) webpage there is talking about how truly realistic and advanced this was for the time, and now I am very much using these sounds for their old-fashioned/retro warmth… That said, though–with a bit of work and processing you definitely could make these sounds sound more “realistic” than I am here, quite realistic indeed, maybe. Secret: I do still use the occasional soundfont, using for a wind instrument, mixed in there with expensive sound libraries and whatnot, when I do full orchestral things. But what I’m going for here is some slightly imagined combination of a console that never was / general midi / literally the sounds that were available to me when I started up doing a lot of computer music.

(Also rather quick and not detailed, obviously!)

Cute music that loops

Has everyone seen Pusheen? turns out on their website they have a bunch of mini animations/animated gif type things, some of which had music. Which reminded me of short, cute tracks for games/title screens/animations… So I made a few of these!

I also finally figured out how to make music that loops neatly — or rather, I discovered the method I already knew was correct, but Quicktime player cannot play clean loops! So, you have to loop them on something else.