Monday, October 24, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Progress...
...is moving quickly, the track Summer is coming along, and I am almost done with it, but I will to sleep on it one more night and see if anything else comes to mind, give it some more of my patented Scrutiny 5000. Then, and only then, will I get it out the door for all of you to see. I'll catch up with all of you again shortly.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Cult: Awakening of the Old Ones
This project came to me in a sort of strange way. I am a regular reader on the Bay 12 forums, and I had come across this project's thread and found it very interesting. Some time later, on a whim I posted a thread on the forums looking for a music project, any project, I just needed something to strive towards.
Lord Dullard replied to my post and stated that he would love to have custom music in his game. That very day I began pouring into his blog and the forum thread for information, and by the end of it, I had an idea in my head about a title track. I began to put down the notes and eventually had the track rounded out, but it was missing something. I added some wind to the background, and sent it off to LD.
Cult-Title
I think he was surprised by my punctuality, and I was surprised he held my first draft in such high regard.
I immediately began work on a second track for use during world generation. My main idea was to make an acoustic guitar sonata (though it ended up being one section short). I had built an intro and an outro's basic structure and I sent it off to LD before I went to bed to see what he thought of it, and when he responded that it was going to be put into his tech-demo build, I was ecstatic. I went to work finishing the middle of it as soon as I could.
Cult-Worldbuilder
I took about a week to reflect and gather inspiration, and then I wrote the track that will play during autumn, whenever the game gets to that point. I started the track with a 12-string guitar, but opted for a grand-piano instead. The whole piece follows a single five-chord progression, and each repetition builds further complexity the main themes. I added an echo chamber in post as it gave the space between strikes a sort of humming quality, while giving the overall piece a sense of distance and foreboding. I really like how it turned out.
Cult-Autumn
I'm very satisfied with the vision LD has for Cult, and I really like what I see so far as far as his world and creature generators go. If you haven't visited his blog yet, you can find it here. The hypothetical back-story that he put together is a magnificent read, and I am very excited to see where this goes in the future. If you are able, please donate to him. I really want to see his vision fulfilled.
Stay tuned for future updates.
Lord Dullard replied to my post and stated that he would love to have custom music in his game. That very day I began pouring into his blog and the forum thread for information, and by the end of it, I had an idea in my head about a title track. I began to put down the notes and eventually had the track rounded out, but it was missing something. I added some wind to the background, and sent it off to LD.
Cult-Title
I think he was surprised by my punctuality, and I was surprised he held my first draft in such high regard.
I immediately began work on a second track for use during world generation. My main idea was to make an acoustic guitar sonata (though it ended up being one section short). I had built an intro and an outro's basic structure and I sent it off to LD before I went to bed to see what he thought of it, and when he responded that it was going to be put into his tech-demo build, I was ecstatic. I went to work finishing the middle of it as soon as I could.
Cult-Worldbuilder
I took about a week to reflect and gather inspiration, and then I wrote the track that will play during autumn, whenever the game gets to that point. I started the track with a 12-string guitar, but opted for a grand-piano instead. The whole piece follows a single five-chord progression, and each repetition builds further complexity the main themes. I added an echo chamber in post as it gave the space between strikes a sort of humming quality, while giving the overall piece a sense of distance and foreboding. I really like how it turned out.
Cult-Autumn
I'm very satisfied with the vision LD has for Cult, and I really like what I see so far as far as his world and creature generators go. If you haven't visited his blog yet, you can find it here. The hypothetical back-story that he put together is a magnificent read, and I am very excited to see where this goes in the future. If you are able, please donate to him. I really want to see his vision fulfilled.
Stay tuned for future updates.
Sentientdeth: A Musical History
My initiation into music began pretty early in life. I was about 6 when my dad bought me my first drumset. I never really got anywhere with drums. They were always fun to play, and bang out frustrations, but I was never a good drummer. I'm not really a good musician period. I can play some guitar scales, chords, but not to any technical level. I can play the bass, but I find it boring. I've never really had a hand for keyboards. My passion is composition; my love is the swirling relationship of notes as they play on one another. I played in two metal bands in high-school (Metal Citizen, Pitface). The bands were awful, mainly due to my inarticulate drumming, but they were both enjoyable learning experiences.
It was around the end of high-school that I began experimenting with MIDI, namely with Cakewalk. I don't remember a lot of this phase, to be honest. This was when I began to learn the base components of music; it had opened a chaotic maelstrom over which I had no control. This was the budding phase, over the course of which I had created some mass amount of tracks with no direction, no discipline, no control. From this chaos, however, came a rebirth of sorts in me. I began to identify with music more closely, see it from a completely different perspective. Music wasn't just sound anymore, it was something greater, with a texture, with a face, with a soul. It flowed into the deepest reaches, to the apex. Music is alive; music is life. A snapshot of the soul.
I started monkeying around on guitar after a crazy road-trip I went on with a couple friends (Mike and Ethan). That trip changed me. Whether it was the drugs or the company, I'll never know, but this is when certain things began to click in my head. I became driven to create; it was my passion, my oxygen. I'm not really sure when I picked up Guitar Pro to help me learn guitar, but I never imagined that it would have taken me on such a journey. I originally picked it up so that I could learn to play songs that I liked (which never really worked out), but it turned out to be a powerful composition tool. I soon-after scrapped using Cakewalk forever, and opted for crafting my own music and learning guitar at the same time.
Guitar Pro 5 was rather simple, but it offered a wide range of effects (slides, bends, vibratto, etc). It also used guitar tab as it's primary means of expression, though I do believe that you could make it output sheet music as well. I wrote the beginnings of my first album (Frozen Over) with it (never finished), and also learned a huge amount about music. Most of the songs from this era had lyrics, which I don't have anymore, as I was trying to start a band, but was never successful.
Tracks from Frozen Over:
Simply Doomed
Faithless Forever
Upheaval
Burning Hatred
After some time writing metal tracks in guitar pro, a friend (Jim) turned me onto a program called Reason. It was completely different from everything else I ever worked with, and I only made maybe four tracks with it, only one of which I ever kept for posterity. It was an interesting tool, but it came with many fall-backs. It tried to emulate hardware synthesizers with software. I tried to use it with a later project, but it came with the nightmare of getting it to sync with the hardware other people were using.
Manifest
Hearsay Heresy was an ambitious project that some friends of mine and I were working on (Jim, Mike, Scott). We all took the project seriously, which is why I think everything fell apart. Though I will probably never know the true reasons, the band was the herald for ephemeral friendships. I haven't talked to any of my former band-mates (save Scott) since the last awkward recording session. We were trying to make Power Noise, but there was this argument between me and the rest of the band on whether we should prearrange our music or do live takes. I thought the live takes sounded far grittier, more appropriate than the relatively clean sounding prearranged tracks. They never posted any of their finalized prearranged work, however. I wrote drums primarily in the project, though I did contribute some sound effects as well. I used ReNoise to write the tracks for Hearsay Heresy.
Hearsay Heresy
After this project fell apart, I went through a rather long depression. I wrote a few songs here and there, but nothing really substantial. I found it difficult to return to my metal roots after so long exploring other possibilities with friends who would no longer speak to me. I started writing whatever I felt like at the time, essentially. Somewhere in this period Guitar Pro 6 came out, which is what I've been using to compose since.
Bubbles
Triune
After some time just doing whatever, I ran across a game project some people at the Bay 12 forums were working on called Crimelike. It was a roguelike based around being a criminal. I wrote a few tracks for their game, but unfortunately, as far as I can tell the project is dead.
Day in the Park
Press the Secretary
I began talking to Grishnak; we'd connected over the Bay 12 forums, and have always wanted to try and do some compilation work. We began working on a couple metal tracks, but he lost his internet connection for several months, and we never really completed anything.
After this, I kind of hit a brick wall. I didn't write anything for a while, at least not seriously. This is is about all I have to show for that time period. It's pretty reflective of my state of mind at the time.
La Tristeza del Duelo
While Grishnak was away, something eventually just clicked in my head, it just said, "Fuck it, I'm gonna write a symphony."
I did a little research, put together a strings quartet, some drums, a xylophone and a guitar in GP6 and started writing. As I went on in the first movement, I just kept gaining momentum. The ideas were coming faster than I could put them into notes, which became problematic eventually. As I progressed in writing, everything gradually began to slow down. Every note I placed made the next note take a little bit longer to place than the last, until eventually around the middle of the second movement, it just became unworkable. I managed to finish off the second movement through much frustration, but when I went to begin the third, I just couldn't go on. There was nearly 45 seconds of load-time between each note-placement. I had pushed GP6 and my computer to the absolute limit my mind could endure.
Symphony no. 1
I didn't write anything else after this for quite a while. I had lost my edge; I couldn't just keep writing without a purpose. I needed something to strive for. I needed a challenge that was also realistic.
It was around the end of high-school that I began experimenting with MIDI, namely with Cakewalk. I don't remember a lot of this phase, to be honest. This was when I began to learn the base components of music; it had opened a chaotic maelstrom over which I had no control. This was the budding phase, over the course of which I had created some mass amount of tracks with no direction, no discipline, no control. From this chaos, however, came a rebirth of sorts in me. I began to identify with music more closely, see it from a completely different perspective. Music wasn't just sound anymore, it was something greater, with a texture, with a face, with a soul. It flowed into the deepest reaches, to the apex. Music is alive; music is life. A snapshot of the soul.
I started monkeying around on guitar after a crazy road-trip I went on with a couple friends (Mike and Ethan). That trip changed me. Whether it was the drugs or the company, I'll never know, but this is when certain things began to click in my head. I became driven to create; it was my passion, my oxygen. I'm not really sure when I picked up Guitar Pro to help me learn guitar, but I never imagined that it would have taken me on such a journey. I originally picked it up so that I could learn to play songs that I liked (which never really worked out), but it turned out to be a powerful composition tool. I soon-after scrapped using Cakewalk forever, and opted for crafting my own music and learning guitar at the same time.
Guitar Pro 5 was rather simple, but it offered a wide range of effects (slides, bends, vibratto, etc). It also used guitar tab as it's primary means of expression, though I do believe that you could make it output sheet music as well. I wrote the beginnings of my first album (Frozen Over) with it (never finished), and also learned a huge amount about music. Most of the songs from this era had lyrics, which I don't have anymore, as I was trying to start a band, but was never successful.
Tracks from Frozen Over:
Simply Doomed
Faithless Forever
Upheaval
Burning Hatred
After some time writing metal tracks in guitar pro, a friend (Jim) turned me onto a program called Reason. It was completely different from everything else I ever worked with, and I only made maybe four tracks with it, only one of which I ever kept for posterity. It was an interesting tool, but it came with many fall-backs. It tried to emulate hardware synthesizers with software. I tried to use it with a later project, but it came with the nightmare of getting it to sync with the hardware other people were using.
Manifest
Hearsay Heresy was an ambitious project that some friends of mine and I were working on (Jim, Mike, Scott). We all took the project seriously, which is why I think everything fell apart. Though I will probably never know the true reasons, the band was the herald for ephemeral friendships. I haven't talked to any of my former band-mates (save Scott) since the last awkward recording session. We were trying to make Power Noise, but there was this argument between me and the rest of the band on whether we should prearrange our music or do live takes. I thought the live takes sounded far grittier, more appropriate than the relatively clean sounding prearranged tracks. They never posted any of their finalized prearranged work, however. I wrote drums primarily in the project, though I did contribute some sound effects as well. I used ReNoise to write the tracks for Hearsay Heresy.
Hearsay Heresy
After this project fell apart, I went through a rather long depression. I wrote a few songs here and there, but nothing really substantial. I found it difficult to return to my metal roots after so long exploring other possibilities with friends who would no longer speak to me. I started writing whatever I felt like at the time, essentially. Somewhere in this period Guitar Pro 6 came out, which is what I've been using to compose since.
Bubbles
Triune
After some time just doing whatever, I ran across a game project some people at the Bay 12 forums were working on called Crimelike. It was a roguelike based around being a criminal. I wrote a few tracks for their game, but unfortunately, as far as I can tell the project is dead.
Day in the Park
Press the Secretary
I began talking to Grishnak; we'd connected over the Bay 12 forums, and have always wanted to try and do some compilation work. We began working on a couple metal tracks, but he lost his internet connection for several months, and we never really completed anything.
After this, I kind of hit a brick wall. I didn't write anything for a while, at least not seriously. This is is about all I have to show for that time period. It's pretty reflective of my state of mind at the time.
La Tristeza del Duelo
While Grishnak was away, something eventually just clicked in my head, it just said, "Fuck it, I'm gonna write a symphony."
I did a little research, put together a strings quartet, some drums, a xylophone and a guitar in GP6 and started writing. As I went on in the first movement, I just kept gaining momentum. The ideas were coming faster than I could put them into notes, which became problematic eventually. As I progressed in writing, everything gradually began to slow down. Every note I placed made the next note take a little bit longer to place than the last, until eventually around the middle of the second movement, it just became unworkable. I managed to finish off the second movement through much frustration, but when I went to begin the third, I just couldn't go on. There was nearly 45 seconds of load-time between each note-placement. I had pushed GP6 and my computer to the absolute limit my mind could endure.
Symphony no. 1
I didn't write anything else after this for quite a while. I had lost my edge; I couldn't just keep writing without a purpose. I needed something to strive for. I needed a challenge that was also realistic.
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