Creative Music from an abondoned game jam project

[[Insertnamehere]]

Hi. ^-^

My name is [Insertnamehere], and I make music! You may already have seen my thread, where I post some of the terrible crap that I make. I know double-posting is seen as blasphemous, but I figured this was noteworthy enough to deserve it's own thread.

Anyway, back in july/august, I participated in the game jam, where I composed the music for a project. Unfortunately, the project wasn't finished by the deadline, and now looks like it'll never see the light of day. So instead, I've decided to post it here for people to listen to, if you want, heh. ;D

Enclosed in the download in also a .txt file with "composers' notes" for each of the songs. Basically just a collection of my thoughts, and a bit on the creative/technical process of composing the songs, if that's of interest to anyone.

Anyway, thanks for your time, and thanks for listening! ;D

EDIT: Oh, and merry Christmas! I suppose that's obligatory for the time, isn't it? ^-^

 

[Rhyden]

Straight fire as always, my dude. Especially impressive considering you had time constraints to deal with. All the battle themes are super neat too. Shame the game never got finished (and I also know how it feels to put this much work into a short amount of time only to have it go to waste). Keep up the good work!

 

[[Insertnamehere]]

Straight fire as always, my dude. Especially impressive considering you had time constraints to deal with. All the battle themes are super neat too. Shame the game never got finished (and I also know how it feels to put this much work into a short amount of time only to have it go to waste). Keep up the good work!

Thank you, friend. ;D Indeed, it's a frustrating experience, but at least it's one that I'll remember lol. Glad you liked it, though! ^-^

 

[SmokedPaprika]

These are very nice! I know what it's like to work hard on a game jam and not end up releasing an actual game - I'd suggest you start with something much smaller next year, but still try to make as much of an impact as possible. You'll find the completed product rewarding for sure!

 

[AenaonDogsky]

First of all, I love every piece.
I like that you've got a combo of general RPG-iness and Pokemon Style...

Enclosed in the download in also a .txt file with "composers' notes" for each of the songs. Basically just a collection of my thoughts, and a bit on the creative/technical process of composing the songs, if that's of interest to anyone.

I've also read all the notes and it's great that you've got all that in mind when you compose! Some specific things:

• I really like the pauses in the Evil HQ theme... There's, like, a small "trend" in electronic composition to "forget" about pauses and just shove all kinds of MIDI everywhere, so props to you
• I'm amazed that you pulled off the Evil Team Grunt Battle theme with DSK Electrik GuitarZ... Not gonna say anything else :P
• Evil team HQ Lower floors is the way it should be, it's good that you didn't add more "intricacies", in a sense, when things get serious and there is a clear goal in mind, simpler music is more befitting methinks. (Simple music is cool anyway)
• Choir addition was a great idea in the Admin Battle :D
• Mysterious World started more spooky and went more "abstract" like and lighter, and had more of a... "something tragic happened, but we're moving a bit forward" RPG vibe, like a semi-final or final area after a dungeon, or a dungeon itself...
  maybe a more "obvious" minor scale would be better suited to emphasize the danger?
• Climax - it's great that you didn't add percussion
• Battle Savage Beast is so far the most "intricate" I think, and not because of its 5/4 signature. Had you added a melody as a break in the middle (whilst dropping percussion), it would have been almost perfect. It conveys exactly what it
  should, and It got me in the "I've gotta defeat these monstrosities" mood, while dancing around in danger. Well done!

All in all,
Great use of synths when appropriate, combination of orchestral instruments and synths that don't sound contradictory to each other, themes befit what the game wants to convey (the most important part, anyway) and each individual track
suits the particular area or situation.
Very nice job!

 

[[Insertnamehere]]

text lol

Oh my goodness, what an intricate reply! Thank you very much for the kind words, and thanks for taking the time to assemble your thoughts for me to read. :D

So, to honor your time, I figured that I’d respond to your comments in a similar fashion. (All of my responses are in the same order as your comments)

• Yes, it’s very easy to overcomplicate songs that really don’t need extra accompaniment. Trust me, I’ve fallen into that trap numerous times lol. By limiting myself to a single bass track, and not allowing more than a set number of channels to play at the same time, I try to avoid that as best I can.
• Heh, since I’m a poor student, paying for high-end guitar plugins, or an actual guitar, is wayyy out of my budget. So my use of DSK’s stuff is actually not initially by choice, but by limitation. Once you get to know their stuff, it’s actually not bad at all. Quite a bit more than meets the eye, in this case.
• --
• I fear that choirs are going to become a staple in my music, now that you’ve said that lol
  You’re right; a minor-based scale probably would have suited the song better. But I’m afraid a combination of laziness and uncertainty led to me just leaving the song as is. This song wasn’t even originally for this project, so I just simply didn’t adjust it fit the feel better.
• --
• Yeah, looking back, this track definitely needed some kind of melodic structure. Initially, I feared that relying too much a continuous melody would take away from the “dangerous” feel that I was going for. idk, still kinda on the fence with this one, heh

Well, thanks for listening, and I’m glad you liked them! ^-^

 

[AenaonDogsky]

Oh my goodness, what an intricate reply! Thank you very much for the kind words, and thanks for taking the time to assemble your thoughts for me to read. :D

So, to honor your time, I figured that I’d respond to your comments in a similar fashion. (All of my responses are in the same order as your comments)

• Yes, it’s very easy to overcomplicate songs that really don’t need extra accompaniment. Trust me, I’ve fallen into that trap numerous times lol. By limiting myself to a single bass track, and not allowing more than a set number of channels to play at the same time, I try to avoid that as best I can.
• Heh, since I’m a poor student, paying for high-end guitar plugins, or an actual guitar, is wayyy out of my budget. So my use of DSK’s stuff is actually not initially by choice, but by limitation. Once you get to know their stuff, it’s actually not bad at all. Quite a bit more than meets the eye, in this case.
• --
• I fear that choirs are going to become a staple in my music, now that you’ve said that lol
  You’re right; a minor-based scale probably would have suited the song better. But I’m afraid a combination of laziness and uncertainty led to me just leaving the song as is. This song wasn’t even originally for this project, so I just simply didn’t adjust it fit the feel better.
• --
• Yeah, looking back, this track definitely needed some kind of melodic structure. Initially, I feared that relying too much a continuous melody would take away from the “dangerous” feel that I was going for. idk, still kinda on the fence with this one, heh

Well, thanks for listening, and I’m glad you liked them! ^-^

Hey, the honor is all mine.
- I understand the trap you're talking about, it's quite difficult to avoid, as you stated.
- I can also totally sympathize, especially with the "poor" part xD. You know, limitations are actually a good thing in art. I can't speak for graphics etc, but when it comes to music,
especially videogame music, hardware limitations led to 1) strife for more originality 2) use of imagination in order to think out of the limitation's "box", 3) strong melodic emphasis
which resulted in all those extremely memorable pieces we have today, (legend of zelda etc etc) 4) massive influence by classical music (the latter
also emphasizing strong melodies, depending on the respective period at least) which is always a good background for any kind of music.
- Well choirs are awesome, so... :D
- I understand what you mean, but even so, this is a "minor" complaint (heh..heh...*coughs awkwardly*). It's already greater than you give it credit for.
- It's like the icing on the cake, it's not necessary, by all means, rather it would be even better than it already is.

I'm looking forward to any future compositions!
Your music is great!

 

[[Insertnamehere]]

-- UPDATE --

So, over the last couple of weeks, I've been getting requests for people to use the music for their own fangame endeavours, so I figure I'll address this now.

You are free to use the music from the abandoned project in any way that you please. (as long as you give me credit ^-^)

In addition, to make life a bit easier for anyone who wants to use the music, I've compiled all of the songs into Vorbis (.ogg) files, that can be looped using the Fmod extension. For anyone unsure what that means, read this. The files are encoded in the .ogg wrapper, and thus should play on pretty much any music player around. They are in 320 kbps, which I know is very high for these type of things, but I can't be bothered to compress them. So, for now, each song is around 2-5 MB in size. Also, the appropriate looptags are already in place, so no need to worry about that.

Anyway, the looped songs can be downloaded here. If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up, and I'll try to answer as soon as I can. :D

 

[OrreMIDI]

This all sounds absolutely amazing! I am so impressed that you did all this in such a short amount of time! I too am a composer, although I have very little music theory education so my stuff is not nearly this impressive, so I know how long it takes to make songs, especially for video games. I really hope to see more from you! Is there anywhere I can hear more of your compositions?

 

[[Insertnamehere]]

This all sounds absolutely amazing! I am so impressed that you did all this in such a short amount of time! I too am a composer, although I have very little music theory education so my stuff is not nearly this impressive, so I know how long it takes to make songs, especially for video games. I really hope to see more from you! Is there anywhere I can hear more of your compositions?

Thanks, glad you like it! ^-^ Also, don't discourage yourself because you don't have kind of educational experience with music. I imagine that a lot of composers on this platform are self-taught, as I am.

Oh, and if wanna hear some more of my stuff, shoot me a DM, and I'll send over some projects, if you'd like. ;D