Ken keeps a digital piano at the available for anyone here to play, and since I joined the lab around a year ago I’ve used it often as a MIDI controller for audio sequencing. I enjoy to compose original music–I go by ear and use samples and synthesizers to approximate the sounds “in my head.”
I have a bunch of musical ideas lying around, many incomplete, but sometimes I find myself taking pieces from those older ideas (consciously or subconsciously) and combining them into something better. This seems to have happened with a tune I composed recently, as I hear some similarities when listening to some of my older demos (I picked a couple for the end of this post). Similarities can be good in this case, as it makes sense to give a game unifying theme and a number of motifs.
Regarding the specific track I havewritten, I wanted something to complement the fast-paced techno-outer-space environment that I imagine for certain sections of the game-in-progress that I shared a few weeks ago. To add something to go along with the music in this post, I drew a very rough concept for how the world may look. (This is not to scale. Don’t let the graph paper fool you.)
The track: (I’ve looped it once in the tradition of most game music.) If you have the option, please use fairly good headphones or speakers. Laptop speakers don’t do bass justice.
Truthfully, I would like to add more more parts beyond the loop-point, but for now I am happy with where it is going. Can anyone identify some of my influences, I wonder?
I’ve already added the music to the game and have been experimenting with simple real-time audio effects. For example, I can toggle a light delay that I might want to use if you’re in particular parts of the world.
Since I’m on the subject of music, here are two older tracks (different styles) from before I joined FRL. I think I might revisit and/or repurpose them. (My apologies for the lack of embedding:)
Thanks, and enjoy.