Hey! It’s been awhile. I’ve got two tunes for you to check out.
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Fanfare and Jubilee (Remastered)

This was actually completed about three weeks ago…

If you compare it to the original versions of the tune you’ll find some changes in the actual composition (as opposed to the sound), but nothing too significant. Mainly, I made the ending shorter so that the listener wouldn’t lose interest. I had thought before that the buildup to the large section that features all of the instruments playing together would be a good idea; however, even I as the composer was fatigued by hearing just one instrument come in at a time. Also, you’ll notice that the trombone starts off the buildup instead of the trumpet, and the percussion doesn’t take extra time to build up either. I think you’ll agree if you compare the two that it was in every listener’s best interest to shorten that section.

While this tune is technically final, having sought out some criticism of it I learned from other composers that they find the mix too dry. While I set out for a drier mix, I am going to run with the suggestions and see how I can improve the sound of the piece by altering the reverb to give it more depth.

(“Fanfare and Jubilee” on SoundCloud)
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A Binding Harmony

This next tune was written for the TIGSource Musical Challenge XXIII. You might recall that I entered one of the challenges a while back with my tune “Mr. AC (Keep Your Cool).” For that tune, the challenge was to make a thirty-second looping battle theme; for this, things were a bit less constricting. The challenge was, simply, to create a love theme.

Download: a-binding-harmony_display-mix-fade-out.wav

Imagine, if you will, that two lovers had been separated against their will, and after many months or years or however long, they spot each other in a large, crowded area. Having locked eyes they push through the crowd and wind up in each other’s arms once again. Suddenly, the world around them seems simply to vanish as they revel in their reunion.

I’m happy with how this tune turned out. It didn’t take me long to write and produce it, for one, and I think that I learned a lot in the span that I did work on it.

Originally, the tune was going to feature brass instruments with a trumpet or horn taking the main melody. After trying that for a little bit, it wasn’t meshing well with my ideas, so I went back to focusing on writing with ye olde piano, where I got down every part with the exception of the bass clarinet solo, which I wrote on a whim using the bass clarinet samples themselves. Another interesting tidbit is that I kind of wanted to make the main theme have more of a jazz ballad feel using a drum kit with brushes, but my current sample library won’t allow for that to be of the quality that I’m looking for.

Anyhow, I ended up knowing that I wanted to feature the woodwinds, especially after feeling like I’ve had good successes in the past in writing for them. What I did this time, though, was sit down and listen to a handful of famous cinematic love themes to try and internalize how the parts around the themes moved to create such luscious sounds. I think that led to me doing more with less—that is, creating more movement by limiting the number of voices sounding in certain phrases and having them all come together in others. Moreover, I started focusing on weaving melodies between instruments and in and out of textures.

I’d say that this tune is done, but it’s because I want to do more with it that I won’t. I would like to add in more brass and even a string section, arranging the piece for full orchestra. In fact, that was a suggestion I got from one of my fellow challengers. She, Elizabitcrusher, also suggested that I take more advantage of reverb (clearly my production-based nemesis at this point). So, I think it’s safe to say that in the future you’ll be hearing more of this tune—it’s just the when that’s in question.

(“A Binding Harmony” on SoundCloud)
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From here, I’m working on finishing up a “large boss” fight tune, and after that, I’m going to compile my first demo and start getting my stuff out there to indie companies. Being that I’ve surpassed the halfway point of my sabbatical, I need to get my music out there and try to grab projects as soon as possible. The most ideal situation would be for me to have enough work to be able to keep moving forward as I am, but it’s more likely that I’ll be on the job hunt again soon, hoping to land a fulltime gig as the projects start trickling in.

On a more fun note, my pal Natalie of Clavis Cryptica asked me to do some voice acting for her upcoming D.C. puzzle hunt, The Famine Game (based after a best-selling novel with a synonymical title). It was so much fun! I hope that somehow I can get roped into being paid for voice acting services one day, haha. Maybe I’ll make a demo reel for that, too…

Thanks, as always, for listening and reading! Questions and critiques forever welcome in the comment section below.

‘til next time…!

Cat’s out of the bag: I don’t work 24/7 all the time.
Here Jen and I are enjoying the cherry blossoms in our nation’s capital.

Hey everyone,

I haven’t posted in about a week and a half, so I thought I’d better give you an update.

First, the music stuff: I am in the process of both remastering old tunes and writing new ones. In fact, I have a list of two tunes to remaster and nine tunes to finish writing, which is a lot of stuff. You might think that I may have spread myself too thin and to that I say you might be correct, haha.

The dilemma is one that isn’t old; namely, I’m caught between wanting to finish up tunes and churn out new ideas. Finishing is two-dimensional problem that I imagine many of us aspiring artists have: one, I always ask myself, ‘Is this even worth finishing?’, and two, I sometimes feel like I’m spending too much time on one idea rather than creating fresh ones, which makes me think of number one’s question again. The answer to that question, by the way, is ‘YES’ 95% of the time simply because I need to practice finishing writing as well as the whole production gig. I refuse to abandon these tunes even though I get scatterbrained and succumb to writing new ideas instead often. The answer to the second? Simply get better and faster, which is done by finishing tunes, and stay focused. And you may think that have a list of nine tunes to finish would warrant me saying enough is enough, leading me to blast through finishing one or two, but no… no, that doesn’t work; no urge to create new things is assuaged.

But hey, the remastered version of “Fanfare and Jubilee” is coming along. Check out what it sounds like at the end of today. Lots of work still needs to be done, of course, including adjusting dynamics, volume levels, articulations, and more, but I think you’ll like it:

Original: 

Remastered:

As for non-music stuff, I’m trying to get out a little more and trying to stop myself from snacking all day long (I have neither the metabolism nor the funds). It’s hard to get inspired when you’re sitting in a room all day, and while baseball season is awesome and I love watching it at night, it doesn’t really help churn the creative butter. So, I like to go take walks during the day (the weather has been gorgeous recently) and I’ve been trying to do some other activities. A few examples: as you saw above, Jen and I went to see the cherry blossoms last Wednesday with her coworker and her coworker’s son, which was really nice; we started playing Sunday night softball on a team that is half comprised of people we don’t know; and I started a nine-week “Adult Beginner’s Gymnastics” course last night (yup, and it’s pretty cool).

That’s pretty much it for now! I hope to be done with the remaster soon and will have some new stuff for you to check out shortly therefore. Until then…!

The works below are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License and ©2013 Gregory Weaver.

It’s been a long time coming, but I finally got around to remastering the first track that I ever did for this blog, “Woods Theme” (or “Theme for the Woods,” as I called it in earlier posts).

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: I usually do my larger-scale compositions in Finale first, which doesn’t have quality sound samples. So, I always aim to go back and remaster the tracks I write in Finale by putting them into Logic and using better samples, as well as by making my own mix instead of using what Finale does automatically.

It feels good to get one under my belt. It’s definitely not my favorite part of the creative process, but it certainly is fulfilling when you finally feel satisfied with a mix. There’s so much to be very meticulous about, and if you don’t have a ton of experience in that world, it can be maddening. Luckily, I have the time right now to stop, let my ears rest, and then resume later, which makes things better on the mental side. Arguably, there’s always that looming “just get it done!” approach that is very effective for the mind and for productivity [which I skimmed right over]; however, at least for this tune, I wanted to make everything perfect. And I kept on learning up until the last bounce as a result.

Remastered (Logic): 

Original (Finale): 

“Woods Theme (Remastered)” on SoundCloud

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I even set the remastered version to someone’s walkthrough of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, below:

While you all have heard some of my other final cuts on tunes that have been produced in Logic, you hadn’t yet heard an orchestral piece. As you might imagine, it can take longer to do the production on a piece the more instruments one has because s/he has to make sure that everything is the right balance in every section of a tune. When conducting, a live orchestra, one has the benefit of the musicians knowing what dynamics to play when. They also know how hard to play notes and how to emote passages in the best manner. Everything melds together well due to a combination of the players’ training, what’s written on the score, and what the conductor is doing.

The computer doesn’t know squat. The computer says, “Tell me what to do;” it needs to be babied. How do I play this note? How loud do I play this note? How do I express this note? Oh wait, you mean I express the same passage in the same way the next time I play it? How do I make myself sound good when playing with other instruments? Working with a Digital Audio Workstation like Logic instead of a live orchestra, the composer has to puppeteer the computer to make it do what it needs to do to sound the best it can. Every single instrument needs to be told all of these details. “Woods Theme” has a piccolo, flute, english horn, violin, viola, cello, and contrabass. That’s seven instruments (really, the strings are all sections), not to mention there are two different parts for a few of those instruments.

Now, of course, the amount of time it takes to finish a tune can be longer or shorter depending on how musically the composer wants the computer to play the notes. For example, I have the ability of inputting every note, making it perfectly in time, and have every note be played with the same attack and loudness. Conversely, I have the ability to just how each note should be attacked based on my knowledge of how to play passages well and how I want them to sound; I can also choose to play all of the parts in real time as opposed to inputting everything in perfect time to make things sound more human.

For this tune, I decided to play everything in real time and then adjust the attacks and the time of each note afterwards. Until I get much better at playing keyboard, I don’t think I’ll be doing that again, haha. Despite things taking much longer, I’m glad I did it this way for the first remaster because I now have a much better idea of how the notes should look when editing them in the piano roll (for those that don’t understand, see the graphic above–literally, you can draw notes in that bottom section, which functions in the same way that an old player piano does).

Anyway, I hope that you enjoy listening to the remastered version of “Woods Theme!” More remasters are in the works, as are some more new tunes, so keep an ear out.

That’s quite the unrelated group (that’s being said admirably as a fan of a number of those bands, by the way, haha). Would I be going too far to hope that maybe The D will power you to win more VGM awards for your songwriting prowess?

HAH… The D does possess great power…

What’s the musical direction that you’re taking for Transistor and how has it been evolving during the development process?  Any bleed over from Bastion? 

For Transistor I’m shooting for something a bit more electronic, but also combining elements of old-world European music and post-rock.  Some of the urban beats and such will probably carry over from Bastion.  One of my personal goals is to make this soundtrack equally as eclectic, but using very different elements.  It’s evolved quite a bit over the last year we’ve been working on it.  Since I had something pretty specific in mind this time around, it took a lot of experimentation to get to.

When you say “elements old-world European music,” can you give me more of a sense of what you mean? Are you referring to things like, say, classical music form and harmonic devices? The sound of the folk music? Does the answer lie within consulting the marriage of classical elements and electronic music found in Bjork and Radiohead, perhaps?

I’ve been playing with some more traditional European instruments: harp, accordion, etc. and trying to incorporate those into my pieces.

I think this time around it’s a bit more of a challenge actually, since I have more specific goals this time for what I want to achieve with the music.  For Bastion, I just sort of made whatever I could and we used it, which ended up working out well, but this time I have a smaller target, I guess you could say.

Interesting, and I completely understand. Has it been that you’ve felt completely empowered and motivated by the goal or do you ever feel yearn for that freedom that you were able to give yourself in Bastion?

The works below are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License and ©2013 Gregory Weaver.

Being that I’m a little over two weeks away from entering into the third month of my sabbatical (crazy to think about that), I decided that I need to get serious about finishing and mastering some of my older ideas.  I’ve got a couple of new tunes in the oven, but cranking out tunes in Finale that sound synthy doesn’t do me very much good in terms of marketing myself in this day and age.  Here are two tunes that I recently finished, both of which might be a bit uplifting:

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 “Happy-Go-Lucky”

I wrote most of “Happy-Go-Lucky” a while back, but had a lot of cleaning up to do with it. Originally it didn’t include drums and it sounded very bare. There was just too much space! I thought that I needed some chordal textures at first because the bass sound was holding down a rhythmic base, but I was completely wrong–drums were the answer, and I knew it immediately after I put them in. Gotta give a shout-out to my old professor, Robert Jospe, since I knew what rhythm I wanted to use. Thanks for teaching me how to groove, Jos!

This tune is meant to be the title screen of a racer, and while I was thinking more “F-Zero” at first, David Graey commented on my SoundCloud, saying that the tune reminds his of the Mario 64 race theme (though he’s not sure why, and I’m not totally sure why either, to be honest, haha). I decided to make the picture that of a Mario Kart title screen as a happy medium between his interpretation and my own.

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“Monday’s Theme” (final edition)

You might remember this little diddy back when I first posted about it last January. From that post:

‘Monday’s Theme’ is a very lazy, easy-going tune.  I imagine that if there were actually people playing this, the banjo player would be sitting in a rocking chair on a porch, hat over his or her face with a long piece of wheat hanging out (or something equally as stereotypical).  The whistler would be working out in the field, harvesting, gearing up for a long, hard work week, but not getting into things too quickly.  Since everyone is so laid back and unworried, they’re just strumming along, not particularly worried about being exactly in time

That still holds true here. The big difference between the old version and the new version is that I added solos for both the banjo and the bass. Furthermore, influenced by Kenley’s suggestions in the comments of the original post, I looked to shake up the banjo part a bit. If I weren’t just trying to knock this tune out, I’d take some more of Kenley’s ideas for a spin, not to mention add even more variation in the banjo part.

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Thanks for listening.  Feedback is always appreciated!

Filed under: Composition Tagged: F-Zero, Groove, Harvest Moon, Mario Kart, Music, Music Composition, VGM, Video Game Music, Video Games ]]> http://scorevgm.com/2013/03/20/interludes_3/feed/ 0 muuurgh Creative Commons License Mario Kart Title Harvest-Moon http://scorevgm.com/2013/03/11/interview_greg-edmonson/ http://scorevgm.com/2013/03/11/interview_greg-edmonson/#comments Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:22:52 +0000 Muuurgh http://scorevgm.com/?p=1122 […]]]> Back in mid-November, after finishing part 2 of my review of the various versions of “Nate’s Theme,” I decided to send an e-mail to its composer, Greg Edmonson, because I really wanted to talk to him about his works.  I hadn’t heard from him and followed up, but still found no response in my inbox.

A month after my first inquiry, having given up on the interview, I found myself randomly wondering whether or not spam message get forwarded to one’s main e-mail account from his or her secondary ones (I have many e-mail addresses that route to a singular one).  So, I logged into one of those accounts and looked in the spam box.  Sure enough, spam messages don’t get forwarded.  Sure enough, there was an e-mail from Greg the day after I sent him my first inquiry that read: ”Hi Greg, I would be honored to do this… Let me know… I will put it in my book!!”

Yes, he even used two exclamation points.  Talk about facepalm.

I frantically typed up an apology letter and added him to my safe-senders list.  Not too long after that, I got another e-mail from him and we both agreed to get back in touch after the start of the new year, yadda yadda, then I interviewed him on Valentine’s Day.  Now that I’m finally done doing a basic clean-up of the audio of the interview, I present it to you, dear readers!  But first, a post-preface preface:

I knew that Greg would be great to interview because I had already heard an interview of him a couple of years back.  From the get-go, Greg was just as I had expected him to be: someone who is very amicable, passionate about his work, and someone who has a lot to say and naturally goes into a lot of detail while speaking.  You’ll notice in the interview that I really don’t ask too many questions, and some of the questions I do ask are just me reacting to his narrative.

He is also someone who is very gracious, thankful for what being a composer has afforded him.  He gives credit where credit is due, and when he talks about having opportunities that seem to come with the territory of being in the position that he is as a film and game composer, you can tell that he has not lost the sense of wonderment that one might have when they first get to do the things that he has been able to do and accomplish.

Because of Greg’s great personality, I think that you’ll enjoy listening to the interview as much as I enjoyed giving it.  It’s certainly a long one, but Greg makes it sail by easily.  Sorry ahead of time for the random noises of my chair creaking, my loud laughter, and the technical malfunctions that you might hear.  Also, we jump around a bit during the interview, but I tried my best to break it down below:

Part I:

Part II:
Here’s where I admit to the greatest technical failure of all: Over the course of the interview, I constantly checked my recorder to make sure that the battery wasn’t running out.  What I failed to do, though, was make sure that I didn’t run out of space [insert faceplam #2 here].  I realized this when I lost connection with Greg, so I was able to get the rest of the interview, but I did lose a good 15 minutes, including the part in which I talked to him about “Nate’s Theme” [#3 here].  Here’s what I remember of what was discussed in that timespan:

• Greg was directed to write ambient music for the first Uncharted, but in the second, he was free to write more melodious pieces.
• The variance of sound between the versions of “Nate’s Theme” is caused by the difference in recording studios and in the orchestras that performed each version.  The first was recorded at Skywalker Sound, but by the time the third came around, Greg was recording at Abbey Road.  I mentioned the timbre of the brass growing in brightness/brassiness version to version, and he noted that version 3.0 was that way especially due to the fact that England has a longstanding tradition and history of brass bands.
• When asked about the specific differences in the parts, Greg didn’t linger on the topic.  That is to say, there was no urgency to “fix” anything in the themes; rather, the additions and changes were done casually, which is cool.
• I asked if anyone from the bands gives him suggestions as to what he might alter in a part.  He responded that, no, people don’t really do that unless they’re a soloist, and if that’s the case, they may have some very specific suggestions.  We shorted out in the middle of that conversation, so you’ll still get to hear about it in…

Part III:

… and that’s it!

My most heartfelt thanks goes out to Greg Edmonson, who was very patient in dealing with my technological blunders in the beginning and then was such an awesome interviewee, even amidst even more tech issues.  It was a pleasure that I hope to have again in the future when he continues to make great games into unforgettable ones by way of his music.

The works below are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License and ©2013 Gregory Weaver.

When I’m feeling a little down about new stuff that I’m making on a certain day, sometimes I tell myself to go work on a jazz-influenced piece since that’s the music that I have the most experience performing and listening to.  Sometimes forcing myself to work on a jazz piece produces the beginnings of a new tune that I like and sometimes it doesn’t; but when the results are positive, I end up with tunes like “Mr. A.C. (Keep Your Cool)” and my latest, the tentatively titled “Sabba4” (short for Sabbatical Tune #4, but I’ve also come to like it as a title ‘cause it sounds all space sector-y).

Here’s what I have so far for the first part of it:

“Sabba4″ on SoundCloud

I pretty much got the first 30 seconds over and done with one day and then moved on to do the next bit a day or two later.  Using Finale I wrote the vibes melody first and then created the harmony, etc., and when I put it in Logic I noticed something: there was a distinct emptiness in the second part that wasn’t in the first (or so my ears told me—you may disagree).  Take a listen to the parts I’m talking about back-to-back:

OLD CUT: 

NEW CUT: 

Do you hear what I hear?  There is a significant energy to the piece that seems to drop out starting at :10, and it’s not because of the lack of a piano as a whole.  I chalked it up to the bass duplicating the vibes too much, the open feel of the drums, and the downward harmonic movement of the guitar chords leading into the open sound of the line after it (i.e., everything).

The question of whether it sounds fine as a piece of music wasn’t what was bothering me because yeah, I think that the old cut sounds good.  However, I think there is just too much space and the energy suffers due to it.

Writing for a game, that’s a problem.  Or, at the very least, writing a piece like this without a particular situation in mind from the beginning, it’s a problem.  Music for a game needs to continuously add to whatever the player is experiencing because it is tied to and thus affects that experience directly.  If the music somehow shifts the mood to an odd gear in the middle of a situation, it most certainly has the ability to detract from the situation and make it less believable or authentic.

In this particular piece, there is an energy and a drive in the beginning up to the point in question.  In the old version, there is so much space starting at :10 that, if placed in a game where the situation called for excitement, it would be out of place.  For example, if you listen to the whole “real” clip, think of a situation where you’re in a ship approaching a mysterious space colony.  Suddenly, you’re shot at by unidentified flying objects.  The situation you find yourself in is one of desperate survival as you are outmatched.  Now, with that in mind and with remembering the feelings you had, listen to the old clip and see if your emotions change.  Mine certainly did while writing the piece.

There are a couple of things that I did to “fix” the track, and the fixes have to do with the bass movement and piano part.  In the old version, the bass has more movement in that it anticipates the guitar’s chords by playing one chord tone per chord a half a beat ahead of the guitar; in the new, I left out the anticipation but didn’t have it play the guitar’s bass notes, which where melodically moving downwards.  Instead, the bass starts the movement a chord later than the guitar and then inverts some of the intervals of the guitar’s bass notes when it comes in (i.e., instead of playing down a M2, m2, M3, M2, the bass plays up a m7, down a m9, up a m6, down a m2).  Then, the piano creates upward melodic movement with the chords and doubles down on the mood it creates at  :12 of the full version by playing open chords, two of which are arpeggiated.

The upward movement here does two things.  First, it, as upward movement, naturally pushes the listener forward and allows the energy of the previous bars to be carried further.  Next, as a result of that carry, it shortens the distance between the held note at :09 and the lines at :13, which are more open because the bass doubles the line played by the vibes.

Speaking of the openness of the part at :13, you’ll notice that I did a couple of things to try and add energy there, as well.  The guitar was originally meant to just hold a single chord, but I decided instead to add a little more rhythm by having it chunk out the chord in its different inversions (with upward melodic movement, mind you).  The other change is that I increased the tempo of this section, which was done because, in fixing the rhythms in the old version – which saw more than one instrument rush –, it seemed to drag a bit.

I hope you enjoyed listening to “Sabba4.”  I’ll be working on a few more edits to the section you hear here (mostly dealing with the drums) and will continue on!

The works below are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License and ©2013 Gregory Weaver.

The day that I started writing “A New Horizon” was a day that bore more fruit than just that tune.  In fact, I ended up producing skeletons of two other tunes, each with its own, different feel.  Throughout the week I’ve been touching up those tunes and today I finished up my work with them; plus, I wound up mixing one other tune that I had started a while back but never got around to revisiting.  Let’s take a look!
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“Kalimba”

As you probably have read before, I enjoy exploring new instruments and sounds by loading up the samples on Logic and just playing around with them using my MIDI controller.  ”Kalimba” was birthed that way; I established the groove of the piece by using none other than a kalimba sample and cruised from there.

The tune was built the same way that you hear it develop.  One groove was made, then I thought of what should go atop that, etc.  I really like the Logic sample “South African Singers” and it seemed to fit right into the sound of the kalimba, so I wrote that vocal part (though, it’s more of a different texture than a ‘vocal part’).  Really, this was one of those tunes that just fell together.  If you get the chance, listen to it with headphones–I had a good time playing with the panning, and I think it adds more to the atmosphere if you can experience that element of the piece.

The only thing that took some time was mixing it and getting it to sound the way I want it to.  Interestingly enough, I’m still not sure if I like how it’s mixed, and the reason for that is I’m not really sure how the tune sounds on the ‘general device.’  I know what it sounds like through my Sennheiser HD598s, I know what it sounds like through my Apple display, and I know what it sounds like through my MacBook Pro speakers.  The issue is that my headphones are fantastic and the Apple products’ speakers are horrible; therefore, while the mix may sound great for stereo headphones, I don’t really know what it sounds like in the open air on normal speakers.  I’m especially worried about the volume levels… If the mix sounds crazy or terrible on your device, definitely let me know what you’re hearing!

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“Hypothesis 209″ (Sabbatical Tune #2)

Yuzo Koshiro DJing at MAGFest XI

Back in middle and high school, I really liked to play “Dance Dance Revolution,” and that resulted in me having a sort of ‘techno phase.’  Flash forward to now, I finally have written my first techno tune, and I had a blast doing it.  Again, “Hypothesis 209″ began with me playing around with the synth sounds in Logic.  The difference from this instance and “Kalimba” is, however, that I wanted to play with the synth sounds because I wanted to make an electronic piece, not just because I wanted to play around with a new sound.

The challenge with writing electronic tunes is that their production value is such a huge part of their overall sound.  I felt like the tune needed to sound immersive and so I took a lot of care to place each sample used in its own place sonically–if I’m in a club to dance (…’cause I, uh, do that a lot… yup…) I want to feel completely enveloped in the sound of the music, so of course I’m going to do my best to make my listeners feel the same way.  To that extent, this is another ‘best with headphones’ piece, unless you have a nice set of stereo speakers.

One other thing that I was sure to do with this piece is to go back afterwards and edit my drum part so that the beat isn’t one static line.  Yes, I could have done much more to vary it, but I wanted more focus to be on the melodic lines, leaving the drums to pulse along.  For this tune, the beat’s infectious enough to me as it is, though I will constantly keep in mind the need to switch things up for future pieces.

PS:  My favorite part was writing in the organ.  I really wanted to find a place for it!
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“Lullaby” (Sabbatical Tune #3)

Brandon cuddling Draggy the Dragon at MAGFest XI

“Lullaby” was more like a nightmare to me (har).  It started off with an improvisation using the “Blues Acoustic” guitar sample on Logic, and I pretty much had the whole tune written after a bit of doing that.  However, I don’t read piano rolls well, so I really felt the need to input the tune into Finale before continuing in order to see a score in front of me.  Problem number one was that the improvisation was extremely messy, and to make any sense of it I had to listen to the mess a lot more than I would have liked, pick out what was good, and then shape that good stuff into something that makes sense.

You know what’s painful?  Shifting from Logic to Finale and back to Logic and then back to Finale to write a score.  I wound up buying another USB connector so that I could use my old M-Audio controller with one computer to write on Finale while using my main setup to use Logic.  This made things only a little easier at the time (though it will make other things a lot easier in the future).

It still was a painful process because of what I mentioned above.  Clearly, this wasn’t supposed to be a big undertaking–it was only meant to be a simple rubato solo guitar melody, which made working with it all the more frustrating.  Yet, even after I fished out the good stuff and manipulated my Finale score to make things more cohesive, I had to input more new stuff and edit more old stuff even more in Logic.  Then, I had to fix the velocities of most of the notes in the tune so that the dynamics sounded smooth and natural.

Okay, I’m done complaining.  This piece is very simple, but it required a lot of work.  All in all, I’m glad I put the time into it because I learned a few Logic functions along the way and I think I improved my understanding of how to best edit note velocities, not to mention I’m glad I wrote for solo guitar.  If you would like the sheet music, I’d be happy to supply you with it!
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Thanks for listening!  Let me know what you think in the comments section below!

Filed under: Composition Tagged: Electronica, Guitar, Kalimba, Music, Music Composition, Music Production, Techno, VGM, Video Game Music, Video Games ]]> http://scorevgm.com/2013/02/25/interludes_2/feed/ 0 muuurgh Creative Commons License Jungle ruins IMG_6106 IMG_6089 http://scorevgm.com/2013/02/18/composition_newhorizon_v1/ http://scorevgm.com/2013/02/18/composition_newhorizon_v1/#comments Tue, 19 Feb 2013 01:00:25 +0000 Muuurgh http://scorevgm.com/?p=1070 […]]]>

Me atop Fuji-san at sunrise

The works below are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License and ©2013 Gregory Weaver.

This week has already started off better than last in terms of productivity as it pertains to my sabbatical. While last required a lot of housekeeping and getting settled in to my new place, this week should lean a lot more on the music side of things, and to kick this productivity cycle into gear, I’ve decided to share with you an early draft of my first sabbatical tune, “A New Horizon.”

The idea behind the tune’s a bit corny: I wanted to sit down and write the first thing that came to mind while thinking about this new adventure that I’ve set out on. Not only was it the easiest thing to think about at the time to get myself simply to write (after all, I’m in a brand new place living a completely different lifestyle), but  that situation is often relatable to video game characters. The way it’s come out, I think that this particular tune could be used situationally (e.g., the main character makes his or her first step in their new quest) or even possibly as a “world map” sort of theme.

Per usual, please excuse the poor instrument samples, as I am writing this first in Finale. There’re also bits of dynamics and articulations added here and there, but they’re not really to be taken seriously at this point. Sometimes when working in Finale you have to force yourself to add the details before you’re done with your first complete sketch to make up for the muddiness of the samples, etc.

As is the idea, the theme’s a bit cheesy, too. If you don’t think that, then awesome, but as I was sketching it out in a reduced piano form, I was honestly a bit uneasy about releasing the idea to the public, haha. I wanted to stick with it, though, because not only did I just want to practice my orchestration, I thought that maybe I could orchestrate the piece in a way that enhanced it to the point where the listener would forget or become unaware of the cheese. As a result, I’m happy with what I have so far and am eager to continue working on it.

Let that be a lesson to all you would-be composers out there! Making the parts behind and around your lame melody cool can negate most of your dissatisfaction and can even make you learn to love your piece.

The one thing that I’m most interested in doing with what I have is inputting it into Logic and using my good sample libraries to listen to my orchestration. The beginning of the tune sounds especially muddy with all of the instruments, but I’ve convinced myself that it’s mostly the product of the sounds and Finale’s way of mixing them. It’ll be a while before I prove myself right or wrong, though, because I’d like to finish writing the tune and then come back and tweak as necessary.

In other news, I’ve written about three other ideas for tunes that I hope to share with you soon. There’s a “lullaby” for solo guitar, another orchestral piece, and – to spice things up a bit – an electronic number. What gets the O.K. to get fleshed out more remains to be seen…

Thanks for listening, and, as always, let me know what you think! In the meantime, I’m going to keep playing Ni No Kuni in hopes that Joe Hisashi’s beautiful soundtrack rubs off on me a little.

After a grueling night of playing challenges (check out the spoils above), I returned to my quarters only to wake up the next morning at 7am to go down and play some more.  In fact, Brandon was able to make his way down to play, as well, and he had stayed up even later than I did the night before—it was great to have a buddy to share the pain with so early in the morning.

Call us crazy, but those laptops are almost always occupied, and it has long been proven that going to the game room in the wee hours of the morning is the best thing to do if you’re looking to play a specific, popular attraction.  My first year, Jen and I woke up at 5am to go down and we were able to play whatever we wanted whenever we wanted.  That’s a Pro Tip for you there for next year, dear readers.

At nine o’clock I went back to the room to wake up Jen and eat some breakfast, and together we wandered down to Kinuyo Yamashita’s panel.  Unfortunately for you all, my notes are sparse—she really didn’t say much outside of what I already knew from my biographical post about her.  However, one notable question asked was whether or not Yamashita ripped off a Guns and Roses song called “My Michelle” with her Mega Man X3 track “Neon Tiger.”  After some sleuthing, the Guns and Roses number was recorded in 1987, while X3 was released in 1995 (start at :20 for “Neon Tiger” and :26 for “My Michelle”).

HMMMM… 

The schedule stated that the panel was to be a Q&A plus a solo piano performance.  Below you’ll find Jen’s video of Yamashita playing what I believe was said to be “Gravity Beetle” from X3.  This video is the extent of her performance.  It was cool to hear her play, but honestly, the whole performance being one short tune was a bit of a letdown.

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I didn’t mention this last post, but I had a MAGFest staff nemesis during the weekend who blocked me from asking questions at both the Koshiro and Yamashita panels.  Two panels in a row, this guy dismissed my attempts at trying to get in line because in front of him was the “last question.”  GUH!

Truth be told, both times were my fault.  During Koshiro’s I waited until the line had died down enough for me to exit my row and be in the back of the line, and for Yamashita’s, I didn’t think of a good question until really late.  In case you’re wondering, I wanted to ask Yamashita: “In an interview of yours that I read, you stated that your music for Castlevania was influenced by the dynamics of how the character moved—I was wondering if such a thing still influences you and how that has changed with games morphing from 2D to 3D.”

I don’t know that she’d have an answer for that, honestly, haha, so it wasn’t a big deal; but, my question for Koshiro was important to me, so I went to a Q&A panel with him and Chris Huelsbeck later that day to get in line early and ask.  My question for Koshiro was something to the effect of: “As a fan of 20^th century classical music, I enjoyed listening to your soundtrack to Beyond Oasis; I was both intrigued with it as a work for video games and absolutely terrified by it.  Could you talk about composing for that game and tell me what your colleagues’ reactions were to it?”

I got a few chuckles from the audience on saying it was terrifying (though it wasn’t meant to be funny! heh heh) and Koshiro talked about having studied 12-tone serialism and other 20^th century atonal techniques.  However, he did not answer the latter part of the question, haha.  It was unfortunate, too, since that’s what I was most interested in—the idea that the team for the game accepted that kind of music and approved it for a video game.  Lest you didn’t listen to it on my post about Koshiro, head on over to check it out and prepare to be unsettled.

Some bullets from that Q&A:

- Koshiro enjoys playing Para Para Paradise
- Both composers use Cubase
- As for their favorite VGM composers, Huelsbeck chose Rob Hubbard (Commodore 64 guru) and Koshiro stated Koichi Sugiyama (Dragon Quest series).

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After eating lunch I broke off from my friends to network a bit.  One of the new features of MAGFest was a section for indie developers to set up booths and show off their games, so naturally, I wanted to strike up a few conversations.

Overall, I think that it was a success.  I was admittedly a bit shy—going up to a developer’s table to hand them my card and make a connection instead of playing their games was weird.  For one, I even tried playing their game first and then telling them that I write music for games, and I think that was even weirder.  Ultimately, though, I just had to do my thing.  I think it’s one of those situations that I tend to over-think because if I were in their shoes, why wouldn’t I want another potential composer in my back pocket?

I met a handful of people and companies and exchanged cards.  It was cool to come home and find some e-mails in my box during the week from some of these folks.  While I didn’t get a job off the bat (not that I was expecting to), now I feel actually connected with these folks and am not afraid to do some follow-up work when I have my demo reel polished.

That evening my friends and I gathered in my room for some friendly rounds of the highly underappreciated Pac-Man Vs., Dogfish Head beer (Fort, Bitches’ Brew, and Chateau Jiahu, all of which were great), and Domino’s pizza.  We also spent time with this little guy, a Christmas gift to Jen and me from our pal Stephen that, as you can see, Brandon loved.

Our evening activities included two shows, the first of which was The Protomen.  Natalie is a huge fan of theirs and got Jen into them, so we listened to an album of theirs on the way to MAGFest.  I was lukewarm on it, the same that I was when I first heard them from my pals Ben and Sarah (who hardcore follow them) a number of years ago.  That being said, the show was pretty great; they are certainly a group to see live.  If I hadn’t heard the record beforehand, I’d’ve been tempted to buy it afterwards.  The playing was tight, the amount of energy emitting from each member was enormous, and the aesthetics of the performance really made their time on stage a show to remember.  I’d see them again!

The second show was one that many MAGFesters had been waiting for all weekend: the Midnight Dance Party feat. DJ Yuzo Koshiro!  Koshiro is the man, seriously.  He was nervous because he had never DJed for an American crowd – nor he had done so for a crowd of that size – before.  There were admittedly a few hiccups, such as when the audio would completely cut out while he was trying to transition between tunes, but Koshiro took it in stride with an enormously supportive MAGFest crowd that adored him.

The set started out with some chiptunes from Act Raiser and morphed into a techno/house/trance club scene over time.  Naturally, Koshiro played tunes from the Streets of Rage series as well as the Wangan Midnight games, and people ate it all up.  I had a great time cutting loose with my friends.

Saturday was a late night that led to an early morning (as always).  The great thing about the Gaylord, though, is that their check out is killin’.  You have to be out earlier than you’ll ever want to wake up on Sunday (11am), but all you have to do is pick up the receiver in the room and press a button and bam! You’re all checked out.  Also, I’m not going to spoil it for you, but there’s something funny about checking out by phone—heck, I think I’d stay at a Gaylord again just to do check out!  Make sure next year you heed my advice.

So Jen and I checked out, got all of our stuff to the car, helped others do the same, and then spent more time with everyone in the game room.  Yes, challenges were involved, and this was the time that Jen strutted her stuff on Castlevania.  But that’s basically it aside from us going to lunch and me getting ultra sick and having to stay at Jen’s until the next day, missing out on work.  Success!

In short, MAGFest was awesome, as expected. I’m already looking forward to another year of friends, games, challenges, and concerts. Wherever you live, be it in Kenucky or Korea, you should seriously consider making the trip to National Harbor if you’re serious about having great times with thousands of people like yourself!