Short film cue for when a character is doing some deep thinking to work out a problem.
[lofi] hip hop instrumental track #2. The first one was published in my news feed as the melody was based off of a song that was not in the public domain. This one, however, is.
I made an anime loop vid for this one as well! Link in the song post.
[lofi] holiday track #3. I love the melancholy ones, but these jaunty carols are always a bit more of a challenge (at least for me). Old songs like this one (Written in 1857 by Oliver Ditson & Co) tend to have very clearly delineated cadences with dramatic melodies that can sound really hokey in modern contexts. My problem with a lot of modern arrangements of this material is the first part of a phrase can sound interesting, but when it comes time for that turnaround there's a weird disconnect between contemporary sensibilities and old ones. I say, if it's not working, fix it! Most of the time you really only need a few notes of these well known songs to establish that your track is related. One of my most used tricks for approaching stuff like this is to split the melody into cells or little chunks that you can then arrange like lego bricks. That way you can reference the source material with a wink and a nod without having to adhere to the rigid constraints of 1800's song structure.
#4 in the lofi holiday binge.
This one sort of got away from me in the production process and I don't think it's really "lofi" anymore. It originally started as a chill jazzy Fender Rhodes loop, but it was hard to keep it laid back. In the end I ended up just going with the flow. I'm still calling it lofi, though you can feel free to disagree.
This is the 5th and final track in my lofi hip hop holiday arrangement binge. I took melodic/harmonic fragments from both Auld Lang Syne and Debussy's Claire de Lune for this one. While I love the melody and hymn-like harmonies of Auld Lang Syne, it can devolve into "sad drunkard" territory extremely quickly. I was hoping the melancholic yet airy qualities of Debussy's impressionism would give it a bit more levity. For whatever reason, the two songs strike a very similar emotional tone for me. They almost work in tandem as is, but both ended up needing a bit of adjusting to find common ground.
The holiday season is a weird one for all of us this year. I hope you all are staying healthy, and safe.
This is a big band theme commissioned by @RobC3 for his OC Frederick the Fennec. I love working on action jazz stuff like this.
I finally uploaded an animated music video I made for a cover I did. The animation is not nearly as good as most of the videos on NG, but it took me absolutely forever to make so I'm posting it in hopes that at least a few people check it out.
Nothing Compares 2 U (originally by Prince, famously covered by Sinead O'Conner, and now 8bit bEtty).
This is a legal cover. I paid a bunch of money to Prince's estate through the Harry Fox agency to have legal rights to put this online.
The full version of "Gaea" by The Rotojam collective is now online!
This gorgeous award winning experimental film was directed by Ash Lo Russo, animated by a team of animators using various rotoscoping techniques, all based on choreography/performance by Lady Gaea.
I was fortunate enough to be able to take an experimental electro-acoustic approach to the score for this film. The ability to have full creative license over a score is rare and very much appreciated. All sounds are created from simple waveforms and piano with a decent amount of custom granular processing done in max/msp.
Keep On Running
This is my PicoDay2022 submission!
The track was written for an animation by @stradomyre which I'll link here once it's uploaded.
This is a very rare recording of me singing. The track really needed some words and the robot vocals I typically use would not have cut it. It's very clear I am not a singer, but I tried my best.
I've also been working on modifying a Squire Baritone Cabronita guitar which you'll hear towards the end for some spaghetti western vibes.
Happy Pico Day!
"A Fistful of PIPI"
A spaghetti western/surf/twang cover of the main theme from an animated film I recently scored called The Legend of PIPI
The Legend of PIPI End Credit Medley.
This one is way more orchestral than the stuff I typically post here.
I'm putting out this track in celebration of the Soundtrack's Release. The release was delayed for ages for a myriad of reasons, but I'm happy to announce that it is now available wherever music can be heard.
If you want to know where you can purchase the album on Bandcamp or listen on Spotify, click the link below:
This is the premiere single from a new project I'm calling Psychic Chime!
The music was originally written for a short animation by @stradomyre for Pico Day 2022, but has since been extended into a full track. The direction for this project is going to be loosely based on the music of grindhouse cinema, cult films, spaghetti westerns, surf rock, twang, and anything else that kind of fits that dusty vintage trashy vibe. I plan on figuring it out as I go along and not setting too many restrictions.
A rare horror track. I almost never get to work on horror projects, so this was a fun little exercise. This was from a collaborative project in 2020 that paired actors with animators and musicians to interpret a horrific folk tale. The one I worked on was called Jenny Greenteeth, and told the story of a woman who lived in the river (or swamp/pond/lake/etc) and sang to lure children and men to the edge where she'd grab them, drown, and eat them.
A track from a score I was writing for a game called "Unearthed: The Mines of Estra". Unfortunately the game got scrapped midway through development but not before I got through writing a significant portion of the score. I decided to release the music anyway. This is the first of five tracks I'll be releasing leading up to the album release on Wednesday August 23rd, 2023.
The vocals in this track are kind of stupid sounding but that was kinda the point. Some of my earlier demos had this as a fully orchestral track with woodwinds and brass, but it was requested to make this more "dopey" and kind of funny so I sampled my questionable singing voice using various techniques like plugging my nose, singing in falsetto, etc. I made instruments of these with hard no legato so the snippets of vocals (and pitch bends) would be pretty obvious stripping away some of the modern sampling veneer.
I had originally intended to schedule publish this track, but didn't really know how to get it set up so after setting the date, I hit the publish button and well, here we are. I decided to let it ride. Sunday release!!!
This is the second track from the soundtrack for the now defunct game, “Unearthed: The Mines of Estra”. This area of the cave system was populated with luminescent mushrooms which gave the room an odd yet magical feeling. The brief was to create “mushroomy” music so I designed some synth sounds that started with a sustained low amplitude, the flared and tapered to mimic the shape of a mushroom from stem to cap. Some of the percussion sounds use a similar envelope but in reverse. Kalimba and marimba help reinforce these punchy mushroomy sounds while the rest of the orchestra helps create a sense of mystery and wonder.
This track was originally a loop but I’ve edited it slightly to give it a pseudo “ending”. I haven’t written nearly as much music for games as I have animation, so one of the challenges I was trying to face with this project was how to keep loops from getting annoying. One of the experiments with this track specifically was to start with a reasonably long build up and end with a reasonable “cool down” period so when the track looped there would be an extended “vamp” section before things kicked into gear again. Not sure how successful it was, but if/when I work on another game, I’ll continue these experiments.
The full soundtrack will be released on August 23rd!
This is the 3rd track from my upcoming soundtrack release for the defunct game, "Unearthed: The Mines of Estra".
This level in the game featured a cave filled with giant crystals. I attempted to create something that felt "crystal-like".
I did a lot of custom sampling for this one including layering breaths underneath some of the percussive hits, tapped glass bottles, and used the sound of dropping a tiny screw onto a plastic plate, bowed cymbals, etc. The heaviest lifting, however, came from sampling my cat's metal food bowl which, for whatever reason, has an incredibly resonant bell-tone. I DIY'ed a rubber mallet by supergluing a skewer jammed into a dollar store superball and used that to strike and rub the bowl. I also used a soft felt mallet and a metal beater from a triangle. These samples were processed and then pitch bent across the spectrum using melodyne so I could use them melodically.
I usually tap my cat's food bowl when it's time to eat so he was very confused throughout the process. I made sure to make up for all the teasing with some tuna after I was done recording.
The full album will be releasing on August 23rd, so I'm putting tracks out one at a time here leading up to the release.
The 4th track from "Unearthed: The Mines of Estra". This track was written for a room of an abandoned dwarven civilization. It's unknown who they were, precisely, and why they left. The music needed to feel a bit ominous, creepy, and mysterious.
This track features a reasonable amount of custom sampling for the percussion. I found out exactly how difficult it is to sample the sound of water droplets (especially when you live in a noisy apartment building where something is ALWAYS going on). A lot of the other sound were created by knocking on various surfaces and manipulating white noise.
The 5th and final track from this soundtrack will release on Wednesday Aug 23rd and will celebrate the full release of this album on (hopefully) all platforms.
This is the 5th and final track for the soundtrack to the now defunct game, "Unearthed: The Mines of Estra".
There were more levels (and music) planned, but the plug was pulled before I started working on them, so this is everything that was written.
This level featured an underground forest. A hole in the ceiling of the cave allowed light to spill through and an entire ecosystem of grass/foliage/trees were thriving within this room of the mine system. This level was intended to be a restful place for the user to experience after having worked through the previous four levels. The music needed to sound "homey". I tried to make it as bucolic and pastoral as I could...sort of like a breath of fresh air as you return to the farm in the small town you grew up in.
The full soundtrack is now out on spotify/bandcamp/youtube/and pretty much wherever else music is available. (Distrokid does a good jaerb of getting it in all the places). I'm proud to have been able to give folks on newgrounds a preview of the album ahead of release. This community is amazing.
I want to start doing quick short explorations of various ideas, color (timbre) combinations, and instrument setups. This is the first of what will hopefully be an ongoing thing, but we’ll see if I stick with it.
Color Sketch #1: Dreamy Lapsteel
This newest track is a piece I wrote for the trailer of a new animated project called "Heathens".
HEATHENS is an action-comedy dark fantasy independent animation series about demons, devotion, and an era coming to an end. Our pilot episode 'Hellhounders' follows Axel, a bright-eyed demon who hunts a Hellhound in the outskirts of Hell, with the aid of his fed-up friends.
This track plays with elements of desert garage rock, blues, and dark country. It's been a blast trying to figure out how to capture a sort of dark/dusty vibe. If we get this episode properly financed, I'll end up writing a bunch more music like this!
For those who are curious, the actual trailer can be viewed here:
