[Complilation Album] Prelud :3

^{this article is marked as yapping, announcement}

⚠ Mention of self hurts, it's like once and not that serious but still.

^18/12/2024

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      Hi y'all, sorry for long gap after the last article (it's been more than 4 months? oh my gawd). Well it's because of the same reason really, I just really don't have any thing to write home (im assuming you read this at home) about. Each article just increasingly spaced out a wonder if the next one gonna even be within 2025 haha.

      Real fan would know i promised that my first announcement post will be for my own game, well i failed, i'm really sorry. Making game is hard y'know? I mean obviously, but with any preexisting notion of difficulty the real thing is probably double that. But I picked up a new hobby recently! (If 7 months ago is recent) It's song composition! Like any hobby it is going really badly but hey, I'm kinda pround of some of them. And for the occasion of new year, I complie the ones I like and make it into a Complilation! And this article is essentially a author commentary. Not that you would learn much from it anyways.

Preface

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      I want to compose music ever since my friend introduced me to rhythm game about 6 or 7 years ago, I heard that it can be done just on a computer (something something DTM and DAW) but I never know where to start. So I just simply didn't! Some years pass (well, 6 or 7 years obviously), one of the DAW I have my eyes on (it's FL) went on sale so i just bought it out right. It's kinda not ideal because I have no clue what to do so I never made anything worth while. What a waste of 199USD I thought.

      Then idk, something happen just a couple months ago (is 7 couple?) and I just feel like starting again, and fortunately, I did. You about to hear them right now. Or not, it's kinda not require to listen. you can just read the commentary if you want. idk why but you could.

      To be honest i was really reluctant on releasing this because in my opinion, it's not of best quality. But hey, if not now then when? The concept i have for this (there wasn't any in the beginning but it just manifested) is to watch as few tutorial as possible because i'm curious what kinda of thing will come out. Is it in a camp of outsider music? Well, no. because i have plenty of preconceived notion of what kinda song i like and some even have a referenced track. But most importantly, i know what a major chord is!

Grit And Oatmeal

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      And you know what's my first move coming back to music? To ignore the DAW I spent my substantial amount of money on and use a free one instead of course! This song was made with OpenMPT, it's a tracker DAW which means that it looks like spreadsheet and it's really REALLY funny to use. I really want to use tracker instead and contemplated getting Renoise instead of FL (mostly because it's frums' daw of choice) but tools don't make its workman and such and FL is on sale (as mentioned above) so yeah.

      The offbeat drums is, interesting, is what's certain. Good or not idk. the project is in 125 BPM but you couldn't tell that for half the song because of that. It's fun though, it's my first song that's more than a minute long (just barely). I remembered someone said that drums at the beginning got them laughing, I'm not sure if that's like in a good way or not?

Awesome Upload Test

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      I watched the video in the referenced tracks, made along, then about a couple weeks later I made this song using what i remembered from that video.

      I don't wanna ruin your notion or anything, but this is the least consequential track out of all. To be honest I don't even know how this made it here in the first place other than it would ruin the metadata of the other track if i deleted it. I gotta say though, nice oriental wind instrument.

break only worth its weight in works

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      I heard many break chops in my years, so i learn to make one. This was the result, well, one of the result. It was a moment of epiphany when i realized you can just shoved more than one chop into one song! What could be fuller than drum breaks? TWO drum breaks! This is Amen (of course) and Think breaks. Chopped coarsely, seasoned to taste (3 OTTs and a waveshaper).

      But the main character of this one for me is the syncopated (i think that what they're called? idk) drums in the second part! Listening back to it i don't even know how i thought of that. It almost made up for the weird dissonant harmonized dyad thingy that sustained up until now. It's also the first song with vocal chopping (i love vocal chop so so much)! Though when i did it then it always came out weird so it gotta take the backseat for now.

      But most most most MOST important thing is someone like this one enough that they remixed it! How cool is that! Thank you so much MONOHALLS! If i have time i want to remix one of yours too! I really like the dotnet one.

Horizontal Scalabilities

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      There's not really much commentary to be make about this song. Most significant thing about this is that it's the first song with a deadline. It's for a game jam entry, it's just loop in the backgroud hence the weird cut in and cut out in the soundcloud version. There's also melody-less version for the main menu.

      The referenced song is from a game called Cat Notebook by artist called Naircat I think it fit the "errie but calm" prompt i got from one of the teammate.

      if you want to play the game it's called Ratchet and it's a part of 2024 GMTK game jam. I worked as a sound guy person thingy. It got 1516^th place. Not too shabby methinks! Warning though, it's pretty jank in some place (gameplay-wise and puzzle-wise)

Rudimental Mouth Pep Song

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      I was in this discord server, there is a channel to share your music works and one of them share a link of some thing called ultrabox in one of those browser based DAW, so i figured it's as good a time as any to give it a go. It was so cool! You can even use it on your phone! Though, obviously you shouldn't really do that, it's really finicky. And most importantly, you can just share the whole project as link. LOOK!

      Now the song name's obviously from the fact that the "lead" sound is just saw wave with some formant EQ thingy. A rudimental mouth if you will! And it was a pep song because it sounds happy, i think? And to be honest i think i like this song most out of all the song because it's very minimal so mixing and mastering doesn't matter that much. It's also weird and esoteric enough to give me a sense that i actually made something new. I wish to do something with this feels again albeit more, sophisticated?

appropriate

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      For this track I decided to make something that's a little more normal, though i don't really know what I mean by "normal" so i just try to make bossa nova, failed, then like any good end to the day, start striping. And thus this song happened. Oh also, speaking of striping, that bunch of shapes in the cover meant to say appropriate, it's a abstraction of details y'know.

      I spent so much time working on the melody, what you hear (or don't hear) is like iteration 6 of the melody because I can't seems to get everything right, the progression is good but the phrasing doesn't work or vice versa. Even now it's far from perfect, but i had to be prepared for a flight tomorrow so i had to make do, that's why the chord progression gotten so weird and the song just abruptly ends. Sorry about that, even more if you hadn't noticed until now :P

contort with step up

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      Originally named controtionist dysmorphia. It's about, well yeah, it was about dysmorphia. This starts shortly after i traveled far from home, and you know how long-distanced trip tends to be. You ponder a lot about things you can't afford to ponder back home. I remembered vividly about it being about how sometimes i want to be a woman and sometimes i don't, that's it. And y'know, even if I am sure about what's going on about that I couldn't really changed anything because of the restricting status quo i painted myself into. I wouldn't be pretty anyways.

      It gotten kinda bad that, actually i'm not gonna share anymore, just infer from the warning at the top of the page. But then time heals and i got better. So I don't think the song is needed anymore but I kinda like what i got so far so I just changed it up and finish it the best i could. And that's it!

      It's nothing i done that made me feels better, it's just going as is. Feeling kinda futile when i think about it. I'm grateful that it's gone, but I kinda wish i had a hand in it. Or do I just have to wait?

      BUT HEY! I spent 7 hours on this 2 mins song instead of 11 hours on the previous song so i think i'm getting better, or something. I also got my first unfixable (to me) DC offset from this song so you could say my sound design game is. up. And by up i mean the fruity waveshaper nodes.

Nightly thoughts and first goodbye

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      This song starts well after i began writing this article. At first i was gonna stop at 7 songs but i figured i want to make the goodbye (final song to the complilation) a little more ceremonial? targeted? I don't know what's the word. I decided on chiptune because it's nostalgic (soooooo retroooooo!!!!!!) and that's a somber feeling i could go for with a final song. I also wanna try using Wavetracker because it looks interesting (also funny tracker hehe).

      I really want to make it a little more uplifting like those song in old-timey racing game or cartoon licened shovelware but idk, everytime it just came out too peppy that it sounds obnoxious. Maybe I incapable of making anything happy, everything just sounds so sad idk why! (Maybe it's the time of day i made these in? I always work on these pass midnight) Gotta fix that after this.

      P.S. Wavetracker's export's kinda weird. Sometimes the playback in the program and from the export audio aren't consistent so i just use Audacity to record the in program playback. Like there's any information to be lose, even if there is i think it would add to the low tech aesthetic (maybe, idk).

So what now

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      I don't know, probably make better songs. And actually watch tutorials. If you ask me, i think all i really did is robbed myself of 7 months of improvments. It's fine though, I don't plan on dying anytime soon so i may have time. Oh, also, I turn on direct download for all the tracks. and set the Creative Commons thingy to thingy (attribution and share-alike, if you can make money from this damn thing then sure, get that bag as the kids say) so you can do whatever with it. Burn it to a disc and burn it to a fire for all i care. But yeah, that's it, see ya later!