The obligatory "Hello" post

I've starting a new blog! You're reading it right now you wonderful person you.

Back in the Naughties (between 1996 and 2005) I was pretty active as a tracker composer, many readers will already know what "trackers" are but if not there's additional reading available on the subject over at Wikipedia. I never really got anywhere aside from a couple of game credits to my name and a fairly impressive download count over at modararchive.

In 2005 I started concentrating more on my programming and my new job as well as trying my hand at a great many other projects over the last 5 years. Some of which still continue!

However I've never stopped writing music, although my output quantity is certainly less than it was I still enjoy coming up with a new melody now and then. This weekend I started recording some of my "live" piano playing and it made me think that perhaps I should take a shot at doing something more.

So I had a good look at what equipment I currently have:

Software:
Renoise
Schism Tracker

VSTs:
Mostly synths

Hardware:
PC with integrated soundcard on motherboard (hehe)
Yamaha DJX

So what are my goals? And will this equipment support me?

Goal 1: Writing Orchestral music
Something that has always eluded me has been orchestral scores, the likes of Jeremy Soule type stuff for example. I'm pretty sure I could cook up some great stuff if I had the right VSTs - but which to get and how much will it cost?

Goal 2: Create a Piano only album
I absolutely love playing piano but I don't really use it as a compositional tool would you believe? Most of my creativeness comes from using a tracker (I find myself very creative with generation 2 programs) But getting back to this, I'd love to try and come up with about 10 pieces that I could play on the piano and create some kind of album out of them.

Goal 3: Make some money from my music
Well I'd be lying to myself if I said I would do all of this for free. It's no good waiting for someone to come along and offer you some cash for being creative, you have to make that decision yourself. I don't particularaly want to be "signed" to any label or anything but wouldn't be completely opposed if somehow I was considered good enough for one! Also I'm not sure I want to write music for anything in particular, like games or TV or such, it's not that I don't believe I could but I generally find constrictions like that make me less creative. I'm not saying never though so if you're planning to offer me a big bag'o'cash to write computer game music for your project don't let me put you off! *wink*

Goal 4: Enter and win some free compos!
I used to love doing this when I was younger. I used to get up at 4am on a Sunday morning, log onto Esper.net (which still exists) and the #traxinspace channel and enter one-hour-compos with many of the guys there (I'll talk more on this later.) So I know there are some compos out there still, the sound devotion renoise compo runs every two weeks I believe so that could be somewhere to start...

So it looks like I could achieve 2 out of my 4 goals straight away, which is creating a piano album (although as good as my DJX is, the piano on it is still General Midi - ugh) and entering some compos to get my name out there again.

I also have some ideas to boost my creativity which I'll be sharing over the next few weeks. Even better than that however (depending on your point of view I suppose) is I'll be sharing some of my previously unshared works here soon, tunes that have never seen the light of the internet for you wonderful people to listen to.