Trail Tracker

So there's a compo over at the Roam game website where they're inviting backers to submit a background ambient tune that might find it's way into the game.

So I decided to write something and I quite like what I did so I've put it up on the YouTubes (along with a quick sketch I did for something to look at while you watch it.)

Let me know if you have any thoughts about it!

First Video on YouTube! And more bits of news.

YouTube?

I'm considering doing a few videos on youtube with some original compositions as I feel I've got quite a few songs building up in my head that are no use in games but are more stand-alone.

So as a test I've quickly put up "Height Highest" with some crappy pictures of Renoise for the visual part of it (gah, silly desktop video recorders).

I've got an orchestral piece in the works that will probably be the second one I put up there, but I'll probably search for a nice picture on Deviant Art that I can use (with permission of course!)

The plan is to try and do one a month, but who knows if I'll be able to stick with that!

So what's the other news?

I'm self employed! I'm now full time writing games over at BumpkinBrothers HQ thanks to the success of The Tribloos 2.

This also means I will probably have some spare time to write music again (woo hoo!) The last time I remember having such time was 10 years ago, so that's weird.

Anyway, you know me, I'm not going to prattle on here about stuff too much. If you need some music or just want to say hi, my email address is on the right. So's my twitter badge thingy.

Links going down for a little while...

I'm in the process of changing my links for things right now, from box.net over to dropbox or elsewhere because I've recently quit my job to make games and music full time! (So I can't afford the monthly fee for box.net anymore).

I'll be adding more stuff soon though as I've actually got some time to write music! Exploring some great new VSTs at the moment. More soon...

I've been listening to - Dust: An Elysian Tail

Being a massive Alexander Brandon fan I picked this up over on Bandcamp when he mentioned it (possibly on Facebook? I forget) and then totally failed to listen to it for several months.

Then while I was doing a bit of coding work the other day and was looking for something different to listen to I noticed it sitting in my music-to-listen-to folder.

Alex did the album with a UK based group (Ireland possibly?) called Hyperduck Soundworks (so now I'm a fan of theirs too!)

Check out the album here:

Wonderful stuff, highly recommend listening to it all and it's only a fiver on Bandcamp!

The Tribloos 2 Soundtrack out now!

About 2 weeks ago our latest game The Tribloos 2 was released!

It's been doing quite well over on BigFishGames...amazingly well actually for only our second casual game release.

Obviously I wrote all the music for it again (as I usually do for our games) so thought I'd share the soundtrack here which you can get on Bandcamp for pay-what-you-want. (eg. you can actually get it for no cost at all!)



Let me know what you think!

Ella's Umbrella Song

Yes I know it's hard to believe, but I'm here with a new tune to listen to (I say it's hard to believe - I have a 20min original soundtrack for Tribloos 2 which I've not yet released!)

So last weekend (just before new year) the BumpkinBrothers did a gamejam and we made a game in 48 hours for the IndieSpeedRun competition. My jobs during this were producer (heh), backup artist and musician.

On the second day I came up with this and I'm a little bit pleased with it:

It uses Garritan Personal Orchestra, Real Guitar and of course was all made in Renoise. The game will be available to play soon over at the BumpkinBrothers site

Tribloos 2 music progress

Work progresses well on the Tribloos 2 sound track. I've got about 7mins 30secs worth after a week and a bit across 6 separate tunes (one of which still needs some work.) Rather than going for a few long tunes I've decided to go for lots of different short (about 1 min) tunes that go better with the varying scenery. Therefore I've still got another 10/15 tunes to write before I'm done which feels like quite a lot! But I'll be getting the first Beta of the game out before then anyway so that I'm not completely drowning in music! So, here's one of the tunes I've been working on, a remix of an old chip tune I wrote but now in orchestral form:
Hopefully more to come next week!

Back and with a (virtual) guitar

Well since last posting a lot has been happening!

We've been looking after our new baby boy which has, unfortunately, removed most of my time for making music for fun (sad face!)

But I just wanted to report that I'm back on the horse tracker and even bought a new VST! Wow, that's only taken me two years...

It's called "Real Guitar" which I'm sure many people will have heard of and it's working out very nicely so far. I've been in need of a good guitar VST for years really and this fits the bill as it handles chords, strumming and even has input facilities for Guitar Hero game controllers! Must get me one of those now...

Much easier than learning guitar (which I just don't have time for these days.)

Also I've had a few people buy my albums on bandcamp recently to which I say: THANK YOU!

Can't stress this enough, and to have it bought at more than the $1 asking prices makes it even more amazing.

Thank you again and again guys!

So what am I working on now? I'm in music making mode for my latest game: Tribloos 2 coming to PC/Mac within the next few months as well as our other Bumpkin Brothers game "Ian Fell In The Machine"...coming to iPhone within the next few months!

In the process however I've been coming up with "offcuts" that don't really fit the games but I really like anyway. I'm hoping to turn these into independent tunes that I put up on youtube (not done this yet - scary!) and possibly bandcamp again for those that just want the music files.

Thanks again for visiting, hoping to have some exciting stuff to show very soon.

Chubby Jump!

I should have mentioned this earlier but...y'know...Christmas.

But as I eluded to in a recent post I've had a commission to write a short piece for an iphone game: Chubby Jump, which features Roundie the reindeer. Here's the synopsis from the youtube video:

Roundie, the chubby reindeer, has a heavy weight. Though he can fly like all other stags of ol' good Santa, he can't fly that fast. All of the other reindeers used to laugh and call him names. They never let poor Roundie join in any reindeer games.
Then one groggy Christmas eve, Santa came to say "Roundie, I got a job for you. Go gather the gifts that fell off my sleigh. You know how much cost we lose for those undelivered gifts every year? Go and make my day!"
Roundie got excited and overjoyed for his mission and ran out of his stable right away. Roundie then realized that there were thousands of the fallen gifts every year -- and Santa had been doing it for over a thousand years so far! Oh my god!

And here is the youtube video itself which features my tune.



To get Chubby Jump for your iphone, click 'ere

The Reign Deer!

Recently I've been asked to do a tune for an upcoming iphone/android project! It was great fun as always (can't wait to see the game published) and I'll talk more on that once it's been released.

However during the "creative process" I first came up with something that was slightly off the mark.

 It's called "Reign Deer" and was supposed to have a Christmas feel to it and loop at 1 min (so it's not too long!) But I really liked it so decided to share it with anyone who happened to be passing:

 

Did I mention Swings and Rounderbouts?

Which was recently added to my main demo?

Check out track 5 on the main demo page! It features me doing some violining "live" y'know.

I actually created this quite a long time ago (probably almost 10 years ago!) So it also uses Buzz Tracker which I was really into at the time. I took this tune to "The Gathering 2002" and entered the music contest there where I came...probably last if I remember correctly!

In my defence it was the only song with a melody and I was against 20 trance tunes, needless to say I should have listened to the previous years entries to see what style I should have written instead!

Anyway I quite like it, it has a haunted quality about it so let me know what you think!

I've Been Listening To: Invincible (Two Steps From Hell)

Time for a short review while I pause to gather up my creative juices for my next stint at the keyboard. Today I'll be talking about the album "Invincible" from Two Steps From Hell.

Obviously this isn't my normal thing so I'll hide my ramblings after one of these "jump" things...

Tell Me A Story Mr Tribloo?

I love music that you can relate to a really good story. I think that's why I like the Final Fantasy sound tracks so much.

I've been posting at a few forums recently in order to drum up some interest in my music services. I've had quite a few visitors but no enquiries yet. That's fine to be honest, I'm still working pretty hard on my latest game, The Tribloos over at Bumpkin HQ.

So for the game I've been working on the storyboards that take you through the "world" transitions. Yesterday evening however I just couldn't figure out how the next storyboard should go so instead decided to fire up all my music stuff and just mess around. As usual because I wasn't trying to force creativity something came of it all and my new storyboard tune was created!

And here it is (no download link though because I want to use this for my own project!)

More tunes added!

I've updated the Old Tunes section with ones I wrote from the year 2001 now. I've also started mentioning which my favorites are if you're interested!

In other news I'll be advertising my services on other sites soon, I've had a bit of interest but nothing concrete yet. Looking forward to my first new composing project.

Also, I entered the Ludum Dare #20 (or 48, whichever it was) last weekend with a game called "Fish With Weapon"  for which I've had some very encouraging comments about the music! Whey!

Now available for work!

It's been a few years since I did this and the scene has changed quite dramatically, but the need for decent music and memorable melodies hasn't!

Therefore I've decided to start offering my compositional services once again to the community and start putting myself out there again.

For those that are interested my portfolio is now up and ready to be viewed (either from the menu bar at the top of the page or by clicking here

So eleven years ago...

I'd just moved out of my family home and into a shared house which meant I could spend all night on the internet playing games and writing music. For the next 3 years writing music and entering small music competitions was pretty much all I did so I have a fairly substantial collection of "Mod" music files from that era.

As I've been asked a few times recently I've decided to try and make more of those available than are already on The Modarchive on this site.

So today I've uploaded some select tunes from the year 2000 which can now be found in my portfolio pages (menu bar at the top of the page) or you can just click on this link.

As usual any comments are welcome!

Dipping my toe into the murky waters of BandCamp

Since I've used BandCamp in the past to buy music I thought I would give it a try for selling music!

Rather than go to the trouble of writing a brand new album (I actually do have something in the long-term works) I decided to release a couple of game soundtracks I've written over the last few years just to preview the difficulty in getting noticed on BandCamp.

Well a few hours after putting the sound tracks on there I had....1 partial play and a skipped play! Hmmm, so not that easy eh? I guess there's no change there, it's all about how you sell yourself and how much effort you feel you can put into marketing. Which, for me, isn't much when it comes to music!

Anyway, it looks pretty neat on there so that's a plus at least. And you never know, I may earn a dollar! Wooooo....

Now I'm going to try out their player on this blog. Lets see how this works out:

The trouble with Tribloos and other bits

I've been a bit quiet here this year so far, mainly because I've been working on a new gaming project called "The Tribloos". A casual game made completely by yours truly featuring small blue fury creatures!

It's a lot of fun going back to creating games again rather than just writing about them, plus it gives me extra incentive to write some tunage again. I've actually written two tunes for it already which is pretty prolific for me these days!

Here's one of them (possibly not completely finished yet) which is quite "elevator-music-ish" (on purpose! :P )


So aside from all this I've been thinking of doing some official releases which I've not done for years. I've been listening to a lot of independent music over at BandCamp (after seeing that's where Alexander Brandon (AKA Siren) now releases his stuff)

I've got a couple of ideas for an album or two that I might release. The great thing about BandCamp is that it gives people the option to give money for your music, or to have it for free! (Or you can set a minimum charge.)

I'm not entirely keen on asking for money for myself for music, but if I did ask for money it would probably be to then donate any proceeds to a charity. Personally my chosen charity would be Cancer Research because a cure for all cancer variants would be something I'd love to see in my lifetime.

*Anyway* more on all of this soon hopefully...

Feelings and Music

Not long ago I wrote a piece for a game a friend and I are planning to create. Since it could be some time until that game gets finished I've decided to post it here.

It's far more sombre than Potato man (from my previous post) but I kind of like the emotion I got into it:

The Potato Man!

For our work at BumpkinLabs I am required to write musical background pieces that reflect the mood and style of the game.

Generally I ignore the requirements and write what I feel like, like this: