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!