The Diary of an Amature Composer

Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier...

2009-04-14T20:52:00.004+01:00

I've now moved to a different website system for making web-pages/hosting because I found google a little too prescriptive and I don't really have time to learn to code html. You can find the home page here. I'll update the links on the left (now on the right) to reflect this.

Jasper

Fantasy for jClassicRPG

2008-11-05T18:19:00.003Z

Here is a finished version of the main theme for the game Java Classic RPG, released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike license. Please click on the link below for a human readable license description.

Fantasy 1.1.2 by Jasper Brownrigg is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

jClassic RPG and other things

2008-10-27T19:12:00.009Z

So I've been auditioning people for my opera which the first performance of is now confirmed for February of next year.Things are going ok there I guess. Found some good people.

Also been continuing to work on the game music for new Worlds: Rise to power. Continuing to have trouble with the Combat music. i guess my main problem is that my music is very harmony and melody focused and combat focuses on rhythmic textures. Clearly something I need to work on. However, I sat down and wrote a 6 minute ambient piece in two hours on Thursday morning, so clearly I've still got something working in the empty cavern that is my skull :P

In the mean time I've also been working on new menu music for the open source game jClassicRPG which will hopefully be finished in time for the next update/release. Here is an unfinished version, still work in progress, but quite fun. I'm not doing this for money, but rather a break from the sci-fi stuff I've been working on for a while. It's nice to get back to Fantasy where I feel most at home. Unfortunately I doubt I'll have the time to create an entire game score, but this menu music at least has been pretty good fun.

jClassicRPG Menu

Please excuse the artifact about half way through. It was a quick mixdown and I don't really have the time to re-mixdown repeatedly until my computer decides to behave at the moment.

Jasper

Opera

2008-09-29T20:52:00.003+01:00

Turns out my opera idea wasn't a pie-in-the-sky-which-pigs-eat-while-they-fly idea after all. Not only have I written it over the summer, but the RNCM has agreed to allow me to put it on in February next year, and then take it on to some schools as part of an Outreach project. Currently working on the casting, seeing who is interested etc. The Opera is only short, about 25 mins long, based on the story of Little Red Riding Hood. There are only four instrumentalists making up the "orchestra" (2xcello, flute and cor anglais) and only four singers needed, one for each part except the mezzo, who sings both Mother and Granny. The cast also act as narrator at various times. Works out to be quite funny and sweet. A horribly compressed version of the music with a piano playing in the voice parts can be found here.

That's what I was doing most of the summer. I need to do more work on my game commissions. Been very busy since I came back working on getting my Opera performed and Post Grad applications (those for conservatoires have to be in either by 1st October or 1st November). On top of it all I've gone and caught a horrible cold which is making concentrating difficult and has stopped me sleeping by trying to drown me in my own mucus. Pleasant. Anyway, that pretty much brings this blog up to date.

J

Beena while...

2008-06-15T01:19:00.002+01:00

It's been a while since I posted here. Unfortunately, I've not got much to show. Basically been finishing my exams and so on which have been going... ok. The only music I've done since the last post has been work on the Crimson Realms game, New Worlds - Rise to Power, so I can't show you that. I have been trying out integrating some synths into the music I produce with mixed results. I'm getting the balance right, though. I've found that they're best used as colour, within an orchestral setting. Too much of them and the orchestral stuff sounds out of place.

A lot has been hapening lately

2008-05-24T06:35:00.009+01:00

With exams and so on, I've been pretty busy, but somehow I've manged to find time to do more composing than ever. Over the past few days I've been working on an entry for a composition competition for East West studios. The prize is absolutely fantastic, $3000 USD worth of really fantastic samples for use in composition. What do you have to do? Score some music for a set piece of abstract animation. Here is my entry:

For better quality you can watch it on Youtube here or here...

or download a much higher quality version with the following link (right click, save as): Link

I had so much fun doing that. I don't know how well I'll do, as I'm up against professional composers who have years of experience writing for film, but I'm proud of what I've done. I've told the story as I felt it and I think that is what matters. If you're desperately interested in the contest rules you can look here.

In other news, and pretty much equally exciting, I've been asked to produce music for another MMO, but this time I'll get payed for it when it's released commercially! In fact they even brought me on board as a developer. I'm no where near as worried about this becoming vapor ware as much as my other projects. The art production is stunning and I've been talking daily to the lead (currently only) programmer and developer. They really like my music, especially the first piece I've written for them (which I can't put up her because of the Non Disclosure Agreement, or NDA, I have signed). The guy who is designing the new website has been playing it on loop all the time he was producing the first drafts of the new site, and boy are they nice. Here is the link to the current website:

http://crimsonrealms.com/

Which reminds me, I need to get my web page redesigned. I'll see if I can get the artist doing the Crimson Realms site to help me this summer...

Construction

2008-05-13T16:22:00.001+01:00

When you're flying out in the varsity of the space of Infinity you want expansive music that reflects the size of the universe, your bravery in venturing fourth and the beauty of the vista's that surround you. However, when you are designing your ship from the various modules available, choosing it's custom colour etc. expansive and/or dark music is unnecessary, if anything it might even be considered over the top. The following piece is intended to be quiet, unobtrusive and gently industrious. After all when you're designing your ship it then has to be built. If you want "heavy" construction music, surely that would come while the actual construction was underway. So this is more "designing" music.

If I have got the system wrong, e.g. rather than the designing and building stages being separate they're combined into designing while you build, I understand that my music may not fit.

Construction test 3

It's worth noting at this point that this is designed to be looped. Not as it is as I've shown it to you, though. The version I have posted here is an example of it looped once already. The problem is that it needs to be carefully synced up to loop properly. Individual loops are 24 seconds long, but because of release tails on the samples (without which it would sound dull and lifeless) the actual length of a loop is a bit longer, and so it can't be looped precisely by just triggering the next one with the end of the previous track. It has to be triggered 24 seconds after the one before started.

Expected FAQ:

Q. Why loop it, why not just write a longer piece?

A. Well there are two reasons. One is that the longer something is the larger the file size is. Now, ok the actual size of an individual piece of music is going to be pretty tiny compared to the size of the game as a whole. However if everyone decided that the size of their component they're contributing doesn't matter then we are going to end up with hundreds of MB wasted on things which are unnecessary when downloading the game. This is not very kind to the people downloading the game, especially if they're on a download limit from their provider. So I'm doing my bit to try to keep the eventual file size down.

The second reason would be that I suspect people aren't going to spend an inordinate amount of time in the designing stages of their ships. Most will only have a couple of modules with very few configurations available, if any. The majority of the time people will be using the designing function just to choose the custom colours, preview their ship and then get on with building it. As such it's a bit wasteful to have too much music which very few people are ever going to listen to.

Q. But won't it get boring after a while?

A. Well, even if you decide to spend ages obsessing over every little detail of your ship in the design preview, it is unlikely (I hope) that the music would become boring. After all it's meant to be barely noticeable, just giving the sense of quiet industriousness. It's built on similar principles to the PC vs Mac adds you can find on You Tube, e.g. this one. It shouldn't become an irritation. Of course it's entirely possible that it'll p*ss some people off. I can't tell until I've had some feedback.

Genesis Industries Anthem

2008-05-05T18:12:00.005+01:00

Genesis Industries is an in game "corporation" created in anticipation of the game in development, Infinity. Confusing, I know, as I'm writing music for a completely different game called Genesis. Anyway, this corporation's CEO is someone who I first met on the Genesis (the game) boards, so he asked me to write an anthem for the corp to be played on the corp radio station when they have that up and running in game. Here is my first serious attempt at it, consisting only of the first verse:

Genesis Industries Anthem Test Verse 1

I've posted it on their site, so now I'm just waiting for feedback to see how they feel about it. It may be that I haven't got the style right for them, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Town music for Genesis

2008-05-01T14:34:00.002+01:00

If you've already looked at my music thread, then you'll know that I've started work on some music pertaining to settlements. Hopefully the game will be able to track population density, and on the off chance that it might be able to track player wealth as well (preferably finding the median average, as I think this would be most telling of the wealth distribution; a mean would only make sense in a place where servants were prevalent).

Small Town

In the examples I've got here (lumped together so you can hear how easily it transitions) we go from potentially a small-town density of average wealth to an area where the average wealth is higher. Yes I did fiddle the harmonies a bit to make it sound finished ;)

Ok, so the breakdown goes English horns represent the size of the community. More instruments, of course means larger community as well, but as you get more instruments different ones begin to dominate. English horns on their own, though, to my weird ears, represent a minimum of small town. By adding the cello in this particular form we immediately fall into the feel of a court dance, like a Sarabande thus associating it with wealth. I need tor research old baroque and renaissance dance styles and their associations more to get the most out of this, but expect to see Gigue-style versions and others in the future. I'll also be looking at earlier medieval dances for the less wealthy areas. Eventually we should end up with techno when someone reaches a high enough wealth level :P Kidding, but we will have to examine how likely it is for someone to reach certain wealth bench-marks so as to be able to associate the style correctly, otherwise wealth differentiation in the music would be meaningless.

As for the "fiddling" with the harmonies this is a using a basic premise in music called opening and closing phrases. It allows me to create a basic structure that all the variants will follow provided their not interrupted. This is just the first part of a larger piece, as it were, the A section. It occurs to me that, whatever dance style I intend to imitate with the parts, I am still free to adjust the structure to suit my needs. The easiest form to create using this and similar sections would be something like a Rondo. This form is very basic and can in effect go on for ever. It's basic structure is:

A B A C A D A

where each letter represents a section. As you can see A returns after every other section. If each section is split like the section I just made then we have the possibility of responding to changing the variables every 20 seconds or so, close enough that a change in the players situation wouldn't take to long to be reflected in the music. I think that's a good general benchmark, 20 seconds between changes.

Anyway, sections B, C and D (maybe even E and F, though this is becoming a lot of work) can be recycled later to keep the town music going as long as needed, probably going into a random selection process. It is not necessary that they be in a particular order provided I do this right. Each section has to be done multiple times to reflect different wealth and population density changes. However I think that we can make it so that we have three levels rather than trying to grade them further; Richer than average, average, poorer than average; Higher than average, average, low population density.

As these terms suggest, these are adjustable, the game can work out every day/week/month what average is, with a lower limit on it so that we don't have music that's too civilised sounding in our mud-hut villages. It may mean that we have to track what building materials being used most are in buildings to determine "technological level" or something similar so that we can have different music that suits the abode type. Alternatively we have three levels each for village, town and city.

Anyway, ramble over I think. I might have something more to say in a bit, but I've got class soon, a singing lesson after and a competition this evening, so I need to focus on other things for a bit.

Opening to a game?

2008-04-24T18:46:00.004+01:00

My latest creation (actually finished in it's current state on Tuesday the 22nd) is what I hope will become the soundtrack for an opening video for Infinity: Quest for Earth.

Menu 1.2.4

Originally it was intended as menu music, but I quickly found myself forming it into something more cinematic than I had intended. It may still be suitable for use as menu music if I expand it further, which I have every intention of doing once I have the time.

Music-Making Mini-Game

2008-04-10T21:09:00.004+01:00

The following is on a proposed control scheme for a player-operated music creation system in Genesis.

-------------------------

I apologize in advance for the size of this download. 13.6 megs, for anyone who has slow connections speeds. This is due to most of the samples having to be .wav files as this was the only format which the programming was flexible enough to play multi-sample as it were. I also apologise in advance for the quality. I did not put much effort at all into the sounds, and have none of my EWQLSO sounds available at the moment as the manufacturers had to wipe my computer to re-install my corrupted OS., Also I think the 1-7 chords are an octave too low. Also I am using "Game Maker" as I have not had the time to learn all the programming I need to do this properly. As a result I haven't been able to implement all my ideas for keyboard commands, such as the use of the shift and ctrl keys to raise and lower the melodic notes by an octave. More on this later. Situational reverb would also be a nice addition to this, though rather CPU hungry. Maybe different release tales could be played dependent upon your situation (e.g. cathedral or small inn room).

Music-making mini-game

Controls:

F1 for help (i.e. controls in the game)

Keypad plays Melodic notes

4 - tonic
5 - third
6 - dominant

Keys above and below play notes above and below respectively, e.g. 2 plays the supertonic (the second note of a scale), as does 7

Numbers above main keyboard 1-7 play pre-set chords 1-7

Space starts and stops the pre-defined backing chords.

This is the basic premise I have for the in-game music playing mini-game, where you are potentially able to play with other people. I am currently using synth sounds, but have every intention to sample actual players (I am not able to use my bought sampled sounds as that would be a breach of copy-write, using the individual samples rather than them within a composition). I hope to find various recorders and flutes, and I know a percussionist whom I can get to sample percussion instruments of various types.

The numberpad, as you can see, is for melodic instruments, and I also intend to map drums on there, though it might turn out that percussion works better on another part of the keyboard. The chords would be played by guitar-type instruments, and the "space-bar chords" would maybe be the key for playing some kind of bag-pipe drone instrument.

As for implementation I have come to realise that music could be a big part of the world. Infact I would like music to be like a form of magic. Take for example this situation. You come to a door in a dungeon and on it are inscribed archaic symbols. You take out your notebook and search for some reference to these symbols and finally discover them. Extracting your flute from your pack you play a short melody. As the final notes die away down the echoing halls a crack forms down one side of the door and it slowly slides open with a rumble.

If you have ever played Zelda, Twilight princess I think you might have some idea of how this game mechanic might be implemented. Rather than having just the three pitches we could have all seven or even multiple octaves of melodies which would be possible to make. Of course these puzles would not necessarily be for everyone, but they are, I think, a nice mechanic. Other uses might be competitions, where one player plays something twice and then another player has to copy it and then extend it, and so on. The twice element is so that people don't do silly button mashing, though we may need a lot of work on this to ensure that it is not possible to make it stupidly impossible for people to imitate what you play.

Other applications are of course possible. The scene from Harry Potter 1, in which harry puts to sleep the three headed dog fluffy, comes to mind, and the possibility of a highly-skilled musician applying the same skill that unlocked the dungeon door to lock the door of his own home, or that of some great king is not too far fetched. The possibility of a bard-class which is as engaging as any martial class is highly appealing to a musician like me. I would suggest that it be possible to set some kind of quick keys to "learn" melodies that you use frequently seems a good idea for this kind of character. Maybe dependent upon how old you are, or something, you can learn by heart a certain number of songs, the rest have to be played from some kind of book.

This system could even be applied to beasts (if they're ever implemented) with them singing/howling/crying the melody.

As you can see, the possibilities for music in this game are endless. I hope to be able to create a system where the instruments produce fairly musical sounds, rather than sounding mechanical, though the exact method of doing that so far eludes me. So far I have managed to find a very simple method of creating a seamlessly looping sound, useful for instruments which can sustain, like the wind or strings. All I need do now is apply this method to a proper sound envelope so that pressing the key starts off with the proper attack for an instrument, which then loops if need be and releasing creates a release tail suitable for the environment.

This system has me very excited. I hope that you too share my enthusiasm.

DS

And now for the silly ideas (a.k.a. the birth of an Opera)

2008-04-07T14:54:00.006+01:00

Hooray, I have finally found myself a librettist. Well, found is not really the operative word. Discovered might be better, but that is by the by. Recently an old school friend who is depressingly good at pretty much anything made the mistake of expressing an interest in lyric writing within my hearing. As such I almost immediately took him up on it. His name is Chris Chan and he's the organ scholar at Merton college in Oxford studying music. However, I know that he has been in the National Youth Theater, and I have enjoyed films that he has made in the past. He's also a pretty good illusionist and so on. Damn talented, and clearly has plenty of dramatic, musical and stage knowledge. The perfect collaborator. We met for the first time in a long time at a reunion of old school friends. In fact I had dinner with him and another old school friend, a recording technician (also called Chris, Chris Humphries, and also very useful; Chris C has been making use of him recently to record his choir performing verious repertoir) just prior to the reunion.

So, at some point in the evening Chris Chan mentions that he's been working on his lyric-writing skills and I jump. I've been wanting to write an Opera or a Musical for a very long time and this seems the perfect opportunity. I asked Chris (C) if he fancied doing an Opera some time, and he said yes! Perfect. I went home that evening and some vague ideas formed in my head such as various Greek Myths and even "Voldemort the Opera". However it was not untill the next day when my mind was fully fcussed on the idea that it suddenly became abundantly clear: do a series of shortish operas based on the Grimm Fairytales. The more I thought about it the better the idea became. I won't go into any more details, for fear of my ideas being stolen or ruining th impact for any who might see the operas in the future but suffice to say Chris also thinks it's a good idea.

So now I've got a stupendous number of projects underway. I have:

- Some music for Infinity: Quest for Earth to at least complete
- To create a fully-working system of adapting music for Genesis (and maybe take this further)
- Build up a normal library of music for Genesis
- Produce an Anthem for my Infinity corperation
- Write a series of Operas based on the folk-tales recorded by the Brothers Grimm

Pretty exciting, eh?

I suspect I will not be doing much else this summer :P

Worry worry worry...

2008-03-31T21:59:00.003+01:00

So finally my computer's left the house in the hands of an incredibly overweight man who almost dropped it as he tried to squeeze both himself and it out of the door at the same time. I'm sure it'll be ok, but The pick-up did not inspire me with an overwhelming sense of confidence...

Further ARRRRG!

2008-03-21T18:23:00.007Z

Why Indian call centres don't work

Indian Guy - "Can you see a yellow question mark next to the sound card?"

Me - "No, the sound card is not detected."

IG - "But can you see a yellow question mark"

Me - "It doesn't detect the sound card. It can't have a yellow question mark next to it."

IG - "Is there a yellow question mark next to the sound card?"

Me - "NO, there's no f***ing sound card detected, SO IT CAN'T SAY THAT THERE ARE NO DRIVERS!"

IG - "Sir, can I ask if there is a yellow question mark..."

Me - "NO THERE IS NO BL**DY QUESTION MARK."

IG - "And you can't see the sound card?"

Me - "No."

IG - "Sir, I would like to inform you that there may be a loose connection between your sound card and the motherboard."

Me - "THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU FOR THE LAST HOUR."

What really gets me is that the next thing he tries to do is get me to open up my computer to check it, which would void my 3 year warranty which I payed almost £100 for. So followed a similar conversation where I try to explain to him why I can't open my computer. This is the line for anyone with extended warranty. If I didn't know anything about my warranty I could have broken it under this guy's direction which a) makes me mad because b) it is completely irresponsible and c) suggests foul play by the computer company. I'm sure such advise is illegal. Eventually the guy said that he had forwarded my problem to some other part of the company who were going to call me to arrange for someone to come around. When they do I'm going to have some words to say about their customer support. I'd like to send an e-mail, but I have no guarantee that it wouldn't just be ignored by an illiterate Indian idiot. I guess that the people who will be calling me are based in the UK, since they would have to organise for the person to come around, but I have no certainty of this. I've tried to lodge a complaint with their online support service but I'm unable to register with them because the "ok" button which should register me so I can do so does absolutely F*** all.

I am not a violent person, I don't usually swear, but the way I've been treated, and the lack of intelligence in the support I've been offered so far on this matter has been depressingly awful. And what, pray, is the company which has been trying to get me to violate my own warranty?

MESH

So up themselves with their award winning computers I thought I'd be safe in their hands. Looks like I was wrong. Anyway, I'm off to beat my frustrations out on a piano somewhere.

Oops...

2008-03-21T00:03:00.003Z

Apparently I forgot to post about my latest piece here, which is unfortunate as it seems to be widely liked on the infinity forums. As to whether it is likely to be accepted into the game or not, I have no idea, but it's certainly a different kind of sound world I'm using for this one, with a lot of extended techniques in the orchestra and even the use of synths to generate some aspects. I'm truly becoming a more diverse composer/producer with the help of the infinity community. The comments on the infinity boards are pushing me more and more to become better at what I am attempting.

So, without further ado, I present you with...

Tension

This is not finished yet, but I'll explain it's composition in case people are wondering what it (or music of this genre) is made of.

The only completely electronic elements of this is the bass-like pulse in the first part and moaning minor third "melody" which occurs intermittently in the second. I used VSTIs (VST Instruments) synth module plugins to generate these aspects. These are purely electronically generated sounds with their wave forms and envelopes (attack (start), duration and release (end)) modifiable by the judicial twist of a virtual knob or two. The first generates a kind of heart-beat-rising sensation, while the second is meant to imitate the mournful sound of the bowed crotales in a sort of haunting melody. I found bowed crotales to be too high pitched for my taste, but luckily stumbled across this preset (which I have now accidentally lost *sigh*) in one of my VSTi Synths.

The wailing screeching sound is made of samples of an instrument called a waterphone. Unusual and very atmospheric it's use can be found frequently in horror films (hence my use of it here). See the end of the following youtube movie for another application of the waterphone: Scary Mary Poppins, and for those who are interested, here's a video of the waterphone in action: Waterphone.

One otherpercussion instrument used in this piece is the chinese tam-tam (a nippleless gong-like brass instrument) which rather than being struck has a stick dragged across it's uneven surface to create the "woosh" heard at.

The rest of the piece (so far) is made up of extended technique and aleatoric strings. In the words of Wikipedia, aleatoric music is "music in which some element of the composition is left to chance or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer(s)." In this particular case the term is to an extent incorrect. There are no performers for this piece, and so there is no chance involved in my part of the process. However, when the samples were originally produced it was left up to the performers themselves to dictate the samples makeup with their playing, rather than being given the direction of playing a specific note in a certain way. As such it is to an extent aleatoric in it's construction process, but is more structured due to post editing by first the recording producers and now me.

Anyway, this is beside the point. Aleotoric (in this context) strings used in this piece are mainly double basses. The initial entry with the gradually rising strings are double bass samples, with, at the end, some violins just to fill out the higher harmonics a bit more as it nears the end of it's rising crescendo around 0:36-7. The following strings after the bass drum are all again aleatoric bass samples involving the simultaneous use of harmonics and natural tones.

At 0:53 two new string elements are introduced. The toneless percussive slaps are produced in a similar way to slapped bass, but with dampening of the strings so no dominant tone can be heard. Though little silence is actually used so far in this piece, I hoped to generate the sense of space that silance is effective for by using these slaps sparingly. Ashamedly I know not the name of this particular technique. I will have to ask my string friends at the RNCM.

Last but not least are what are termed "Pendereki" violin samples, also entering arround 0:53. This presumably refers to techniques requested by the polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. I need to do more research into these sounds before I can say anything even remotely knowledgeable about them, but they too, or at least something similar, seem to appear in many suspenseful films. They seemed appropriate here anhow. In this particular case I specifically panned them in a kind of wandering walk from one side to the other and back again which makes them even more effective in creating shivers up your spine, as it's almost like something is crawling around behind you unseen, but felt watching. it makes the hairs on my neck stand up, anyway.

I must say I'm indebted to EWQLSO for their fantastic samples, without which I would never have been able to produce such an emotive track.

In other news...

2008-03-20T23:59:00.001Z

I've just moved home for the Easter holidays and stupidly took my producing computer with me. As a result the sound card seems to have shaken loose in the car or something and the computer's not detecting it. ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGG!!! As a result there's no way I can get it fixed without voiding the 3 year warranty on it until after the bank holiday weekend is over. *sob* Was really looking forwards to using this time for music production. Anyway, don't expect anything from me for a few days phonically.

Mood swings

2008-03-14T13:20:00.001Z

Nah, I've changed my mind. I don't feel these latest parts are credits music. They can go somewhere, but not in the credits. I'm gona take some time away from the credits music, maybe go back to the menu music or start something new :P see where it leads me. Maybe I'll find something else to continue the credits sequence on the way.

Numerical Deficiency

2008-03-13T16:43:00.000Z

After an hour or so messing around with the computer and an hour and a bit of the computer messing me around I've got the outline of the next section done. It's only a skeleton, needs fleshing out quite a bit, particularly the second part.

Credits 4th part skeleton

Actually it's the 5th part that's the skeleton, but I had a temporary lapse of mathematical ability when I came to name the thing.

Back again

2008-03-12T22:33:00.002Z

Grr, been so frickin busy with the opera lately that I've been unable to do anything with my music for what feels like ages. Now we're out of the production stage and into the run I can focus on other things now. So, back to the keyboard for me. \o/ onto the next exciting stage of my composition.

Let the credits roll

2008-02-27T16:16:00.003Z

Oh yeh, come ON! I've been trying to get further with the menu music but failing miserably as I seem to have worked myself into a corner with the previous material :'( Thus I decided verily to move on to pastures new and lo melodies did flow abundantly as streams in autumn from mine fingers. So mine music making did bare fruit, juicy succulent fruit which... oh you get the picture. I'm happy with my new keyboard and the ease with which I can create counter-melodies with it. I've extended the credits (yep, it is definitely credits music, as I've talked to several people and they all say the same thing) by about half it's length again. Not much, I know, but I've tidied up and completed the second section. Have a listen. Is this credits music? These melodies (have worked in the genesis theme :P) and counter melodies are all usable within the main game, so don't consider them wasted here.

Credits Start

DS

Edit: on listening again, I think I need more space (reverb, or "echo") on the horn solo cos it sounds too close. I'll fix that for the next version.

Edit2: Also started a musicians MySpace page. You can find it here.

Edit 3: More advanced version here.

Hooray for Midi Keyboards

2008-02-23T22:04:00.005Z

Yay, I got my Midi Keyboard yesterday and, after a little panic, I got it working, and even got the latency down to a playable level in Nuendo. So then I spent some time playing with it until I was too tired to continue. Came back to what I did last night today and showed a friend. He was blown away by the change in my ... um writing? I guess it's more producing than writing at the moment, or at least an equal combination of the two. Anyway, everything in the following extracts was recorded straight into the computer as midi using the keyboard and then adjusted to compensate for my apauling keyboard skills to sound vaguely listenable to. The end result is ... more than listenable to, at least to me. Listen to it and see what you think. It's a great increase over my last effort with sequencing. Please note that this is all still WIP.

Genesis Menu Beginning

Menu Music Big

Personally I think that the whole Midi Keyboard thing is a big win. I can hear how things are going to sound with the end instruments rather than having to put them in stiltedly though Sibelius and it's awful sounds and I can let my fingers wander through harmonies and record them rather than playing them and trying to remember them while I write them out. Plus I add the human element to my music which has so far been so missing in my EWQLSO produced stuff.

Can't wait to explore these sounds more, the choir stuff in particular, hehe...

Epic Ending

2008-02-12T14:40:00.003Z

Felt the irrational desire to write a full orchestra something, so here's a cue for the ending of a big quest/mission for Genesis. I aired it on the Infinity forums, but they weren't too keen, but the Genesis people loved it. Guess my writing at the moment just suits Fantasy more than Si Fi.

Epic Ending

Multiple melodic mixes

2008-02-09T23:34:00.001Z

I've been experimenting with how musical themes can be combined to generate interesting music for extended periods with the minimum of input. Below is an example of something I threw together with some ideas I came up with today.

Two Melody Mix

Though not suitable yet for the game, I think with some adjustment this might make some ok material to use. Just need to work out how. The main problem is that it's too busy for non-combat game music. For the moment lets take it for what it was meant to be, an exercise in melody combination. There are three methods used here, each with varying degrees of "reusability".

1. Each of the melodies are played separately. The simplicity of returning to a theme is never to be underestimated in it's effectiveness. A method to extend the current mix might be to reintroduce one theme, proceed to the next methods of extension and then return to a simple voicing of the other. In this way this is a pivotal technique around which each of the others must be built.

2. Voicing the two themes at the same time. This is perhaps the least useful (if we're talking in terms of the number of times this can be used). The only ways to get more out of this are to change the relative volumes of each theme and the panning. this should be used almost as sparingly as the separate version of each.

3. Overlapping the two themes. Most useful of the three, this allows for a mathematically predictable number of iterations. In the current setting, you can hear only a few of the possible combinations. If combined with number 2 this enables even more variations. Taking the current example, both melodies are easily split in two. There are (beginning of one + end of the other x2 + the beginning and end of the same one x2) 4 possibil2 versions containing 1 middle section, 16 2 mid part versions, 64 3 mid part versions, etc (you notice a familiarity in the numbers involved? :P). By varying the number of the middle parts and the combination of middle parts used this can extend the piece for quite a while.

Ultimately, no matter the combination of melodic material used, a 5 or 6 second harmonic pattern will become tiring in the end, so it will become necessary to employ several harmonic patterns to keep the ears from becoming tired. I will look more into this soon.

I'm surprised at how well this turned out. The two themes I made as compatible as possible and they harmonise rather nicely. Shame it's too busy in it's current form to be used in the game really. For a few hours work it's not that bad.

Edit: Corrected the maths and here's a new slower, low pitched version. Which is better?

2 Melody Slower Mix

Edit 2: Here's a full piece version...

Melodic Mix version 5

The current state of affairs for Genesis...

2008-02-08T13:16:00.000Z

So what has happened so far? Well the original idea was that Genesis would have a large library of music tracks to go between and the game would select the most appropriate one at any moment to play.

Then I came up with this idea of having the music in the game be more adaptable as an option to the traditional approach to game music. What happens is a layering of music tracks dependant upon the events in the game and the use of "punctuation," shorter musical phrases to play at a critical or strongly emotional point, but wouldn't count as a piece in their own right. The ideas is that this will be adaptable enough that anyone playing will have their very own symphonic sound track to accompany their own specific journey through the game.

The basic idea behind this new music creation process is that the game will have a library of tracks of different types which it will layer intelligently deepening on how the game is played and the resultant triggers sent to the music engine. There are several types of track

Ambient Track: This is what plays while the player's character is exploring, moving from place to place and performing various non-combat activities. It is governed by the character's situation, geographical location and activity. For example, if the character belongs to one faction and is in another faction's territory, they would be threatened, and so the music would fade to become suspenseful. Here is a prototype of what and ambient track might be like: Ambient Track Prototype

Mood Track: As yet unexplored, this will overlay the ambient track, colouring it with the character's mood. In the above example it might be that tremolo strings, and occasional interjections by other instruments which might make up the ambient track would be coloured by a strong melody if the character was feeling bold. However, if they were injured or feeling vulnerable the mood track would adjust to reflect that, maybe an oboe with a pining melody would take over

Punctuation Cues: These would played when an important event happens in the game to the character. This can range from a wondrous discovery or the birth of a child to the death of a friend or the destruction of their home. Here is a cue that would be used to reflect a disappointment that the character has suffered: Disappointment Prototype

Combat Tracks: These will consist of multiple layers. Currently it consists of the percussion track that continues throughout the whole of the combat, a string track which reflects intensity of the combat and a brass track which is used as punctuation to indicate the state that the fight is in, for example, winning, losing, making a devastating blow, etc. Here are some examples of combat punctuation and the base percussion track: Winning, Kill 1, Kill 2, Percussion Track

The following is an early prototype of what sort of things to expect to come out of the music engine using the above samples. Below it I will write a (silly generic) in game story that it would accompany.

Game Music Prototype 01-01

Your character has come home to discover their brother has been killed by rats. Despair then anger fills the character as they stand over the body. They go hunting for the rats. About a minute later the rabid rats see you and charge at 1:24. Between 1:31 and 1:35 the first blow is struck. You gain the upper hand fairly quickly, and the horn call goes out at 1:46 to portray this. Soon one of the rats dies (between 1:56 and 2 min). The horn call goes out again as you continue to battle well against these miniature monstrosities. As the other two are slain the fanfare rises again, celebrating your victory.

Future development of the idea is as follows:

Escalating loopable sections - These are bits which follow naturally from each other and can follow the fight or situation as it becomes more intense
More use of the orchestra - Basically as I get used to these sounds and how they react to different writing I can use them more effectively and combine them better.
Thematic writing - I intend to introduce more genesis specific themes and so on into the punctuation and the general music. At the moment it's intentionally generic, except for the slow punctuation bit's I aired earlier. If I can get the generic stuff to work then it's possible to write themes which work well for this style of music creation.
More variety - That's something that'll be needed a lot in the combat tracks certainly. I'll have to write a lot of cues for this, but it'll be worth it, me thinks. Also the looped tracks can be interspersed, or replaced with modified versions or different tracks to keep things from becoming incessant or jaded.
Manipulation of audio - Though not necessarily possible with the current game, I hope to some day create a program that will be able to create a sound track for any game if a library is inserted relevant to that game, which will be able to do all this plus manipulate the audio files themselves, such as slowing them down to imitate tiredness or a change of pitch to reflect intensity.

Another side to the music creation process is that I want to make doing magic in Genesis to be something truly magical, not just another game mechanic to exploit. As such I'd like to score some stuff for spells, either individually or by strength or by type or some other kind of rating system which decides what music would fit the magic being done rather than sound effects. Though I haven't tried anything with this as yet, ideas have been put forwards on the forums that the spell accompaniment would be diagetic (i.e. be something that the game characters can hear, a kind of music that stems from the magic itself rather than from the sound track). However it is implemented I want the magic music to cause all other music to fade out, so that it becomes a special event in the game.

Anyway, that's the state of the music process at the moment for Genesis.

Jasper

The story so far...

2008-01-20T12:12:00.000Z

Hello, dear reader, my name is Jasper Brownrigg, currently studying Opera at the Royal Northern College of Music (the RNCM for short) in Manchester. As such I spend my days singing and performing, learning operas and very occasionally writing bad essays to scrape by on the academic requirements for the degree. In my spare time... well, I have a few interests. I like to read and play computer games, love film (one of my ambitions is to act in film) and practice martial arts, Ju Jitsu at the moment. So where does composition fit in with all of this? I shall tell you a story. Not a very exciting story, I'm afraid, no heart pounding action or weepy love scenes I'm afraid, but it's the story, so far, of my compositional exploits.

It all began when I was a small child learning piano. My first memory of ever even considering writing music was when my piano teacher at the time said that I would make a good composer to my parents. I don't know what made her say that. I could barely read music at the time, let alone contemplate trying to produce something playable. Well, a few years passed and I moved on to a new teacher. The idea of writing music never really left me. It remained, a little thought, wriggling through my mind occasionally surfacing, and when it did I'd sit down at the piano and play around, let my fingers wander through patterns learned over those years of playing, to discover something that sounded sort of interesting. Then I'd start the painfully slow process of writing this idea out by hand. Being dyslexic made this even harder. I'd play something, go to get the piece of manuscript (music paper) and by the time I'd found it I'd have forgotten whatever scrap of an idea I'd come up with.

This carried on for some time, with ideas (most of them atrocious, as you'd expect from a child) floating around on pieces of paper, getting lost and found again, most of them thrown away at some point, but rarely were my ideas expanded upon into even a semblance of a piece.

Then it came to my GCSE years, and suddenly I was required to write music to demand. I remember my first attempts at writing music during class. It was still painfully slow and I suffered from the further problems of having to work in the noisy class environment. That Christmas my parents bought me something which would change my life, my first music software. Finale 2001. I remember being a bit bemused at the time. Why did my parents get me this? The truth is they must have been encouraging me at something they saw that I enjoyed. Anyway, it took me a little while, but I gradually got used to the program and the next time I had an assignment I did it in one night and presented it the next day. One comment from a class mate about this was so amusing I still remember it now. She said "when you're rich and famous I'm going to marry you."

Anyway, I entered a new era of writing music. If I got an idea I could write it down so much faster than before. I was also finally able to develop my ideas somewhat. With the ability to play back what I had written so far without having to remember it or read slowly from my poor hand writing things progressed much faster. By my second year of GCSEs my supposed composition teacher (who never said anything more useful for me than "sit down and get on with it") told my parents that I had the "Composition bug". Composing was not my life by any means. I was doing pretty well in all my GCSE subjects except French, and I was spending my summers doing musicals with groups like the National Youth Music Theatre and later on Youth Music Theatre UK. Still, I was enjoying it. I remember writing a joke triangle concerto at this time, which involved one note for the triangle right at the end, meant to be a comment on the sparsity of this instrument's use in the orchestra.

Then I moved on to A level. Here I took both Music and Music technology, along side the more sensible subjects, Physics and Maths (my dad harboured hopes that I'd become a scientist even after I came to the RNCM). I think, of the subjects that help my writing of music at the moment, the Music Technology was the most useful, though the harmony I learnt in Music sped up my ability to realise (accompany) my melodies harmonically. Throughout this period I wrote what I intended to be a great sea epic. It was a full orchestral sea-shanty inspired musical story called "Ocean Voyage". I wrote about 20 or 25 minutes of it in the end, before I abandoned it. I also learnt how to use a sequencer, manipulate midi and use audio plugins on a program called Cubase SX. Valuable experience, but what I made with it at the time is cringe-worthy to me now. Also at this time I wrote a song called Jim and the Apple tree, a folk-song style piece with a memorable tune which I still intend to explore further in the future.

So, with all that I had learnt I applied to several music colleges to do both composition and singing. It was a disappointment to be turned down for composition by all the colleges, but I was accepted for singing by two, and Royal Northern being the friendlier of the two, I was set to go off to Manchester. My dyslexia paid me back for all the troubles it had caused me over the previous years by getting me a new government funded laptop, complete with Sibelius 4, part of some equal opportunities program for people with learning disabilities.

That first year at the RNCM was fairly quiet for me, composition-wise. I think I didn't write a thing the whole year, at least nothing memorable. It wasn't until my second year, last year, that I finally had a reason to write some music. I was searching for a free MMORPG to play in my spare time when I came across a site with some incredibly interesting ideas. Searching for the download I discovered that it wasn't even in alpha testing, but still in early development. Better still it was looking for anyone who wanted to contribute to it. The game... Genesis. Excited I was immediately inspired to write for it. I quickly wrote a piece and submitted it. The comment I got back was

"It is exactly the type of music that I think will go great with Genesis."

Ecstatic I started work on more. My topic on the forums acted as a kind of blog for my music creation from then until now. However, I'll finish the story here.

I continued writing for the game, trying out different styles, but always restricted to what I could produce with Sibelius 4. Then I reached as far as I could go with it. The Glory of Battle pushed beyond the capabilities of that software. I was unable to include pizzicato when I wanted to without the strings all playing pizzicato throughout. All the brass play with the trumpet sounds, in short, I needed more flexibility. Fortunately it was at this point when Sibelius 5 was released. This is a vast improvement over the old Sibelius in it's functionality. It provides the ability to write in "panorama view", where the music is not split up into pages, eliminating irritating behaviour like moving onto the next page when you are trying to input multiple parts on the last bar of a page, and generally makes the physical writing process much smoother. It also possesses Kompakt player 2 with a much larger library of sounds than the first. To be honest I found these sounds to be less appealing, even if they were more accurate than their predecessors in the original Kompakt player (which came with Sibelius 4). However, I struggled through with it for a short while and produced a couple of pieces. Quickly I became disenchanted and, though I didn't abandon the project, I remained silent for a while, hoping inspiration would strike.

When I returned from summer holidays to the RNCM I came across another game on the internet which was also looking for community input, Infinity. Inspired again, I attempted to write some music for this game, with little success. My contribution was not up to their production standards, so I appealed to my parents for better sound sets to use to produce my music, and lo, for Christmas I received two fantastic sound libraries, East West Quantum Leap (EWQL) Platinum Symphonic Orchestra and it's expansion, and EWQL Symphonic Choirs. The quality on these is extraordinary. 24 bit samples, recorded at three different depths of field. Simply stunning.

So I tried again with these new sounds to produce something for Infinity. However, still my production was not good enough in quality. I seemed to be unable to create realistic orchestral sounds. I decided that it was probably in part my writing and in part due to my lack of experience with the tools now available to me. So I decided to go back to basics, start writing music using only a few instruments, learn how to make things sound real with this complex software, and gradually build up my understanding of composing using this new medium.

So with ideas upon ideas bursting out of my ears I set down how I intended to produce music for Genesis. (see "The current state of affairs...")