Authentic Taste Sensation!
Malcolm Brown codes game projects, makes music and probably rants about stuff
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Did you know that Homestuck Vol. 10 will be the 25th official Homestuck music album to come out? ~destiny~
Asked by turboshitnerd
We’ve got ourselves into a bit of a Resident Evil school of Naming Things.
I should do something with Showtime, y'know, in celebration of where we began all this nonsense.
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Can you expand on the basic setup post & suggest some VSTs/soundfonts/etc? Thanks!
Asked by kintozero
This could go on a while, I think others have done much better collections than I’ve done, but let’s see…
Soundfonts
These’re everywhere, with various different states of price, quality, licensing etc. There’s a tonne of free ones about. Good ones to start with are general GM collections. Here’s a nice starter list (collected by ‘darkesword’) which has a few I’ve used before.
Other ones I like using are numerous retro game packs dotted about the place, Papelmedia, SGM, etc.
Other VSTS
Good synths can be quite handy but also pretty expensive. Synth-1’s been well recommended to me and a full filler for various kind of sounds from decent pads, acid bass & wubby dubstep noises. Dig around the web for preset packs to build up a good collection.
Other fun choices are emulators for various chips for the more authentic chiptune quality. i.e. ’38911 Bytes’ is a fun little C64 emulator. Just punch in the chip the console used for music synth followed by’ VST’ and you can usually find a few like this one for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive
Big fancy collections wot I use
For the more orchestral sounding things I’ll often use the EWQL Play VST with various sound libraries I’ve bought from them. Recently I’ve also picked up Kontakt 5, which aside from coming with a decent collection of orchestral, synth, percussive & general misc voices, I also use Spitfire Audio’s Albion (very 'cinematic’ collection of orchestral voices) & Shreddage 2 for my obviously non-live guitarwork.
Vocaloids
If you’re into that sort’ve thing :p
Samples
Always handy to just build up big piles of samples. These’re mostly useful for effects, percussions, loops etc.
Stuff FL Studio just comes with
Using the stuff that’s shipped with your DAW of choice is a bit like using the Photoshop Lens Flare filter. It’s fairly limiting, and anyone familiar with the program will know exactly what you’re doing and call it unoriginal, but they can be a decent collection of stuff when getting started and I still occasionally drop an ol’ FL Drumloop to enhance the drums a bit. Also has a few generators (though many are demo versions requiring many $$$s to get full versions of) that’re pretty good.
Should be enough to get started? Generally you collect stuff and hear about stuff in an eternal unending pursuit of collecting until one day you find yourself buying a collection of Gregorian Chanting and wonder if you’ve gone too far…
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Please become the leader the music team needs. I have the feeling Radiation is too busy to organize/master Vol. 10, and I don't want to wait any longer.
Asked by bobrosscollectathon
Pffft I am the worst at organising anything :p Trust me y'don’t want me runnin’ this show.
I can probably say that there *is* movement on Vol 10. No idea when it’ll come out but I’d expect to see it before HS ends? I’ve got 2 tracks being tweaked and a 3rd I’m playing with… We’ll see what comes of ‘em in time :p
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Hey, I had a question- I'm looking into some software for making music, and I've heard a good bit of your stuff from the CQ and it's all great. What program do you use? What specs are required to run it and the like? I hope you didn't have a FAQ somewhere that answered that I can't seem to find it if so :'D
Asked by fatpidgey
I’m sure I answer this one regularly enough :p
I personally use FL Studio, been usin’ it for yonks (back when it was “FruityLoops”), but there’s plenty others. Popular ones include Reason, GarageBand… Cubase? Is that still going? Basically anything that calls itself a Digital Audio Workstation (or DAW) will do most things y'need to make music. FL Studio isn’t perfect, but runs decently enough.
Specs wise depends on what you’re doing, but generally CPU power and RAM is important depending on how many VSTs you’re throwing at it. Decent hardware will also help too, like decent phones or studio monitors, but that’s mostly useful for mixing. In my experience some VSTs utterly devour CPU time (I’m looking at you EWQL!) while other’s are basically just playing back samples or simple synths. If you’re planning on collecting a vast library of samples ‘n such, be prepared to eat up lots of Gigs of Hard drive space too. I pretty much just used my decent-end gaming PC for all my gamedev & music making needs and it doesn’t hit any major limits. A MIDI Keyboard t'fit nicely on yer desk also helps, but isn’t essential if you’re just getting started.
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Audio post reblogged from Musicin' n vidya games
Some more electronically inclined music from me. Though I couldn’t resist adding an orchestra either.
*Patiently awaits Drop*
*Is not disappointed*
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So there’s been no Musicoodle as mentioned because of JAM. Specifically ProcJam where I made:
(Although it has a few music tracks so consider that the musical scribble for this update)
It’s a sort of procedural clue/cluedo-esque thing where you toddle about a (very simple) random house, talking to (very simple) random people about a (slightly complex) murder that takes place, and y'have to determine who did it, how they did it, and what their motive was.
It plays like a sort of odd Detective Zelda esque thing, and everything’s heavily simplified to fit into the week deadline I had to make it. There’s a tonne of stuff I’d add if I was going forward with it.
Enough folk have managed to *get* it and solve the murders and enjoy it that I’d consider it a decent avenue for making something properly eventually. 'Till then, give it a go!
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Music making’s going to take a brief hiatus for a while because it’s Jam Season again!
First up is #ProcJam wherein the challenge is to use procedural generation in a game or tool. Procedural Generation is one of those greatly powerful things that tends to go head to head against straight-up hand-made, authored game content, and is mega popular with the ol’ indy scene who don’t have droves of artists & level designers to whip up content to keep things interesting. There’s even some keynote speakers from the likes of Tom Coxon (Who’s making an entirely procedurally generated Gameboy-era Zelda-esque thing called Lenna’s Inception and has a few neat articles on “How to randomly generate a Zelda game overworld complete with dungeons & tools/keys”), Hazel McKendrick (Fellow Scottish games techie & head dinosaur combobulator of Hello Games’ “No Man’s Sky”) and lots of other smart folk talking about how to basically Play God in video game & algorithmic terms.
Current plan is to do some kind of Procedural Procedural, that is, a murder mystery. Think Clue/Cluedo but with skills in blood splatter analysis & other forensic sciences. Although get any images of a highly detailed, Dwarf Fortress Police Department out of your head because I’ve got whatever time I can assign to it in a week or so.. You’ll be lucky if it isn’t just a text adventure!
After that it’s time for another #LDJam Ludum Dare. I’ve done this twice now, and my first attempt was *very well* received (The second attempt was borderline impossible to play but sounded great!) so hoping to tone down the difficulty and up the fun this time round.
I quite like doing Games Jams over say, working on a full game project because it lets me spit out the various ideas I end up having with a strict timeline & budget. Plus, I have almost no patience, and can only work on stuff like this for about 48 hours before going NOPE BORED NOW NEXT IDEA and move on to the next thing. Perhaps one day I’ll actually finish a full game with a story ‘n everything, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.
Jam on!
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Revisiting an old favorite for the old guard/true believers. This one took a bit longer than the average doodle, but was pretty much done entirely from memory.
Find it weird that I can still very clearly remember stuff I made yonks ago.
In any case, this is a rehash of the main theme from a Fangame called Sonic: Time Attacked wot I did a lot of music for. While I was still pretty much learnin’ the ropes of how all this music composing stuff worked, some of the stuff I made to this day I occasionally get stuck in my head. And it was all gawdawful sounding MIDI files. Tis not the quality of the voices maketh the track, but thee annoyingly catchy melodies.
Or something.
The bizarre ‘swarbling’ glissando at the start is made the same way it was made then too - It’s just lots of “Guitar Fret” noises played in quick succession.
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I wonder if I could do one every day for a month NOPE TOO LAZY DON’T GET USED TO THIS.
I’ll admit, I spent most of today’s “Hour of Musicoodle” trying to find various missing power & MIDI cables that have long since been gone several house-clearances ago, but eventually wired something together to try something a bit new. Namely actually recording stuff from a keyboard instead of painstakingly entering every note manually. I’m incredibly rusty at this, which is why today’s offering might sound a bit less ‘tighter’ than usual.
Inspiration comes this week from Gigidigi’s Cucumber Quest which I’m sure you’ll all familiar with. Don’t think I’m happy with the choice in harpsichord. Wanted something 'Sharp’ sounding to go with all the thorns 'n whatnot and for most of the time it was a Dulcimer and a variety of other plucked instruments but nothing really worked the way I wanted it to. Tremolos worked though, even though they might be a bit loud.
I’m keen to do something for Jo the Mage & Tank now… Top note, music composery people - Webcomics are a good source of inspiration to play with due to the abundance of visuals and narrative but without any actual sound.
It shouldn’t be that hard to do a Tango/Entangled pun. #NamingTracksIsHard
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Another music doodle today. Is there a word for those? A Moodle? Muudle? Y'know what sod it it’s a Musicoodle.
Figured I hadn’t done any Halloweeny music on ‘ere so whipped up another quicky. 45 minutes! Although this one’s cheating because it’s full of borrowed Homestuck stuff. It was goin’ to be some kind of Underwater Level music originally but then I remembered “Oh yeah, Halloween” so here we are.
Also hey! That Terezi track WIP I posted up a while back has had quite a bit of interest. Should have some good news for your guys come the inevitable VOLUME 10 since I’ve been workin’ on it since then, although at this point it’s kind’ve in “Alternate Universe”-ville given the current state of affairs and whatnot.
Right it’s the weekend. Expect another Musicoodle over the weekend of some form. Might even hook up a keyboard and actually compose stuff live which is something I almost never do and really should.
Good weekend ya’ll!