Infinite musics

Okay so we're getting into the later two stages of this Castlevania-like game now. There's only one more level after this, though there are some boss tracks. The theme I was given for this level was "castle courtyard". Also you gotta figure, it's the penultimate level, so there's gotta be a bit of buildup in the music, but not so much that you give everything away.

This is a song that I think could have gone better. I don't love the chord progression in the beginning. I don't think it's "gothic" enough, and I think it sounds a little too relaxed. The buildup section is also a little bit sloppy in my opinion. I dunno, that part feels a little aimless to me. I like the fast part, that's cool. I like how I got the synths and drums sounding I guess. Idk.

This is probably my favourite song that I've done for the Castlevania-like project I'm doing music for. The level theme for this song was "abandoned monastery". This is another song that I just sorta came up with in the shower. Granted, it was several showers. I'd be like "ooo that's a neat idea, I wonder if I can work that in".

I had wanted to write a song in 7/4 to go in this game. I always see Castlevania's music as being informed by a lot of 80s hard rock, as well as some progressive stuff, and then obviously you have that gothic classical music influence injected into it to make it sound spooky. All that in mind, I always try to be a *little* progressive with my songs for this game. I don't want to be too progressive because that's not really the domain of Castlevania, which is aesthetically pretty big, dumb, and loud.

The pitch bend was also something that I'd wanted to do for a while. I'd written pitch bends into other tracks, but the synth that I'm using for these chiptunes doesn't allow it. Most of the time it's not a big deal, but I wanted a big expressive pitch bend in this song. The solution was manually creating the bend in Audacity using a time/pitch shift effect. I had to do it every time there was a pitch bend! Yuck.

That second section in the song where it goes into 4/4 is a bit of baroque harpsicordy sounding stuff. This is another case of "I wanted to use this idea at some point". It's funny how all my "I want to use this" ideas just ended up in this song. Maybe that's why I like it?

This is the third level track for the Castlevania styled game I'm making music for. The theme for this track was "snowy mountain".

I think this is the track where things kinda clicked for me. This and then a few songs after this were when I really felt like I was on fire. You mess around and it somehow comes out good each time. You start to feel like "wow I can't do anything wrong! Everything I write will be good!". (You can, it wont).

This is one of those "came up with in the shower" songs - sort of. I say "sort of", because I thought "wow that chorus works really well, am I ripping something off?" And unfortunately it turns out I was a little bit. I didn't realize I was ripping it off, but after a few days of humming it in my head I realized it was the melody to Those Were the Days . Naturally I used it anyway after changing it up a *little* bit, and doing some important research

I don't know why I had a greek folk song stuck in my head. Anyway, it's public domain.

The "hey's" were inspired by Ninja Turtles on NES. One of them. I forget which. I did some amount of down sampling, EQ-ing, and clipping to make it sound authentically like something you might hear on an NES. I think it's possible. I've heard it... it's definitely possible.

Here's the next level I wrote for a Castlevania-like. The guy asked me to make music for a burning town. I was initially really hot on this song. I don't know why, but I feel like I cooled off a little on it... I'm not really sure, I just feel like it's a little flat sounding. I don't know why. I went back and forth a lot with the amount of echo on the background parts.

The B section of the song is an idea that I'd had kicking around in my head for a while. It's the kind of thing that you can only do with the distortion from chiptune style music. I've tried to do this kind of thing in regular ol' compositions but it ends up sounding awkward.

Well Rosie Planet worked out alright! I didn’t have high hopes and I exceeded them. Onto the next project? Maybe. I’m thinking of doing something more story-focused. The issue is that I’d have to write characters and dialogue and it’s very intimidating. In the meantime I’m doing music for a guy’s game. It's a Castlevania-like. I'll link more information or that as it becomes available, but he hasn't said a ton about it now. This is the first level theme, a swamp.

The game is pretty NES style and he's asked me to compose it like an NES game. I actually do have a set of rules that I laid out, which I'm (mostly) following.

I get 4 square wave channels (an nes has 2, but could be expanded to 4 with a mapper chip. This specific one was used in castlevania 3, I think)

I get one triangle wave channel

I get one noise channel, though I play it pretty fast and loose with what constitutes a single noise channel sound.

Any amount of echo is fine, which is not at all true for an nes

reverb and EQ are okay but only to subtly clean up the sound, and not to change it.

Mastering is okay, in the vein of those youtube channels that post mastered versions of videogame music.

In general it's been a lot of fun and pretty interesting to do all of this. I like composing in this style because I can play things a lot more fast and loose compositionally. A maximum of five notes at the same time means that you have to be relatively sparse in your arrangements, and the simple/distorted waveforms in question mean that you can get away with some notes that would otherwise clash. A lot of these songs were things I came up with in the shower, part by part.

On the flipside, it's been a little difficult writing in this "serious" context. For one, I'm writing it for somebody else's thing. With my own games, I know exactly the feeling I'm going for. With somebody else's game I have to infer it from a level description. Also, Rosie Planet would radically shift in tone because I wanted to put everything I liked in there. I made a point of trying to be pretty varied with the music. A lot of the music I wrote for that game is pretty broad pastiche - "this is the song that sounds like donkey kong", "this is the song that sounds like surf music", ect. That's all well and good, but the problem is that you can't include two "this is the song that sounds like donkey kong" songs. They'd just end up sounding the same! In this game I'm writing an entire game's worth of songs that sound like Castlevania music.

Jumping on guys feels good in Rosie Planet!

Wishlist here

Beware Rosie's Mighty Kick!!

And wishlist Rosie Planet on Steam or she'll kick you!!!!!!!!!

Rosie Planet has Blue Skies.

(wishlist here!)

It's basically Uncharted, right? Surely this attention to detail deserves a wishlist on steam :) :) :)

Cover art for my indie 3d platformer, Rosie Planet.

it looks absolutely amazing, thank you so much to @refundtheticket who did this amazing art