#astrothrill

most of the stuff i did in this time was with LMMS, which, a bunch of vsts are a buggy mess in!! genny vst is what i primarily used (with the SEGAudio soundfont later on), along with spooky keys as a theremin- the former randomly putting sustain on a note even when the entire song is turned off, forcing you to restart the program and keep trying to export until it decides to work fine, and the latter's wibbly-wobbliness is just. gone in newer versions. songs with spooky keys made in older versions will keep their wibbly-wobbliness, but placing any new notes is a no go!! in learning all this, I don't recommend LMMS to anyone unless it's a last resort- unless things have changed since i last used it!!

this here is my oldest piece of my astrothrill stuff, circa 2021. i had an imagery of a scorched hill with a once-abandoned base sitting atop it,, with it's new resident of Sairen-X9. WAY too depressing in hindsight for the main style I wanted to go for.

i eventually re-arranged the melody into something a lot faster and action-oriented. the first half of this was done in a few weeks after, but the second half was done a couple years down the line into 2023 after being stuck for ages. a fair bit better to what i thought i wanted!! nowadays i still feel it's not "bright" enough, this still feels like something you'd hear in the later half of whatever AstroThrill's gonna end up being, rather than something that sets the overarching tone of fun cartoony sci-fi yknow?? this only says final because i'm done iterating on this particular version rather than me feeling like it's ready- ill get it there eventually :]

onto another song now! this one's just a snippet, didn't get too far- but i feel like what Is there is quite close to what i want!! i've always enjoyed marches with that rolling drum sound (looking at astro blaster's queue music) and i did want to try and pull something like that off eventually!! the inspiration that gave me the spark for this was one of the final bits of music in fortnite's collision event- specifically when you're shooting down a bunch of spikes right above the zero point (shoutouts to Phill Boucher [pronounced boo-shay] who's music is too good for that game)

and then i experimented with it again, probably going "what if i cut it down or something. jazz jig rhythm for no reason" and it just kinda. formed into This. i am SO shocked and happy with how this little jingle turned out- i wanted it to feel older than the rest of the stuff i had, like late-70s to mid 80s, and sustaining the notes gave it that little extra flair that feels Perfect. instrument-wise can still be improved by going for actual old synths and not SEGAudio but it's what i got and used ghsCXLKH

this last snippet here goes back to sairen's theme- i just had another jolt of inspiration of the beginning melody in this song during a particularly tense game of capture the flag(? maybe it was infection) in halo infinite ghscvklhcklv after making this it made it very clear that what comes really easy to me music-wise is dramatic stuff darker in tone than the music AstroThrill needs, but this is still probably my second favorite piece i've done right behind the gamma co. jingle from an "instrumentation completeness" standpoint