Making My Own Music (Inside Video Game Music)

Originally posted on October 18, 2014

In this episode, I talk with Grant Kirkhope, a long-time game composer who wrote the soundtrack for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. We talk about his boss battle song “Balor.”

Grant is a member of the Classic FM Hall Of Fame, and his video game soundtracks have sold more than 25 million copies.

In my interview with Grant Kirkhope, we cover the following:

• His musical background, attending The Royal Northern College of Music, playing in metal bands, and working at Rare, Big Huge Games and 38 Studios
• Grant has been fortunate to have a live orchestras record the soundtracks for Viva Piñata, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Viva Piñata 2, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, CityVille 2 and Civilization: Beyond Earth
• Grant writes the music and creates a MIDI mockup, before handing it over to someone for orchestration
• During the recording, Grant stays in the control room, making sure the performance is right while recording engineers, conductors, mixers, and mastering engineers handle the tasks they specialize in
• When making MIDI mock-ups or for pieces not being performed by a live orchestra, Grant uses Hollywood Brass, Strings, and Orchestral Woodwinds libraries from EastWest Studios
• From playing trumpet in orchestras, Grant has great knowledge of what the different instruments can do and what they are great at
• He listened a lot to the first three Harry Potter soundtracks composed by John Williams
• We talked about writing complicated runs for woodwinds, and that orchestral players are good enough to play them
• I then played “Balor” from Kingdoms of Amalur Boss Pieces with Endings
• He talked about the looping version for the game and the versions with endings for the soundtrack
• Grant likes to use motifs that pop up in different pieces throughout the game and soundtrack
• He liked working with Curt Schilling, although he did not know about baseball
• Grant talked about working with his friend Danny Baranowsky on the Desktop Dungeon soundtrack
• He likes working with indie developers and how they focus on great gameplay
• One of Grant’s favorite all-time games is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• He likes games that use Danny Baranowsky’s and Jimmy Hinson‘s (Big Giant Circles) music
• Grant Kirkhope's website is grantkirkhope.com. You can find Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning on Steam, Playstation and Xbox

Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email [email protected].

Originally posted on October 11, 2014

In this episode, I talk with Tim Shiel, a composer from Melbourne Australia who wrote the Duet soundtrack. We talk about his song Nay.

In my interview with Tim Shiel, we cover the following:

• His musical background playing grunge music in high school, and then releasing music under the name Faux Pas
• How he toured with Gotye in 2011 and 2012 for the Making Mirrors tour
• The five-minute video of Gotye and Tim made by Abelton about how they used the software during live shows
• His radio show Something More on Double J (now triple j)
• How he went from wanting to get into game music to getting the Duet soundtrack gig
• Inspired by Indie Game: The Movie and Jim Guthrie’s story which led to meeting the folks from Kumobius
• The Duet game, and how it appeals to hard-core gamers and to casual gamers
• Tim made a lot of Duet sounds on the OP-1 from Teenage Engineering
• He uses a Nord Stage 2 as his MIDI controller as well as use the Nord sound library
• The music for Duet is laid-back “atmospheric” dance music. Tim talks about getting it to fit into the game, to sound decent on an iPhone speaker but great on headphones, and to stand alone as a soundtrack album
• Tim talks about making the loops long (three to five minutes) with different sections
• I briefly talk about the form of Nay. After having the “A” note in the bass for the whole song, near the end there is two measures of F and two measures of G before returning to A. Tim talks about the tension-release
• I then played “Nay”

Tim talks about the “rewind” sounds that play when your red or blue game balls hit a block

He used a reverse reverb trick on the voiceover with a lot of side-chain compression

Some of Tim’s favorite games include the Mass Effect series, Pool of Radiance (Commodore 64). He really likes the music on Rymdkapsel (music by Niklas Ström)

Tim’s latest EP is called Time Shield available at timshiel.bandcamp.com (as well as many other releases).

He is now working on the soundtrack for GameLoading: Rise Of The Indies, a feature-length documentary film and with a project called Telling with Ben Abraham

Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email [email protected].

You can hear my music at TomSnively.com on the Music page. You can try Match Em and Molecular Music Box by finding the links on tomsnively.com.

Originally posted on October 4, 2014

In this episode, I talk with Rich Vreeland, who also goes by the name Disasterpeace. He is the composer of the FEZ and many other game soundtracks. We talk about his song Adventure from FEZ.

In my interview with Rich Vreeland, we cover the following:

• His musical background growing up and at Berklee College of Music
• His 42 projects available for sale on his music page
• Retaining or giving up rights to be able to release the soundtrack himself
• His album Neutralite and how he collaborated with SpamTron
• If it is hard to wait after writing a bunch of music for a game to be completed and released
• Rich has a blog entry where he talks about the synthesizers he uses. I ask about how to move up from beginner at synthesis
• We talk about Adventure, and how there are only seven or eight tracks in the song
• I then played Adventure from the FEZ soundtrack
• Rich gave tips on making things loopable, and how the soundtrack version differs from the game version
• How he use Leq and AudioLink to match the volume level for the game assets, separately from having the soundtrack mastered for the game Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake
• His “game”/music app January
• Rich is performing October 11th at IndieCade, singing and playing piano on new songs
• Rich also wrote the score to the film It Follows in about three weeks to have it ready for the Cannes Film Festival
• His alias, Disasterpiece, how we came up with it and the occasional problems of having two identities
• His favorite games of all time are NHL ’94 (Sega Genesis), Tecmo Super Bowl (NES), Super Mario RPG, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island and Chrono Cross.
• He loves the music in Yoshi’s Island (Koji Kondo) and Chrono Cross (Yasunori Mitsuda), and more recently Machinarium and Samorost 2 (Tomáš Dvořák). Spelunky (Eirik Suhrke)

You can find Rich Vreeland at disasterpeace.com. You can find FEZ at fezgame.com.

Next week I am interviewing Grant Kirkhope who wrote the soundtrack for Kingdoms of Amalur, GoldenEye, Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Pinata, Perfect Dark and many more.

Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email [email protected].

Originally posted on September 27, 2014

In this episode, I talk with Ben Prunty, the composer of the FTL soundtrack. We talk about his Battle version of his MilkyWay song. I also talk about the podcast name change from Making My Own Music and the change of focus.

Originally this podcast was called “Making My Own Music” where each episode went into a song, mostly ones I composed. I talked about Rue’s Whistle and episode 1 of MMOM where I talked about my musical background. I also mentioned episode 28 of MMOM where I talked about Molecular Music Box and a couple of solo piano songs I wrote using it.

I talked about episode 27 of MMOM where I talked about RPSwipe, a mobile game that I wrote the music and sounds for, I also wrote my own game, Match Em which used a song called Rise Above that I talked about in episode 20.

I also had some interviews, I interviewed Charlie McCarron in episode 22 and Joe Gilder in episode 23. In episode 24, I interviewed Whitaker Trebella about the music from his game Pivvot.

In my interview with Ben Prunty, we cover the following:

• His background going to audio engineering school, recording and mixing rock bands
• “It takes ten years to make an overnight success” from his blog entry
• He started on Gravity Ghost in 2010, and it is not going to released until January 26th, 2015. Is it hard to have to wait so long for people to hear some of your music?
• The FTL soundtrack has sold over 100,000 copies. We talk about owning the soundtrack rights for indie games
• He mentions the hardware and software used to make FTL in a blog entry. He mentions Native Instrument Komplete 10 that has over 12,000 sounds. How do you find the next patch to use when writing a song?
• He has a blog entry on an analysis of themes in the FTL soundtrack. What is the right amount of self-referencing material on a soundtrack? He’s varied on Gravity Ghost, FTL and StarCrawlers coming out in November
• We talk a little about the effects processing in FTL
• I ask about programming drums. Does he think about whether it is playable by a human drummer
• I then play the Battle version of MilkyWay
• We talk about music theory study
• We talk about how he enters notes and quantizing/humanizing
• We talk about a separate mixing process he does when the recording of a soundtrack is complete
• His favorite games are EarthBound, System Shock 2, God Hand, Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger. EarthBound and the first God of War are his favorite game soundtracks.

Ben's website is benpruntymusic.com.

Next week I am interviewing Rich Vreeland who goes by the name Disasterpeace who wrote the soundtrack for FEZ and Tim Shiel who wrote the soundtrack for Duet.

Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email [email protected].

You can hear my album Major 7ths and Minor 9ths on Bandcamp. You can stream it for free or download it for “pay what you want.” You can try Match Em and Molecular Music Box by finding the links on tomsnively.com.

Originally posted on September 20, 2014

In this episode, I talk about Molecular Music Box, a music app that I wrote that creates algorithmic solo piano music, and two songs that I composed using the app.

I started by talking about my entry for the August 2014 Ludum Dare. I worked by myself but used clip art from MyCuteGraphics.com. The theme was “Connected Worlds” and I made a game called The Circle Of Life. It is about the life cycle:

In the food chain, we are all connected. The butterflies eat from the flowers, but the birds eat the butterflies, but the foxes eat the birds.

In “The Circle Of Life” your place in the food chain keeps changing. You are the purple butterfly and have to eat from the flowers. But don’t get eaten by the birds. But then you are a blue bird and have to eat the butterflies. But don’t get eaten by the fox!

I had fun with the audio. When the animals eat the other animals, you here me or my son saying “Nom nom nom!” in the correct place in the stereo field. I got top 11% ratings in humor and top 34% in audio.

I originally saw a video for Molecular Music Box by Dr. Duncan Lockerby, a professor in the UK. With an algorithm, you can create solo piano music using 2 numbers and a starting note, for example 4 E 3. 4 is the “initial length” and 3 is the “secondary length.” It's hard to explain in just audio, so I played a song first to demonstrate, 9 D 1 1/2.

Start with a low D and hold it for 9 beats. Then play the next white key up, E, and hold that for 9 beats. You continue up the white keys. While this is happening, you use a “loop pedal” to record and repeat 4-measure loops. So, whatever sounded during the first 4 measures gets played again in the 5th measure while you add new notes. Each time you loop the 4 measures, there will be additional notes played.

You continue doing this until you are starting a new note at the same exact time an existing note is set to sound. In that case, you change from the initial length (9) to the secondary length (1 1/2), and play new notes for 1 1/2 beats each until you again have a note already starting at that time. When that happens you switch back to the initial length (9 beats).

If you’d like to try Molecular Music Box, you can play around at https://tomsnively.com/mmb/. The program has sliders for initial length and secondary length so you can make them go from 1/2 to 16, and the initial length can go from C2 (two octaves below middle C) to C4 (middle C). I also added three advanced features: adjust tempo from 60 to 300, a “key” slider so you can have the song use any key instead of all white keys, and you can change the loop length to go from 8 beats up to 32 beats.

The piano sounds come from Mildon Studios; he published a free library.

In 8 C 14 1/2, I am using the key of Eb making the song in natural minor. I also changed the loop length to 15, so the song has 3 measures of 4/4 followed by 1 measure of 3/4. I then played 8 C 14 1/2.

Composer Michael Chadwick used Molecular Music Box as one part in a larger song called Chemical Music.

Originally posted on August 16, 2014

In this episode, I talk about RPSwipe, a mobile game available now for iOS and Android, and the song and sounds I made for the game.

RPSwipe is a mobile game written by Amidos, an Egyptian game developer Ahmed Khalifa. It is inspired by the games Threes! and 2048, and uses the rules from Rock, Paper, Scissors.

I started by making an audio track from the iOS Musyc app. I moved the track into my Cubase project and added reverb and a ping-pong delay. The track plays an Eb pentatonic scale (Eb F G Bb C) so it goes with Eb major chords and C minor chords.

I talked about and played the electronic sounds, all from the Omnisphere synthesizer. I used two tracks of “Singing Reality Distorted,” and tracks of “The Buzz In Jack’s Head,” “Dynamic Crystal Bottle Hits,” “Enyaesque Pad,” and “Waxing Downsaw.” My favorite Enya song is Orinoco Flow. I also recorded a rainstick, and added reverb and delay.

The song has different-sounding sections, and lasts four minutes before it loops. The soundtrack version loops and then fades and is about 4 1/2 minutes. I then played RPSwipe.

I also made sound effects for the game, including paper covering rock, and scissors cutting paper. I also used some of the synthesizer sounds and made sounds that fit in with the song.

I have a couple new versions of Match Em available. Here is the Indie Quilt version and here is a 10-difficulty challenge version.

You can find my past broadcasts on twitch.tv/jively or contact me at [email protected].

Originally posted on August 4, 2014

In this episode, I talk about Indie Quilt, an online game jam for charity, and about 15 30-second songs I wrote to be used in the game.

My album, Major 7ths and Minor 9ths is available on Bandcamp at tomsnively.bandcamp.com. You can listen to the whole album for free. To download it, click “Buy now, pay what you want” and choose $0 or more to “purchase” the album.

I found out about Indie Quilt which is an online game jam organized by Eric Hornby. Developers have about two months to submit a 30-second “mini-games” for Eric to “quilt” together into one large game. I volunteered to provide music and sounds for any Indie Quilt game developer who needs it. I also wrote and published 15 30-ish-second songs for developers to choose from.

I wrote these songs using the iOS Figure app which I talked about in episode 13. Developers have chosen four of these songs and included them in their games:

Hoops by Kitsune Gaming, wrote the music

SHOOT_THINGS by Security Porpoise, wrote one of the two songs in the game

Asteroid Storm by Kitsune Gaming, wrote the music

Sprint by Kitsune Gaming, wrote the music and sound. I also assisted in the coding to speed up the music based on the horizontal velocity.

I played IndieQuilt Clips which includes clips 1, 2, 14, 5, 6 and 9. You can find the full playlist of all the IndieQuilt clips on my SoundCloud page. If you would like to use one of these songs for your IndieQuilt submission, please email me at [email protected].

I made a new game mode for my Match Em game. In this mode, you have to match as many as you can in 30 seconds. I will soon make a standalone version of this to submit to Indie Quilt.

(This is a link to a playable [non-mobile] IndieQuilt difficulty challenge. You have to beat my Match Em submission in 30 seconds at difficulty 1, and when you beat that, difficulty 2, and up through 10 for Total Victory.)

RPSwipe is coming out for iOS and Android this Friday (8/8/2014). I wrote the song and made the sounds for this game. I will talk about the game and song in my next episode.

I’m also excited about my newest project which is music composition tool called Molecular Music Box. I’ll talk about this two episodes from now. You can try it on tomsnively.com.

I’m also testing out live-streaming on Twitch. You can find my past broadcasts on twitch.tv/jively.

Send me your feedback by emailing [email protected].

Originally posted on June 12, 2014

In this episode, I talk about a video game, Match Em that I designed, developed and published. I talk about my debut album, Major 7ths and Minor 9ths that I released on Bandcamp. I talk about how I put together and mastered the album. I also talk about my song “I Love Pivvot.”

In May I got a bit of a “coding bug” where I was really enjoying doing computer programming, and I created my own video game. It is called Match Em and you can play it at https://tomsnively.com/games/matchemwebgl/

Match Em is a fun but somewhat frustrating game where all you have to do is find matching items. During gameplay, there are two rows of pictures and images. There are five pictures and three words in each row.

The first row and second row will have exactly one item that matches. It might be two words, two pictures, or one word and one picture. Find the match, and click on one of the items. You must find 10 matches to complete the game. Find the matches as quickly as possible. There is a 3 second penalty for incorrect clicks. Click ‘skip to the next one’ if you just can’t find the match and want to try again. There is a 1 second penalty for each one skipped.

I released my debut album, Major 7ths and Minor 9ths, which is named after my two favorite chord types. I talked about the song order with regard to keys and styles.

I talked about small mix changes I made to six of the songs. I talked about how I mastered the album, using Graham Cochrane’s three-part series on mastering with stock plugins, EQ, compression and multi-band compression, and limiting. I got the stock plugins from Reaper which worked really well. I also got Voxengo SPAN spectrum equalizer.

I talked about the Loudness Wars, and how much dynamic range the final album should have. A really good resource about this is Dynamic Range Day. I had to go through my process a couple of times, lessening the limiting until the dynamic range, according to the Offline TT Dynamic Range Meter was 10.

I talked about the reference tracks I used for many of my songs to make sure the volumes were similar. I talked about the fades and the gaps between songs.

I published this album on Bandcamp at tomsnively.bandcamp.com. You can listen to the whole album for free. To download it, click “Buy now, pay what you want” and choose $0 or more to “purchase” the album. (This has subsequently been published to Spotify and other places; see https://tomsnively.com/music/.)

I next talk about my song, I Love Pivvot. I bought the chipsounds synthesizer from Plogue. I stretched the Zaxxon audio using Paul’s Extreme Sound Stretch.

I then played I Love Pivvot.

I was hired this month to write three songs and make sound effects for an archaeology game. The developer will probably be launching a Kickstarter in the next month or two. I will let you know when that Kickstarter is running and I will talk about the game and the work I did on it.

Send me your feedback by emailing [email protected]

Originally posted on April 24, 2014

In this episode, I interviewed Whitaker Trebella, a video game composer and game designer in Chicago. We talked about his song Voyage from his game Pivvot.

Pivvot is available on iOS and Android, and on Windows, Mac and Linux on Steam.

In my interview with Whitaker Trebella, we talked about:

• Why Whit went from composing game music to making his own games.
• His game Pivvot, a thrilling game of strategic avoidance. This game was heavily influenced by Super Hexagon.
• His influences for the music, Hydrogen from Hotline Miami, and Memories of the Future by Oliver.
• His challenge with Carter Dotson, Pivvot: Carter vs. the Developer where he was unable to beak Carter in the Berserk mode of Pivvot.
• How he live-streamed the composition of the Pivvot music, and what it was like composing for an audience.
• The use of a reference track to take a lot of ideas from. Will the new song sound too much like the original? Whit was concerned that Pivvot was too much like Super Hexagon.
• He created a palette of sounds for the first song, and used that as a template for the other songs in the game. A lot of the sounds use the Plogue chipsounds VST.
• How to learn synthesis, modifying synthesizer sounds. He started with a tutorial on subtractive synthesis that came with Logic.
• We both love the chord progression like Am9 – Cmaj7. Whit describes why he likes that so much.
• Whit went through the Logic project talking about the different tracks: kick, second kick added for louder section, distant hi-hat, extra percussion (kick on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4), 16th note pattern, bass with a big EQ cut in the middle, electric piano, and the choir-y sustain part.
• The use of “humanize” on hi-hat velocities and how that creates inspiration The use of side-chain compression with the kick drum, and how it makes the compressed instruments pulse to the beat. This led into how all the screen objects (the stick, the ball, the obstacles, the menus) pulse to the beat, even if the different songs have different tempos.
• We talked about his thoughts on looping. He thinks the song should be at least a minute and have different sections so that it isn’t boring.
• In Pivvot when you die, the song continues but at 1/4 speed, so the song is slower and two octaves lower. He also adds an EQ filter. Whit talks about “tweening” which is available in Unity Pro where he can switch from speed 1.0 to 0.25 but change it over a half of a second. It is similar when you pause and unpause. Whit’s website is wtrebella.com and his music is available for sale at his Bandcamp page.

https://rss.com/podcasts/mmom/3105758

Originally posted on April 4, 2014

In this episode, I interviewed Joe Gilder, a songwriter and recording/mixing/mastering engineer in Nashville and host of the Home Studio Corner-Ask Joe podcast. We talked about his song No Time from his first album Out of Indiana.

Joe’s main website is a blog called Home Studio Corner where he makes frequent posts about recording, mixing and mastering. He offers a daily email newsletter. He maintains a YouTube channel with training videos. He also has a nice monthly product called Dueling Mixes.

In my interview with Joe Gilder, we talked about the following:

• His background with music and recording, working at Sweetwater, and starting HomeStudioCorner.com.
• Joe built the audience by creating a lot of blog posts and videos, and connecting with other established music recording and mixing shows like The Home Recording Show.
• Joe listened to 40 or 50 business audio books. He especially likes The Go-Giver by Bob Burg, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, Good To Great by Jim Collins
• Joe talked about moving away from home, getting married, and how much his younger brother grew over the time. Since he does a lot of writing, lyrics are not particularly difficult for him.
• Recording aux percussion. Joe probably recorded a short sample and looped it on this track.
• The instrumentation on No Time, two guitars, mandolin, bass, shaker, tambourine, and background vocals. Joe talked about how he writes and records the background vocal parts.
• The song has an extra dissonant note on the last chord. It is a G chord, one guitar plays G and the other plays Gsus with a C. Joe and his wife were broke and never get to visit home. They finally get a chance to go back to Mississippi but get snowed in at the Cincinnati airport.
• I then played “No Time.”
• Joe challenged himself to write 50 songs in 12 weeks. The intention is that 10 of them will be really good and can be used for a new album. He’s a little behind pace, but has already written about 18 songs with a month to go. The next goal will be to record the songs with a group of musicians as a band.

Joe then described his products and services. Go to HomeStudioCorner.com to find out more. You can find his music at JoeGilderMusic.com.

Send me your feedback by emailing [email protected].

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