Music

At this point, I felt very frustrated with my life for various reasons. It had been a long time since I made any music, but I couldn't scrape anything decent out of VCV Rack. That's when I looked into trackers again, and as I was curious about modern sample-based trackers, having only used FT, 0cc-FT (NES) and GoatTracker (C64) before, I started playing with Milkytracker.

This song is actually not finished. It doesn't finish in a jarring way at it stands but it isn't enough for me. But I haven't figured out where it should go yet.

This stands as the greatest song I have ever created. A grand, complex, seven minute long improvisation with multiple instruments.

Highly controlled randomness was used to perform some things in this track, but it's not your typical ambient noisemaker. My hands were absolutely flying across the knobs trying to keep it going somewhere, controlling at least a dozen and a half parameters or so, knowing one mistake would turn this into one giant mistake. Hence the title, there was an attempt to wrangle the beast into something, and somehow I managed to do it, admist all the failure I experienced up to this point.

The way I made this song, was like I was a conductor of all these instruments playing their parts, except far more involved.

My first recorded success in single instrument improvisation.

I should note that I never had any training in playing keyboarded instruments, but as I had strong music theory fundamentals, I begun experimenting with keyboard improvisation, and got a feel for it. But that is also why I don't do anything very complex or quick.

Please excuse the clipping as I'd not done many recordings yet, and didn't realize I should use a compressor when recording a polyphonic instrument.

The gameplay was supposed to be like a fast-paced top-down shooter, Binding of Isaac style. I wanted it to have some energy but at the same time didn't want it to feel too 'hard', this is what I ended up with. Perhaps it could've been better, but I only allowed two days to make this track and move on.

A dramatic organ piece I wrote for my unfinished game. The start of the game was to feature a minute long exposition about how you are a traveller of cyberspace, one day you stumble on a strange door you never saw before and enter it. On the other side you find war and chaos. The following image are the three panels that would be shown while the exposition is displayed. You can feel the piece is also in three parts, which correspond to each panel.

Kind of sloppy but a nice monophonic improvisation. I loved instruments like this, seeing what unique sounds can be pushed out of them.

This is not a new EP, despite the title. It's just a track.

I still like this one a lot. It's groovy and very hard, it has a nice sound. If I recall correctly, that 'wind' sound that's in the background is actually something I synthesized.

One of the few electronic tracks I created that survived for some reason. I have made so many electronic tracks over the years but have deleted them. If I was to count all the music I've made so far, I'd easily put the number up to around a hundred and fifty give or take, plus many hours spent improvising. This track really doesn't reflect that time spent as it could, but I still hold a little affinity for it.

A creepy improvisation using one very bizarre instrument I made. I liked playing around with that instrument because it seemed to make so much different sound, and managed to develop a general sketch in my mind for this song before I played it, whereas a lot of improvisation I did before was very 'in the moment' rather.

During all this time I'd been experimenting with LMMS and made many many songs which did not survive my frustrated purges, and was using trackers less. But during the Covid-19 pandemic, I picked up the tracker and decided to make a track that will be my sendoff.

This was my demonstration of all I had learned about musicality, especially structure and harmony, as well as my knowledge of the tracker software and the chips used. It has a very large sound that was only possible through the addition of the MMC5, which gives an extra two square channels to play with.

Compared to the previous track, it has a far more satisfying direction; I think it still has a fantastic ending.

This song indicates when I shifted to more complex structures; making a game track that loops like my previous tracks is easier because you don't have to deal with structural progression.

This song was for a school project about smoking. It doesn't have much to do with smoking, I just wanted to do more tracking, but you'll notice I mimick the sound of heartbeat, breath, and cough throughout the song, and the ending implies the man dies. Don't smoke kids!

A feature of almost all my music at this time is brevity. Ideas are not duly expanded on, I move on too quickly, thus the music finished too quickly. This was I think because of my immaturity and because of my software. When I made this I was fourteen years old, and as much as I love trackers, they are not particularly versatile or easy to work with.

Admist a musical rut, I created this, and believed I may never create a song so good as this one. The grief that thought gave me was very intense.

The title of course implies I made this to be like a Capcom game track. This is apparent in the melodies and somewhat in the structure. I specifically had the Mega Man games in mind.

The first song I ever completed. Despite many file purges in the past, this one has survived to this day, which I find incredible.

A monophonic improvisation where I tried to mimic a very typical sounding horn tune, just for fun.

A polyphonic improvisation made early 2024 during a particularly stressful period of my life, after quite a hiatus. Far from my best and is not very interesting, but it's pleasant.