I can't very well mention last year's New Year's album and not point out that the 2016/2017 album is also out. It's called "Come At Me Slow" and you can listen below, on SoundCloud, or on Spotify.
The standouts for me this year are the amazing cover art by Kathleen and the epic sounds of the title track. It is with some regret that I note that I still haven't been awarded the steam achievement described by "Hate Plus / Love Note", despite sending a verification photo and e'rything.
With the crush of the SIGGRAPH deadline, I failed to both create a New Year's card or even make a post detailing the Jimike New Year's album for 2015/2016. So let's fix that right now, shall we?
My remedial New Year's card for last year is titled "Grid Line", and that about sums it up. The grid gets interesting half-way through. Play here (works on smartphones, too!).
I think this might also be my first New Year's card with sound effects (though those don't work on phones; sorry).
Last year's album was titled 36-Hour day, since we were producing it in such widely separated time zones. You can listen on SoundCloud (widget below) or Spotify
Standout tracks for me are "Dear Snails" and "The Only Fi I Have" both of which have honest, if shallow, lyrics.
Each year, my brother and I spend the new year's eve building a new album to release. Also, I've been trying to get in the habit of releasing a little interactive solstice / new year card around the same time. So here they are.
This year's game is a quick implementation of a puzzle interaction involving moving blocks around. The opening animation explains it better than I could:
This year's is called "Sassy Bunny" and you can listen to it right now:
Some highlights: Weird To Me -- a classic one-take Jimike song; Undone -- all sorts of interesting sounds in here; Intro -- really energetic track. Some lowlights: weird mixing in Great In The Future; She -- a track that is perhaps too mellow.
We are starting to accumulate a fair bit of audio gear. This year's album involved two guitars, a banjo, a Monotribe, three mics, and two different midi control devices -- a keyboard and a Push (run through a custom script to make it nice for use in Reason).
As always, expect Spotify links when we get around to pushing the files to our distributer.
I am pleased to report that the iOS version of Rainbow is proceeding well. In fact, a 1.0 version has already been accepted for app store sale (though -- owning to some gameplay changes -- I will probably not release it).
So, what have I been working on? Well, other than finding a real job, tweaking and adjusting Rainbow to be an even better game. Part of that is doing things like adding incidental music to cutscenes -- and that's what this post is about.
The most recent two tracks I added to Rainbow were an opening and closing theme for the villain (and player's persona), who I will simply call "D.D." herein.
The opening theme is meant to be sinister but energetic, as befits a villain whose goal is to bring color and happiness into the lives of a drab people:
The closing theme is meant to be similar to the opening theme but more mellow, because D.D. is now tired from the effort of playing through the game:
One of the things that I think works really well in both of these tracks is the drums. The main drums are from Reason's factory sound library, but are bit-crushed via a Scream4's "digital" method:
I also automate the 'Rate' parameter of the Scream4 in one of the tracks to get some interesting variation into the drums. It's certainly a rough sound, but it's one that I quite enjoyed using in an earlier track.
The parallel channel through the reverb and compressor is generally mixed very low, but it does provide some interesting texture. (The LFO is being used to sweep the resolution on the Scream4 in this channel, which adds more rhythm to the texture.)
In addition to the main drums, I use a lone synth kick, without any fancy effects, in parts of the track. This kick is used as an sidechain input on the lower pad, in order to make the pad duck the kick (and thus make the kick seem to hit harder):
I doubt Rainbow will be winning any awards for cutscene music design, but these snippets certainly seem better than letting the menu theme continue to play.
Today's chunk of work on Rktcr included the creation of four more challenge levels (two in the impossible category!); updates to path drawing; the inevitable bugfixes; and -- what I'm actually going to talk about in this post -- some updates to the soundtrack.
Rktcr's soundtrack is largely drawn from my (quite large) collection of Reason noodlings. (Many of which are entirely unsuitable for game music.)
Today, I set out to finding and/or build music for the challenge levels and the passages. I wanted contemplative tracks, uncomplicated, but with a bit of motion. I think I dug up a few good ones.
Here are two of them:
Elevatored Chimes is probably the mellowest piece of music I've ever created. It was sitting around mostly complete but unmixed, and seemed perfect for the beginner challenge levels in Rktcr. After a bit of EQ-ing to integrate the oboe and chimes (and knock some sharp corners off the strums and drums), the resulting track is a calming blur.
Evidence of Motion is a track that I started earlier this week as... well, something different than this. But I found a nice hats loop which pushed it into what it is now: calm, with a bit more motion than Elevatored Chimes. As such, I think it makes sense as the background for the intermediate challenge levels.
A few other tracks, which aren't uploaded to Soundcloud:
I unearthed and recut an old track called "Rktcr Background Mockup" (which, perhaps startlingly, wasn't in the game yet); I haven't decided if the resulting "Mockup" will get used for impossible challenge levels or for world levels without gems.
The other contender for the background of impossible challenge levels is a track called "Piano Figure" which I spent some quality time reworking and extending today. It has some a-freaking-mazing drums in it (bordering on too big for game music), and a cello top line which is perhaps a bit grating; but the track has a good heart. (It's also 6/4 time with drums on the 1's and 3.5's -- I love that syncopation energy.)
