The song for Amun, first song for the next CD, is done. I am indecisive about posting it publicly yet though.

So is this one, "Hork!" -- slapped together in 15 minutes including downloading the synths used and rendering to disk. It isn't going to win any prizes, heh :)

I have been trying a lot of synths, experimenting with various things, etc. Spending way too much time doing so, in which I should have been sleeping, washing dishes, grocery shopping, and putting the living room into some kind of order. That's me, practical to a T. :P

The beginnings of the song for Tayet are sort of there. I find myself doing glitchy quantized lo-fi beats, influenced by 8bitpeoples and the like -- both in Her song and in the experiments I've been doing.

I am giving a lot of thought to the balance between creative freedom, making music that I personally like, making accessible music likely to sell well, and keeping my focus where it has been. I get a bit self-conscious when I think about plugging the album in certain places -- like at the office for instance. People there might buy it just because they know me, and an album makes a great demo if I want to make a move toward doing game music again... but I don't want to start talking religion at work.

But leaving the "You sure are a freak!" anxiety out of the picture, there's still a balance to strike. I'm telling stories without words or pictures, using a lot of personal associations and in-jokes, going on instinct, and half the time not even realizing until afterwards how it fits. Sometimes there's a pressure to do something not because I think it would sound the best, but because it would make a stronger association to the subject in question. Other times I do something that sounds good and has little to do with the subject.

Anyway. Along with not knowing the musical direction I want to go in, I don't know what instruments I want to pick up next. Thus all that experimentation.

QuadraSID is the absolute latest in Commodore 64 technology, heh. It has some great purely electronic sounds -- check out their way cool demo songs -- but also many of the same wacky limitations that the chip from 1981 had. It has some really bizarre design decisions, most of which were in favor of emulation rather than power. A few extra features unavailable on the original SID would have really made it kick butt, but they didn't do it. (Why not include the emulated filters as well as stronger fatter ones, formant filters, etc.? Why not allow for detuning, other waveforms, distortion, quantization, etc.?) Also the interface doesn't look entirely like a synth. (Filter cutoff is an entry in a spreadsheet-like table, not a big knob or slider to tweak... what the hell?)

But despite its limits I made quite the infectious groove with the demo version this morning before the demo expired and didn't allow me to save, heh. And they're going to be releasing OctaSID sometime this year, with an upgrade option... whoot :)

I also have a love-hate thing going on with Rhino. It sounds great, it's an industrial death machine and an Ambient/New Age wonder and an 80's FM synth (it now reads DX7 SysEx files!!!) and an additive synth and... yeah, lots of stuff. But programming the thing is Way Hard... not having gone through the tutorials or read any documentation anyway. ;)

I'm thinking that deposit money we're supposed to be getting back soon may go entirely into music stuff and continue to hold off on the PS2... :)

Posted 10:53 AM CST [Link] [Archives] [Index]

Just wondering if you're possibly be making up for lost band classes in high school? Just joking. Keep it up cause I liked the other three you put up.

Heh.

I wound up buying Rhino after all. Rhino sounds like a $2500 hardware synth for $120; QuadraSID sounds like a $50 Commodore 64 for $60. Heh.

Speaking of. I just saw a TX81Z on sale at eBay for $35. Oh man. That box is pure concentrated 80's. ;)