Eino Keskitalo

I never looked at their live stuff before. Thanks for sharing the link! Interesting to hear their stuff with some prominent guitar. It was fun to watch with our toddler. I've always thought YMO must have been very influential on many Japanese VGM composers. --Eino

I've made some progress, not as much as I'd like to have, but I'm having good fun & am confident I can finish on time. I'll just have to squeeze harder towards the end. I should have an update to show in a few days! --Eino

About time this thread got bumped? Here's a brilliant, compact 2-4 deathmatch game, in a 90s retro/arcade style: Toxic Takedown. It's a simple run-and-shoot kind of an affair, but the controls are tight, the (only) level is well designed and the point-collecting system has a nice twist. You don't get a point just by killing your opponent, you need to catch a bouncing star the death spawns. I often fall into acid while trying (and the other guy collects their own star). You do need a friend at hand to play on the same computer, but then again that's about the best kind of gaming. --Eino

Bumpty bump.

Many thanks for the mod review! I'll digest it and return to work on the piece once I'll handle in my Gunstar Heroes mix. I should've provided a source breakdown, it's one of those cases where I thought it's all obvious, but if I'd thought twice it would've been obvious it wasn't obvious at all. For instance, the title theme lead is there (in the first minute), but it's transposed from the original! And. indeed, the sources are likely to be unfamiliar to almost everyone. Anyway, I'll get back to this. --Eino

Hehe, sounds like what you have so far isn't quite what you aspire to, but it works for me quite well. I like the simple heart-beat. One thought I had was that if you added a "definite" lead/solo instrument to the last part, with some sort of a clear "melodic statement" for it to play, (plus perhaps a short coda at the end), it could work as a complete structure. Just some scattered thoughts from me! --Eino

Congratulations! --Eino

Cool (ouch) start, the wintery feel comes across really well. I like the subtle artificial feel you've achieved with the mixing choices, compared to "natural" orchestral sound. The feel is very light. I feel the sound/instrumentation holds together and keeps interest. I'm eager to hear what comes next! It sounds natural that the next section would be heavier. Going electronic/orchestral hybrid might well work! --Eino

I don't know if it's really a hard part, but after getting the arrangement down, and stating to actually mix the thing, polishing all the wrinkles so it starts to actually sound good instead of just me thinking it's fine, that seems to take hours and hours and hours for me. I can't believe people whip up tracks that are ready to go in just a couple of hours. I used to have no sense of structure, flow, transitions etc. I'm not sure I do now, but at least I realize you can't just slap two parts together and think it's fine.. or completely change into different style and practically a different song if you run out of ideas/skill how to progress what you have. Well, it CAN work, but I apparently used to think it would always work. Man, my old pieces are so bad. I was reminded of that by what Nutritious said, and I'm currently working on that exactly on my Gunstar Heroes track.. this is a Gunstar Heroes project mixers support group gathering.. turning the ideas into an actual structure. It's kind of hard, but mostly it's just lots of work. I feel that's different from actually hard. What's the hardest for me is that I'm trying to play lots of guitar on the track. Any live recoding I try to do, I have such a sense of ineptitude that it's really clouding my judgement. That's hard and I should just get over it, just work it, but I need to get past of everything sounding shit to me. Most of it does, but I'm sure there's that one take that's actually good, or at least good enough, and I don't want to miss it just because I get depressed. And the actual hard part is not having the time I wanted to make music. --Eino

Cool to see this happening again. --Eino

Happy birthday chimpazilla! ..I feel sorry for Kong in the cake.. --Eino

Didn't find the time to enter this round.. happy to see many entries though! And I did get work done on my Gunstar Heroes track, plus I finished my (& Tuberz's) Turtles project track so that's good. (: I'll try to find a moment to listen & vote, looking forward to that. --Eino

So good to see the first post updated, thanks Jaka! My UNATCO remix came back from the panel with some really good feedback. I've already worked on it a bit, and once I feel got a decent update done I'll update my WIP thread. Gogogo! --Eino

Sounds like Eye of the Beholder games, or Dungeon Master? --Eino

Well, personally I thought FFXII had a pretty good soundtrack, and this is indeed a really good piece. Hnngh, I wonder if I could squeeze together some time for doing this. Not before I update my Gunstar Heroes project track.. that's extra motivation then --Eino

This sounds like a cool project. The original doesn't run well on my Linux laptop so that's one reason for me to keep an eye out on this, so I'll be following you on Github. Also the original's music is good stuff! I can't commit to do music at this stage, but I will play the game! Good luck! --Eino

Got to this finally. Really really nice work combining the sources. I enjoyed the slowdown/changeup/source change thing 1/3 in. The atmosphere in the slowed down bit is deliciously desolate. The energetic parts are pretty powerful and driving, and work really well, and the sound is good there. Some of the parts felt a bit underdeveloped/-detailed: the very beginning up to 0:11 and 01:20-01:42 of the slower section I just complimented. With both of these parts I was thinking that the bass instrument sounded kind of simplistic, especially when it goes up. I think the problem is that I perceive that the bass is carrying these sections, but the sound in itself doesn't seem interesting enough. There's also a note in the bass line in the slow section - 01:41 and 02:03 - that sounds really off-key to me. The change-up at 02:35 was a bit surprising, it could have been set up or foreshadowed. In itself as a part it's very good, and the part that begins at 02:58 follows very logically from the 02:35-> part and the writing that precedes it. I feel a bit like if the part before 02:35 had been longer, it would've followed more naturally. Anyway, apart from the off-key bass note those are pretty minor nitpicks for me. Good stuff! --Eino

Some lead loudness was the only thing that made this feel not a 100% polished piece for me. Solid, groovy, lushy, lots of detail in there. Nice nice work. --Eino

Good work on addressing the issues! When I listened to this earlier today I thought the piece was just really, really together. All the polish you've put to the piece has paid off. It's still the same piece as a couple of iterations ago, where I was already enjoying it, but it works so much better now. I'm particularly impressed how you made the stiff percussion work - it's still stiff, but now it sounds right. And that piano, it sounds like it's the piano sound I've used myself ten, fifteen years ago in crappy tracker modules I made, where it sounds really cheap, it's still the same piano sound but now you've made it work, I think the sound really works for the song. --Eino

I got a comment about how static the bass is in the beginning, and I tried to address it by EQ:ing it down a bit more early on so it's not as prominent on bass-heavy systems. Let me know if it sounds strange. here --Eino

Bumpupdate, some additional bass filtering. Tried to make the long bass notes less intense. Final candidate 2 here --Eino

Happy birthday to DusK! --Eino

Happy to see this edging towards conclusion.. looking forward to the finished album as always! --Eino

I'd never thought of that myself. I tweaked the overall middle EQ a bit and it seems it balanced the mixing quite amazingly. Thank you! Apart from re-renaming the piece, I've given it round of polish, most notably the stereo image, and I think I'm finished. Which probably means it needs a tweak or two, but a mod review should help spotting those. Here we go! Kningjan Swordstyle final candidate 1 --Eino