Calum

hey everyone! I just released a super chill, nintendo-style, jazz, feel-good, puzzle game soundtrack. 〜◦CLICK◦HERE◦CLICK HERE◦CLICK◦HERE◦〜 the whole OST is an exercise in re-harmonisation of one main theme (set out in the titles first track). I had a hellova lotta fun making it so I hope people enjoy it! There's a killer (free) remix by OCRemixer rukunetsu on there as well! p.s. the game's got some mindblogglin puzzles! so feel free to check it out! I would love to hear feedback. thanks guys! Calum

I think it is all about what other stuff you have and what you use the most. I bought CCC and my impressions are: Symphonic Orchestra - amazing, I use this all the time, in everything. It is pretty wet buuut I can get over that. Symphonic Choirs - I was shocked that these really weren't all that useful. Wordbuilder is nice but way too much effort to get anything good going. I sometimes use the solo voices but never really the whole choir as it doesn't really sound outstanding to me.... also, I don't really use choirs all that much. Gypsy - Contrary to Plasuma, this is my least favourite. I was really excited about it at first but then I found it to be a bit disappointing. Everything that's there is easily replaceable live or by another sample library - I've used one of the guitars a little but there's a chord django guitar which is a bit annoying. Accordions/Trombone/Violin weren't as good as something you could find elsewhere. Guitars, I suppose I assumed this is probably the most commonly recorded instrument (after voice I suppose) but it depends what you're after really. Ra - This is quite good. I'm not a huge fan of how the patches are described and laid out - hard to know what you're getting with some of it buuuut there's a lot of diverse stuff here for your world music needs - I use that dijeridoo quite a lot! Silk - Again, it's good. I've had a lot of use for the japanese instruments. There's a quite nice string section in there as well which I've used a lot. There's a lot of stuff which goes unused here though I suppose. Pianos - great sound but takes forever to load. It's good though! I think a lot of this is just dependant on what you'll find you're likely to use most. For me gypsy was my least useful but that's clearly not the case for everyone. :~)

SOUNDCLOUD a collaboration between myself and mus.hiba from the 9-bit blizzard winter compilation. free download, don't you know!

Source is not terrible : ) Source is brilliant! I think the drums from the toad vst are a little misleading as you're using the coin sound from mario and the dashy sound from sonic and something else. Try using some FFTA sfx if there are any notable ones. In terms of the sounds - you have bass and melody and drums throughout the whole thing (and some strange choir pad only at the start). I'd think about trying to thicken things out with more chordal parts and layering more stuff. If you wanted to go for a purist chipsound then use purist chip sounds (as your bass is more overpowering and your lead as too chorusy for chips) and even then you would have another channel available. Everything sounds a little improvised and meandering - no strong melodic or harmonic content. The start of the main theme is strong (0:38) but then it kinda just wanders around. Be aware of making your bass go a little too low where it jus starts to sound a bit farty. I think, in order to solve the issues i'm having with the remix, you need a more firm idea of the harmony you're using since the bass notes often feel a little random, then add more parts in general as it's all a bit empty, change the drums to something that's not sampling sonic or mario. Alternately, this is a pretty difficult source so if you're unsatisfied by what you're doing there's no shaming in choosing something else to do (especially since this isn't really a Cid theme anyway). sorry I was a little harsh. I'm sleepy and mean : )

https://soundcloud.com/calumbowen/every-day-feat remix from this OST http://jmickle.bandcamp.com/album/probability-zero i had a lot of fun making this. I like singin' duets with robot girls.

Zack & I recently collabed on a big romp through a bunch of VGM genres in a huge crazy piece of everything. stream/download it here

just listened "The Windmill Song" from Klonoa: Door To Phantomile! It has a really similar interplay between 5/8 and 6/8! Never heard of klonoa before, it has some pretty chill music. Thanks for the comment : )

ANOTHER ONE: https://soundcloud.com/calumbowen/super-ubi-land-frost-fandango SNOW LEVEL THEME: 5/4, 808 pitch-bendy fills, brass bands, miraculously NO SLEIGH BELLS! ENJOY : )

Thanks man. I was wrestling with the dry/wetness of the prod (with lots of advice from Ectogemia!) so it's good to hear that you think the balance is good on that front. Ah yeah, that was using some synth on logic called klopfgeist but it's just super low decay/sustain on some nice pure waveform (maybe my one was sine... don't know really) with some big reverb and little delay and you'll get it. (Someone correct me if my advice on that front is wrong). First time I've heard both of the tracks you referenced but you're totally right!! These are cool. Thanks!

i love how you constantly change time sig with this. I could imagine this being a pretty intense boss battle track. Good orchestral sequencing as well. Sounds nice. String melody could be a bit more prominent - sounds like it's just one legato patch, maybe vary the type of patch to get a more complete sounding melody - the attack is too slow for some of the quick changes in note, if you get what i mean? (for the first half I'm talking about) This is a neat track though! Is it for anything in particular?

Just working on a new track for a game called Escalated Strange. As is kinda similar to the art style, I'm going for a sort of glitched up beautiful sound that kinda has a traditional japanese orchestral sound as well (think Okami): http://soundcloud.com/calumbowen/lonely-fountain Here's the Devlog on TIGSource if anyone's interested: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=21232.0

I don't want to sound annoying or sarcastic or mean BUT I feel like this is, in fact, very very uncatchy! Mostly to do with the fact that the timing is all over the place. But also the fact that there's very very little repetition and the piece seems to be a kinda stream-of-consciousness explosion of disparate rhythms and melodies. I think, if you want to write something catchy you need to use more repetition - be that a set of notes, a short rhythmic phrase, whatever. (think about how much rhythm repetition there is in beethoven's fifth symphony and how bloody catchy it is because of it! Literally dum dum dum duuuum - that rhythm is repeated to a ridiculous degree) The notes change but they also keep the shape of the melody. that's another thing - keeping the shape of a melody with slight variation. Listen to various mario themes and see what parts are repeated (notes-wise and rhythms-wise) and base your piece on that! I hope you don't see this as a negative comment but more a realistic and encouraging one. I get the exciting feeling and mario-esque instrumentation but catchy is certainly not the word i'd use because it in fact so difficult to catch - i'd challenge anyone to listen to this a few times and then hum along to it.

http://soundcloud.com/calumbowen/what-im-working-on-7-11-2012 it is what it says. : )

Really amazing work Ruku! Digitally Strange World is one of my favourites! You keep true to your style but there's so much attention to detail and little touches within these tracks that it keeps everything real interesting. Keep it up man!

ahaha! Thanks for showing me that Dissidia!