Submissions by Arcana tagged chiptune

Hang on to rays of light.


May 14, 16:15 - 17:35.

My main is to crank out a melodic EDM song in an hour.

Okay, it was more melodic than EDM, but I guess it fulfills the purpose. I am thinking that the part with the beats isn't quite as impactful as I want it to be, probably due to the fact that the kick is a bit too mechanical. Maybe more noise would have been good for it.

Total time: 1h 20m (the exact time for a One Hour Compo! It's almost like I know the exact time.)

I worked with a theme: Space Pirates. On earth, there was ice. In spaceā€¦ there is still ice.


Production notes: I worked pretty quickly. The song's not too long and I reused a number of melodies and kept them pretty simple. I wanted to get some amount of chippiness in the tune but not too much.

The song is made with predominantly hardware and some software effects. I am really happy with the sounds the Phenol can make - it forms the background drone and really helped to fill out the track. The rest of the track was made with a Nord Lead 2x and MASCHINE druns. Effects are mostly Valhalla Shimmer and some amount of Neutron, but there's also a few others here and there.


Sunday, April 2, 12:00 - 12:15. Again, I am thinking of Zelda: Breath of the Wild so I'm here to make a quick and interesting song in a minimal amount of time!

It's actually interesting to see how much "quality" I can crank out in a tiny span of time.

I've received a theme from someone: Space Pirates. So let's make it so.

Setup and making patches - didn't get enough time to really get started.

13:15 - 15:25. Compose, sound design, mix. Boom.

Total time: 2h 10m

In the open world, there's gold at the end of the rainbow.


Track notes: I kind of didn't try hard enough. I ran a bunch of errands earlier in the day and kind of came home late-ish. I did aim for two things in this track:

1. A new key. Arpeggios. Stuff like that. The composition isn't anything amazing but new keys take a bit to learn.

2. Compose more chiptune and make sure that it sounds like passable pleasant chiptune music that doesn't have anything fundamentally wrong with the timbre.

A few habits I'm picking up: Changing drum timbres. Thanks onezero!

Things I didn't spend a lot of time on: Mixing. I think it's reasonably balanced but I applied very little EQ and compression.

Also, as cool as analog synths are, they fall out of tune and rar I keep on having to fix things. Maybe that's not a bad thing because my ear's starting to get trained finally.

Hope I achieved those goals and that you enjoy this!


Sun, March 19. 11:30 - 11:50. I'd like to work on making arpeggios and other backing elements, chiptune style this week.

I also plan to work on the key of F major/D minor to get more used to different keys. I currently do a lot of C, G, and E and adding another key will help diversify my sound.

It also reminds me that I should work on playing scales as a regular exercise.

13:00 - 13:20.

16:25 - 17:45. Not really my best work - I kind of half-assed the mixing. It was fun though.

Total time: 2h

A day of asteroid mining.


This is kind of not in line with the rules since I continued a track that I started last week, but it's really rare that I'll take a track and actually spend a good deal of time on it so I wanted to actually post it and be happy and not worry about composing something else for this week on the cheap on Sunday. (I'll probably start something - I want to do a remix).

I did a song over six years ago. The beginning sucked but it had a catchy melody close to the end that I never finished.

http://compo.thasauce.net/rounds/view/OHC098

I've always wanted to redo the song. Now I have a chance.

The song was kind of a goofy song based on space asteroid drilling. The theme still fits (space is awesome) and I've also been playing FTL so this totally jives.

===

Mon. Mar 6 21:40 - 23:00.

In a massive WeeklyBeats faux pas, I'm continuing a song that I started last week, but hey, it's WeeklyMusic, not WeeklyBeats, and I'd like to do things that'll help me enhance my music quality. I rarely revisit songs, so it's a good opportunity to really build the ideas up.

To work on: smoothing transitions and cleaning up some of the chops and production in the fast part. There are too many themes going on in the piece and it doesn't tie together, so I need to make it more coherent.

Tue. Mar 7 21:30 - 23:30. Fixing melodies and some mixing and bad timres. More transition smoothing needed.

What I think is cool: I still like the old melody, but it takes such a back seat. I like the punchiness when the kick drums come in in the fast part.

Spent 30 minutes just mixing also. I don't think I've spent this much time with a track in years. Probably will give this the multiple-monitors-and-headphones treatment if I have time this week.

Wed. March 8 22:20 - 22:40. Going to do a few touch-ups since I did something else tonight instead of music.

* Make the kick punchier in the middle

* Repeat the melody in the A part

* Make the ending more melodic

Thurs. March 9 20:00 - 20:40. Trying to put in some more finishing touches on parts of the melody that I don't like (I can't believe that a melody can cause so many changes) and mixing/production.

Fri. March 10, 20:30ish - 21:40. Finishing touches - lowering volume of kicks, bouncing hardware synth parts, touching volume levels, etc. I think this is done.

This week: 5h 30m

Total for this track: 10h 20m