$12256 / $11500
I just thought I'd post an introduction.
My name's Thor, I'm 32 and I'm a computer programmer who does a bit of type design on DaFont, microstock illustration on shutterstock and istock and now I'm trying to be more productive with music.
In my teenage years I played some drums, melodic percussion and piano. I've used Fruity Loops on and off for about 15-16 years or so, but haven't made much that I like.
This is why making game music seems like a great place to start, since it provides a context and something concrete to work towards.
I'm going to post some sketches and melodic snippets as well, in the hopes that they might be useful for someone.
My website is here, which is where I post about anything I've made or dug up from my old hard drives.
I ended up on this site thanks to the Udemy game development tutorials for the Unity game engine, which made me enroll to a couple of courses on video game music
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Welcome!
I hope you find OGA a fun and generous community to be part of, I know I do.
Ok, now that I'm at a keyboard, let me add my one bit of advice for anyone coming to video game music from elsewhere: cut to the chase!
Long 10-30 seconds build ups work great for other music forms, but in the video game world you've typically got about 0-5 seconds for the main melody to kick in, with a heavy preference on 0.
This is especialy true for title themes, most gamers try to get out of title menus as quickly as possible, so if you want to them to hear any of your hard made music you've got to get it started as quickly as possible.
There's a little more room to play around with in-game music, but the same general idea holds. Picture a 'Village theme' song that plays in the background when a player enters a town in a fantasy RPG. The song needs to set the tone and pace for the player to make feel like they are walking around an medevial village. It can't take 30 or even 10 seconds to do this, the player needs to feel transported to the village pretty much from the moment the scene opens. A player will probably spend longer in the village then a title menu, so there's a little more room to play around before getting to the meat of the song, but not too much.
Not a comment on any of the tracks you've made specifcally, just a general pointer I like to hand out.
anyway, looks like you are off to a good start with both the games and game music. Good luck and happy travels! :)
Very little of the stuff I released have long buildups. I purposefully make short works and melodic sketches since I've heard that game music usually ranges between 30 seconds to 2 minutes.
It's also great for me to work that way since I find the best way to be productive is to make a lot of simple and short work instead of being ambitious about a single piece.
I'm also thinking about making some 1-4 bar stabs and cadences as "sound effects". By the way, what do you call those things, you know, those short musical themes/motifs that might show up at certain events in the game, such as when Link opens a treasure chest or Mario finishes a level? A quick search says "dynamic music", but that sounds more like a general term for the style of music and not the theme itself.
I call them 'fanfares' but I'm not sure where I got that term so it may or may not be a real one. :)