Tuesday, December 14, 2010

A big release

This past weekend I released some more new music onto YouTube. You can watch them here and here.

The first song is a remix of a fairly simple tune from SNES RPG 'Chrono Trigger'- the Derelict Factory. At that stage in the game you enter into a factory in the future which has basically run wild.

The remix module has the most technically advanced special effects that I have done thus far. The bass is run through a pair of 'thruzero' (phase shift) effects set to the absolute left and right pan positions. I found this effect by accident: when the phase amount and duration are set very small, it makes an effect which sounds like a combination of stereo-phasing and vibrato. The second advanced effect is the strings, which use a fixed rising frequency line combined with fluctuating the filter quantity to make the "fluttery" sort of sound. I will release the SKM file for this module shortly so you can download it.

I'm fairly certain that most people are going to find Outer Perspective boring- it isn't dance or party music, it doesn't even have any drums, and its fairly long. What it does do, however, is take you on a trip somewhere...out there. Its the sort of music that gets people like me excited and puts everyone else to sleep. About half my current collection of music from other artists also falls into this category (such as Optical Image, Ian Boddy, and Craig Padilla).

Outer Perspective is a fairly special module in that:
-It is the first module that I discovered instrument filters. These things are amazing built-in tools that really let you shape a sound in all sorts of interesting ways.
-It is the longest composition I have ever written (spanning 20 minutes total play time).
-It was edited, little by little, over a period of several years to become what it is. I have 5 backup copies of the module taken throughout its development life-cycle.

Everything I did after this song (which is SA260) is based on things that I learned in it- it really changed the way I compose, and I think shows what sort of features SkaleTracker added over previous generation trackers. If I do end up releasing a CD, Outer Perspective would probably be the title track of it.