Greetings!

I haven't uploaded a song in about a week or so like I intended to do, sadly. However, I just finished composing one and, now, I just have to mock it up! I'm also in the process of composing another short piece and will be uploading that one alongside the other piece, so two songs will be incoming soon!

Cheers,

Lloyde

PS A future blog post about the music I am composing for a game is incoming which will include some snippets and other info! ;)

After many, many years of inactivity here on NG, I have returned! I have learned many things over the years and experienced many things, etc. I've released a short music piece, Morning Rise, and plan to release more music on here as time permits. Gonna have a browse around and see how things are!

Hello!

Here we are, as promised. Two sneak-peak previews from the remaster of the Quick Quest Original Soundtrack! 

Title Theme [wip v0.1]

Game Over Theme [wip v0.1]

With the release of Quick Quest (which suffered the unfortunate event of the programmer cutting contact with us), I decided to touch up the soundtrack. I'll post some sneak-peeks once I make some more progress, so stay tuned! ;')

Argh! The heat! It's really hot. Then again that's to be expected since it's summer... but still! It's so unbearable. It just drains the energy from you. It's terrible. Winter is coming, they say. Tell it to hurry the hell up!

Phew! 

I've been pretty occupied lately. I'm working on music for a game, so I've put everything else on hold for now. That's why I haven't really released anything (Dark Descent was more me playing around with hardware than me actually trying to make something xD).

I think I may try to finish the two songs I have started and nearly completed for the Newgrounds Inspired Music Contest. I had planned on doing 3, but I've got to focus on my work! Since the two are closed to being finished, it shouldn't distract me too much. All I've got to do for one is sequence it in the DAW (I've gotten everything worked out in notation at the moment) and finish the other one up (it's already close to being finished sequenced). So, hopefully I can get that done before the deadline... which is in a few days. xD

So, what's the game I'm composing music for? Enki Adventures! Not sure what that is? Check out the devs page here (The Enkian). He has a few posts with some details and screenshots! While you're at it check out Land of Enki I (soundtrack here) and Land of Enki II (soundtrack here) which I also had the wonderful opportunity of composing the music for!

I'll leave it at that for now. 

Cheers!

Lloyde

So, I've made more progress with remastering the soundtrack to the Legend of Dragoon. In the previous news post, I stated that I already had a bit of a headstart a while ago. That was when I didn't have a decent pair of headphones. I had some cheap and horrible ear phones. Now I have some studio heaphones. I've had them for about a month now. Yes, it took me many, many years to finally buy a pair xD. Anyway, I've been going over some of the songs I transcribed and checking them for errors and boy am I glad I'm doing that. I'm so surprised at how many mistakes I made while transcribing some of the songs long ago. I suppose I shouldn't be considering the ear phones I was using and my skill at hearing during that time. I'm tellin' ya, high quality headphones really help out when doing musical work (composing, mixing, transcribing, etc.). Do yourself a favor: get a pair (if you're a musician, of course).

Moving on, so far I've gotten 9 (nine) songs transcribed and out of those nine, three are already in the oven (aka the digital audio workstation/DAW). I still don't know what all songs I will do, but I do have a good idea of them. I don't plan on doing all the songs... but I do want to try to do as many as I can. I think I'm going to post a little teaser of 3 or so songs in about a week or so. Don't take that as being written in stone though!

That's it for now. I'll post another update on my progress sometime in the future!

Greetings fellow humans! Recently I was playing around with the idea of remastering some songs from a favorite game of mine. I figured I'd go ahead with that plan. It's going to be a challenging task, but it's something I really want to do. The main challenges are:

1) Transcribing

I'm still fairly new to transcribing, so that makes it a bit of a challenge. Some things are hard to hear in some of the songs (that may not be entirely due to my skill level).

2) Arranging & Instrumentation

In one particular song it sounds like the acoustic guitar is going down to a D1 and the lowest string is generally tuned to E1. The way I handled it was just to use the D and octave above (D2). I suppose the guitar could be tuned to Dropped D...

 

In regards to the instrumentation, I'm not 100% sure what some of the instruments are. No doubt I can figure it out by asking someone or just finding something that sounds close to what I hear. That's another thing: I may not have access to all the instruments used. I don't think that will be a problem, though.

 

Something else that I'm unsure about is the synthesized and processed instruments. Some of the instruments used are synths. In some of the songs, they are a really important part to the overall song. I haven't decided whether I'm going to try to recreate the synth or use a combination of instruments that comes close to the sound or something like that. Or maybe just exclude the synthesized insturment altogether (which I probably won't do). I'm really a beginner when it comes to using synths, so recreating those sounds could be a real challenge. I'll have to think hard about what to do. What do you guys and gals think? It's sort of the same with the processed instruments. For example, there's a processed kick drum (it sounds like the highs and mids are removed) in the Prarie/Grassland theme (where you first go after getting out of Hellena Prison). I'm not sure if I should also process the kick drum or just have it unprocessed. I guess if I want to try to stay true to the originals, then I should process instruments as they are in the original music... provided I can figure out all of the processing used!

 

I honestly don't plan on doing too much in terms of arranging. I want to keep things as close to the original as possible when I can. I do, however, plan on doing an arrange album of sorts somewhere down the line ;). That's when I'll stray from originals a bit more, especially when it comes to the processed instruments and maybe the synthensized ones, too.

But yeah. I'm not sure how many songs I will do or which ones I will do. Okay, I do already have an idea of some of the songs I want to do xD But I don't want to make any promises! I'm already jumping the gun in revealing my plans! I need to think about how I want to release the tracks, also. I've got a few things to consider! I think I know how I am going to do it, though. I'll keep that a secret for now ;).

Let me know what you think about all of this!

"You are free to sever the chains of fate that bind you."

Greetings to all! Lloyde here, but I’m sure that’s obvious :P. I thought I’d take you on a behind-the-scenes on some of the music for the Land of Enki games (I & II). Part I will focus on the music from Land of Enki I and Part II will focus on the music from Land of Enki II (maybe there will be other parts focusing on music from both LoE I & II...we'll see!). I must admit that this is my first time doing something like this so it may not be the best, but I will try!

Let’s start with the track that sets things up: The Main Menu theme. This is a favorite of mine as well as the developer of the game, VoidForce. It’s got a jungle/tribal vibe to it which fits/represents the Land of Enki. The two elements that I feel really gives it those vibes are the ethnic shouts and the xylophone. Oh, and the bass and Bamblong (kind of like a bamboo marimba)! I guess that’s four things haha. Of course the other instruments help out in giving it the jungle/tribal feel, but I feel like those four help out the most. I make use of two specific instruments to… represent the “island”: Steel Drum & Vibraphone. When I hear a Steel Drum I think of a Caribbean island and the Vibraphone in the context of this piece makes me think of a general nice island (it’s because of the beautiful 7th chords being arpeggiated and sustained!). Hmm… at the end of the piece, a few measures before it loops, there’s a polyrhythm going on in the percussion. I love polyrhythms! I guess that’s all I have to say about this track. I’ll say this now and at the end: feel free to ask me any questions about any of the music and I’ll do my best to answer!

On to the next track, Forest Food Lands. Another one of my favorites. It’s such a very beautiful piece. The driving force in this piece is the Harp. Without it… well, it wouldn’t be what it is! It’s meant to be peaceful and calm. It’s the first place Kon arrives at upon arriving upon (haha words are troubling me today) the Land of Enki… well, besides the shore… anyway! Though there are monsters within the forest, they aren’t really all that harmful. They’re quite cute… except for when they are trying to kill you, but that’s fine. You get over that once you look at them again :-).  Continuing on, to express the peacefulness of the forest I sought out beautiful harmonies as well as a beautiful melody. I wanted to keep things simple, so the instrumentation is light. That’s about all I have to say about Forest Food Lands. I wish was able to better explain it! For the most part this track was one I had a feeling about and went from there. Now, moving on!

Here we are at the Overworld Theme. Ah, this has quite the nice sound to it, no? It has the sound of adventure in it! Primary representatives of that are the Snare Drum and Pizzicato Bass (that rhythm!). The primary providers of harmonic support are the woodwinds followed by the harp. I believe this is one of the first pieces where I modulated to chords from different keys. The descending modulating chord progression also plays a big part in creating that “Overworld” feel.

Let’s take it to the Temple of Nature! This track overall has an ancient and tribal vibe to it. Everything about it gives that feeling. The percussion, the pan flute, the harmony, and the scale used. The scale used is Phrygian Major/Arabic (quite a few different ways to call this scale. The scale degrees are 1, b2, nat3, 4, 5, b6, b7). It’s basically the Phrygian scale with a natural third degree instead of a flat one. It has a Middle Eastern sound when played alone and also depending on the context it is used in. In context of this song, it takes on a more ancient and tribal quality (further enhanced by the breathy timbre of the pan flute and flute). Our friend the Bamblong makes a return in this song. An interesting thing about this song is that it moves away from the orchestral-like construction that most of the other songs have. The tracks of Land of Enki II do this even more so, but more on that later ;-). That’s all I can think of mentioning at the moment.

Alright, that’s all for now. I hope that someone is able to find this either entertaining or helpful, perhaps both! I know it probably could have been a lot better. There’s more to come, so there’s time to improve :-). My adventures in composing are far from over! If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask me. I can probably answer those better than I can thinking of random stuff to address! Also, feel free to ask questions or even make comments about the tracks I didn’t mention here. Part II will focus on the music from Land of Enki II. Stay tuned for that!

Cheers,

Lloyde Sorrow

The time is here! The soundtrack for Land of Enki II is out! I know the soundtrack for Land of Enki I was just recently released. It was due for a release a long time ago, but I've already went into that on the other post. 

Anyway, I really had fun composing the music for Land of Enki II. There are some really nice themes. My personal favorite is Timpani Village (Village of the Drumdum's on the OST). You can check out and download the soundtrack here. Once again, thank you for your support!

Enjoy!

Land of Enki I - Game | OST
Land of Enki II - Game | OST