Back to back jams?#
There is still 1 day left of the OST Composing Jam: Overtime Jam, but this jam started today and I was really eager to finally write something really upbeat and energetic after spending the last month writing nothing else than moody and ambient stuff while really trying to avoid having them be too in your face…
Luckily for me the theme for this jam turned out to be Mechs, Cyborgs, and Artificial Intelligence so I can just use Generative AI to do the track for me right?? just kidding of course 😂
The sci-fi theme and especially the Mechs part of it really brought to mind the Gundam series to me, so I got an idea of game being some sort of arcadey action game where you pilot mecha units in battle.
With the Gundam series in my mind from the theme I really felt like using some rompler sounds would be way for this sort of a retro flavoured game, also probably slightly inspired by the music of Gundam Wing though that has actual live recorded orchestral arrangements and other stuff as well, so should I do a rompler sound + sample orchestra sounds combo?? Will have to see how things feel as I start coming up with tracks i guess…
Initial First Idea#
With the Gundam Wing inspiration in mind I loaded up a roland rompler piano sound and started coming up with stuff, eventually landing on some simple chordal staccato stabs over a constant root pedal bass and a distorted electric guitar doubling that which worked well to get that action feeling.
Later I added a pluck synth to play a constant 8th note sequence on the latter half of it, and then after the thing started feeling a bit boring with the constant pedal I came up with a second section that has more movement and melodical stuff.
For the newer section I came up with the progression of
Dmin - Gmaj - Dmaj (Ebmaj7) - Dmin - Cmaj - Dmaj
with (Ebmaj7) as a passing chord, and then after that it goes
Cm7 - Ebm/B - Dbm/Ab - Ebmaj/Bb
to lead to the short section that then loops back to the beginning.
After I added some melodies to the part using a synth lead and a alto sax + put some little bell figures at parts of the track, the whole thing was sounding pretty OK for now and I decided to stop for the day as I had been working on it for a few hours now.. Will see later how the track feels and work on it more if it feels the right sound direction to go for.
Audio#
First Idea Cont.#
Worked a bit more the initial idea the next day and extended the track by having the whole thing repeat again, but a Electric playes the lead on the repeat of the verse this time with the chorus still the same with the guitar added to harmonize the alongside the alto saxophone.
After that comes a new section with the hammond organ turning on the overdrive effect and taking the lead, which then leads to the last repeat of the chorus that loops back to the start.
Feels pretty OK leghtwise now at almost 3 minutes long, but maybe a bit too repetive with the 2 repeating sections with small changes.. just having the 1 organ bridge part before the final chorus might be a bit boring, but for now this will do and I will probably try to come up with other track ideas, possibly actually trying to do some of the challenges that are required instead of just jamming 😄
Throwing Paint#
Tried coming up with other track ideas, but the 2 two I got felt a bit ehh to me, with one just a boring sus2 chord based tension thing that felt too similar to a boss track I did for the Impressions: OST #3 jam, and the other feels too dance music/euro dance to fit with the first tracks more rock feel…
Probably just going to have to try other things until something good comes up from those…
And so for the first “other things” test, I loaded up my trusty old Hollywood Orchestra sounds and started a new more orchestral approach to things from the retro one before.
Sketching ideas on the piano I came up with a pretty simplistic melodic idea that had an anthemic feel to it for me, so I started to arrange that further and ended up with a sort of military march kinda of feel because I used the brass section as the core of the arrangement and then ended up adding a snare drum and other percussion to amp the military march feel even more.
Not even a minute long thing yet, but the basic idea I feel could work. Maybe reworking the melody to be as good as I can get it and using this track as the main theme, then making some combat/action, boss fight and ambiance tracks for a mecha game like before but a more modern one.
At least for now this will be the direction I’m going, but if I suddenly start getting inspiration for the earlier style/tracks, then I’ll switch to working on those.
Audio#
Déjà vu?#
Listening to the anthem idea after a break it really felt the way to go, but after having to deal with the performance hits and other wonkyness that coma with using windows plugins via WINE/Yabridge in the last Overtime jam, I once again decided that I just couldn’t deal with all the little annoyances that using unsupported plugins in Linux brings with it and so with my tail tucked between my legs I went back to to windows for music production…
I think this was my third time in trying to make it possible to work with all of my Non-Linux Native plugins/libraries without issues, and I did achieve that sort-of, but there is still the performance overhead that using compability layers brings with it and some license managers do not work properly or only partially. So like the reason has probably been on all the other times, I want to use the stuff I already know/own and do so without having deal with minor quirks and glitches that compability layers bring with them…
So long story short, I re-installed windows on a drive and specifically Windows 10 LTSC version instead of Windows 11 since I really disliked how sluggish 11 felt compared to 10 and the LTSC version of Windows 10 will receive updates till 2032.
By then hopefully Linux gets native support from pro-audio companies like EastWest, Native Instruments or even better Steinberg bringing Cubase to linux 🤩
Which I know is just wishful thinking and probably will never happed due to the costs assosiated with supporting another platform, but hey, never lose hope?
After installing/setting up my DAW and my plugins/sample libraries, I was pretty much set to go but I only tested things worked and closed my system intending to start the next day.
Since I was back on Windows I returned to using Cubase and after some months of learning/using Reaper, using Cubase again felt so smooth conmpared to how slow I felt using Reaper even after 4 months of regular usage…
But not everything ended up being that smooth after all…
I had installed all my music stuff on the new system and made sure everything worked, the DAW, ILOK licences, Kontakt, EW Play and so on.
But after I shutdown my system that day, Windows installed the first batch of updates after the initial install and somehow, I don’t know how, but my machine ID or something changed because of the updates and ILOK decided that I was on a new machine, leading to my Hollywood Orchestra and other licenses to be stuck on the now lost machine and I have to request the different companies to release those licenses back.
This is the exact issue that I’ve encountered twice on Linux because of WINE updates making ILOK think I’m on a different machine and it’s one of the reason I decided to switch back to Windows again since I got tired of deactivating all my licenses of the machine if I updated/changed anything WINE related…
But now this means I have to wait for EastWest customer support to release my licenses off the old machine ID before I can actually start continuin the orchestral stuff I was intending to do, since most of my orchestral sounds are from the Hollywood Orchestra package as that is my main orchestra soundset.
Maybe I should finally just cave in and buy the damm ILOK USB key to store the licenses in that just to avoid these shenanigans happening again…
While waiting#
Because I can’t use my Hollywood Orchestra sounds yet, I decided to start building my electronic sound palette since I’m intending to do something in the vein of modern hybrid orhestral stuff.
With a more electronic music oriented production in mind, I took a 4 bar percussion groove and threw a stock Cubase FX Modulator plugin preset on it that added a sequenced resonant filter and other effects on top of it to make it feel more cool
On top of that I put choirs doing simple Hah staccato hits to add some groove accents, a shimmery bell like synth sound playing a fast repeating downward sequence, synth bass playing a consistent repeating pedal tone and a synth pluck playing a reinterpretation of the earlir anthem melody, but not fully yet.
After the initial softer part a new section comes with the choirs singing the full melody, with a new drum sequence added on top of the filtered one alongside some typical EPIC taiko’s.
The jump between the two parts is a bit jarring as it is now, but when I get my Hollywood Orchestra sounds I can start adding strings and other stuff in the arrangement to make things more smooth.
After the full melody gets sung by the choirs the final section comes with the brass section taking the lead and playing the melody again with some changes and contrasting parts.
Since I don’t have my usual main orchestral sounds usable yet, I remembered I had some orchestral brass sound freebies from Performance Samples that I could use. The freebies are patches from their Angry Brass libraries and are really FFF played samples, so they are really harsh, loud and brassy which I feel is a bit too over the top for this track, but they will do now for as placeholders.
Pretty rough around the edges, but for a main theme/intro tune I think this will end up working well after it’s finished/polished.
Hopefully EastWest doesn’t take a week to respond to my license reset request like last time 🤞
Audio#
First action track#
The anthem track felt it was at an OK spot for now, so I decided to start another track.
Starting this one I didn’t really have any in-depth image what the new track is meant for, but just had an overall feeling of some form of action gameplay going on during it, as the fictional game setting is still just some form of a action oriented mecha game and I haven’t really thought about the nitty gritty detailfs of what the actual gameplay would be like.
Just noodling for ideas on the piano, I got a simple rhythmic Ta-Taa figure that I liked a lot and started to come up with material using that figure as the base.
For instrumentation I pretty much used what I had used for the main theme tune and then added some other sounds when I felt the track needed more, like the mangled solo singer at 0:15 in the first draft posted below.
The mangled singer I recorded myself singing the melodic line and then added some pitch/formant shifting and distortion to it to make it feel more robotic and i guess sci/fi 😄
For the lead instruments it’s pretty much the same as the main theme, choirs and then the big FFFF trailer brass sounds from the performance samples Angry Brass freebies I’m using as placeholders until my ILOK license resets go through, although I’m starting to fear that if I end making too many tracks using those sounds before I get access back to my Hollywood Brass sounds I might have trouble replicating the same really brassy powerful tone that these have… 😰
Percussion/synth sounds are pretty much the same as before and I even reused the little aux. percussion I used in the main theme here too (call me lazy, but it felt fitting here 😄)
While working on this first draft of the idea I hadn’t realised that I’d subconsiously took the Ta-Taa figure from my anthem track which had used that at parts of it and only realised it after making this first draft 😅
Now since the whole basis for this action track is just a part of the anthem/main theme, I’m having some doubts about whether they will end up sounding too samey and feel a bit lazy and boring when listened back to back…
But since I like the track itself from how the first draft feels, I’m just going to run with it + I’m trying to limit my inner critic more this year and not scrap ideas continuously because of these sort of what if? feelings.. 😉
Initially feelings are good about this one and will continue it more later.
Audio#
New sounds/section#
Listening back to the track, it felt like it needed a fuller arrangement.
I had been putting off using the string section before I can use the Hollywood Strings sounds, but I got tired of waiting for an answer to my license reset request to EastWest support and loaded up my other string library Anthology Strings and decided to use it as placeholder sounds for now..
I still liked the mangled singing thing I did for the first draft and from that I got the idea of adding a chanting chorus by recording myself multiple times and then mangling those in the same way as the solo singer one.
I didn’t really have any good ideas for what the chanters would chant and felt that just doing simple Ahh Ahh Ahh stuff would feel lame, but in the end just went with what first came mind to me and that ended up with recording the line STAND AND FIGHT! repeated ad-nauseum in multiple takes at different sides and distances from the microphone in a very basic march like rhytm with a word on every beat.
When trying to come up with a new section I was thiking of changing to a new lead instrument since at this point everything was the same as in the previous main theme track which is a bit boring.
These sort of Scifi/AI themes always bring to mind the Blade Runner soundtrack by Vangelis for me, so since Vangelis used the Japanese zither instrument Koto in that I decided to use a japanese instrument too 😄
I chose to use a Shamisen since I’ve always liked the sound of it after first hearing it when I stumbled across the music of Shamisen duo Yoshida Brothers.
Might even try to make this whole project a big fusion thing by using different instruments from around the world in tracks since I’ve collected sample libraries of those because I like all sorts of folk music and instruments.
But for now just using the Shamisen for this, taking inspiration from Yoshida Brothers in that I made the part feature two Shamisen players playing together like their tracks do.
After adding all of this to the arrangement it felt really nice and full, but now the whole thing might’ve ended up a bit too full and borders on being too busy and muddy + the shamisen parts will probably need more tweaking to make the lines feel clearer and less all over the place 😅
Probably will need to add a section or 2 more after the shamisen part and then it will be long enough, but if I don’t get any ideas for those might just start a new track, maybe the required challenge one now?
Audio#
Challenge track time?#
Decided to start making the challenge track next and from looking at all the challenges to choose from, the Multi-Phase Boss Fight seemed to fit the stort of arcadey action game I’ve been making these for.
The Challenge part for the boss fight is to only use un-even time signatures, so I started out by just coming up with little sequences and rhytmic stuff in different time signatures, put that stuff on the bass/low instruments and then came up with some simple percussion grooves to go alongside those.
After coming up with a few of those, I then moving them around and testing how the different parts felt playing after each other, and then shortened the parts when needed and got a start for the boss track from combining them.
Of course since this is just different ideas slapped together back to back, it has that sort of feeling I like to call bad prog music where it feels like LOOK AT MY DIFFERENT TIME SIGNATURES DUDE!!! without much thought to the actual flow of the music, but hopefully when I come up with the actual lead/melodic lines it will flow better…
For a start it will do for now, and I do like the initial feel of it.
License issue resolved#
Finally got all of my ILOK license requests approved and now I can actully use my Hollywood Orchestra sound package for the jam.
I swapped the placeholder brass and string sounds for the proper ones and the change was not as big of an issue I was fearing it to be, and mostly needed to tweak the dynamics a bit.
Now I could work more on the original Anthem Track, but I kind of made a newer version of it while waiting for the ILOK issue to get fixed + having two versions of pretty much the same thing might be a bit boring.
Will have to see, but probably just keeping the newer version and scrapping the original one, or maybe turning that to a ending/credits track?
Procrastination#
Haven’t really worked on the jam almost a week now, so I decided to try and break out of this rut by redoing the orchestral template I was using for the jam.
Main reason for doing this was Cubase having released a new GROUP FOLDER TRACKS feature a few months earlier, where you can now have folder tracks that also act as group tracks. This is something that Reaper has had for a long time and I really came to like it during my time using it on Linux.
This makes it very easy to access all my buss tracks when I need them without needing to open the mixer and find the group track there, and having any tracks placed under the folder autorouted to it makes for a quick workflow when I want to have multiple tracks grouped for processing with effects and such.
The switch to the folder groups from how it was before took a bit of time, but after i got it setup I felt it could be better compared to before.
One thing I did not like though was that the new folder tracks are a bit too wide in the mixer even on the smallest size settting, and all tracks under the folder group also get made a bit wider than usual which I did not like and hopefully making them smaller will be possible in a future update..
While changing to the new folder groups I also did some tweaking to my reverb setup and send values to make the sound more dry/upfront, since the previous tracks felt too muddy to my taste.
Maybe overdid things and went a bit too dry for the sound now, but for a start it feels a lot clearer and not muddy.
Audio#
More procrastination#
After doing the previous stuff I havent worked on the jam that much, but seeing as its under 2 weeks time left now I should probably start actually trying to finish tracks before its too late 😅
I tried to continue the stage 1 track a bit more with adding another section at the end, but it might be too meh and keeping it as the earlier 2 minutes lenght is better?
The boss fight challenge track is feeling a bit dead in the water, as I cant really come up with any good lead lines for it and just having it be mostly rhytmic with nothing melodic feels too boring to me. Probably should’ve started with an actual melody in odd time instead of doing the harmony/rhythm first…
Instead I decided to start doing a new track for a different challenge, the new one being the Sneaking Mission one where you write music for a stealth mission and must avoid basic triads and only use chords with extensions like seventh chords etc.
I got a little idea pretty quickly for this one and then just let stuff flow out as they came and got a short sketch completed with a rhodes piano/synth layer doing the chordal stuff, a koto doing the melody and a synth bass playing the bass part + a drumkit for the groove and a synth pluck playing a repeating pedal tone.
The synth pluck and bass sounds are what I’ve used in previous tracks so I hope they help to make the tracks feel like they belong in the same univserse, and the Koto I chose for the melody because I’ve already used the japanese shamisen in the action/battle theme and thought that the koto felt complimentary to that since they both have that nice percussive tone.
I had the idea of doing a big fusion by using instruments from around the world on these tracks, but now I’m feeling like just using the koto and shamisen will have to do.
I took a little break after making the inital sketch and then worked a bit more on the track and added a second part to it with a bit more movement in the rhodes accompaniment and the koto switching to a alto saxophone for the lead part.
When I listened back to the initial sketch after the break I felt that it might be a bit too laid-back/chill for music to a sneaking mission and the new stuff I added makes it feel even more chill so I’m a bit worried this will not fit the challenge prompt in the vibe…
Maybe doing something with the arrangement by adding more feeling of tension to it could help? Not really sure how yet, but will have to try something.
Another thing I’m worried about is that this will feel too laid-back compared to the battle track that is a lot more LETS GO!! in its energy, and I might need more tracks to make the jumps in energy between the tracks less jarring.
And now that I got thinking about that, the main theme/anthem track I started out with now probably feels like it’s from a completely different projects since it’s fully orchestral without any synths at all…
That probably needs some things to make it feel more sci-fi/futuristic like these other tracks.
Last few days#
3 days to go!#
Really have been lazy during this jam and haven’t managed to work on the tracks a lot…
Other than getting the first action track about done, the rest are unfinished and I’m really not feeling those at all and will probably have to submit them as they are if I cant manage to work on them more.
The odd-time boss track I’m scrapping, the anthem is really short at around 1 min + feels a bit separate tonally from the other more hybrid/synth heavy tracks and I failed to add synths to the mix without sounding bad.
The sneaking track I replaced the cheesy saxophone with a soft synth brass lead but it still feels a bit too mellow and more like a “safe” area ambiance or menu music, maybe I can use the anthem track for the “Character theme challenge” as it is meant as the anthem of the player characters faction/army so it does fit that criteria.
Will still do another try for the sneaking music and if I get something halfway good I will submit that as the challenge track even if its only a minute or so long 😅
24+ hours left?#
Managed to get a new try on the sneaking prompt in a somewhat ok state like the initial one, but that too feels like it might be a bit too neutral sounding in vibe for a sneaking track…
I also used a koto as the lead sound for this one like in the one before, but in this one its just the koto whole way through the track which might get a bit samey with the earlier track 😅
Either way, I will probably use the new one as the sneaking challenge track and have the first one as a generic menu music for a maybe some sort of a shop or upgrade spot since its more chill in its feel.
The anthem theme track I added parts for violins 1 & 2 and violas to fill the texture in the latter half of the track, but didn’t really get ideas for anything else for that track so it will have to stay as it is since I only have tomorrow to render my tracks out, make the youtube videos, upload those and then make and submit the actual project for the jam since the jam ends at 3 am the day after that my time 😄
Not really too happy with a lot of my tracks for this jam since they feel a bit boring. The battle tune is the only one that feels somewhat OK to me, and that is the one I managed to work the most on, but hopefully they will feel less boring to people listening and rating 😄
I’ve already “pre-mixed” the tracks as I was writing them, so I only need to do a quick master for all of them to get them to a good equal loudness. Maybe I should try some jedi mind tricks and master them a bit louder than usual to see if the LOUDER IS BETTER thing is actually true 😂
For the videos I already looked up a free to use little 3d art video loop beforehand that I’ll just use as the art for the videos.
Usually I’ve put all of the tracks back to back in 1 video, but since I did separate uploads per track for the last OST Composing Jam: Overtime I will do a video per track for this one as well.
At this point it’s probably best to end this devlog here, if this was fun to read, then thanks! If it was really tedious to read and boring, then thanks? 👋
Stock video loop I used for the video background is by Andy Ally from Pixabay