https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNCJg2RHHVc&ab_channel=Slide20XX-Topic

So we ended up rewriting it! Even though we didn't end up shipping this version I still think it was an important part of the journey that got us where we ended up. (plus it makes a nice little behind the scenes journey)⁠
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as always, find the Heart Village demo streaming on Spotify + everywhere ⁠
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stay musical, people⁠
🙂‍↔️

About 95% of the music I've written for clients has appeared in game. The second and third pieces of music I wrote for Calico are part of that last 5%
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This version was approved for the game when it was finished, but after I'd written through the rest of the soundtrack, we thought it might be interesting to re-approach it and see how the theme would come out with my newfound experience - plus, it also needed to be reworked to properly add lyrics.⁠

This version of the theme, though, was the original theme for the Heart Village. It's the second piece of music I wrote for the title and the first remix of that main theme (the version that appears in the game is technically the third!) ⁠
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That became the basis of the background music for the Heart Village - it was eventually reinterpreted as the song that appears when you're in the cafe, "A Cat is a Cat"⁠
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It'll often be a pretty significant piece of music - on The Stars Between Us, it was the game's main theme. On some of the professional game-jam work I've done, it's been the main gameplay theme.⁠
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For Calico, it was the title theme, "Cats and Magical Girls"

https://open.spotify.com/track/3kR2cKaf7WHtUtkJWewKxW

A lot of my soundtracks start with a, sort of, "statement piece" - something that's representative of the major themes and moods of the game and is in a genre similar to a gid bit of, if not necessarily all of, the rest of the soundtrack. ⁠

I do think it takes me at least 4 hours to get most things off the ground, and it'd be fun to find ways to work faster. I did make one of my favorite compositions in about 2 hours (this one!) and it'd be awesome to do more of that.

A lot of my compositions are winners - and this one.. is not 🥳 🫠

I present to you: a failed experiment

The original conception of this track was simple - I hadn't written anything in a while, so I'd confine myself to just 30 minutes and see what I came up with. That... did not work out

I also think I have a tendency to search for new sounds instead of using things that I've already added to a session - and that's a limitation I'm going to keep trying to overcome (stay tuned 👀)

these are.. not... exactly what I'd choose.. given a choice. which my challenge did not give me

So! we call it a(n admittedly groovy) failed experiment. I still think the challenge(s) is worth re-exploring

So! I decided, I'd only work on this in 30 minute sessions at a time. I gave that a shot but it was feeling undercooked, so I tried to focus on the other part of the challenge: I'd restrict myself to only the instruments that were open in the session, no adding anything new.

Unfortunately, mmMMMM

@AsherVo

oh snap !!! what are you in school for??

and here we are!

If you're curious how it went - check out my website! https://slide20xx.com

and get in touch if you're at #gdc25 and want to meet up for a chat (or you want to work together 😉)

for the uninitiated - these files do not have recorded sound in them. They're essentially a set of instructions - digital sheetmusic - that your computer's (very bad) instruments would play back for you.

I downloaded so many of these.

Mostly Sonic the Hedgehog midis.

The patterned repeated itself. Eventually I said to myself, "hmm. I wonder if I could make midis."

"I wonder if I could make.. video game.. midis..."

"I should write music for video games."

I was about 13.

coming back to that slow internet - I also really liked music! but I couldn't download 2, 3, 4 megabyte songs !!!

So what did I listen to? midi files. from http://vgmusic.com

Video game music midi files.

So I had a lot of time on my hands - no youtubes or tiktoks or whatever. I needed something to do, so I decided, "hey, why don't I try to make some of these comics?"

I dare not share these - but I did find a relic of the past.

Introducing... "Slide the Hedgehog"

I also grew up in poverty - we did have a computer and internet, but we were on painfully slow dial-up internet for the longest time.

I still remember the 3 hours I took to download the massive 6-megabyte sonic fan game, "Amy, One Girl Army"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fhn2Hh0vOM

For the uninitiated, a "sprite comic" was a popular genre of online content from the late nineties/early aughts - folks would rip graphics from video game and make comics out of them

I read... a lot of these.

and they were mostly sonic themed