Mythruna

I recently beefed up my sound library and sound plug-ins for my home studio.  Normally, I painstakingly compose the orchestral scores by hand but it gets painful so I finally invested in an actual midi keyboard controller so I don't have to fire up my synths all the way across the room just to record some notes.  It's harder to experiment that way, too.  Anyway, first midi controller didn't work but the second one from m-audio did so I engrossed myself goofing around all night.

Here is the Mythruna them done almost "Pirates of the Carribean" style:
http://mythruna.com/temp/m-audio-goofing.mp3

It's got some problems but it was kind of fun.  Maybe I can clean it up and use it as battle music sometime.

Doesn't need to much cleaning up, it sounds purely epic! maybe for a battle theme all you would need to do is make it so the beginning and end blend together so, tada, you make a battle loop!

Now to make it loop :D

Not bad. I do agree it could use a bit of cleaning up, though.

Yeah, looping it isn't hard.  When I play with adding new tracks, I play it in loop mode as it is. :)

Some of the timing needs to be cleaned up and stuff and I will add some different parts, probably.  I relistened to the pirates of the carribean sound track and some of my other noodling from the past few months.  Maybe I'll let it percolate in my head a bit.

noodling and percolate... feeling wordsy today? lol

Is your perspicacity picking on my loquaciousness?  Or just the manner in which I employ it?

Perhaps I should slink back into quiescence. ;)

Problem is, I can't hear it :/

paul, it is very difficult to articulate an appropriate remark for that on my psp keyboard thing.

why not moonk?

New favorite thing: create pandora station filled with only video game music, and drive to it

Heheh.  I just spent 30 minutes in the car (both ways) listening to movie sound tracks. :)  Klaus Badelt and Harry Gregson-Williams on the way out and John Williams on the way back.  (Pirates of the Carribean, Kingdom of Heaven on the way out and "every other movie you've ever seen" on the way back, ie: "Best of John Williams" :))

I usuallt listen to audio books, but this thread made me want to listen to music, I spent 5 hours on the road today

Encounter (metal gear solid) was probably my favorite

pandora is great and very helpful

Regarding game music, the Uncharted theme is way up there on my list.

today, i learned what a hurdy gurdy is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4y7HNW972M

Paul, any location that you have where I am allowed legally to download your mythruna themes? i love songs w/out words :) and I would use them in youtube videos (of course the credit of the songs go to you :))

He let me just download the mp3 files. Fiddle is now my ringtone.

....i want a mythruna ringtone

Use the links in the posts.  Just right click and say "Save as..."

I'll put putting up an official page someday when they are actually finished.

lol i love that tone, Don't see a problem except looping. I have it set to looping forever ;)

I was playing with a new version tonight:
http://mythruna.com/temp/main-battle-theme.mp3

I need to put it aside for a while because I'm getting tired of it and some things just aren't working right in my head... needs a middle part, etc..  It was fine for playing around with the new sounds but I need to tear it down and start over after it's sunk in a while. 

It's loopable now, at least.

I also uploaded the main Mythruna theme music... variation on what I might use for a soundtrack for a game trailer or something.  I've used it in one of the videos but I'm not sure I've posted it here before.  It uses crappy sound patches (I need to update it to me latest sounds libraries) but I still like it.  It's the closest thing to "real orchestra" music that I've ever written.  And it's only got a third of what it's supposed to have anyway.

http://mythruna.com/temp/mythruna-main-theme.mp3

thats what happens when you mess around too much with one song at one time. Do you plan on having a lot of music in the game? or will it mostly be ambience sounds? i know you've mentioned both but i don't think you said which one there will be more of.

The song is amazing! ^.^

Really cool score it really captures the essence of the game! May I add a couple of suggestions that would make it even cooler (to my ears at least)

1) Needs better orchestration. Like a bed of strings-pads behind the main melody and/or some extra melody harmonies over the main melody like a second voice repeating the main melody but up an octave or a 3rd higher (to give a more middle/trebble feel) I feel theres some space between the current layer of strings and the main melody
2) Needs better mixing the timpanies and percussion seems to be burried in the mix
3) Needs better more realistic string plugins

Really cool composition as it is though :)

I'm not sure which song you are referring to.  If it's the battle music... that is already using a very expensive set of sounds.  If there's a problem with a string sound then it's in the phrasing/composition.  The second song (the main theme) is using a bunch of crappy free sounds.

For final mix-down, I will be handing the music over to a real sound engineer... he will probably also use his set of orchestra sounds, though I'd expect them to be similar.  I used to think I knew how to mix down until I heard his work.  Now I don't try very hard at it since I know it will sound better later. :)

I worry most about the composition... so all other points noted.

Yeah, you can only hear the same tune so many times before it gets old.  And I've listened to that battle music 100 times now.  It's too repetitive for that.

Mythruna is supposed to have context sensitive music throughout.  Some of that I have to wait for until the game is farther along.  For example, it may turn out that this battle music is completely useless when real combat is implemented.  If sound turns out to be important and the music is drowning it out then it will  have to be greatly toned down.  For other things, it will wait until I see what I can detect.  If you come over a ridge and suddenly see a town you've never seen before, there should be some short "new town" music that plays.  When you enter the town, maybe there is a light theme that plays that kind of sets the mood for what kind of town/village/city it is.  For example, if you walk into a town and no one lives there anymore then the music can be darker or sadder, etc..  Synching it properly to easily identifiable information should be interesting.  Context should provide depth to your senses without being too overt about providing hints.  If you enter a town and spooky music starts playing it will put you on your guard instantly... but there should have been some clue that something is wrong aside from the music.

Once the various contextual triggers are setup then there will be a modding API added for registering songs with triggers so modders can write additional music packs.

Music language, harder to understand than binary

sounds good to me! i hate it when games seem like they just play random tunes.

if you play http://mythruna.com/temp/m-audio-goofing.mp3 (http://) and play this (http://mythruna.com/temp/mythruna-main-theme.mp3) directly after that, it gives sort of a nice tune :) I have both downloaded and listen to them in a loop with Windows Media Player (WMP)

and do i mind to ask what program you use to make your audio?

The battle music sounds like PotC. You know, with Captain Jack Sparrow [Or mah dad [Not really but looks like him]]! They have an online game for it, and they use a lot of music like this, so whenever I hear stuff like this, it reminds me of pirates. xD

Ooh yeah XD...

what kinda pirates ;)
SKINNYfatSHORTtallWEIRDnormalSTUPIDsmartFUNNYboringUGLYcuteCOURAGEOUSscaredDEADalive.

ANYweirdSTUPIDFUNNYanyCOURAGEOUSaive.

Also, I'd love to help Paul, with the music, but I don't think I'm even close to your standards, and you seem to have it pretty good! PLUS I'm a bit aways from you, and I don't have a studio xD

my standards?

Pretty sure he was talking to paul

wait lol i didn't know what post we were on :P

I was referring to the battle music. The plugins are really cool already although they could be more shined up but thats the engineer's job and this isn't even mastered so...My personal taste comes to orchestration and mixing. I'd Like to hear the timpanies louder with more reverb or ambience. Try to experiment with eq and hall reverb stuff. The snare percussion should be a little louder too in my opinion. The composition is good, everytime i listen to this im having dejavus like Ive heared that dorian tune before but i cant remember when or where :P ( I know this is an arrangement of the slow theme with the flute but im having dejavus at that one too :P )

The main tribal theme sounds like its made using default midi output :P Again some strings in the background seem confusing to me maybe the timing isn't what i would expect to hear but anyway the tunes are more than ok its just i had to say something as a musician  :D

Reaper.  http://www.reaper.fm/

Paul, you are my hero. I always wanted to mix music on my computer, but the few free programs i could find were either very limited as a trial or very limited in general. this looks amazing.

i just wanted to add in on how important music can be to the game, i got superbrothers: sword and sorcery not long ago and its not really a game, to me its a music album and you only play the game to visit a new area to unlock a new song the game aspect is over shadowed by the music, im just saying this because it might give you some inspiration for some of your other songs for mythruna, jim guthrie did the soundtrack and yeah just thought i should mention this encase you havnt heard it :p

You... YOU... *opens folder with Swords and Sworcery music*

i did do that :p its in my itunes haha i do that with lots of games with good soundtracks xD