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In this episode, I talk with Vancouver composer/sound designer Gordon McGladdery, also known as A Shell In The Pit, about his song Narwhal (Tower) from the Rogue Legacy soundtrack. In my interview with Gordon McGladdery, we cover the following: His musical background, including learning sound design at the Vancouver Film School. He spends about half his time on sound design and half on music Gordon writes music for Destin Sandlin on the YouTube channel SmarterEveryDay He likes LA Scoring Strings (LASS) for strings, the Cine- libraries like CineHarp and Kontakt for percussion Rogue Legacy is a genealogical Rogue-lite where you play as a series of knights. Narwhal plays and loops when you are in the tower. Gordon talked about techniques for making looping songs now sound repetitive We go through the form. In the “A” section, Gordon layers a lot of guitar tracks, including left- and right-channel parts making the guitars sound wide. The “B” section uses an old-school chip synthesizer sound. His method of making chip sounds has changed since working on this soundtrack I then play Narwhal (Tower) Gordon talked about the history of getting the music and then the sound design job for Rogue Legacy and bringing on Judson Cowan (who goes by Tettix) to write half the music. He talked a little about sound design and how good sound effects have their own beats Gordon talked about how the implementation of game audio is a lot easier when he can use the middleware tools for dynamic mixing and effects processing. He is the co-host of the podcast Beards, Cats And Indie Game Audio with Matthew Marteinsson Some of Gordon’s favorite games are Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, The Long Dark, and going back Super Mario Bros, the Hitman franchise and the Mass Effect franchise You can find Gordon McGladdery at ashellinthepit.com or on Twitter @AShellinthePit. Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email tom@insidevgm.com or tweet at me on Twitter @TomSnively. If you are or know a game developer that needs music or sounds for the game, I would love to help. Email tom@insidevgm.com or tweet at me on Twitter @TomSnively. You can hear my album Major 7ths and Minor 9ths on Bandcamp. You can stream it for free or download it for “pay what you want.” You can try my game Match Em and Molecular Music Box by finding the links on tomsnively.com/credits. I Appreciate Your iTunes Reviews! It is very valuable for the iTunes podcast rating to receive 5-star ratings and/or written reviews. If you like the podcast, please go to iTunes and give a 5-star rating and/or review. I am so incredibly thankful to those who have recently gone into my listing in iTunes to provide a 5-star rating and a written review of Inside Video Game Music. Subscribe to Inside Video Game Music: You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer.

In this episode, I talk about one of my game soundtrack songs, the Peru Theme from the upcoming archaeology game Digology from Robo Ra Games. Next week I am interviewing Gordon McGladdery / A Shell In The Pit about the music from Rogue Legacy. If you have any questions for him, email tom@insidevgm.com or tweet at me on Twitter @TomSnively. In this episode, I cover the following: In May I wrote three songs and did sound effects for an archaeology game called Digology being developed by Robo Ra Games. In Digology, you are traveling around the world, excavating bones and artifacts for your museum. I wrote a museum theme for orchestra, a Montana theme using Native American instruments, and this Peruvian theme using Peruvian instruments. I did all three songs in Bb major and/or G minor so it would flow smoothly as you change locations in the game. I also used a 4-note motif (G Bb C high G) in all three songs. I demonstrated the motif in the Montana and Museum Themes. I described the chord progression of the song I went through the sounds I used, primarily from Garritan World Instruments, playing a portion of the tracks. They were South American harp, Andean Panpipes, Peruvian Panpipes, Quena and Bombo. I also used the Big Equator Pad synth from Omnisphere. I then played the Peru Theme The “Digology – Early Development Gameplay Teaser” video: To vote “yes” for Digology on Steam Greenlight, go to insidevgm.com/digology. You can find Robo Ra Games at RoboRaGames.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/RoboRaGames or Twitter @RoboRaGames. If you are or know a game developer that needs music or sounds for the game, I would love to help. Email tom@insidevgm.com or tweet at me on Twitter @TomSnively. Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email tom@insidevgm.com or tweet at me on Twitter @TomSnively. You can hear my album Major 7ths and Minor 9ths on Bandcamp. You can stream it for free or download it for “pay what you want.” You can try my game Match Em and Molecular Music Box by finding the links on tomsnively.com/credits. I Appreciate Your iTunes Reviews! It is very valuable for the iTunes podcast rating to receive 5-star ratings and/or written reviews. If you like the podcast, please go to iTunes and give a 5-star rating and/or review. I am so incredibly thankful to those who have recently gone into my listing in iTunes to provide a 5-star rating and a written review of Inside Video Game Music. Subscribe to Inside Video Game Music: You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer.

In this episode, I talk with Eirik Suhrke, the composer who wrote the soundtracks for Spelunky, Ridiculous Fishing, Hotline Miami and others. We talk about his song “Deathmatch” from the Spelunky soundtrack. In my interview with Eirik Suhrke, we cover the following: How he has no formal musical training, and got started playing in rock bands. Eirik used MODPlug Tracker to make most of the Spelunky soundtrack, and then he added acoustic instruments like drums and saxophone in Pro Tools. He recorded the samples from his own synths and from Amiga modules and Super Nintendo games Eirik described Spelunky. The game was originally published in 2009 with music made by George Buzinkai and Jonathan Perry. Eirik was asked to make music for the remake which came out in 2013. He talked about he was asked to make music as if it was a new game, but how he made an homage to the original music in the Deathmatch track. Deathmatch plays in multiplayer mode where players are trying to kill each other. The matches could be really short or a bit longer. Eirik wrote a longer track (2 minutes 21 seconds) that loops in Deathmatch mode, but doesn’t repeat each time a new match starts. Additionally, the percussion is on a separate audio file so they fade it out between the matches and play it during the matches Deathmatch has a number of different sections. It has an odd meter at the start. Eirik said the tracker is like a spreadsheet with rows and columns, so that there is nothing guiding you into common meters like 4/4. Eirik frequently uses pedal bass like the start of Deathmatch. The song starts with Bb majorish chords over Bb, and at 0:25 changes to B maj7 and B maj9. After a long pedal note, there is a big impact from the bass note change. I then play “Deathmatch” from the Spelunky soundtrack. Eirik recorded his friends playing on the soundtrack, including the drummer from his band Pajjama He said the most influential game he played was Final Fantasy VII (music by Nobuo Uematsu) which made him want to be a game composer. Some of his favorite games of all time are Final Fantasy VII, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Deus Ex, as well as the whole Zelda and Super Mario series. He also likes the Little Nemo: The Dream Master music and game. Eirik is working on a lot of things now: a couple of games, an album with his band Pajjama, an album of his own, and he is working on his own game You can find Eirik Suhrke on Twitter @strotchy and his website is strotch.net. The Spelunky soundtrack is on Bandcamp. You can find Spelunky on PC, XBLA and PSN or get more information at spelunkyworld.com. Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email tom@insidevgm.com or tweet at me on Twitter @TomSnively. You can hear my music at TomSnively.com on the Music page or the Credits page. You can try Match Em and Molecular Music Box by finding the links on tomsnively.com/credits. You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer. I Appreciate Your iTunes Reviews! It is very valuable for the iTunes podcast rating to receive 5-star ratings and/or written reviews. If you like the podcast, please go to iTunes and give a 5-star rating and/or review. I am so incredibly thankful to those who have recently gone into my listing in iTunes to provide a 5-star rating and a written review of Inside Video Game Music. Subscribe to Inside Video Game Music:

In this episode, I talk with Charlie McCarron, the composer who wrote the soundtrack for Star Reaction by unTied Games. We talk about his song “Moto Hekalu.” In my interview with Charlie McCarron, we cover the following: His musical background, how he got interested in video game music and joined friends to start unTied Games, a small indie game studio For the RPM Challenge, Charlie created 35 1-minute tracks using a Casio SA-35 keyboard. That album is on Bandcamp. Charlie uses Puremagnetik and other synths that come with Ableton. Instead of modifying the patch, Charlie likes to modify the sounds using distortion, delay, frequency shifts, EQ and the like. The game, Star Reaction, available now for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android Moto Hekalu plays during the orange “fire temple” levels. Each color has its own song from the soundtrack. “Moto Hekalu” means roughly “fire temple” in Swahili. Charlie shared his thoughts about making looping songs, including one that he got from Whitaker Trebella (Whitaker Blackall) We talked about and played some of the individual parts in the song. The “Texture” sound actually was a sample from another track on the soundtrack. The “mallets” sound used an Arpeggiator. Charlie also talked about using an arpeggiator on episode 22 of Making My Own Music, this podcast’s previous incarnation. There is a layer of wind and a layer of crows. Charlie talked about a Crowpocalypse he witnessed a couple of years ago. The bass part plays kind of a diminished scale and never resolves. Later in the song it plays a half-step higher. There are three percussion sounds. The bass drum comes from the Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra which is free. There is also a tom part and a percussion part. There is a part called “Soft Jupiter” and a higher synth that doubles the bass part, especially for people playing on mobile phones . I then played “Moto Hekalu.” Charlie split the parts into two layers, the “peace” layer and the “panic” layer. During the endless mode, the song morphs from “peace” to overlapping to “panic” as the panic meter rises and your time is running out. The full soundtrack is available now at untiedgames.bandcamp.com. Charlie hosts a podcast called “Composer Quest” where he interviews composers of various styles. Charlie interviewed me in episode 77 Charlie especially likes the late Romantic music from around 1890 to 1920. Some of his favorite games are N64 games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye, Super Smash Bros N64, Mario Kart. He also has been playing Fez and Portal recently. You can find Charlie McCarron on Twitter @charliemccarron and his website is CharlieMcCarron.com. The Star Reaction soundtrack is on Bandcamp. You can find the Composer Quest podcast at composerquest.com. You can find Star Reaction on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android from unTied Games. Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email tom@insidevgm.com or tweet at me on Twitter @TomSnively. You can hear my music at TomSnively.com on the Music page or the Credits page. You can try Match Em and Molecular Music Box by finding the links on tomsnively.com/credits. You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer. I Appreciate Your iTunes Reviews! It is very valuable for the iTunes podcast rating to receive 5-star ratings and/or written reviews. If you like the podcast, please go to iTunes and give a 5-star rating and/or review. I am so incredibly thankful to those who have recently gone into my listing in iTunes to provide a 5-star rating and a written review of Inside Video Game Music. Subscribe to Inside Video Game Music:

In this episode, I talk with Kat Angeloni, the composer who wrote the soundtrack for Coin Crypt. We talk about her song “Lucky Penny.” In my interview with Kat Angeloni, we cover the following: Her musical background and getting into game composing. She took a game music class at Drexel taught by Andrew Aversa (a.k.a. zircon) Lucky Penny uses instruments that came with Logic, but now Kat prefers to use Ableton. She subscribes to Puremagnetik to get new patches each month Coin Crypt is a rogue-like card game that uses coins instead of cards Lucky Penny is the title theme. Kat talked about how she varies looping songs I then played “Lucky Penny” Kat talked about the soundtrack as a whole. There are two paths in the game, through the dungeons and in the outer world The soundtrack is available on Bandcamp at dloot.bandcamp.com Kat also wrote a song for Mirror Isles for Alan Hazelden She has been listening to a lot of Anamanaguchi and Son Lux lately Some of her favorite games of all time are Shadow of the Colossus, Wario Land 3 (Gameboy Color) and Katamari Damacy Kat likes the music in Kirby (Nintendo), Kingdom Hearts and Katamari Damacy You can find Kat Angeloni on Twitter @dlootie and her SoundCloud page is soundcloud.com/dloot. You can find Coin Crypt on Steam. Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email tom@insidevgm.com or tweet at me on Twitter @TomSnively. You can hear my music at TomSnively.com on the Music page or the Credits page. You can try Match Em and Molecular Music Box by finding the links on tomsnively.com/credits. You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer. I Appreciate Your iTunes Reviews! It is very valuable for the iTunes podcast rating to receive 5-star ratings and/or written reviews. If you like the podcast, please go to iTunes and give a 5-star rating and/or review. I am so incredibly thankful to those who have recently gone into my listing in iTunes to provide a 5-star rating and a written review of Inside Video Game Music. Subscribe to Inside Video Game Music:

In this episode, I talk with Chris Kukla, a game composer who wrote the soundtrack for Claustrophobia: The Downward Struggle. We talk about his song “Where Are My Keys?” Chris also wrote the soundtracks for The Memory of Eldurim and Citybound. In my interview with Chris Kukla, we cover the following: His musical background, playing piano as a kid, then learning guitar and going to college for music, and how he got his first game music gig For the most part, he learned synthesis by trial and error and Google searches Lately he’s been using a lot of kalimba, marimba, xylophone, harp, glockenspiel, celesta Chris likes Kontact’s Cinematic Strings, Berlin Woodwinds, Sample Modeling‘s horns, Orchestral Brass Classic, and VOXOS: Epic Choirs. He also mentioned Emmitt Cooke’s blog entry 19 Smaller Kontakt Developers You’ve Probably Never Heard Of (and need to check out!) Claustrophobia: The Downward Struggle is a roguelike turn-based RPG with permanent death, similar to Dungeons of Dredmor Daniel Millward, the developer has a great sense of humor and has put funny material into the game Where Are My Keys has a non-standard meter, a repeating pattern of three measures of 5/8 and one measure of 7/8. In Ableton, he uses one measure of 11/4. We talk about the form and instrumentation of the song. The repeating 8th note pattern is a marimba sound. and then the bass part is a string bass. The instruments are pretty much stock sounds that come with Reason. The main melody is a guitar sample that is processed in a guitar rig with EQ, distortion and a lot of ValhallaRoom reverb. After a few measures, a glockenspiel doubles the melody with the same processing. There are two additional marimba parts that play harmony with the first part. The main melody is reprised near the end. The song is five minutes altogether and does not loop during gameplay. This game may last six or seven hours, so the soundtrack has a number of longer pieces to keep the music from being repetitive. I then played “Where Are My Keys?” Chris also wrote the soundtracks for a couple of short films, iDig and Raw and Primal Yearnings where he got to write in a variety of styles Chris likes the podcast All Songs Considered Some of Chris’s favorite games of all time are Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and the Civilization series. He also really likes the music in The Binding of Isaac (Danny Baranoswky) and Gunpoint (Ryan Ike, Francisco Cerda, and John Robert Matz) You can find Chris Kukla on Twitter @ChrisKukla and his website is ChrisKukla.com. You can find Claustrophobia: The Downward Struggle on Steam. Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email tom@insidevgm.com or tweet at me on Twitter @TomSnively. You can hear my music at TomSnively.com on the Music page or the Credits page. You can try Match Em and Molecular Music Box by finding the links on tomsnively.com/credits. You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer. I Appreciate Your iTunes Reviews! It is very valuable for the iTunes podcast rating to receive 5-star ratings and/or written reviews. If you like the podcast, please go to iTunes and give a 5-star rating and/or review. I am so incredibly thankful to those who have recently gone into my listing in iTunes to provide a 5-star rating and a written review of Inside Video Game Music. Subscribe To The Inside Video Game Music:

In this episode, I talk with Grant Kirkhope, a long-time game composer who wrote the soundtrack for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. We talk about his boss battle song “Balor.” Grant is a member of the Classic FM Hall Of Fame, and his video game soundtracks have sold more than 25 million copies. In my interview with Grant Kirkhope, we cover the following: His musical background, attending The Royal Northern College of Music, playing in metal bands, and working at Rare, Big Huge Games and 38 Studios Grant has been fortunate to have a live orchestras record the soundtracks for Viva Piñata, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Viva Piñata 2, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, CityVille 2 and Civilization: Beyond Earth Grant writes the music and creates a MIDI mockup, before handing it over to someone for orchestration During the recording, Grant stays in the control room, making sure the performance is right while recording engineers, conductors, mixers, and mastering engineers handle the tasks they specialize in When making MIDI mock-ups or for pieces not being performed by a live orchestra, Grant uses Hollywood Brass, Strings, and Orchestral Woodwinds libraries from EastWest Studios From playing trumpet in orchestras, Grant has great knowledge of what the different instruments can do and what they are great at He listened a lot to the first three Harry Potter soundtracks composed by John Williams I then played “Balor” from Kingdoms of Amalur Boss Pieces with Endings He talked about the looping version for the game and the versions with endings for the soundtrack Grant likes to use motifs that pop up in different pieces throughout the game and soundtrack He liked working with Curt Schilling, although he did not know about baseball Grant talked about working with his friend Danny Baranowsky on the Desktop Dungeon soundtrack He likes working with indie developers and how they focus on great gameplay One of Grant’s favorite all-time games is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past He likes games that use Danny Baranowsky’s and Jimmy Hinson‘s (Big Giant Circles) music You can find Grant Kirkhope on Twitter @grantkirkhope and his website is grantkirkhope.com. You can find Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning on Steam, Playstation and Xbox Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email tom@insidevgm.com or tweet at me on Twitter @TomSnively. You can hear my music at TomSnively.com on the Music page or the Credits page. You can try Match Em and Molecular Music Box by finding the links on tomsnively.com/credits. You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer. I Appreciate Your iTunes Reviews! It is very valuable for the iTunes podcast rating to receive 5-star ratings and/or written reviews. If you like the podcast, please go to iTunes and give a 5-star rating and/or review. I am so incredibly thankful to those who have recently gone into my listing in iTunes to provide a 5-star rating and a written review of Inside Video Game Music. Subscribe To The Inside Video Game Music:

In this episode, I talk with Tim Shiel, a composer from Melbourne Australia who wrote the Duet soundtrack. We talk about his song Nay. In my interview with Tim Shiel, we cover the following: His musical background playing grunge music in high school, and then releasing music under the name Faux Pas How he toured with Gotye in 2011 and 2012 for the Making Mirrors tour The five-minute video of Gotye and Tim made by Abelton about how they used the software during live shows His radio show Something More on Double J How he went from wanting to get into game music to getting the Duet soundtrack gig Inspired by Indie Game: The Movie and Jim Guthrie’s story which led to meeting the folks from Kumobius The Duet game, and how it appeals to hard-core gamers and to casual gamers Tim made a lot of Duet sounds on the OP-1 from Teenage Engineering He uses a Nord Stage 2 as his MIDI controller as well as use the Nord sound library The music for Duet is laid-back “atmospheric” dance music. Tim talks about getting it to fit into the game, to sound decent on an iPhone speaker but great on headphones, and to stand alone as a soundtrack album Tim talks about making the loops long (three to five minutes) with different sections I briefly talk about the form of Nay. After having the “A” note in the bass for the whole song, near the end there is two measures of F and two measures of G before returning to A. Tim talks about the tension-release I then played “Nay” Tim talks about the “rewind” sounds that play when your red or blue game balls hit a block He used a reverse reverb trick on the voiceover with a lot of side-chain compression Some of Tim’s favorite games include the Mass Effect series, Pool of Radiance (Commodore 64). He really likes the music on Rymdkapsel (music by Niklas Ström) Tim’s latest EP is called Time Shield available at timshiel.bandcamp.com He is now working on the soundtrack for GameLoading: Rise Of The Indies, a feature-length documentary film and with a project called Telling with Ben Abraham You can find Tim Shiel on Twitter @timshiel and his website is timshiel.com. You can find Duet at duetgame.com. Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email tom@insidevgm.com or tweet at me on Twitter @TomSnively. You can hear my music at TomSnively.com on the Music page or the Credits page. You can try Match Em and Molecular Music Box by finding the links on tomsnively.com/credits. You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer. I Appreciate Your iTunes Reviews! It is very valuable for the iTunes podcast rating to receive 5-star ratings and/or written reviews. If you like the podcast, please go to iTunes and give a 5-star rating and/or review. I am so incredibly thankful to those who have recently gone into my listing in iTunes to provide a 5-star rating and a written review of Inside Video Game Music. Subscribe To The Inside Video Game Music:

In this episode, I talk with Rich Vreeland, who also goes by the name Disasterpeace. He is the composer of the FEZ and many other game soundtracks. We talk about his song Adventure from FEZ. In my interview with Rich Vreeland, we cover the following: His musical background growing up and at Berklee College of Music His 42 projects available for sale on his music page Retaining or giving up rights to be able to release the soundtrack himself His album Neutralite and how he collaborated with SpamTron If it is hard to wait after writing a bunch of music for a game to be completed and released Rich has a blog entry where he talks about the synthesizers he uses. I ask about how to move up from beginner at synthesis We talk about Adventure, and how there are only seven or eight tracks in the song I then played Adventure from the FEZ soundtrack Rich gave tips on making things loopable, and how the soundtrack version differs from the game version How he use Leq and AudioLink to match the volume level for the game assets, separately from having the soundtrack mastered for the game Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake His “game”/music app January Rich is performing October 11th at IndieCade, singing and playing piano on new songs Rich also wrote the score to the film It Follows in about three weeks to have it ready for the Cannes Film Festival His alias, Disasterpiece, how we came up with it and the occasional problems of having two identities His favorite games of all time are NHL ’94 (Sega Genesis), Tecmo Super Bowl (NES), Super Mario RPG, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island and Chrono Cross. He loves the music in Yoshi’s Island (Koji Kondo) and Chrono Cross (Yasunori Mitsuda), and more recently Machinarium and Samorost 2 (Tomáš Dvo?ák). Spelunky (Eirik Suhrke) You can find Rich Vreeland on Twitter @Disasterpeace and his website is disasterpeace.com. You can find FEZ at fezgame.com. Next week I am interviewing Grant Kirkhope who wrote the soundtrack for Kingdoms of Amalur, GoldenEye, Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Pinata, Perfect Dark and many more. If you have any questions you’d like me to ask, please email me at tom@insidevgm.com. Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email tom@insidevgm.com or tweet at me on Twitter @TomSnively. If you enjoy Inside Video Game Music, please leave a rating or review in iTunes. You can hear my album Major 7ths and Minor 9ths on Bandcamp. You can stream it for free or download it for “pay what you want.” You can try Match Em and Molecular Music Box by finding the links on tomsnively.com/credits. You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer. I Appreciate Your iTunes Reviews! It is very valuable for the iTunes podcast rating to receive 5-star ratings and/or written reviews. If you like the podcast, please go to iTunes and give a 5-star rating and/or review. I am so incredibly thankful to those who have recently gone into my listing in iTunes to provide a 5-star rating and a written review of Inside Video Game Music. Subscribe To The Inside Video Game Music:

In this episode, I talk with Ben Prunty, the composer of the FTL soundtrack. We talk about his Battle version of his MilkyWay song. I also talk about the podcast name change from Making My Own Music and the change of focus. Originally this podcast was called “Making My Own Music” where each episode went into a song, mostly ones I composed. I talked about Rue’s Whistle and episode 1 of MMOM where I talked about my musical background. I also mentioned episode 28 of MMOM where I talked about Molecular Music Box and a couple of solo piano songs I wrote using it. I talked about episode 27 of MMOM where I talked about RPSwipe, a mobile game that I wrote the music and sounds for, I also wrote my own game, Match Em which used a song called Rise Above that I talked about in episode 20. I also had some interviews, I interviewed Charlie McCarron in episode 22 and Joe Gilder in episode 23. In episode 24, I interviewed Whitaker Trebella about the music from his game Pivvot. In my interview with Ben Prunty, we cover the following: His background going to audio engineering school, recording and mixing rock bands “It takes ten years to make an overnight success” from his blog entry He started on Gravity Ghost in 2010, and it is not going to released until January 26th, 2015. Is it hard to have to wait so long for people to hear some of your music? The FTL soundtrack has sold over 100,000 copies. We talk about owning the soundtrack rights for indie games He mentions the hardware and software used to make FTL in a blog entry. He mentions Native Instrument Komplete 10 (affiliate link) that has over 12,000 sounds. How do you find the next patch to use when writing a song? He has a blog entry on an analysis of themes in the FTL soundtrack. What is the right amount of self-referencing material on a soundtrack? He’s varied on Gravity Ghost, FTL and StarCrawlers coming out in November We talk a little about the effects processing in FTL I ask about programming drums. Does he think about whether it is playable by a human drummer I then play the Battle version of MilkyWay We talk about music theory study We talk about how he enters notes and quantizing/humanizing We talk about a separate mixing process he does when the recording of a soundtrack is complete His favorite games are EarthBound, System Shock 2, God Hand, Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger. EarthBound and the first God of War are his favorite game soundtracks. You can find Ben Prunty on Twitter @BenPrunty and his website is benprunty.com. You can find FTL at ftlgame.com. Next week I am interviewing Rich Vreeland who goes by the name Disasterpeace who wrote the soundtrack for FEZ and Tim Shiel who wrote the soundtrack for Duet. If you have any questions you’d like me to ask them, please email me at tom@insidevgm.com. Is there a game composer you’d like to hear from? Let me know and I will reach out to them for an interview. Email tom@insidevgm.com or tweet at me on Twitter @TomSnively. You can hear my album Major 7ths and Minor 9ths on Bandcamp. You can stream it for free or download it for “pay what you want.” You can try Match Em and Molecular Music Box by finding the links on tomsnively.com/credits. You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer. I Appreciate Your iTunes Reviews! It is very valuable for the iTunes podcast rating to receive 5-star ratings and/or written reviews. If you like the podcast, please go to iTunes and give a 5-star rating and/or review. I am so incredibly thankful to those who have recently gone into my listing in iTunes to provide a 5-star rating and a written review of Inside Video Game Music. Subscribe To The Inside Video Game Music:

In this episode, I talk about Molecular Music Box, a music app that I wrote that creates algorithmic solo piano music, and two songs that I composed using the app. I started by talking about my entry for the August 2014 Ludum Dare. I worked by myself but used clip art from MyCuteGraphics.com, so it was a “jam” entry. The theme was “Connected Worlds” and I made a game called The Circle Of Life. It is about the life cycle: In the food chain, we are all connected. The butterflies eat from the flowers, but the birds eat the butterflies, but the foxes eat the birds. In “The Circle Of Life” your place in the food chain keeps changing. You are the purple butterfly and have to eat from the flowers. But don’t get eaten by the birds. But then you are a blue bird and have to eat the butterflies. But don’t get eaten by the fox! I had fun with the audio. When the animals eat the other animals, you here me or my son saying “Nom nom nom!” in the correct place in the stereo field. I got top 11% ratings in humor and top 34% in audio. You can play or download The Circle Of Life. So, I originally saw a video for Molecular Music Box by Dr. Duncan Lockerby, a professor in the UK. With an algorithm, you can create solo piano music using 2 numbers and a starting note, for example 4 E 3. 4 is the “initial length” and 3 is the “secondary length.” The algorithm is hard to explain in the just audio, so I wanted to play a song first to demonstrate. I then played 9 D 1 1/2. So you start with a low D and hold it for 9 beats. You then play the next white key up, an E, and hold that for 9 beats. You continue up the white keys. While this is happening, you use a “loop pedal” to record and repeat 4-measure loops. So, whatever sounded during the first 4 measures gets played again in the 5th measure while you add new notes. Each time you loop the 4 measures, there will be additional notes played. You continue doing this until you are starting a new note at the same exact time an existing note is schedule to sound. In that case, you change from the initial length (9) to the secondary length (1 1/2), and play all the notes for 1 1/2 beats each until you again have a note already starting at that time. When that happens you switch back to the initial length (9 beats). If you’d like to try Molecular Music Box, you can play around at MakingMyOwnMusic.com/mmb. The program has sliders for initial length and secondary length so you can make them go from 1/2 to 16, and the initial length can go from C2 (two octaves below middle C) to C4 (middle C). I also added three advanced features. You can adjust tempo from 60 to 300. I also added a “key” slider so you can have the song use any key instead of all white keys. I also allow you to change the loop length to go from 8 beats up to 32 beats. The piano sounds come from Mildon Studios; he published a free SFZ library. In 8 C 14 1/2, I am using the key of Eb making the song in natural minor. I also changed the loop length to 15, so the song has 3 measures of 4/4 followed by 1 measure of 3/4. I then played 8 C 14 1/2. Down the line, I might release this app for iOS or Android, and maybe can allow users to save their songs as MP3s. Composer Michael Chadwick used Molecular Music Box as one part in a larger song called Chemical Music. Send me your feedback by emailing tom@makingmyownmusic.com. I am also going to re-brand this podcast; it will no longer be called “Making My Own Music.” The new podcast will have a slightly different focus, and I will try to make an effort to release episodes every week. You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer.

This is a song for solo piano written by the Molecular Music Box app. For more information, please see Episode 28. Right-click the “Download” link above to save this to your computer.

This is a song for solo piano written by the Molecular Music Box app. For more information, please see Episode 28. Right-click the “Download” link above to save this to your computer.

In this episode, I talk about RPSwipe, a mobile game available now for iOS and Android, and the song and sounds I made for the game. RPSwipe is a mobile game written by Amidos, an Egyptian game developer Ahmed Khalifa. It is inspired by the games Threes! and 2048, and uses the rules from Rock, Paper, Scissors. I started by making an audio track from the iOS Musyk app. I moved the track into my Cubase project and added reverb and a ping-pong delay. The track plays an Eb pentatonic scale (Eb F G Bb C) so it goes with Eb major chords and C minor chords. I talked about and played the electronic sounds, all from the Omnisphere synthesizer. I used two tracks of “Singing Reality Distorted,” and tracks of “The Buzz In Jack’s Head,” “Dynamic Crystal Bottle Hits,” “Enyaesque Pad,” and “Waxing Downsaw.” My favorite Enya song is Orinoco Flow. I also recorded a rainstick, and added reverb and delay. The song has different-sounding sections, and lasts four minutes before it loops. The soundtrack version loops and then fades and is about 4 1/2 minutes. I then played RPSwipe. I also made sound effects for the game, including paper covering rock, and scissors cutting paper. I also used some of the synthesizer sounds and made sounds that fit in with the song. Send me your feedback by emailing tom@makingmyownmusic.com or calling and leaving a voicemail on 631-213-5023. I have a couple new versions of Match Em available. Here is the Indie Quilt version and here is a 10-difficulty challenge version. You can find my past broadcasts on Twitch.tv/jively or on my YouTube channel, youtube.com/TomSnively. You can also find me on Facebook.com/makingmyownmusic or Twitter.com/TomSnively. My album, Major 7ths and Minor 9ths is available on Bandcamp at tomsnively.bandcamp.com. You can listen to the whole album for free. To download it, click “Buy now, pay what you want” and choose $0 or more to “purchase” the album. You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer.

This is the soundtrack to the mobile game RPSwipe available now for iOS and Android. To download a high-quality version, see my Bandcamp page. Click here for info on RPSwipe. For more information, please see Episode 27. Right-click the “Download” link above to save this to your computer.

In this episode, I talk about Indie Quilt, an online game jam for charity, and about 15 30-second songs I wrote to be used in the game. My album, Major 7ths and Minor 9ths is available on Bandcamp at tomsnively.bandcamp.com. You can listen to the whole album for free. To download it, click “Buy now, pay what you want” and choose $0 or more to “purchase” the album. I found out about Indie Quilt which is an online game jam organized by Eric Hornby. Developers have about two months to submit a 30-second “mini-games” for Eric to “quilt” together into one large game. I volunteered to provide music and sounds for any Indie Quilt game developer who needs it. I also wrote and published 15 30-ish-second songs for developers to choose from. I wrote these songs using the iOS Figure app which I talked about in episode 13. Developers have chosen four of these songs and included them in their games: Hoops by Kitsune Gaming, wrote the music SHOOT_THINGS by Security Porpoise, wrote one of the two songs in the game Asteroid Storm by Kitsune Gaming, wrote the music Sprint by Kitsune Gaming, wrote the music and sound. I also assisted in the coding to speed up the music based on the horizontal velocity. I played IndieQuilt Clips which includes clips 1, 2, 14, 5, 6 and 9. You can find the full playlist of all the IndieQuilt clips on my SoundCloud page. If you would like to use one of these songs for your IndieQuilt submission, please email me at tsnivelymusic@gmail.com. I made a new game mode for my Match Em game. In this mode, you have to match as many as you can in 30 seconds. I will soon make a standalone version of this to submit to Indie Quilt. RPSwipe is coming out for iOS and Android this Friday (8/8/2014).  I wrote the song and made the sounds for this game. I will talk about the game and song in my next episode. I’m also excited about my newest project which is music composition tool called Molecular Music Box. I’ll talk about this two episodes from now. You can try it on tomsnively.com. I’m also testing out live-streaming on Twitch. You can find my past broadcasts on Twitch.tv/jively. Send me your feedback by emailing tom@makingmyownmusic.com or calling and leaving a voicemail on 631-213-5023. You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer.

This is a collection of six 30-ish-second samples available for the Indie Quilt project. For the full playlist of all available clips, please see the SoundCloud playlist. For more information, please see Episode 26. Right-click the “Download” link above to save this to your computer.

In this episode, I talk about a video game, Match Em that I designed, developed and published. I talk about my debut album, Major 7ths and Minor 9ths that I released on Bandcamp. I talk about how I put together and mastered the album. I also talk about my song “I Love Pivvot.” In May I got a bit of a “coding bug” where I was really enjoying doing computer programming, and I created my own video game. It is called Match Em and you can play it at http://makingmyownmusic.com/match. At this time, my best score is 58.3. Can you beat it? I want to set up a “leaderboard” that captures everybody’s best score. I am also going to try to make as iOS version for iPhone and iPad and may try to put it on the Apple Store. This is the game description: Match Em is a fun but somewhat frustrating game where all you have to do is find matching items. During gameplay, there are two rows of pictures and images. There are five pictures and three words in each row. The first row and second row will have exactly one item that matches. It might be two words, two pictures, or one word and one picture. Find the match, and click on one of the items. You must find 10 matches to complete the game. Find the matches as quickly as possible. There is a 3 second penalty for incorrect clicks. Click ‘skip to the next one’ if you just can’t find the match and want to try again. There is a 1 second penalty for each one skipped. I released my debut album, Major 7ths and Minor 9ths, which is named after my two favorite chord types. I decided on the following song and song order: Rue’s Whistle Follow The Advice Of Your Heart I Love Pivvot Escape! Pill Rise Above Revolution Fan Podcast Theme Fusion Sleepy Rondo Quest Elephant’s Feet Summer Strut Funk (for solo piano) Tremble Late Day Storm Fountain Low Earth Orbit I talked about small mix changes I made to six of the songs. I talked about how I mastered the album, using Graham Cochrane’s three-part series on mastering with stock plugins, EQ, compression and multi-band compression, and limiting. I got the stock plugins from Reaper which worked really well. I also got Voxengo SPAN spectrum equalizer. I talked about the Loudness Wars, and how much dynamic range the final album should have. A really good resource about this is Dynamic Range Day. I had to go through my process a couple of times, lessening the limiting until the dynamic range, according to the Offline TT Dynamic Range Meter was 10. I talked about the reference tracks I used for many of my songs to make sure the volumes were similar. I talked about the fades and the gaps between songs. I published this album on Bandcamp at tomsnively.bandcamp.com. You can listen to the whole album for free. To download it, click “Buy now, pay what you want” and choose $0 or more to “purchase” the album. I next talk about my song, I Love Pivvot. I bought the chipsounds synthesizer from Plogue. I stretched the Zaxxon audio using Paul’s Extreme Sound Stretch. I then played I Love Pivvot. I was hired this month to write three songs and make sound effects for an archaeology game. The developer will probably be launching a Kickstarter in the next month or two. I will let you know when that Kickstarter is running and I will talk about the game and the work I did on it. Send me your feedback by emailing tom@makingmyownmusic.com or calling and leaving a voicemail on 631-213-5023. You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer.

This is a video game song inspired by Whitaker Trabella’s “Voyage” song from the Pivvot soundtrack. It is from the album “Major 7ths and Minor 9ths” available for download at Bandcamp.com. For more information, please see Episode 25. Right-click the “Download” link above to save this to your computer.

In this episode, I interviewed Whitaker Trebella, a video game composer and game designer in Chicago. We talked about his song Voyage from his game Pivvot. Pivvot is available on iOS and Android, and will be available soon on Windows, Mac and Linux on Steam. In my interview with Whitaker Trebella, we talked about the following: Why Whit went from composing game music to making his own games. His game Pivvot, a thrilling game of strategic avoidance. This game was heavily influenced by Super Hexagon. His influences for the music, Hydrogen from Hotline Miami, and Memories of the Future by Oliver. His challenge with Carter Dotson, Pivvot: Carter vs. the Developer where he was unable to beak Carter in the Berserk mode of Pivvot. How he live-streamed the composition of the Pivvot music, and what it was like composing for an audience. The use of a reference track to take a lot of ideas from. Will the new song sound too much like the original? Whit was concerned that Pivvot was too much like Super Hexagon. He created a palette of sounds for the first song, and used that as a template for the other songs in the game. A lot of the sounds use the Plogue chipsounds VST. How to learn synthesis, modifying synthesizer sounds. He started with a tutorial on subtractive synthesis that came with Logic. We both love the chord progression like Am9 – Cmaj7. Whit describes why he likes that so much. Whit went through the Logic project talking about the different tracks: kick, second kick added for louder section, distant hi-hat, extra percussion (kick on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4), 16th note pattern, bass with a big EQ cut in the middle, electric piano, and the choir-y sustain part. The use of “humanize” on hi-hat velocities and how that creates inspiration The use of side-chain compression with the kick drum, and how it makes the compressed instruments pulse to the beat. This led into how all the screen objects (the stick, the ball, the obstacles, the menus) pulse to the beat, even if the different songs have different tempos. We talked about his thoughts on looping. He thinks the song should be at least a minute and have different sections so that it isn’t boring. In Pivvot when you die, the song continues but at 1/4 speed, so the song is slower and two octaves lower. He also adds an EQ filter. Whit talks about “tweening” which is available in Unity Pro where he can switch from speed 1.0 to 0.25 but change it over a half of a second. It is similar when you pause and unpause. Whit’s website is wtrebella.com and his music is available for sale at his Bandcamp page. Send me your feedback by emailing tom@makingmyownmusic.com or calling and leaving a voicemail on 631-213-5023. If you use LinkedIn, connect to me and endorse my skills (saxophone, songwriting, recording, mixing, and podcasting). You can also connect with me on Facebook or Twitter. You can play the podcast using the play button at the top of the post, or right-click on the “Download” link to save it to your computer.