Miscellaneous compositions

These are assorted songs that don't fit into a particular project, but that I feel are good enough to share anyway.

Remnant of the Universal Veil - probably the thing I'm most proud of, at least until I finish the Untitled Fantasy Album. I came across the title and figured it should be a psychedelic space-rock sort of thing, and things just kind of went from there. (Also partly an attempt to recapture the feel of the demo song on a chintzy old keyboard - Casio, I think? - that my aunt and uncle used to have, and that I wish I had gotten from them.) For bandwidth reasons, the above link is a 160kpbs MP3 file; you can get it in 256kpbs MP3 or FLAC format at archive.org.

(Addendum: I finally, finally rediscovered the song that inspired this: it's the demo song from a Yamaha PSR-48. And I finally have one again!)

7/4 - A song from Radish Sabre, all nice and arranged. Guess the time signature! It's pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.

Radish Sabre - Another song from Radish Sabre, the title theme, arranged as a demo track for my Roland JX-10. Turned out pretty good.

Armageddon Practice - A song written as a demo track for my Korg MS-20 Mini. Recording a whole song with a single monophonic synthesizer was an interesting experience, even considering that all the music was sequenced. Gives me a new respect for Switched-On Bach and Oxygene, lemme tell ya.

Thunderstorm - A demo track for my Korg DW-8000, which I did for the VSE hybrid synthesizer compo. This turned out incredibly well for something that I didn't think was going to be any good at all when I started it.

C64 fantasy shooter soundtrack

This project never really got off the ground, but I did do most of the soundtrack for it. Maybe I'll pick it up again at some point, but until then, here it is.

• Demon Stomp - This was the final boss theme. It's all right, but not a very good final boss theme.
• Glacier Dance - Oh my God do I love how this song turned out. And yes, it's in 12/8, I'm weird like that.
• Magma Rumble - An abortive attempt to be Heat Man's music from Megaman 2. Still, it's all right, I guess.
• Mountain Climber - See if you can guess which popular rock band this is nakedly ripped off from!
• Necromancer's Crypt - I like the atmosphere, I really really like the atmosphere.
• Odell Mermaid - Yes, I was actually planning an Odell Down Under type game by this title at one point. Then it got repurposed here.
• Transmigrator - I never did figure out where to put this.
• Xenarthus - See if you can guess which not-popular rock band this is nakedly ripped from!

NES compositions

Random songs I put together in NerdTracker 2.

• ctlavos - Cover of "Last Battle" from Chrono Trigger.
• grieg - Would Grieg hate me for this? I don't know, but I like the gradual descent into lunacy.
• MIDLALTA - Cover of some old MOD. I don't know where it originated, but to us MZXers it'll always be the town music from Bernard the Bard.
• Moon Patrol - Moon Patrol! It's now surf rock! Actually, it basically was anyway.
• spygroove - This song eventually found a home as "Cedric the Combat Butler" on The Funnies, but it originated here.

Songs from the aborted Starless project:

• In God's Domain - Thank you, Ed Wood, for that magnificent turn of phrase. Shine on, you crazy diamond.
• Dark Forest - Kinda unremarkable, but I do like the brooding atmosphere.
• Road to Confrontation - Interesting, I almost never write songs withou a bass line.
• Military Beat - It's okay, I guess.
• To The Skies - I still like this one pretty well.
• Among The Stars - This is one of my favorite compositions, ever. Ever. Which is why I did an arranged version. (Uses OGG looping tags, play with compatible player.)
• Duel - The boss theme. Some day I'll find a place for this.
• The Final Battle - Just what it says. I like it okay. (Yes, those are supposed to be bagpipes at the end.)
• Run For Your Life - I'm not sure how I decided this wasn't annoying and a waste of channels. Guest-starring the Chrono Trigger battle theme, because somehow it just fit.

Songs from an aborted Pitfall! soundtrack:

• Title - Shockingly, the title music. I love the dual-pulse-wave trumpet.
• Main Theme (20 Minutes) - The cheery, reassuring "you've got plenty of time" music. This is another of my favorite compositions.
• Main Theme (10 Minutes) - The "step it up, already!" music.
• Main Theme (5 Minutes) - The "almost out of time" music. Eh.
• Hurry Up! - A jingle for transition between the main themes. If this had been written after I got really, really into prog I just would've written a 20-minute song.
• Game Over - This never seemed like it would fit Pitfall! But that's okay, it went on to be "Funky Dirge" on The Funnies.
• Editor - Yeah, this particular Pitfall! port has an editor, apparently.
• Sound effects - I'm still proud of how these turned out :)

MOD compositions

Most of these are for MegaZeux games I wrote, some are just for fun. (Many use the common-in-MZX trick of storing multiple songs in one file, so you may need a player that handles that.)

From the DOZ Summer 2005 entry - FINAL FRONTIER

• Opening Crawl - You can't have a sci-fi story without one!
• Space Travel - Including the main space theme and the combat theme.
• Planet Surface - I daresay it's the perfect music for sneaking around on a planet full of hostiles!
• Boss Theme - I still like how this one turned out.
• Final Battle - It's all right, but I wonder if I shouldn'tve switched this and the normal boss theme.

From Castle of Zokor:

• Step Carefully - I do kinda like this, but there's too many weird harmonics due to mixed sample quality. I swear it's a binaural-beat generator in a MOD file.
• The Dark Fort - This is one of the earliest songs I wrote, and somehow I still like it.
• The Spellbook - Another very early composition. It's a little simplistic for my tastes, but I do love the feel of it.
• Evil Water - Stupid title. And I should've been killed for that shaker noise.
• A Zokor Boss - Probably the earliest song I wrote that I like unequivocally and wouldn't change anything about (except the sample quality.)
• This Game Was Brought To You By - Somehow this never seemed to settle into a time signature. Still, it's nice and evocative and end-credits-ey.
• Zokor Fight I - The final-boss theme. It's actually surprisingly okay, I guess, but I was way too in love with orchestra hits back then.
• Zokor Rematch - The other final-boss theme. I actually kinda like this, but it has the same weird sample-interaction problems as "Step Carefully."

• Long & Weird - This started as an attempt at making something like "A Day In The Life" by the Beatles. It went completely insane somewhere in the process. I blame terrible college food service. Guest-starring the Weirdness title theme.
• MacArthur Park - I have an obsession with the idea of using the instrumental section from "MacArthur Park" as a final boss theme. Think about it! Here it is, arranged for the Konami VRC6 Famicom sound expansion, though sadly I never got around to actually putting it in an NSF.
• Mech Game music - Another early-ish composition. I like the break-down in the middle, a lot.
• RPG Quest: Boss - One of the weirder boss themes I've ever written, that's for sure.