anosou.com

That was supposed to be a clever pun meaning “What’s up?”… Yeah, well, you do better!

In any case, I’ve been slow on updating the site lately mainly because summer has hit me. I’m still working hard on Kaleidoscope and the unnamed Office soundtrack but part-time work and midsummer’s been draining time. The third track for Kaleidoscope is pretty much done, just some final polish needed. Since the environments were going to be reminiscent of old 8-bit games and a bit strange I really took some time to make the music reflect that. I’m using sampled sounds from the C64, GameBoy and Sinclair Spectrum together with my own blend of sounds. Furthermore, I came up with some catchy-but-simple polymetric stuff.

Oh, and my personal favorite of all my remixes just went live on OverClocked ReMix! It’s a rather trippy electronica rendition of Spencer Nielsen’s Heart of the Giant for Ecco: the Dolphin (Sega CD version). Do check it out, maybe even leave some thoughts if you’re feeling generous and opinionated. That’s all!

Nitro Game Injection, probably the best VGM podcast in the world, featured a “hot seat” edition with yours truly. I go in depth on my soundtracks and other video game music related subjects with terrific hosts Kyle ‘KyleJCrb’ Crouse and Larry ‘Liontamer’ Oji and there are exclusive tracks from the upcoming Kaleidoscope to be heard!

So, do go ahead and download the episode here and comment if you liked it, hated it or if you’re just bored!

I made a shorter interview that will be featured on Radio Free Gamer (http://8bitx.com/)  on Wednesday 7PM EST. There will be a first-ever preview of a Kaleidscope track, some general talk about my work and other music-related stuff. It’s also a great opportunity to hear my funny Swedish accent! This segment will be played during an otherwise live broadcast and will later be made into a downloadable podcast. Listening live is obviously the cooler thing to do so I urge you to tune in.

So, that’s Radio Free Gamer, http://8bitx.com, Wednesday 7PM EST!

EDIT: Okay, it’s been broadcasted live so now it’s avaliable as a podcast mp3! You can download it by clicking here! Do check it out for a dose of silly Swedish accent!

Utau Oka ~Harmonics FRELIA~, the first track on the soundtrack to the wonderfully Japanese game Ar Tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica is quite the piece of music. Akira Tsuchiya really shows what he’s capable of.

What’s so interesting with this track then? Well, the main vocal part is changing between 6/8 and 5/8 which gives it a very interesting feeling. I took the liberty of transcribing this main hook (1:11-1:24 in the track, then repeated 1:24-1:37). Below’s the result:

What makes this truly fun to listen to in my opinion, and also very unpredictable, is that he inverts the pattern for two measures. It starts with establishing that 6/8+5/8 is the main thing here, then after four measures he uses it in the reverse order 5/8+6/8 only to switch back right after. Considering the almost folk music-like nature of the Ar Tonelico soundtracks this play with time signatures doesn’t feel out of place at all. I’ll actually stop my analysis of the track here because I’m busy doing other stuff but that vocal line really is the only established theme in the track. It is also a bit of fresh air in a world dominated by 5/4 and 7/8 without further expansion.

It’s worth mentioning that I’m generalizing a bit here, there are much VGM that is as complex or more complex than this. The main battle theme of Dragon Quest IV for example. Fellow VGM enthusiast and ultra-geek CHz pointed this out to me and I analyzed one part as 9/8 – 9/8 – 13/8 – 7/8 – 7/8. The 13/8 can be divided even further but I was too lazy at the time. That MIGHT be the subject of a future blog post though.. Anyway, for now you’ll have to be satisfied listening to the part of Utau Oka I analyzed:

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That’s all for now, the next VGM Spotlight will probably be a bit more in-depth so keep an eye on the site!

I’m currently composing music for a project created by Ted Hung at Moment Games. The game, which I can’t tell you that much about, is set in an office environment so I’m currently trying my best to capture the spirit of an office in music. This is harder than it might sound because an office isn’t at all times dull, nor is it at all times fun. There’s a certain ambiguity surronding the office as a game environment and the game’s story doesn’t clearly present it in just one way.

With this in mind I decided to base the main gameplay track around a chord sequence that offers the same sort of ambiguity, in this case between minor and major. The “verse” section is a simple four chord sequence:

A – G – F#m7 – Fmaj7

The funny thing here is that I’m using chords found in A-major or A-minor (A and F#m7 from A-Major, G and Fmaj7 from A-minor). This makes establishing a key a bit harder, even though it starts with an A-major chord. The last chord is emphasized to further increase the confusion.

The “chorus” section offers yet another quite confusing chord sequence:

E7 – G – C – Bb – F – Dm7 – E7

Here I’m using some unconventional “leaps” between chords that makes it sound less rooted in a major or minor key. For example going from C to Bb or from E7 to G. While none of these are really daring, at all, they make for an interesting effect and helps add to the peculiar mood that’s in an office.