Ballads For Your Ears (A New Piece in This, The Year of the Ape!?)

Guess which forumite has a Tindeck account, compositional software and access to a rather shoddy sound set?  If you guessed anyone who's not me, you're as wrong as Donkey Kong in a thong.  This sub-forum's a bit dead, so here: have some tunes.

http://tindeck.com/users/Balladeer

Turn that volume all the way up for the best experience.  Most of them loop after a bit and then just cut, because I couldn't be bothered to make them end nicely: the penguins one, the One vs. All pieces, and Mind of the Queen are exceptions.  You can listen to them all the way through.  Enjoy!

And if anyone else happens to compose, or has any examples of themselves playing music (I know LexLuthor did, waaaaay back in the day), give us a listen.


EDIT: Yep Tindeck is now dead. Here are the four request pieces as were:

Zero: Bounce! Bounce! Bounce!
Moyles: Retrevolution
Buska: Fire Dancer
Buska 2: Bamboo Battle (of LLP fame)

Are those all original compositions Balla? That Liscarroll Battle track would fit right in to a Zelda game! I really enjoyed the few tracks I listened to, great work!

I recall you once had a YouTube channel with some videos of you playing piano, am I right?

They are apart from two: "Vs. Geno" is a merge of two pieces from SMRPG, as might be expected; and "Liscaroll Battle" is a boss battle remix of Irish reel "Walls of Liscaroll". Thanks for the complement!

I'd complete forgotten about the Youtube channel!
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheDarkBalladeer/videos
Created when I was a teenager, hence the cringeworthy-in-retrospect username.

That's the one! I even found my original comment from 5 years ago on your Rainbow Road video: "This is impressive".

Ooh! I enjoyed Liscarroll Battle. Will zoom back here and listen to a new track every now and then. Is 'DL' the number of downloads each track has received?

Downloads and plays, including my own , so it's not really a representative measure of popularity.

Well, you've obtained more hits that I'd manage. By far.

I'm just happy that I can compose a sentence.

*cough*

I mentioned composing a piece recently in the Chat Thread. Sibelius' own unique interpretation of said piece now exists in my Tindeck account (see the OP). Feel free to tell me that the euphonium is far too quiet.

For a virtual brass instrument it's probably better that it's quiet  

MEGABUMP. I've been super-unproductive on the music side of things recently, so I'm going to try to get back into it next month.

So, give my ideas for what to compose? I'm hoping to get two or three videogame-like pieces done next month, and I work better when I'm delivering for someone. If you could give me suggestions, e.g. level themes, game themes, ideas for bosses to compose fight themes for, I'd be very grateful! (Only please, no "like existing franchise/game/level" ideas, those games already have their music and I'm not so good at aping e.g. the Sonic style.)

What about a them for Pod of War as GNamercast has one and Drunka has done a bang up job with Guesstus using what ever he's using. We used the PS1 intro once for EP1 and haven't since with any of the Podcasts.

A pub karaoke version of Mousse. T's Horny '98.



This should also be the theme song - and sole subject - of Pod of War.

Mr. Wizard, I'd like you to produce a dance track that gets me super pumped, so I can add it to my gym playlist please. Imagine the background music in a fairly light-hearted fighting game, or the heroic beats when the player is kicking ass in a Platinum title.

@Mas: 1) The opening I use on Guesstus is the David Bowie song "You Will Set The World on Fire", which is a clever gag if you've finished Dark Souls.
2) Ps and Qs, bud.

Balladeer wrote:

So, give my ideas for what to compose?  I'm hoping to get two or three videogame-like pieces done next month, and I work better when I'm delivering for someone.  If you could give me suggestions, e.g. level themes, game themes, ideas for bosses to compose fight themes for, I'd be very grateful! (Only please, no "like existing franchise/game/level" ideas, those games already have their music and I'm not so good at aping e.g. the Sonic style.)

I don't know if this would be possible, but I'd love to hear your take on a chiptune videogame track. I saw in the Zelda thread you mentioned you were quite fond of MM2 Wily Stage 2, so I'd like to hear what you like in an 8 bit style track through your own music.

Failing that, I humbly request a theme for an RPG character who uses the lawyer class I dreamed up in some thread a while back. This may or may not be me trying to circumvent your "like existing franchise" rule.

@Cappa we will stick with PlayStation news as it seems to be working

@Drunka I thought, I knew what it was. I sort of know why it works.

Sorry Balla if you think I was rude hopefully you read it in a polite voice.

mas wrote:

orry Balla if you think I was rude hopefully you read it in a polite voice.

Ahh so that's where I'm going wrong when I read your posts.

J'ai une idée (sorry, too much Bravely Second). I'm thinking of a platformer where the character is constantly jumping: not tiny hops but high and languid bounds. I've commissioned you to make the tune for the first level: a relatively simple grass world type that teaches you the game mechanics. It's slightly cutesy, this fictitious title, but not twee.

Er, good luck.

Cheers muchly for your suggestions gents!  One thing I should warn you, before I charge into next week chords-a-blazing, is that the instrumentation available to me is a bit... MIDI.  Sibelius' sound set, you see.  I hope Jay can bear to listen to what I create nonetheless.  

That does rather rule out Cappa's suggestion, sadly - "drunken karaoke" isn't in that particular sound set I'm afraid, although I'd be very interested to hear the videogame setting he had in mind for it. I'm not going to do Mas' piece for different reasons: not only is it "the dreaded other formats", but a podcast jingle is usually only about half a minute long, not enough for me to get my teeth into really.  Sorry gents.

That leaves Zero, Drunka, and Jay.  I'm definitely going to do Zero's, it seems like the most intuitive of the three for me personally to compose and I've already got some motifs floating around.  I think Jay's will be my second priority, as it's the toughest of the suggestions (Cappa's aside): I'm used to using a range of (synthetic) instruments, limiting myself to chiptunes will be a real test of the fundamentals.  Now if only I can get "Monty on the Run" out of my head...

I do want to do Drunka's piece as well, as I'm not used to doing dance tracks.  Hopefully I'll have enough time next month to give all three a crack.

you could of done a outro as well

All good, not sure what you could of done being PlayStation, some sort of PS1/2/3/4 intro's remixed some how.

Balladeer wrote:

I think Jay's will be my second priority, as it's the toughest of the suggestions (Cappa's aside): I'm used to using a range of (synthetic) instruments, limiting myself to chiptunes will be a real test of the fundamentals.  Now if only I can get "Monty on the Run" out of my head...

I'm fully expecting a cover of Monty on the Run now.

Looking forward to hearing your take on this Balla - good luck!

I've run into my first roadblock - Sibelius' soundset does not contain anything at all chiptuney. While I've not quite given up downloading appropriate soundsets, getting plugins that work on (a) Sibelius and (b) a Mac is proving very tricky.

If this continues to go south I'll probably switch to Drunka's idea as my second priority, and Jay's lawyer theme as my third.

Yeah, I did anticipate you running into a problem like this, hence the two suggestions. Hope it works out though, chief.

This is... nope. Cannot for the life of me find something that works. Lawyer tune it is, then, assuming I get around to it.

Dangit, Balla - beaten down by the man!