0025. 2023-11-29 S2DPM Map View.mp3 I wrote a short 4 bars melody/thing! I think it works excellent when looped. For me it has a vibe of a game-map-view or maybe a post-game summary screen or credits. The uploaded result has three versions in it, one after the other: plain version with drums and bass added lead added “bell-like” flavor chords And yes, the whistle is a required part of the drum arrangement.

0024. 2023-11-25 S2DPM Menu Theme.mp3 This is a short theme written for the Super 2D Platform Maker. I tried to convey a more playful vibe with rather simple instruments, clicked together in Vital. Bassdrum “Four to the Floor” style to give the whole thing a certain drive. I think it loops quite nicely and I like the short break at the beginning / in the loop where you can only hear the drums.

0023. 2023-10-31 2D Platformer.mp3 In our regular online hacking sessions Gesche continued to transfer her Unity knowledge to Godot and in doing so wrote a small 2D platformer proof of concept. Seeing that on stream I wrote a very short piece of music for the game. Made with reaper, instruments quickly clicked together in Vital. I used the “old and free” version of Sitala for some drums. The game can be played here.

0022. 2023-04-28 Synth Wave Basics Try One.mp3 Sat together with a friend and started into looking how to make synthwave songs (or… anything in that direction). This is the first try of this! Well, not really. It’s the first try of getting some instruments ready that sound a bit like the instruments I want to have later on. But, that’s the first step anyway - get the instrument somewhat right, learn what chords, patterns and other tricks are used in a synthwave song and then try to emulate it.

0021. 2022-01-30 Bespoken Thirds.mp3 Today I took a short look at Bespoke Synth, a free OpenSource synthesizer. It is a module-based synth and lets you connect them to each other to generate… music! I’ve seen some people do really cool things with this thing, especially in the directon of generative sound design. I, on the other hand, didn’t leave my comfort zone that far. I started out by putting the thing into “chromatic” mode, popped up some note sequencers and started writing down notes.

0020. 2021-12-22 Unknown 8-bit.mp3 I got again distraced by what I actually wanted to do and made a short chiptune-style piece of music. This one is designed as a loop, so instead of a proper ending it just starts again. I had a lot of fun messing around with panning and pitchbend in vital. So much fun that I forgot to invest into a proper title.

0019. 2021-12-18 Angry D&B Computer.mp3 Originally I wanted to test out some ambient drone music stuff with Vital. This did not happen. In this track I started out with the riff, which sounds a bit computerized, thanks to Vital’s “Sample & Hold” randomness connected to the frame selector of my waveform. Then we have the “strong bass”. Just put distortion on it, makes it sound angrier. Perfect. I also added a pattern played be something like a synth-bell, which I find fills the track quite nicely.

0018. 2021-12-12 Mellow Sunset.mp3 Originally I only wanted to play around with vital and create some sort of “synth string” sound. The riff was what I came up with to continuously listen to my synth while messing around with the dials of vital. In this song you can hear: somewhat relaxed synth-string riff (which is just a filtered sawtooth with a long release) a bell sound as lead (a sine with a matching envelop does the heavy lifting, plus some filters for a better fealing; I’m really surprised what you can do with a proper envelope on a synth instrument) some hacked-together bass - sounds a bit more synthy for this track than I would like, but eh… a “woosh” sound!

0017. 2021-12-08 Jumpy 8-bit Arp.mp3 Orignally I just wanted to try to make an 8-bit arp with vital. To develop this, I wrote the small riff you can hear starting at 00:07. Then I started to like the thing and decided to make a song out of it. This time I played a liiiiittle bit around with arranging this song (there’s like, a sections where totally not every voice is playing at the same time!

0016. 2021-12-03 Sidechain Rave (loop).mp3 I have heard and read so much about side-chaining that I wanted to try this myself. In this example I have a bassdrum, which is connected to a Calf Sidechain Compressor, which then controls the volume of the “organ”. Sounds ravy! Maybe something to make a song out / add a lead to in the next iteration. I did some improvisation on my keyboard while this was playing, but no melody stuck out enough to actually write it down.