Game Music Composition: Angry Bots Project

Our new assignment this week is composing the music for a game called Angry Bots, and I may have had a little too much fun with it. We were to go with a really kind of industrial feel (and for good reason; look at the space we're in), and give things a really gritty feel. I may have gone too far, but I really like how it sounds so I'm going to roll with it until I get some feedback from my instructor and peers. 

We were to create a 1-2 minute ambient loop that would be played when we weren't battling the bots. Then we had to do an 8-bar loop for each of the bots, giving them each a unique melody and feel so that you know which bot you're fighting. There are also three stingers that play when each of the robots' themes start. Can you differentiate each of the bots' themes?



Lennon
Student
Bachelor of Science, Music Production

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Game Music Composition: 2dPlatformer: Sound Effects

One of this week's assignments was to remove the sound effects from last week's project, 2dPlatformer, and replace them with sound effects that we either record, create, or find on a sound library. I haven't had to do a lot of sound design for interactive media since my Interactive Audio course back in November of 2015. So this turned out to be a lot of fun! 

I've embedded a screen recording for the assets that I created for this assignment below. 

Here's a screenshot of the assets that we had to deliver.

Some of the sounds may have been difficult for you to hear throughout the video, as I haven't really mixed them yet. I'm not entirely sure how to go about mixing individual oneshots like this for a game, so that will come later. However, I did get them to somewhat sit and not fight with each other. 

In case you couldn't hear everything, we had to create sound effects for the bomb exploding, bomb's fuse before it explodes, picking up the bomb, setting the bomb down, three grunts when we kill an enemy, a gunshot, the health box pickup, three jumps, "ouches," and taunts. I had fun with the bomb's fuse, enemy deaths, jumps, "ouches," and taunts. I got to get out my microphone and do some recording. Then, I went into Pro Tools and did some pitch shifting to make them sound more alien-like. Tons of fun, especially when you're creating sounds for something as ridiculous as a bean who's ship has landed in London and being attacked by aliens. 

As always, I'm open to suggestions on how to make things better. If you noticed something that seemed off, please let me know so I can tweak it.

I don't think I've enjoyed "homework" this much before!

Lennon

Student

Bachelor of Science, Music Production

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Advanced Music Composition Programming: Final Project

It's been a whole two months since I was in my Advanced Music Composition Programming course. It seems like just yesterday I was sitting in that class. 

Back in July of 2015, I took a very similar course to Advanced Music Composition Programming called Music Composition Programming. The projects were a bit more simple and focused more so on the technical side of learning Apple's Logic Pro X and a few musical elements such as arpeggios, bass lines, and drums. The months prior to Music Composition Programming were very heavy into music theory, identifying the meter of a song and various intervals within pieces of music. Music Composition Programming was the first class where we had to write an original song using only the Logic Pro X default plugins (to ensure that our projects opened up on the instructor's computer). At the end of the month, we were to present our final project to the class, friends, family (if they wanted to come), and even some Full Sail faculty. It was fun, and I learned a lot that month. 

Moving on to the advanced course...

Advanced Music Composition Programming was certainly a fun course. The music theory (which I thoroughly enjoy!) was caked on, and we got to work on a variety of cool projects. The one that I really enjoyed was our final project, which we were to compose an original piece at least 2-3 minutes in length. My project went very, very well! I nailed all of the points as stated in the rubric and my instructor (who earned their doctorate degree in Minnesota at the University of Minnesota) wanted me to share it on the class's SoundCloud page. This certainly isn't one of my most prized works, but I do really like most of the elements that are heard throughout. I had a lot of fun composing this piece because everything just came to me. That feeling you get when you're working on a song and everything you do to is working and fitting into the song is so, so refreshing! It saves a lot of time, headache, and hair. Give my final project a listen below. 

Certainly not my most prized composition, but there are a few things that I really, really enjoy in there, particularly the piano melody. Simple, yet very effective... I think.

This was just a quick blog post to share my project from Advanced Music Composition Programming. I was going to post this last month but never got around to it. I hope that you enjoyed this post and my song. :) 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Lennon
Bachelor of Science, Music Production

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