Duration: 4:36

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This is part of a daily upload challenge I am putting myself up to for 2024. I am currently a self-taught composer of two years, starting my journey of music theory in January 2022, and I am looking to show what I've learned since then by uploading one track a day for the whole year. I originally started off pursuing this as a means to compose music for gaming projects, especially inspired off the works of indie developers such as Toby Fox or ConcernedApe, however, realistically, I am looking into pursuing it more as a hobby - perhaps looking to pursue composition in a more serious capacity in the future.

That said, I am open to critique of my work.

The DAW that I learned to compose with is LMMS, which I picked entirely because it's free. I have considered options such as FL Studio, Reaper, and GarageBand down the line, though for my purposes at the moment this works fine for what I'm doing.

My music is entirely built off soundfonts which I have shamelessly grabbed from Musical Artifacts. The primary ones I'm working with are the Pablemo 2022, Roland SC-88, and the Arachno soundfonts, which can be downloaded from their website and used in your DAW if it supports .sf2 files - to my understanding, most DAWs should support them.

I started this one playing a Son Clave rhythm on the xylophones and began an Andalusian Cadence for the piece. I thought back to self-studies on MuseScore and remembered pieces written in a percussion ensemble, so I thought to do something of the sort here - picking up a low marimba for the bass and two vibraphones for the lead.

Afterward, I ended up deciding on an ABACB format for the piece and wrote a repeating motif that I used throughout the song, using a variation on the last 8 bars of each B section, and the C section. I thought to try different set of harmonies for the vibraphone as well to help differentiate each section of the piece.

To try and add more variation for all the sections, I also added two different pads to play throughout the piece with held notes to create more texture throughout the track. I'd also played around with the volumes on each of the pads also to help tell apart the reprisals for each section.

Overall, I'm satisfied with this piece. It sounds whimsical and that's what I was going for when setting up the xylophone beat that carries throughout the song.