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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.

This piece was written in D Phrygian. The piece itself follows a ABAC format with the musical structure, and was built around the piano arpeggios in the ABA sections. The C section's arpeggio was built more off the rhythm of the hihats.

The rhythm for the lead is a Tresillo for the A sections, while using a variation of a Son Clave (3-2) in the B and C sections. I had chosen strings to create some sort of dramatic feel about the main melody, but the backing elements of a saw wave and a bass synth were chosen to make things sound more unnatural or unsettling to perpetuate the intended threatening mood.

I also worked in countermelodies with the lead sections here, trying to create harmony between the two while having a countermelody to keep the melody itself interesting. I wanted to ensure that the countermelodies could still be heard amidst the piece, especially in the final section.

The drums I felt were best to match the rhythm of the arpeggios for the most part, aside from the C section where I had the kicks match the Son Clave rhythm, the hihats create its own rhythm, and the snares playing on the backbeat of the bar.

Since this track was written in Phrygian, I had envisioned hearing this while aboard a ship in enemy waters. I'm thinking like a group of unfriendly pirates or boarding the villain's ship while their whole crew is on board and you're trying to get by without getting killed.

Something I have been wanting to work more into my pieces are having pads playing in the background to add more texture to the piece, as I can hear merit to doing so when listening to other music since I've started this journey.