Duration: 3:54

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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.

The motive behind this one was to create a call and response piece. I originally started off with coming up with a piano arpeggio to set up a chord system, but ended up deciding to make it a harp bass and created a more "stable" arpeggio on the higher register to set up the chord notes with another harp sample instead.

I also set up a drum beat, using a pedal hihat to set up a pulse rhythm of 8th notes to keep playing throughout the track, and a pizzicato on the low register to supplement this. I had the drums play alongside the main arpeggio for each section, in which I designed an ABC format for the music.

And since I had set up a chord progression of half of my comfort pick (i - VII - i - VI) I ended up following up the chord progression with the Royal Road progression just to drill that in more (iv - v - VI - III) for my comfort picks. I used variations of these two throughout the track in each section.

The instruments chosen were the pan flute because I'm more familiar with it in the DAW at this point, and the accordion to create a harsh contrast. I'd originally set up a trombone sample for the call and response setup, but I thought that didn't have enough contrast to stand out between the pan flute pieces to really create both a contrasting harmony alongside a distinct voice for the call + response setup.