Duration: 5:01

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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.

Today's piece is to set up a combined piano chord with an arpeggio on the high register and a low register bass. I wanted the notes to follow the chord notes, and to that end, I chose E minor to base the piece around.

To supplement the chords, I added a synth pad to play on the back of each section, and a pedal bass playing the current chord key as the piece goes along. A kick drum helped play the notes that the piano bass played, and the snare sections were all there to add more energy to the backbeats. Hihats were then also added to add more of a pedal rhythm to this piece.

The piece was written to be in an ABABC format with appropriate transitions inbetween each part, and the strings were chosen as a simple yet effective leading instrument to play the main lead. I added an organ to provide some contrast with the strings, while also playing alongside it in the B sections of the piece.