Duration: 4:54

7 views

0

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 recently watched 8-Bit Music Theory's video on Dark Souls music and used that as a basis for this piece, using chromatic chord progressions to create interesting music for listeners. The goal here was originally to create my own Dark Souls styled music, though by starting off with guitar riffs I thought I had something a bit less like a Dark Souls styled confrontation and instead something a bit more foreboding, like a buildup to something like a Dark Souls fight.

With that in mind, I decided to set up a drumbeat to go along with this and held low piano notes to create more of a sinister feeling, following those chromatic chord progressions. I had the drumbeat consistent throughout an ABACB format, changing only dramatically for the C section of the track.

Following that, I also created a motif and used that for the main A section, while doubling the general length of it for the B sections to emphasize the motif movements. I also made sure to make the harmonizing tracks and incorporate enough key changes to create enough of a contrast throughout the track, even with the reprisals on the A and B sections.

The main goal here is that I wanted to use the motif on top of the chromaticism to make the piece feel uneasy and tense for the listener, to ensure that the listener feels that they're in an unwanted place.