Duration: 4:13

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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.

With this track, the main goal was to work on changing time signatures within the same piece, as it's something I haven't done enough with LMMS. I started with building a drum beat off of a 7/8 beat and decided to make an ABAC format for the song.

I thought to make the B and C sections more interesting by making them play in 4/4. Initially, I also thought to make the C section be in 12/8, however I decided against it.

After setting up the drum beats, I set up a steel guitar to play chord notes throughout each section, and supported it with a low piano bass. I amplified the volume of the piano bass later on to make it stand out amidst everything else playing.

To also make the chord notes stand out, I also had piano notes play those chord notes as well as playing a pad in the background throughout the whole piece. I used variations of i - iv - v in D Minor for the chords.

As for the main piece itself, I set up a pan flute and string ensemble to play the main melody. For sections A, I had the strings act as a countermelody, while in sections B and C I had the pan flute play a countermelody. I wanted the "main" melody for each section to play its notes at the same time of the chord notes with the guitar, with variations at certain points to maintain interest.