Category: The Journey

Music 30/30 – Day 20

Two thirds of the way through, and I’m doubling down on the idea of completing the first “semester” of the music theory course. I moved away from it a bit just to get more into material that would be more directly useful to my current projects, but at the same time I’m so close to reaching the end. So I’m buckling down and doing the homework that I haven’t gotten around to yet. According to the instructor, completing fifth species counterpoint marks the end of the content from the first semester of his collage course, and that is very nearly the point that I’ve reached. So that will be pretty gratifying. Afterward I can shift back to studying techniques more specific to ambient and game music for the remainder of the challenge.

Other

I consciously decided to skip the “video” update today. I’ve been having an incredibly difficult time with the recording setup lately, and I’m honestly not sure why it’s proving to be such a hassle. On the plus side, I have a couple of new options available to try out, but I wasn’t able to get everything together to test it today. Tomorrow I will try to see if I can’t get an actual video together.

Music 30/30 – Day 19

Today I spent some time reviewing the courses for third and fourth species counterpoint. Now that I’ve gotten my feet wet with a few practice pieces I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have some more guidance on putting together some melodies. I am certain that I’ll need to go over the material again, and probably go back and review first and second species as well, since I still have a lot of questions about what’s happening, but at least I’m starting to get the content.

Other

In other news, I managed to put together the basic camera work around the new book display in Runic Alchemy, and actually came up with something I’m pretty pleased with. I’m still trying to work out exactly how I want to handle the UI around getting to specific pages within the books, but it’s a start.

I also picked up a small handful of additional courses for future learning, this time around with a focus on writing, and specifically non-fiction writing. I don’t know if I’ll be even trying to pick up any freelance gigs any time soon, but there are a lot of areas directly related to Illustrious Kingdom where having the skills needed for freelance writing will be invaluable. 

Music 30/30 – Day 18

Song number 4, ready to go. I decided to skip out on the percussion in this one, in favor of just letting the melodies provide the rhythm, and even went in for a bit of counter movement, though in retrospect it probably would have been nicer if it had been full counterpoint. I need a lot more practice with that, though. It’s short and melancholy, I like it.

In the piano practice, I moved on from the “easiest” section to the “easy” section, and I have to say that from the tracks I’ve tried so far the difficulty curve is a bit steep. The first one went perfectly fine, I actually aced it on the first try, but the ones after that proved to be much more challenging than I expected. Literally taking things to the next level.

Other

In other news, I managed to upgrade the camera settings for Runic Alchemy today, giving it a much nicer transition between the different things that you may want to look at as you play. I added a basic library as well, for the new books, but I’m still trying to decide exactly how I want that part of the game to be visually represented.

Music 30/30 – Day 17

Something more than straight practice today, I started in on another piece. I’m going for a bit more of a varied melody this time around, and I’m afraid I haven’t had a chance to nearly complete it, hopefully more work on it tomorrow, but it’s study none the less.

Other

In other news, I made another step forward on getting a playable version of Runic Alchemy ready today, with the purchase of someone else’s assets. I know, I know, and to be honest I’m trying to do the majority of the game with nothing but my own self made code and art assets, but in this case I needed something rather complex, and it turned out that someone else already had exactly what I needed ready to go. It’s a part of the Unity culture to share and reuse work in this manner, and in this case it would have been silly to dump weeks worth of effort into recreating something on my own when it’s already done, so pop, into my project it goes, for a nominal fee.

Of course the downside to purchasing an asset as opposed to writing it yourself is that you still need to figure out how to use the silly thing, and I’ve only just started with that, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. With any luck my next coding session could see me turn it into a viable way to study the runes in the game to unlock power ups.

Music 30/30 – Day 16

Another day of mostly just practice, though I think it’s going well. I did go through a lecture on how to pick out chord progressions by ear, but that’s a thing that takes a lot of practice before you can do it well, so I don’t think I’ll be able to claim it in my repertoire any time soon.

 

Music 30/30 – Day 15

Today was a pretty light day, challenge-wise. My 30 minutes were spent entirely on piano practice, and that was the extent of my musical involvement for the day. Every now and then you have to take a step back and just mostly relax.

Music 30/30 – Day 14

Another day, another song.

This time I decided to play around a bit more with the melodies. I ended up with two similar but distinct melody lines, and had them switch up between the voices part way through. I think the end effect was pretty nice.

Other

Aside from the usual music practice and turning out another short piece, I spent some time today diving back into Runic Alchemy. I managed to fully integrate my custom “stupid big number” structure into the code and get actual resource conversion happening the way its supposed to, along with finally being able to reliably buy upgrades for things in the game, which is a crucial step toward having something that’s actually playable. I also fixed an issue with the cloud of magical motes that float around the room. It’s nice to finally get back to it and start making some real progress.

Music 30/30 – Day 13

Another day focused more on practice than actual theory, though I did watch some videos on using 7th chords. The practice was centered around my second piece created with bandlab:

I wanted to go a bit slower with this one, get a bit more video game background music with it. I think I like the result. It’s a bit less repetitive than the last piece, too, which is a plus. I think I’ve still got a ways to go before I’m turning out actual good pieces, but they always say that the best way to get good at something is to actually do it, and in the meantime I’m pretty happy with what I’m already able to produce.

Music 30/30 – Day 12

Not a whole lot to report today, other than this: I wrote a music.

It’s a bit basic, and a bit repetitive, but I like it. I was quite pleased to realize that bandlab’s in-browser DAW is actually pretty functional, and works well on the Mac that I use at work, allowing me to compose on my lunch break.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled blog…. already in progress? No? Well, sort of, now.

Music 30/30 – Day 11

I took a bit of a slight detour in my musical training today. I still spent some time going over the basic rules for Second Species Counterpoint, which was interesting, but I’ve also been realizing that so far I’ve had a very strong focus on more or less “pure” music theory, which the counterpoint work so far is reminding me lends itself very well to classical music. I know it applies to other forms of music as well, and having good fundamentals is going to be really important for making really quality stuff, but I’m also not certain that its where I need to be focusing right now, given my stated goals. I’ve been enjoying the heck out it, sure, and I’m sure I’ll keep going at it for a while at least, but I also wanted to start some new threads of investigation to see if I can’t get something a little more directly in tune with where I’m trying to go.

To that end I picked up a different course from this same instructor (J. Anthony Allen, if anyone is wondering. He has a Ph.D. in music, is a collage professor, and an award winning composer and performer, and has some very excellent music courses on Udemy, including the Complete Music Theory course I’m enrolled in.) This new course focuses in on composition for electronic music, so rather than focusing on sheet music and piano parts, he’s using a digital audio workstation, drum loops, piano rolls, and the like, which is a very similar setup to where I’m going anyway. Since I know I already appreciate his teaching style it should be a good fit, and hopefully a good segue into the more specific if somewhat theory light classes I already have from others on writing music for games.