Finding the Perfect Musical Sketchpad

Shortly after a compo round ended, I stumbled upon a thought that provoked a chat session among other music makers. I wondered aloud why I tended to put one project on hiatus to work on a different one. For example, I had stopped publishing my webcomic to focus on hosting my radio show, and this in turn halted new mixtape episodes since I put all of my new Duosis material into the radio broadcasts. I also placed any new non-Duosis musical projects on hold while I did all the other stuff. Someone in the chat suggested I sketch out my compositions bit by bit over time so that I could do more things at once. It's a fair suggestion, except that my sketching usually involves painstaking sequencing that takes almost as much time as producing the completed song. I don't know sheet music or play instruments, so even laying down a skeletal structure of chords and melodies would take time. How could I sketch out my ideas quickly?

This question spurred a search that has not led to a fully adequate solution, but nevertheless brought a few options to my attention. My first train of thought was some sort of musical app. I have a mobile device on me for most of the time, so why not use that to lay down songs? Google brought up Fiddlewax, which looks like the exact opposite of iOS GarageBand. Skeuomorphism is largely absent from Fiddlewax, so there's little to no association to physical instruments. There are even different types of input that people can choose based their own level of musical knowledge. One snag is that there's no MIDI export in GarageBand, so taking a work-in-progress over to the desktop for polishing is a complicated effort. A few other apps seem to have the same problem: they function well as digital instruments, but when it comes time for post-production you're usually stuck with an audio recording.

After a while I pivoted toward a different musical note-taking option: using my voice as a writing instrument. Doing so with technology isn't a new concept: there's the old John Tesh anecdote about how he was in a hotel room without a piano, and that he ended up singing into his answering machine to lay down what would become the NBA on NBC theme. Regarding contemporary gear, I had tried Loopy HD in the past to record one-man-acappella-band versions of potential songs; I also later checked out Take Creative Vocal Recorder, which has similar functionality. What I was looking for now was some way to use my voice as a controller. Ideally my sung notes would trigger an on-screen element that could jot down the notes for me. In my search I immediately came across Imitone, which recently got financial support from Kickstarter. The app developer's goal is to open up music making to anyone whose larynx could express music. This seems too good to be true, so I'll see how that goes when the product is available for public release.

I later tried other processes based on software that I already had on my computer. Microsoft Research Songsmith sat on my hard drive for years after I installed it to make some joke songs for compos. One way I could use it for serious work would be to hum the melody idea I had in my head, select the corresponding chords manually in each measure, and then export isolated instrument parts as MIDI. Once I had the MIDI parts loaded up in a DAW, I could do whatever changes I wanted. So that worked for the chordal sections somewhat, but what about the melody line I sang? For that I used Melodyne's feature to export audio as MIDI. This isn't a perfect method, as a lot of the time the software has a ballpark guess as to what was sung. Getting close to the intended line however, as someone in the compo chat suggested, is an improvement to having to sequence it from scratch.

Going through other potential solutions also caused me to figure out problems I had in FL Studio that had prevented me from inputting things via microphones and MIDI controllers. If I can take anything from this search, it's that. This brings me to my current state of musical sketching: meeting technology halfway to get my ideas down. Regardless of my method, I still lean on simple chord-identifying programs like Reverse Chord Finder just to know what it is I'm writing. I shouldn't be a choosy beggar; the initial problem wouldn't be there if I learned notation or took music-playing lessons. As I said in the chat, it's not like my cartooning where I can sketch out something in fifteen seconds and then finish eating a sandwich.

Composer Spotlight on Andy Kelley

When I met him at a chiptune show in NYC earlier this year, Andy Kelley aka superjoe changed my perception of him as a person. For one thing, he’s shorter than I had imagined. Judging from photos of his angular head (think Conan O’Brien) I assumed he would be towering, but he turned out to be about 6’ by my estimation. At the show he also clarified his love of electronic music, favoring it over the acoustic tunes that came before. I asked Andy a few questions about his pet project SolidComposer, his experience in compos, and an Internet band he’s in called The Burning Awesome.

Andy commented on his earliest exposure to music, which happened to be of the acoustic variety. He said that, “My mom would always listen to country music while I played Legos. I hate country music. I didn't start liking music until much later.” His leaning away from non-synthetic sounds continued to the present day: On more than one occasion, he completely dismissed acoustic versions of electronic compositions. He affirmed this line of thought as my question brought it up, and he used OverClocked ReMix as an example. “I'm a sucker for synthesizers, what can I say? I'm disappointed that the OCR judges think there is too much electronic music, because I love it.”

This is also reflected in Andy’s approach to music production. Speaking of his common workflow methods, he said that “I usually start with some effect, trick, or sub-genre I want to try out, see how it goes, and then work from there. It's not a particularly effective method. I'd like to know a better way; maybe I should be planning on paper or something.” He uses FL Studio and works with two staples of that workstation: Sytrus and 3xOsc. Andy also incorporates the Vengence Essential Clubsounds sample packs as well as SampleFusion. He owns a guitar and occasionally uses a microphone. At one point he had a piano keyboard, but that fell away as he felt he had inadequate skill in that area.

With his gear in place, Andy made a number of entries for composition competitions. He first discovered compos via the OCReMix forums and found them compelling. “It's fun to get instant feedback. Also the Doubles’ Dash ones force you to quickly cooperate with someone you don't know, who you can only communicate through the Internet. It's super fun.” His interest in the mechanics of running a compo led him to develop a competitions arena at SolidComposer. He noted that, through ThaSauce’s existing format of using IRC to synchronize listening parties, “One Hour Compos don't scale to more than eight people; it gets unruly to manage. I saw a place where my l33t skillz could help make the competitions a better experience.”

SolidComposer embeds a chat room into the compo rounds themselves, and the listening parties are automated. Although he was mostly pleased in how the concept of his website worked out, he admitted that “Ironically ThaSauce currently scales better than SolidComposer after you pass the twenty-five entrant mark.” Over two years after its launch, Andy's site isn’t so much on the back burner as it’s almost off of the stove. He was visibly stunned when he realized how long SolidComposer has been running, and jokingly lamented that he should resume housekeeping on it.

Initially, the site's workbench system had been created as a way for him and his colleagues to work together as an Internet trio. Andy explained the pitfalls of making music as The Burning Awesome: “We ran into all kinds of problems with stepping on each other’s toes, trying to make sure we all had the same samples, trying to communicate effectively. I ended up creating a website to help our project along, and it worked great. I improved it a lot, generalized it, and made it into SolidComposer's workbench.” The Burning Awesome eventually put out a debut album, albeit one largely consisting of the same chord progression.

Despite the intentions of the workbench, the majority of activity on SolidComposer is through its compos. Andy reflected on this, and on the concept of collaboration: “I thought the site would help draw people into what I thought was a brilliant idea for working on projects. The benefit of working with other people is that when you run into composer's block, you have someone there to take the song in a totally different direction and give you all sorts of new ideas. The bad thing about working together is that you often disagree with what the other people do, or they don't understand that they shouldn't put seven Soundgoodizers on the master channel with the bass turned all the way up.”

Andy summarized his thoughts about competitions and group-composing by saying, “Yes, I think compo experience helped me quite a bit. Also vice versa: working on The Burning Awesome album together helped out in compos.” Andy’s attention has shifted away from the online arena as he moved to NYC and pursued his career at Indaba Music. To quote his response at the end of my questions: “Sorry, I’m a bit busy atm.”

Composer Spotlight on Mirby

Taylor Brown aka Mirby is perhaps best known in the video game music community for her journalistic pursuits. She has written numerous articles reviewing arrangement albums as well as interviews with remixers. Mirby has also collaborated with members of the community for original material and for VG-based fan works. More recently she is heading the Final Fantasy remix project Audio Engineering, covering all the Cid themes from the series. I asked Mirby a few questions about her influences, her creative goals, and her short-lived ReMixing Bout compo.

Mirby revealed that her earliest exposure to music was probably as soon as she came into the world. She explained that, “My dad was a bassist in a band, so music has always been a big part in my life. The band was disbanded before I was born, and due to a drunken mishap they weren't signed. That said, my brother and all his friends (henceforth referred to as my brothers) are musicians, so through them I learned all sorts of things. In fact, if it weren't for them I might not have any interest in making music at all.” She felt that this early experience influenced her current work: “Since all my brothers did was jam sessions, all my music is basically just made as I go. Adding in what sounds good, tweaking things to make it just right... they definitely influenced me as a musician.”

It's been noted that Mirby’s solo work carries a heavily improvised style, sometimes implementing on-the-fly keyboard riffing. She elaborated that, “When I can, I like to mess around with whatever music-making thing I can; keyboards are usually what I use, but I did recently make a nice rhythm via the ocarina in Ocarina of Time 3D, and have since figured out how to play it on a keyboard. When I'm actually recording, I stick to FL Studio and soundfonts. I've found quite a few good ones, and am slowly getting more familiar with the track. I also have a friend who is willing to record live violin, so that's cool too.”

Mirby has participated in a number of compos, and eventually organized her own, Mirby's ReMixing Bout. When asked what her motivation for joining compos had been, she said, “I think I first learned about them because of JHCompo. I'd never really made music in a short time frame before, so having that restriction really inspired me. One Hour Compo is also great fun because it's half the time and thus double the rush.” She also explained why she started her own competition: “I just have a lot of tracks I want remixes for. That's literally the main inspiration for it. But thanks to my Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story remix of Plack Beach, I have been inspired to make my own remixes now instead of purely original stuff.”

She is currently organizing a Final Fantasy Cid tribute project, and described the experience of bringing artists together for collaboration: “I have a few WIPs so far, so it's going well. Considering I got all the main Cid tracks claimed in just ten days, I'm rather amazed. I guess that everyone likes Cid, so that's good.” At the time of the interview, the album was simply known as the Cid Tribute Project. She joking mentioned she had an idea for a fake cover: “Everybody Loves Cidolfus with FF12 Cid on the front.” It was later given the title Audio Engineering: A Cid Tribute Project.

Mirby revealed some of her current plans for her outlets, known collectively as Mirby Studios. “I'm always up for an interview with a remixer. Other projects include the numerous games I've been working on and have never finished. Whether I do finish those someday or not is still up in the air.” She noted that her collaboration with Wildfire remixing Subrosia’s theme from Oracle of Seasons is coming together. Regarding composition competitions, Mirby concluded that, “Basically, compos are good. If you're looking to improve on your skills, find a compo and participate. I didn't learn as much in FL Studio just messing around as when I had time restrictions. There are plenty of competitions, so it's not hard to find one.”

Most Dangerous Game

The past week marked the start of Street Fighter: The World Warrior Remix Royale. For the tournament, each entrant selected a character theme from the Street Fighter series and will battle by way of a “vs remix” merging the theme with that of an opponent. Unlike previous competitions held on OverClocked ReMix, the royale will feature involvement with Capcom for potential inclusion of music in its promotional releases. SDCompo ended round 65 with a handful of entries, and its first place entry agargara gathered much approval despite its unorthodox structure and inexplicable snail-themed lyrics. LLCompo: Battle 8 similarly was home to some unusual verses due in part to its “Robot” theme. Saif in particular teamed up with a friend to create a speed metal song about the rise of the machines. 

JHCompo on Tuesday invited everyone to a “Game Show” where the big prize was perpetually hidden in a question-marked box. My introduction track featured my usual narration, this time set to the Match Game theme song. Duosis chose to make a theme song for a reality show, cutting a sampled rock riff to a pounding house beat and funky bassline. SonicThHedgog in his typical fashion put out a pair of Sonic arrangements and asked listeners to identify the source material. Finally rwarman007 worked out an electronic piece that served to propel his spoken-word instructions about the game show and its progression. 

Thursday’s OHC was preceded by the hype built up at Compo Stadium, detailing the “Battle of the Heroes” theme amongst the flaring of NFL on Fox horns. A-zu-ra demonstrated that overthinking is a mixed blessing, thus leaving his entry untitled and creating a brief chip entry. CSWorks worked out a bouncy, off-kilter battle theme in the style of Final Fantasy. Acuity’s track “Summoner’s Rift” asked participants to select the protagonist and go off on an adventure of lo-fi synths. Miru’s post-piece requiem focuses on playful fights between friends, set to rhythmic orchestral music. DijiTwitch said simply “Kill’em Dead” and ventured to the dance floor with his stabbing piano. BrandonS decided to forgo actually composing a song for the round and instead offered an infomercial for his new EP. DDRKirby(ISQ) similarly promoted his compilation album, but made a new song containing church bells, strings and many blips.

Flik made a rare appearance and submitted a short but effective mixture of industrial and ambiance. Arcana felt that his tune was too upbeat to be about war, so his orchestral jaunt summarizes the joy of victory. CJthemusicdude whipped out his keyboard to rollick among the ivories in a somber composition. Trancient noted that his electronic track sounds better with headphones, which is not a problem considering the listening party’s large percent of producers. Shadix’s entry is possibly shorter than the time it takes to read the track description, but what is heard fits the context. General Mumble arrived an hour late due to a Daylight Savings Time snafu, but shook the dancefloor with arps and a lumbering beast of some sort. sci uploaded another mashup of his that manages to sound cohesive despite the wild mixture of sources. 

munchi made a sly nod to DDRKirby in his entry title and presents the glitched blurbs he worked on as practice. OMGitslewis also sent out a chippy electro tune complete with a chilled middle section and some wubs. Forty-Two soaks his reflective “No Man’s Land” in reverb and subtly played off of his harmonies in a soft manner. Roseweave sang a bit for her submission, seemingly falling onto her microphone in the process. I wrote an original song in OHC for once, with the help of a rhythm guitar recording that I chopped to create chord progressions. At the end of the listening party MandraSigma submitted his “hero theory” for approval, combining keyboard jabs with vocal samples and a patchwork of other elements.

Composer Spotlight on DDRKirby(ISQ)

To call Timothy Wong aka DDRKirby(ISQ) a star in the compo community would be an understatement. His reputation for creating vast, dense musical tracks in 60 minutes precedes him. Fellow compo participants lament even being played after him in listening parties, as the euphoria of hearing his entry often extends past the end of his song and onto the next. It comes as no surprise that one of his tracks was played during a ThaSauce panel at MAGFest X, as any tune of his is a shining example of what could be accomplished during a One Hour Compo (OHC). His latest “Monthlies” compilation can be found at his Bandcamp page. I asked him a few questions regarding his musical output, his influences and what he has in store for the future.

Timothy spoke of his early exposure to music and how it impacted his current work. “As I was growing up I was being classically trained in piano, but most of the music I listened to was chiptunes from video games. From there I later branched out into Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) songs and OverClocked ReMix.” He noted that he considers the DDR games and OC ReMix to be within the realm of video game music, and that he began listening to trance and other “non VG stuff” afterward. Timothy explained how all of this influenced his output: “When I first started producing I actually wasn't doing chiptuney stuff at all... It was more ‘old school OCR’ techno-like, and I was trying my hand at making trance stuff as well. Somewhere along the line, chiptune sounds started creeping into my songs, and nowadays they're there full-force.”

One question that occasionally pops up during compo deals with Timothy’s unusual artist name. He explained the origin of DDRKirby(ISQ): “DDR and Kirby were two things I liked a lot at the time so they just came together. Later I decided it wasn't guaranteed to be unique so I added ISQ, which stands for Io Squad. It’s a crossover universe of sorts that my brother created and that only really exists between us. You can just think of it as an arbitrary clan tag or something. It's solely for uniqueness.” Sometimes he uploads a second entry for a compo round as “DDRKirby(ISO)”, which serves as a similar looking duplicate name.

He recalled when he first began participating in composition competitions: “I knew that compos existed but never got around to actually trying them until eventually I just decided it might be neat to try, and good practice. Since then, I've found that they're a blast, and have improved my production skills to an amazing degree. Somehow the one hour time limit of OHC is perfect, and manages to spur me on to create great things. I also like how it really streamlines your process and manages to really get you into the flow of things.” Beyond OHC, he has also joined remixing compos. “I participated in a few rounds of FLMC (Fruity Loops Music Competition), where you're only allowed to use the default samples and plugins that come bundled with FL Studio. I managed to win twice, with Mega Man 3 and Link to the Past remixes that really show you the power of 3xOsc, among other things.”

Listeners often marvel at the intricate nature of Timothy’s work, especially considering the limited timeframe imposed by compos like OHC. He elaborated that, “In terms of arrangement style, not instrumentation, I'd say that I tend to work a lot with layering. Perhaps due to FL Studio I tend to have a pattern and loop based workflow. So there's actually a lot of repetition in my arrangement; even in my melody lines, it'll usually be something like two measures of something, then the same two measures with some differences. I'm not one to focus on primary foreground melodic elements – rather, I consider textures, soundscapes, and complex layering to be more important to me. This also tends to help me do well in OHC because I get to reuse a lot of elements, whereas I know there are other people who spend a lot more time because they don't use as much repetition.”

Timothy went into further detail about his common workflow methods: “Starting a song off is always the hardest part, but once I have the beginnings of a neat song, things tend to flow really well. I hardly ever start by composing a chorus first; I always just go from beginning to end. I try to basically have more-or-less final arrangement and instrumentation before moving on to the next section. Really, most of my practice nowadays is in the OHC setting, so my workflow has become pretty heavily streamlined to that sort of style.” As far as his choice of weaponry, he stated that, “My most used instrument has got to be the 3xOsc, which I love to death.” He recommended the VST for its versatility in the manipulation of its oscillator shapes. “It can do everything, from massive supersaw basses, to sub-basses, and triangle whistle sounds.”

He mentioned his signature ‘KirbySquare’ made using 3xOsc, one that has inspired other entrants to emulate this sound during compos. Timothy described KirbySquare himself as “a square wave plus a triangle wave one octave lower, and was originally inspired by RocketSniper in FLMC.” His approach to chip sounds has changed as he progressed in music production. “Recently I've been using custom pulse and triangle waveforms ripped directly from Famitracker and LSDJ, which has been working super well. Before I had those waveforms, I used to use a combination of TS404 for great pulse leads, magical8bitplug for pulse pads, and tb_triforce for triangle wave stuff.” Aside from 8-bit, he incorporates elements from a wide variety of sources. “I have Alchemy’s Planet Earth sound bank that I use a lot for pads and soundscapes, and I also use Ugo’s Motion for evolving sounds. For drums I have this one MPC library that zircon recommended, but more often than that I'll just slice up drum loops, of which I have two different collections.” 

Timothy recently put up his body of work on Bandcamp, which was a lengthy process. He noted that he re-rendered a lot of his work in WAV format to meet the site’s upload requirements. “There were a bunch of issues with stuff that didn't render right or didn't render the same as the original track, so I had to fix all of that. And then some of the songs were just so old (back to the days of FL 3.56) that they basically didn't work now, so I just caved and generated the WAVs from the mp3s directly.” Due to Timothy’s large back catalog, the work was split into "Monthlies" album releases, each with its own cover art. “For a while I was just working on all of these 16x16 pixel art graphics to put for each month. I ended up having to make over 50 of them.” Aside from the monthlies, he intends to release a new original album on Bandcamp.

A DDRKirby(ISQ) track was played as part of a ThaSauce panel at MAGFest X. When he had heard about this, he said, “I thought that was just really cool and awesome. At the risk of sounding egotistical, I do admit I'm well-aware that I've developed quite the reputation amongst the OHC community, and really appreciate the fact that people recognize my music.” People have also shown interest in seeing Timothy possibly perform at Jamspace. He clarified that, “My music just isn't very performance based. Keep in mind that I just sequence everything by mouse, so the limit of my ‘live’ ability would pretty much be me hitting the play button for something I've already composed.” He joked that, “If you want me to go all the way out to MAGFest just to hit a play button, something tells me that's not very efficient!” Timothy however hastened to add: “I can play other stuff live, like piano, flute, and maybe I could mess around with my LoopMuse program, but that's not really anything like the chiptune music that you guys know me for, so that kind of defeats the purpose.”

Timothy has several plans for his work, and for branching out. “I feel like I'm still relatively unknown in the larger VGMesque community, but perhaps that might change in the foreseeable future.” Regarding upcoming releases, he revealed that, “I've got a handful of unfinished WIPs, including one that's being made using two instances of LSDJ. I'm also trying to make a compilation of music for social dancing, since I'm big on social dance.” He submitted a Touhou Project arrangement to ReMix: ThaSauce and OC ReMix, marking the first time he has submitted to OCR in seven years. Besides music, he has delved into game development, CG art, and "insane crazy Japanese Tetris" among other things. His various interests can be viewed via his “Site o’ Stuff” containing an impressively tall navigation bar. Perhaps fittingly, considering all the dance floors his songs could rock, glowsticking is one of his pastimes.