This has been something I've been meaning to do for a while. This is going to be the theme for the final level of Rosie Planet. I've been (sometimes) hard at work on the final level and I've just constantly had to imagine "some kind of cool jrpg music" underneath Rosie's chirps and grunts in the otherwise uncomfortable silent void.

The opening of Chrono Trigger has this really abrasive cool sounding synth for its main melody. It's apparently supposed to be a saxophone, but I think an actual saxophone doesn't really capture the otherwordly prog-rock sound that the song has. I started with that song as a bit of an inspiration and threw the saxophone part in the garbage. I wanted the synth sound. The signifier has now become the signified.

I'm really happy with this one, I feel like I was in a bit of a slump for a while. It ended up being more "Tales of" than Chrono Trigger, but I'll gladly take that. I really feel like I managed to capture what I was going for with this. At some point I kinda wrote myself into a corner, but I'm proud because I was actually able to then write myself out of that corner.

I'm a little worried that time will pass and the master will reveal itself as being bad, but hopefully I did an okay job? I really want to do this justice with the master because I'd hate to ruin something on the final step.

Okay, I rarely do this but I actually disliked my job on the most recent song so much that I'm doing a reupload of it. Of course, this is also a mix/master that I haven't let sit and haven't listened to it with fresh ears. Guess we'll see if it's good later!

This is going to be the music on the title screen of my next game (it's called Rosie Planet). Progress is like 80%ish? I'm a little sad because this song gets pretty lush, but it's not like people just sit on title screens listening to music (okay, yes, I know, you watched the Ocarina of Time title and you listened to the Halo music).

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This is the music for my game when you get the airship. Spoilers! What exactly does getting the airship entail? Guess you'll have to play it and find out when it's ready! ;) ;) ;)

Really happy with this one! This was nice because it came after one or two tracks that I wasn't super hot on that I've written for the game. I felt like I was getting a bit burnt out, so it was nice on this one that it just sort-of happened. I'm once again ripping off the Sailor Moon Sailor Stars opening, which if you recall is the same thing that I ripped off for the car music. Also, if you do recall then wow, you're reading these things that closely?

I didn't have a problem with the car music, but I felt like I missed the mark on getting to the heart of what makes the original song special. Maybe I made my own original thing that has its own strengths, but fuck that. I wanted my pastiche!!

As I mentioned earlier, I really pushed myself to make something interesting, and more importantly a capital-S "song". This is the kind of thing that realistically should have vocals. I'm very proud of the anime-esque chord progressions I have going on. Specifically, I finally figured out how to do one of those jazzy half step turnarounds that gets used a lot in Persona and the like.

Ideally it would have had a disco style guitar wah-wah-ing over things, but I made a decision a long time ago that there's no live instruments on this soundtrack. Mostly it's because of laziness, but I feel like they'd sound pretty out of place. I was going for a very 90s synthy sound. Somewhere between adult contemporary cheese and Japanese PC game.

I gotta say, eventually I got to be on a hell of a roll with this song. I toiled away on the composition of this thing for like 5 hours, but after that things went really smoothly on the production end. There's minimal mixing. I was able to just drop these tracks into audacity and (mostly) let it rip. Sometimes things sound really muddy or thin when you put them in and you have to do all sorts of compression and EQing to get them to sound like they should. Not this one baby!

This is going to be the music for the haunted mansion levels in Rosie Planet. Definitely a little bit Castlevania inspired lol!!

Pretty happy with the way this turned out. It's a lot of fun and is a litle bit more complicated than I usually would do. Didn't really have a plan going into it, so that makes me doubly glad that it worked out. I had to actually think musically, which I do less than you'd think - making music and all.

I'm a bit iffy on the mastering. I wrote this last night and am listening to it right now with fresh ears.... Sounds.... fine I guess. Wouldn't mind if it had a bit of a thicker sound, but there's a lot going on so I'm just glad you can hear all the bits and it's not soupy.

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This is going to be the music that plays when you’re driving around in the overworld of my (eventually) upcoming game, tentatively titled Rosie Planet. I wanted it to sound like music from the opening of a 90s anime, or like a japanese idol group from the 80s. I’m actually very happy with this one - ESPECIALLY the Sonic Adventure style bendy guitar riffs!

I’m maybe throwing around ideas and doing some early work on a new 2d platformer! Watch as I spend hours upon hours arduously animating a single sprite!

(still have to add swimming animations)

This music is gonna be for the grass worlds. I made another 2d platformer before but I really want to not make this like that. Mainly that one is kinda bad. I’d rather this one weren’t bad. I just went back and played it a little bit ago. It really had that developer difficulty problem, and the levels didn’t feel chill enough to hang out in. It was very much a “run to the right side of the screen” type game, which at the time I wanted to make. that’s out of my system now and I want to make something a little more chill.

With that chillness in mind, I wrote this song to try and get the vibe I was looking for. I want things to be like in kirby where the level design isn’t super heavy handed, and you take your time walking through the level, and the jumps are a little bit more floaty. and there’s a lot of little cute details like clouds on the ground and stuff.

I like this song, though I feel like it’s a little aimless. There isn’t a whole lot of structure or logical progression to it. The second part with the saxophones (that’s what they are btw) kinda comes out of nowhere. That was a little bit intentional because I was really annoyed with myself for writing myself into some prolonged ii-v-i cadence for the 10 000th time. I’m really glad it worked out!

On the production side, I always relish a chance to use those ninja turtles on SNES-ass drums. The arrangement kinda ballooned and led me into my usual cliches (re: tubular bells) but I tried to be a little creative with the glockenspiel part. Originally I tried putting SNES slapback style echo on the whole song, but it didn’t really work out. My compromise is that it’s on most of the instruments in the song but not the drums. It kinda maybe sometimes evokes that super nintendo sound, but obviously you couldn’t make these sounds on a super nintendo.

Should I be looking for a job? Maybe! Should I be working on getting an apartment? Yeah! Did I do this as a way to avoid both? Probably!

I wanted to write a song that sounded like the world map of a jrpg. I really appreciate that it ended up working out because there’s some really funky harmony that goes on in some parts. There’s a chunk in the B section where the really bassy contrabass cuts out and that’s kind of annoying. I wish I knew how to fix that but I don’t!

It’s been a really long time since I wrote something! I can’t write any real music rn because I don’t know why, but I wanted to so I figured I’d write some videogame music. I’ve been playing Edge of Eternity lately which is a very strange experience. It’s extremely JRPG but was made by a western indie studio. You’ll be playing it and it feels like Xenoblade or Final Fantasy or something, but like... different. It’s like when you watch Canadian TV. Anyway v cool game and has really good music.

I’d never written a battle theme for a jrpg, only boss battles. Figured I’d give it a shot!

Made a trailer for my game! Check it out! It’s “done”!  Download it here