Fall Cover Ring y final de año

Menudo viaje desde el último post. No sólo mis vacaciones se torcieron (baja por Covid leve), sino que además muchos de los planes que tenía por delante se me han retrasado (o ido directamente al garete). 

Los últimos seis meses he hecho bastante música que... directamente he desechado por estar descontento con ella. Quedé bastante contento con mi participación en el Cover Ring de otoño de Maj7 organizado por Jneen. Me tocó hacer una versión del tema "Gamer's Farewell" del amigo Dorkus64, que podéis escuchar aquí:

sergeeo · Gamer's Farewell (original by Dorkus64)

El original eran básicamente tres partes conectadas, con una secuencia de acordes muy original y unos patches de sinte muy divertidos. Despiecé completamente el tema y lo rehice a mi manera, añadiendo nuevas partes, intentado profundizar en el estilo que empecé a desarrollar en la edición anterior de la Cover Ring. El tema de la mezcla fue especialmente complicado porque hay mucha diferencia de intensidad entre el principio y el resto del tema... ¡En fin, vamos aprendiendo poco a poco!

Podéis escuchar el Cover Ring entero en este enlace de YouTube.

Por otra parte, sigo muy a tope con las clases de guitarra. En cierta forma me están reamueblando el cerebro (y las manos) de cara a Big Giant Trees 2. El proyecto va despacito, pero espero poder sacarlo a tiempo en enero (de esperanza también se vive). No estoy seguro si me va a dar tiempo a conseguir baterías grabadas o si van a tener que ser secuenciadas... ¡Lo veo bastante difícil, pero me encantaría!

He aprovechado el Black Friday para hacer algunas compras que me hacían falta: un pack de Waves para unificar-estandarizar mi equipo propio y el equipo de la empresa, unos cuantos kits de XLN audio y un buen bundle de iZotope. Todavía no me ha dado tiempo a probarlo todo, pero creo que estoy bastante contento con las compras. Me queda pendiente darle un empujoncillo a mi equipo portátil, que se va quedando bastante corto para los plug-ins más nuevos...

Sin más, espero terminar el año decentemente. A ver qué nos depara la tercera temporada de 2020.

Holiday - Celebrate!

These months I have been quite busy and I haven't remembered to write much here. For my nonsense, rants and daily thoughts, you can follow me on twitter, where I am much more active.

Just tomorrow I start my summer vacations and I hope to be able to disconnect a little bit from the hammering daily routine I've been going through since the pandemic and the remote work started. I don't plan to travel very far, because the situation in Spain is still complicated, but I will be able to spend some time with my family in a cooler place than Seville.

So far this year, we have included a lot of new features in Tuscany Villa, which is becoming a more and more complete game. I think the team is fighting very hard to make the project move forward as expected, which is not easy given the global circumstances. I would like everything to keep rolling and improving, to reach higher levels of quality and engagement.

On the other hand, I have been able to collaborate in the sound design of the fights of Chess Club, a chess game for Oculus Quest developed by the friends of Odders Lab. I've been in charge of the sound design of the "Battle Chess-like" animations and it has been really fun.

I'm also working on a battle royale type game for mobile platforms that will be released in Q4 of this year, and it has a very powerful team behind it that I've worked with in the past, it's looking great! I'm really enjoying all the 3D sound and environments, something that is not very common in mobile development, and I hope players will come to appreciate and enjoy it!

Lastly, I have some scripting stuff pending and we are starting to move some ideas for both 8bit homebrew and some more current madness, the end of 2021 looks very interesting in terms of game projects indeed!

Musically, I'm very slowly starting to work on Big Giant Trees 2, which I'd like to release just a year after the first volume. I've been studying guitar as much as I can and my teacher has helped me a lot to systematically visualize and approach elements that I was unable to see before.

I also recently participated in the Maj7 Request Line, contributing a track of my own. The truth is that I would have liked to dedicate more time to it, but it has been difficult because it has coincided with some family health issues that had priority.

I think that's all, I hope you all have a great summer. Please wear a mask and stay hydrated!

Spring 2021 #maj7 Cover Ring Party

At the beginning of February, after the successful listening party organized by Chimeratio for the Maj7 discord server, Jneen started to organize a cover ring event! This was how it went:

• You will be randomly (and secretly) assigned another participant
• Choose 1 track from that participant, and spend 1 month making a cover
• Try to make your cover recognizable, but it's totally fun and cool if it completely departs from the original genre.
• We all have a listen party at the end.

The tune I was assigned was great! It's a tune called "Time" by the japanese composer Sadao Enoki aka Observer. You can listen to it here. As soon as I could, I started transcribing the piano: the chords in it are so good! I had to use the equalizer a little bit to get the right voicings, but really enjoyed the initial process.

As the melody and harmony were so powerful, I thought about writing lyrics and getting someone to sing it... Unfortunately, it was going to be too complicated to pull that off because I had quite a backlog of work and I didn't want to expose myself to a possible delay because I couldn't record on time or something like that.

And of course... I'm really bad at writing lyrics.

Some decisions I made:

• Trying to go from the original arrangement, which is quite calm, to areas of different intensity and tone.
• Using the original chords and a simplified version of them in different sections.
• Using a combination of live instruments (electric bass, electric guitar, guitalele) and samples. I wish I could have recorded some live percussion, but I just didn't have my stuff around :(
• Embracing the Bo-En / Katamari aesthetics, which I love, because why not?

To give the whole thing a touch of chiptune, I used some NES sounds from Magical 8bit Plug for the very first time! I also used Vital for some bass sounds (the more d'n'b kind). The use of NI's Kontakt was important for the horn parts, which I enjoyed a lot playing. There's also some Battery and FM8!

sergeeo · Time (original by Observer)

Yesterday night (2:00 CEST), Jneen finally premiered the whole thing, with very cool visuals produced using processing! My track was selected as the closing one, so you can listen to it while watching the credits :) The live chat is quite fun!

 

The quality of the submissions, as you can listen, was SUPERB. I don't think there are music communities out there that are so creative, diverse and powerful. There's a little bit of many different genres: from t-squarish fusion to pure chiptune, with some rock and metal, uplifting JRPG-ish tracks... 

I was honoured to have one of my tracks covered by Narek! He was given a tune from my latest EP, called Gotanda, inspired in the Tokyo district of the same name. He made an amazing job, showing off his amazing skills with Famitracker. I'm sure he's going to be great videogame soundtracks in the very near future.

Thanks to everyone who joined and shared their own music. 

Superb-thanks to Jneen for having the energy and dedication to pull this off!

7Jam Live at Revision Party 2021

I had the honor to be invited by tenfour to play a live jam session for Revision Party 2021 with some friends. The band featured also jazzD, Mattmatatt, wayfinder, midiman, jeenio and SagaMusix! Our stage was 7jam, an amazing MIDI online jamming platform built by tenfour himself.

You can take a look at our performance in this video! Hope you like it!

It really was coffee morning compatible music. Thanks for having us.

Programming the Roland JVs

Getting more into synth programming is one my year resolutions for 2021. I thought that it could be interesting to document my progress here! It’s a nice topic to blog about, isn’t it?

I’m not exactly new to this discipline, but I have to say that I don’t consider myself an expert. Synths have always been my main instruments, but they have so many options, and there are so many different models and synthesis methods, that it’s hard to know them completely. To narrow down the scope a bit, I’ve decided to focus on the Roland JV series. What I want to do is to build my own library of sounds, exploring all the options and tricks that I can learn and discover. 

There are many reasons to love these synths! They are true classics, with many classic patches that have been sounding everywhere for the last +20 years. And even if they were released in the 90s, they’re still reliable: it’s quite easy to find (still cheap) full-working units! There are many editors available for them in different platforms (PC, Mac, iOS) and they’re growing again in popularity thanks to the JV1080 software version in the Roland Cloud service.

I own two units: a JV1080 and a JV2080. I have many expansion cards, including the super popular SR-JV80-04 Vintage Synthesizer. I also have a Roland Fantom-X6, which is a grand-grandson in the family. I’m going to stick to the JV2080 (it’s the one I have at home right now), with the standard waveform collection and the Ctrlr panel made by dasfaker. If you would like to learn the basic about this synths, I recommend you to take a look at this website, which covers lots of technical details. The user manuals, your best friends, are available in archive.org.

Some people will say that these synths sound dated. Obviously they’re not the best choice if you want a realistic acoustic piano comparable to today’s multi-Gb sample libraries, but there are so many things these synths can do! They can make a really good work with acoustic patches in old school sounding arrangements in the aesthetics of PS1 game soundtracks tho (Symphony of the Night anyone?), so even if cheesy, these sounds can be still useful under some circumstances and in many styles.

 

I'd like to focus mainly on electronic sounds, because those are the ones that I think can be most useful for making my music today. Some people will say that trying to recreate analog sounds in JVs doesn't make sense either, but... Why not?! There are lots of VA synths out there, and even new great poly analogs being released, which are probably better options for this. But hey, this project is all about learning and trying to get the most out of the machine. I've always been fascinated by self-contained music systems and the idea of, for example, making a record with just one of these devices makes me very excited.

In each of the updates I will try to cover a particular technique or special feature of the synthesizer. I'll try to share some musical examples (although I hate posting stuff on soundcloud, but...) so I can comment in more detail what comes to my mind. Don't expect me to be overly systematic!

New Blasphemous DLC: Strife & Ruin!

My friends from The Game Kitchen have just released their new DLC for Blasphemous, called “Strife & Ruin”, and... I'm glad to announce that it features some music by me!

Mauri contacted me some months ago because they’d like me to write some classic chiptune tracks for a special “8 bit zone" they were working on. Inspiration in the classic NES Castlevania titles was pretty obvious (genre, graphics, etc.), so I had to go and do everything in the old good famitracker! I knew that some of the developers were big fans of the classic Akumajou Densetsu  soundtrack, so VRC6 channels were mandatory. I was superthrilled and excited about the commision!

My favorite music genre on the NES is that baroque-clockwork-rock from oldschool FX! EP by Virt, which is for me a step beyond in the classic Konami style... I started to write some stuff in that direction, but I guess that my first tests were way far too proggy. You know, getting to know what you shouldn't do is part of the job, and sometimes there's a bit of trial and error.

I had a general idea of what was the sound of the game because I've been following its development since the very beginning, but at that point I had to stop to study in a deeper way what my friend Carlos Viola had been doing with the compositional work on the game (something that I should have done since the beginning TBH 😅). The soundtrack is a bit in the foreground, especially if you compare how "in your face" was in The Last Door, their previous game. Music comes to the forefront in boss battles (which are one of the strongest points of the game) and narrative moments (dialogs with special characters, animated sequences, etc.). 

This meant that there weren't many tunes I felt I could transform into chiptune style easily, because the original tracks are all about ambience, so I had to look for something else. The team linked me to one of the most beloved tracks of the previous DLC, called Baile de violetas, which was a nice bet for a 2A03 adaptation. I also liked the music from the original trailer too, so it ended up like the base for the "Press Start" tune.

With a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I ended up with five tunes! That's a lot more NES music than my average in the last five years! The last one, the track for the boss fight, was inspired in the original classic NES game, which at the same time, was inspired by Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky (thanks Narek for pointing this out!). You have to love the crazy use of that saw wave!!

My friend Parejo did a really good job with the audio implementation and sound effects and well, I think that the overall output is really nice! The Game Kitchen is one of the most solid teams I know of, and I'm sure they're going to do even greater things in the future! Thanks to Mauri, Enrique, Maikel, David, Dani, Baxa, Parejo, Carlos and the rest of company for letting me join this great adventure!

If you don't have the game yet (you should!), you can watch and listen to this gameplay video!

Big Giant Trees (instrumentos y equipo)

Durante las últimas semanas del año pasado, he estado terminando algunos temas que he compilado en un EP titulado Big Giant Trees. 

• Escucha y compra en Bandcamp
• Escucha en Soundcloud
• Escucha y compra en itch.io

Mi idea inicial era hacer temas orientados a una formación de trio de guitarra, batería y bajo, inspirado en bandas como Khruangbin, pero poco a poco empecé a grabar pistas y más pistas... ¡Una cosa lleva a la otra!

He utilizado un montón de instrumentos nuevos en esta ocasión y me apetecía contar un poquito cuáles son y cómo los he usado. Este tipo de cosas antiguamente se ponían en el booklet del CD, pero desafortunadamente no existen copias físicas :) 

El bajo principal ha sido un precision knockoff que me regaló Dani de sus tiempos punkis (¡muchas gracias!). La acción es muy bajita y es muy cómodo, pero llevaba muchos años en un armario, por lo que estaba en un estado... punki: óxido aquí y allá y el hardware KO. 

Lo llevé al gran Gonzalo Fuentes para que lo limpiara y ajustara: le cambió las pastillas DiMarzio que tenía por unas Lollar, dimos el salto al entorchado plano y... el resultado fue magnífico. Además Gonzalo le incluyó un mod al hardware para que los valores de tono y volumen sean totalmente independientes. ¡Es un auténtico placer tocar con el!

La guitarra principal ha sido mi nueva G&L ASAT Classic. Llevaba mucho tiempo detrás de un modelo tipo Telecaster y al final me decanté por este... Pronto contaré más sobre la historia de cómo llegó a mis manos (cuando se pueda). Es una guitarra muy cómoda, y a pesar de que es un poco diferente a una Telecaster estándar (sobre todo por las pastillas y las selletas), tiene muchísimo encanto y personalidad. 

Hay algunos arreglos de guitarra acústica que grabé con mi Taylor Academy. Los grabé por línea, porque en casa es bastante complicado tener el silencio (y el espacio) necesario para grabar con micrófono. La verdad que por línea no suena nada mal, de hecho una de las principales características que me hicieron decantarme por esta guitarra fue su sonido enchufada, pero es verdad que se descompensa el ruido del movimiento de los dedos sobre las cuerdas y del ataque de la púa.

En cuanto a los teclados, son una combinación de algunas librerías de Kontakt y algunos patches sueltos de mi nuevo Modal Argon8M y del viejo y querido JV2080. Los sonidos de batería son, en su mayoría, de Studio Drummer de NI.

Me faltó muuuy poquito para poder tener baterías no programadas (grabadas “de verdad”) en el EP, pero los plazos del batería con otros compromisos lo impidieron. No descarto sacar una versión del EP con las baterías reales... Me gustaría, si diera tiempo :)

La interfaz principal con la que he grabado todo ha sido la Audient iD14 (mk1), directamente a Cubase 9.5. Para conseguir entradas adicionales utilicé un módulo de 8 previos de MOTU conectado por ADAT.

La verdad que la ejecución de las partes de guitarra es lo que más me ha costado. Por muchas tomas que hiciera, encontraba más y más imperfecciones... Y además tenía encima la idea de que nada estaba afinado 100%. Cuando te acostumbras a que todo esté perfectamente cuantizado y programado, es difícil afrontar la humanidad. ¡Es bastante complicado de todas formas llegar a un nivel de competencia mínimo que no te deje en ridículo al grabarte!

Eso sí, ha llegado un momento en el que, después de trillar tanto ciertos arreglos, he disfrutado mucho regrabando partes, especialmente las partes de bajo. El proceso ha sido casi el mismo de componer durante ensayos de una banda... ¡Pronto contaré un poquito más sobre cómo ha sido el proceso!

¡Gracias por escuchar!