[VGM] Complete videogame OST entirely made LMMS (18 tracks!)

Share and discuss your LMMS music projects here, and see what people think!
On SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-165088756/s ... al_sharing

This thing is kind of my magnum opus right now. I've made some "albums" before, but this is the most amount of time and effort I've ever put into a project regarding music so far and what really got me back into working with LMMS. There's some context down below, if you're interested how it came into existance, but if you aren't: It's VGM! I tried to be as shamelessly fun, cartonny and videogamey with it, as I could. The SunSoft picked bass is in there. It's everywhere in fact. A cover of "Believe in Myself" is in there. A lot of jokes and references are in there as well. If you're into that kinda stuff check it out. If not it should still be pretty fun to listen to. Obviously I'm very open for feedback, since it's my first major project like this. Do the tracks blend together into a cohesive musical identity? Are they fun enough? Do you think they would work in a game context? Among other things you may think of.

Since they were designed for use in a game the originals all have loop points - I emulated this with fade outs or rewrote them slightly to give a clearer ending where possible. So keep that in mind.

Okay, now for some context: I offered a friend working on a game project some assistance and he was really happy with my work so I took on the soundtrack among other things. It was supposed to be a storydriven shootemup featuring the Scratch cat and several other of the standard characters. If you know it you might think of an ambitious game project being made in a tool like Scratch as massive red flag, but I didn't really mind. I'm happy for any opportunity to make music with a purpose and add to some (more or less) emotional experience. It was a great learning experience as well. Unfortunately he scrapped the project. Since I had put so much time into it I decided to finish up the OST anyways as best as I could and even dug and patched up some discarded concepts and sketches to complete tracks. As a soundtrack to something that doesn't really exist it's more of a fun emotional journey now. I kept the references to some of the original context as hidden as possible due to worries about licensing stuff. All fanboy references are still as clear as day however, so maybe someone will spot them.

EDIT: By the way, I just realized I forgot a track. I know, pretty embarassing, right? So - "Space Opera" is now available as well.
Went ahead and listened to most of the tracks. This is the first I've heard your music but I can sorta tell you're more of a rhythmic composer than a melodic one. A lot of the riffs feel like they're just begging you to vibe with them. Definitely music I can see myself playing a shmup to.

Love your use of dissonance and chromaticism in mid-game stage themes especially. That jazz influence definitely reads very strongly and I appreciate it a lot.

The album as a whole definitely feels unified to me but I'm not sure if it's because of the similar instruments or something else. The flow from one song to the other gives a sense of progression. Each song also feels like they're the backing track to completely different locations from each other, which I feel is important to a video game soundtrack.

The only real critique I have is the fact that the drums feel pretty weak.

Overall, I think it's a very well-done album, especially for what is apparently your first full soundtrack.
redlerred7 wrote:
Mon Apr 25, 2022 9:56 am
Went ahead and listened to most of the tracks. This is the first I've heard your music but I can sorta tell you're more of a rhythmic composer than a melodic one. A lot of the riffs feel like they're just begging you to vibe with them. Definitely music I can see myself playing a shmup to.
First of all, thank you for taking the time to do this. And yeah, I tend to go with the Tim Follin school of videogame composition, in that music is a subconcious background experience, which is achieved through rythmic patterns. I try to learn this concept from dance music and EDM, which also have a strong focus on getting lost in the moment, rather than being pulled out the immediacy of that experience by some complex intellectual work. Which I have nothing against coming from classical music and being a bit of a jazz fan of course.
redlerred7 wrote:
Mon Apr 25, 2022 9:56 am
Love your use of dissonance and chromaticism in mid-game stage themes especially. That jazz influence definitely reads very strongly and I appreciate it a lot.
That's a bigger compliment than you might have expected it to be, since I initially felt like quite a slacker writing cheap entertainment instead of "true art" (whatever that may be). That's what I meant with deciding to be shamelessly fun and videogamey, but at the same time not too lazy and uncreative: Instead of being hindered by intellectual hurdles I focussed on what I really wanted and loved to create.
redlerred7 wrote:
Mon Apr 25, 2022 9:56 am
The album as a whole definitely feels unified to me but I'm not sure if it's because of the similar instruments or something else. The flow from one song to the other gives a sense of progression. Each song also feels like they're the backing track to completely different locations from each other, which I feel is important to a video game soundtrack.
It mainly relies on the General User GS (a midi Soundfont), which eventually became a concious decision because I really started liking the slightly-cheesy-midi-soundfont aesthetic. I snuck some self-configured synths and a lot of my favorite samples in as well. I would like to think there's also some thematic material and certain rythmic elements shared across all the tracks making up the identity of the OST as a whole, but listeners will have to decide if that actually works out the way I intended.

As stated I got quite involved in the project and made up all kinds of exciting stage concepts, by always trying to combine something known with something a bit more unusual to give it some flair. Bringing very different concepts to life musically, while still retaining a common identity was also what I really wanted to practice here. It's also what I always admired most about good VGM, especially in older titles where the graphical fidelity was pretty limited and the music really had to sell the idea.
redlerred7 wrote:
Mon Apr 25, 2022 9:56 am
The only real critique I have is the fact that the drums feel pretty weak.
Valid point. I actually had some people tell me my drums seemed almost too intense and loud to them, but considering we're talking about videogame music... (example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5fpipK ... Da&index=5) Also they get buried a bit sometimes and could probably be a little more hard hitting. So that's definitely noted.
redlerred7 wrote:
Mon Apr 25, 2022 9:56 am
Overall, I think it's a very well-done album, especially for what is apparently your first full soundtrack.
Thanks again! For your feedback as well as you taking the time for it.
Am listening to them right now. It's really admirable! I can never step out of scale, and you've done an excellent job with the tracks. I love how it sounds.
Do you have any information or guides about how, as you say, "music is a subconcious background experience, which is achieved through rythmic patterns."?
I've thought about this before, but I can never achieve results that sound like garbage but still somehow suffer from the same problems that prompted me to attempt a solution in the first place. I've seen this sort of boldness only in some other tracks, and rarely to this extent. The only track this close to music without sticking like I do to apparent scales, is a MIDI file I don't recognize that was included as part of a bug report somewhere.
To me, music like yours has been a role model of sorts in its ability to sound good auditorily and not just "musical".
It just "makes sense" to me, while at the same time being indecipherable once I try to look (listen? Mentally look) directly through it.
Your use of effects, sound, and combined tracks is commendable.
Impart your secrets, please?
Monospace wrote:
Mon Apr 25, 2022 4:13 pm
Am listening to them right now. It's really admirable! I can never step out of scale, and you've done an excellent job with the tracks. I love how it sounds.
Thanks a lot! I wasn't really expecting such positive responses to be honest.
Monospace wrote:
Mon Apr 25, 2022 4:13 pm
Do you have any information or guides about how, as you say, "music is a subconcious background experience, which is achieved through rythmic patterns."?
I've seen this sort of boldness only in some other tracks, and rarely to this extent. The only track this close to music without sticking like I do to apparent scales, is a MIDI file I don't recognize that was included as part of a bug report somewhere.
To me, music like yours has been a role model of sorts in its ability to sound good auditorily and not just "musical".
It just "makes sense" to me, while at the same time being indecipherable once I try to look (listen? Mentally look) directly through it.
Your use of effects, sound, and combined tracks is commendable.
Impart your secrets, please?
Unfortunately I'll always have to say that I am entirely self-taught in such things, basically through years of trial and error and beating my head against music I liked, but didn't understand, even despite wonderful sheet music. So I think my guides were just great examples of this apporach in practice, which I listened to, tried to take apart, cover, etc. Stuff like the Silver Surfer OST for example (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5ctRrs ... 3E&index=5). Other than that I used to be really into old dance music (which I still enjoy). Here's a great example of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyoFB3Gh_II.

Something that might help in regards to not sticking to scales too much is the fact that for most of my life I wasn't even really aware of them and only learned about some basic music theory when I had already been writing for years. So I still take a very intuitive approach to writing music. Coming up with the concept I want to bring across is the main part for me - then I'll just sit down at my piano and start improvising with whatever ideas come to mind. Sometimes I'll immediately have a melody or even a complete section in my head, other times it takes some time. The main thing about this sketching process for me is not being afraid of anything - wrong notes, horrible dissonances, whatever. Just keep smashing keys in whatever way feels right until an idea emerges. The second most important thing for me is to immediately write everything down that comes to mind. My project files always have a special Sketch track, which will be chock full of ideas when I'm done. Some of them will be used, most of them likely not. And then I just keep experimenting all the way. Actually in regards to scales I've been told time and time again that the pentatonic is quite prominent in my work, but that's again not something I conciously decided.

I could go more into detail about my methods and thought process if you're interested. I never really felt like I had secrets to impart, but I love to share as much information I can when it is helpful to someone. It's a lifelong learning experience for all of us after all. These are just my improvised ramblings, but I could definitely cook up something a little more detailed and specific about my apporach to structure, composition, rythm etc. So what are you most interested in? It could be anything. I was also thinking about maybe writing some tutorials on few tricks I picked up on. But I feel like I'm only just starting to get a glimpse of what music can really do, so I'm worried about coming across as too arrogant in explaining myself. If I do that's really not intended.

Also: I don't know how helpful this is, but I have a habit of making sheet music of all of my work for documentation purposes. I just recall how annoying and disappointing it could be to search for sheets or midi files of tracks I really liked so I could play around with them myself, so I thought I would do a better job. Most are still in the works but "To The Rescue", which is one of tracks you liked, is already availabe on my MuseScore account: https://musescore.com/user/36397252/scores/7782266. I think that is transparent as I can get about my work. Unfortunately I can't really share my project files, since they are almost entirely made with Soundfonts and samples which of course wouldn't load in properly on any machines besides mine. Which is a bit of a shame, since I really liked the practice of sharing your "modules" I came to know from the chiptune community. Maybe one day LMMS will have a feature to export project files together with all their additional files.
Thanks for the information! I'll check the resources you linked.
Monospace wrote:
Tue Apr 26, 2022 2:48 am
Thanks for the information! I'll check the resources you linked.
As stated I wouldn't be one to willingly hold back secrets. Rethinking it I realized I actually forgot to mention how chiptunes in general are actually a great example of rythmic interconnection between instruments, especially the older ones where composers didn't have all that many voices (in musical terms: very low polyphony possible) to work with. They might seem really simple at first but there is a lot of fascinating complexity hidden in there to make them work. There are a lot of great examples out there but the one I decided to study is the OST of "Tails Adventure", a Sega Game Gear game. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwdYj3r ... Da&index=1. I'm planning on slowly remaking the OST, so I started by transcribing some of the original tracks, one of which is already finished and uploaded to my Musescore account as well: https://musescore.com/user/36397252/scores/7875797.

I also remembered a great example of a more modern VGM OST making use of the rythmical and pattern-based approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwdYj3r ... Da&index=1

Maybe these could be helpful or at the very least interesting to listen to. I should eventually have sheets of my entire OST as well as of the Tails Adventure OST uploaded.
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