https://i.imgur.com/mVJhOq9.jpg?1

<h3>Music for Video Games</h3>

It all started with me talking with @kralizec about a video game he's working on... As soon as I heard about it, I wanted to make the music.

This is the beauty of steemit - opportunities abound! Within ten minutes, we had arranged to talk about the project:

https://i.imgur.com/nqoJTYf.png

In Discord, Kralizec gave me the scoop. We discussed the size and theme of the game, and I offered a few ideas for how some music might sound with it. He's still in the early stages, so it's not urgent. I figured I could whip up a few themes to get started and  then wait until there's more progress.

At this point I started vlogging - so here's me giving a bit of backstory about learning to compose with intent, rather than out of randomness.

https://youtu.be/VCMowfXHs_s

<h3>Building the Initial Theme</h3>

In the next video I demonstrate the initial idea for the theme. Sorry if these are a little quiet- I'm still adjusting to my new apartment and didn't want to wake up the roommates. You should be able to hear everything.

Notice in this video how simple the idea is. The initial motif should generally not be mind-blowing or crazy. You want to start somewhere simple so you have room to expand as you move towards arrangement, orchestration, melodic development, all that good stuff that sounds fancy but basically means "writing the song."

https://youtu.be/iI5s54K4hWk

Seriously, keep the motif simple! That's the golden rule. Start simple, especially if you want to end up somewhere crazy.

<h3>Concocting a Drum + Bass Groove</h3>

The next step was to design a drum and bass groove. This is where "arranging" comes in, creating the landscape that the melody lives within. Since it's a video game, the goal was to be energetic and fun. I basically want the effect of "whoa! Let's play some video games!" - ya dig?

Here's me explaining and demonstrating the drum and bass groove, sans melody:

https://youtu.be/s9behN5SLvA

<h3>Putting the Groove and Melody Together</h3>

The last step is to put the pieces together. All the simple ideas add up, and before you know it you've got five or ten different elements all interacting with each other. 

It's crazy how fast you end up with your own unique song, sort of like how every chess game becomes unique within 10-12 moves. The math works out exponentially, it's not intuitive but there are just so many ideas to be had.

The next step is to add more sections so it won't be monotonous when it's repeating in the game, perhaps tomorrow I'll follow up with a post about that. Anyway, here's the song as it stands now - I like it! 

<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/341984142%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-U55pO&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false"></iframe>

Yeah! See, it's not so hard to develop a song. If you know a few chords and scales, and if you've got the patience to slowly build up the cache of ideas until it becomes awesome, you can do this too.

Do you have any questions about this process? Feel free to ask in the comments, I'm happy to offer some guidance.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmYuuW18gWNZPLC1A53SoZ6CHMYTPL4rraFh4gcJ5DYDKf/follow_heymattsokol.gif

<center>https://i.imgur.com/hgkeIwR.jpg?3</center>