An Instance of Epicness

Today's highlights

• The beginning of the Instance series

• democoding in Haskell !

• a new demogroup gets born

The demo at The Alternative Party 2010 Beginner Demo Competition.

This story began when I was asked to make a soundtrack for a demo  that was going to serve as an invitation for the first Instanssi demoparty. At The Alternative Party 2010 there was going to be a beginner demo compo, and that's where the demo was going to be submitted to. The soundtrack got to be orchestrated and massive, just like a proper movie trailer song. There was some rendered video clip that was used as a reference for the demo, but I don't remember exactly what it was. It was an invitation for some event, and its visuals consisted solely of animated text that was accompanied by orchestrated music.

At that time I was finalizing my Altparty Freestyle Music Compo song and thought that it would be cool to make a demo soundtrack, so I started working on it right away. I had had one remarkable song in my mind for a long time, and decided to use it as a reference to get started fast. That reference was the theme song from the movie 'Shaolin Soccer' (Especially the cover made by Policron). After hearing both songs, the reference song's influence should become very clear.

The Reference: Shaolin Soccer opening theme cover by Policron.

I asked zipola to create lyrics in Latin for the song, and he delivered some really nice lines. Even though no one has any idea about what the choir is singing, the lyrics are there:

Advenite in festum
Demonstrationes parate mox
Musicam etiam

Forsan Delia foveat vos
Fiat! Si
Cognoscas ego quod volo dicere
Senti hoc festum

There's not that much to say about the song. It was a straightforward and fast project for a certain need. It borrowed elements from the reference song quite heavily. The melodies are very simple and involve just some triplet bashing. But the making of it was fun! Perhaps my shift towards soundtrack-only productions started right there.

A week later, it was time to head for AltParty. The piece was finished, but the demo was still under construction. The coders had a considerable amount of partycoding, as well as lack of sleep, before the demo was finally submitted into the party system. If I remember correctly what has been told to me, the demo got finished about an hour before the deadline. And it was then when the guys realised that in order to submit a demo, they need a group name. Out of the blue, Hot Lambda Lovin' was said and it was the best name ever.

It must be mentioned that the demo is written in Haskell. If that doesn't say anything to you (and if you don't get the group name), it doesn't matter. But if you know what that that means, you might respect the effort a little bit more. The somewhat hilarious source code is also available.

Airshow soundtrack

Updated 26.8.2011



Some have mistakenly assumed that the Airshow soundtrack is made by me. However, that is not the case. I did make the foley track (sound effects) and final mastering, but the actual song is made by Mixnot. The whole animation was created by a team of 4 core members, out of which my significance was the smallest. One must be careful about this kind of author assumptions now and in the future, as our group now includes three musicians. The two new names are Mixnot and Laser Berger.





During the planning stage of the production, we decided to have a cool, loud and fast-paced electronic soundtrack. That's something Mixnot can handle exceptionally well, and he made a very cool and solid track for the production.

Actually, I did come up with a draft for the soundtrack, too. It was an orchestrated piece with some cartoony twists. The main reference song would have been a song named Attack!!! by Jeremy Soule from a legendary RTS game Total Annihilation. It would have set quite a different mood for the production, and as it wasn't exactly what we were looking for, we ditched it.



If the concept of a foley artist is unknown to you, it basically means a person whose task is to add synced sound effects to the production in a manner that it creates more presence to the experience and complements the visuals while not being distracting. When the foley track is made well, you don't notice it or the lack of it. We had some balancing over the suitable amount and volume of the foley, and decided to follow the golden path everyone could be happy with. One may notice that some scenes miss a sound or two. That could either be a conscious decision or then I couldn't find a suitable sound for it. I used freesound.org as my source for sound effects, as the material selection is vast and can be used with a suitably permissive license.



I created the foley track (and did the mastering) with a DAW called Cockos Reaper. As it is possible to preview the visuals, create&craft the audio and bring in some VST effects in a same project, it is an ideal tool to work with on this kind of tasks.

Reaper was used as a 100% precise sound effect tool. I doubt my workflow was particularly optimal, as almost every sound effect had its own track. I ended up having a massive pile of tracks, even though the film is only 5 minutes long. However, I couldn't come up with any cleverer solution for being able to tweak every sound individually.

A Change of Focus

(or Checkpoint 2.0 - now including a change of appearance, too)

I am changing my focus. As a demoscene musician, I've grown tired of the individual music compos. So, I'm going to shift into making soundtracks. In music compos your song is always kind of "alone" and it has to be a really good show on its own. As a soundtrack, when music accompanies some visuals or gameplay, it has more space to evolve. You have more space to maneuver, even though the music has to be compatible with the rest of the product. Either way, for success, one should follow some basic guidelines that differ a bit from each other. I'm going to try the soundtrack way next. And, luckily, there are some soundtrack projects for scene products and for a commercial game as well. So, as a musical checkpoint, I could as well try to list all my individual music compo tunes to see what has been done to this date.

NES music
ThousandLoop Rave (Icons'08 dance music compo)
Power Quercetin (ASM'08 extreme music)
I Was a Nintendo Girl (ASM'09 extreme music)
Full Moon Flow (AltParty'09 oldskool music)
Pixelated Knight Tales (ASM'10 executable music)
1.662607 MHz Turbo Supercar (ASM'11 executable music)

Freestyle modern music
Stronger Than a Storm (ASM'08)
Irish Rain (ASM'09)
Epicus, pars I: Provocator (AltParty'09)
As We ARRR The Pirates (ASM'10)
Aspectus A.D. MMXCIX: Astra nos manent (AltParty'10)
Fast-forwarding Thru Hell (ASM'11)

Tracker music
Tricks Of The Warlocks (AltParty'08 1-channel music compo)

Fast Music
Batman Nahkanuija & Yön Timot (ASM'08)
The New Teruminator Bot (ASM'09)
Castlemania (ASM'10)
Ennennäkemättömät bileet röllimetsässä (ASM'11)

Even though I'm really slow at making music (the fast music compos are the only exception), things do accumulate. That's already a reasonably neat discography. There would exist some other songs, but they are quite old and not released under my current name, released outside demo parties or made as soundtracks. If I had to be objective and name my best piece ever, it would be the one I've spent the most time and effort on, and thus is the most polished and lovably crafted: Irish Rain. I think quite many can agree with this.

Meanwhile, I'm going to get more involved in programming. Actually, I've been involved in programming for some years now, and that's what I'm going to do for my living after graduation. But now realtime graphics has started to become my hobby number 1. There already exists my one-man demo programming learning project that goes by the name of Rage Manifesto. To this date, I have made some quite horrendous and ugly trash with some a bit obscure and/or "lame" platforms. More recently, I've started adopting more of the correct set of tools, like C++ and OpenGL. We will have to see where it leads. The goal is to achieve a skill level where I can deliver some solid expression. And ...

Assembly 2011

-A (somewhat) HUGE INSIGHT INTO THE EVENT, ITS MUSIC COMPOS AND SOME OTHER STUFF-

-Pictures are still missing, I'm going to add a few later -

Even though I still haven't written a general blog entry about Assembly'10, I thought it would be wise to write something about this year when I can still remember something.

If I had to describe this year's instance in one sentence, I think I would say "It was very OK and the overall entry quality was exceptionally good." And Pehu has been to gym.

I think it was very cool to utilize the main stage for everything possible, including the gigs, the cosplay contest and some random encounters. Everything had been made more visible and approachable. And almost everything happened on schedule. Thanks to Abyss for pointing out the strong connection between demoscene and Finnish game industry - that's how to promote the scene to the gamers! Oh, and one more thing: (afaik,) thank you for not releasing nonqualified entries automatically! Even though some really good material will remain hidden, the point is that it gets another chance to be entered at some other demoparty.

Nevertheless, I must say that I have started to grow tired of Assembly and demoparties in general, so I am going to reinvent my scope a little bit. For instance, my freestyle music compo entry was probably a swan song in that category. My high-end demoscene music will be heard more in the form of soundtracks than as standalone pieces, and I am going to make a general shift from music to programming.

As I mentioned earlier, the overall entry quality was exceptionally good this year, and that's what made the 20th Assembly really worthwhile. For the rest of this blog entry, I am going to write about the compos and praise my favourite entries.

Fast Music

After the compo rules changed in 2006, the amount and overall quality of the entries has risen constantly. Of course there's been very good songs every year, but now there's actually quite solid music for the whole schedule slot. Even some preselection has had to be made. The actual 90-minute songwriting slot has always been on Thursday, and for me that has been the main reason to get to the party place on time. Those 90 minutes consist of some very concentrated music making, 2 mugs of coffee, 1 bottle of water, 1.5 computer places, hard times for my keyboard and lots of swearing. Usually I'm quite finished at 75 minutes, but I utilize the rest of the time for a more polished iteration of the song.

I found this year's chords quite tricky, even though they're straight from Pachelbel's Canon in D Major (the first 4 chords: D, A, Bm, F#m). The scale combined with too little time gave me really hard times, as I know nearly nothing about music theory, including scales. I just slammed the keyboard until matching chords came out, and I must say I'm extremely happy with the outcome, Ennennäkemättömät bileet röllimetsässä (1st). If you speak English natively, the name must be quite interesting. The translation would be something like 'An unprecedented party at the troll forest'. I don't remember how Abyss translated it in the prize ceremony, but it must have been something similar.

Let's skim through some of my favourites..

Metalworks by Dazzler(14th)
This song has a cool theme, nice melodies and is overall a very decent tune. The problem here is that there hasn't been enough time for mixing, so one can hear only the drums and the guitar. Or maybe the author has had some very noisy neighbor who has blocked him from hearing what he's actually doing. Or then he has had 4.90€ headphones.

VVC-Ankka by 1nsane (3rd)
There's some Basshunter(?) style going on? This is quite a solid and a very happy tune.

Maxymised arps by Rebb/TRSi^Paradise (2nd)
You will always get my respect by doing an oldskool entry in the fast music compo. The piece is beautiful and nice, too.

Extreme music

Last year there were only 9 entries. This year the total amount was 24, and I have heard all of them as I participated in the oldskool demo / extreme music jury. As plain tracker songs are now allowed, almost half of the entries were tracker tunes, mainly XMs or ITs. In addition to that, there were some executable synths and a good set of pieces for many oldskool platforms. The good amount of oldskool/oldskoolish entries really delighted me, and it's good to see that there's a healthy future for this compo.

Almost every screened piece was really, really, really good with true retroish sound and killer melodies! Thank you everyone who entered a tune in this compo! Thank you for blocking my 3-wins-in-a-row streak by making this much this good music :) The competition was exceptionally even, too, and the top-4 fitted inside 43 points. That's extremely tight!

If I had to point out some highlights from the excellent entry pool, I'd mention...

hurja retkuretki by cce [MilkyTracker] (14th)
I really love the sample choices here! A solid tune overall.

Drifting 32k Higher by DJ Joge of Brainstorm [Amiga ProTracker] (11th)
There's a noteworthy achievement here, as this is an extremely cool prod for a 85394 byte protracker module. And the crunching to just 32716 bytes makes it a little bit more epic. (Even though there would not have been any need for that, as the module file size limit was an overkill of 1MB, obviously something DJ Joge hadn't heard of.)

Horse Heads and Gray Biscuits by Man With No Alias (6th)
This is an exceptionally cool and high quality softsynth song! Even though I'm not that much into psytrance, I still find this song very, very good.

The Last Level of 8-bitness by Laser Berger / Tekotuotanto [NES, FamiTracker] (4th)
It's always easy to praise a friend's song, but there's a good reason for that. When I got the finished song for previewing & recording through a real NES a day before the event, I genuinely thought "Holy shit! I've already been beaten." You will definitely hear about Laser Berger in the future, as this was his first NES song with which he already got SO FREAKING CLOSE to the magical top-3 and even the 1st place.

Megamies sienimetsällä. by Reaby [NES+VRC6, FamiTracker] (1st)
The NES triumphs once again! This is a very good tune with some clever use of the VRC6 extension chip's sound channels. I must say this piece wasn't at its best in the jury session, as the used sound hardware muffled this song very badly.

My entry (1.662607 MHz Turbo Supercar, placed 5th) was made with FamiTracker for the NES. And yes, in the end, I got beaten by my friend. This was a research project about the utilization of melodic DPCM samples and implementation of Super Eurobeat on the NES. I think it's (technically) my best NES song. And if you can't guess what clocks at 1.662607 MHz, google it!

Freestyle music

The freestyle music compo had some mindblowingly good entries. All the pieces that weren't just generic electro/trance, really stood out. I'm not saying that the "more electric" pieces would be bad, but there's always so plenty of them. I was really delighted to see & hear some dynamic and melodic orchestral entries, as that's what I'm into.

Let's get into my favourite pieces next..

Tiananmen Ghost by Aikapallo (placed 1st)
Aikapallo shows once again how to do things properly. What a piece, with a message to it! My initial impression was, and still is, "WHOA! This is seriously cool and beautiful!"

Two Cars, One Cup by Signal (3rd)
Hooray, this year Signal got to the big screen! This piece has a nice retro feeling to it, and actually could have been implemented for the NES. It does everything right with some style & attitude, definitely the "best show" on this year's compo.
(There's a coincidence, as I made a car-themed song for the extreme music compo.)

Northern legends by JPT (4th)
A very epic and dynamic song! After listening this one through a couple of times, it really started to shine. Probably my favourite song of the whole compo. You really can't go wrong with EWQL VSTis... :)

Dark Myth by Mr. Rose (12th)
This sounded really impressive at the party place. I find it a little rough around the edges, but it is still an extremely cool and moody song. Very cinematic material!

My own entry, Fast-Forwarding Thru Hell (6th) did very well, too. The final name kind of portrays the making of the song, as well as the general feeling to it. It could serve as a sufficiently interesting topic for a standalone blog entry ;)

There was a piece by a friend of mine, too, Freljordian Beauty by fluffy&fragile (10th). fluffy&fragile dominated this year's music compos at Instanssi demoparty, so I was quite excited when I heard that there's going to be a freestyle music entry. The style is really distinctive and while I love the song, there could be some more variation. Some visitor put up quite a show during the compo, obviously inspired by this piece.

Short Film

Short Film compo has traditionally been the highlight of the whole event for our group. Last year our entry consisted of nice 2D graphics, but this year we went all-in for proper 3D (Airshow, placed 1st). It was nice to see how there are now three recognizable 3D groups who cross-greeted each other in their entries. I'm of course talking about HBC, Pistoke and Tekotuotanto. This year there were some surprises, as HBC didn't get its "big" entry finished on time, Pistoke lost one crew member because of conscription, SirRandom conquered the 3rd place out of the blue with a fresh hand-drawn animation Why Is There No Animation Combo? and Damn Creepers made a surprisingly funny Monty Python spin-off I accidentally two Holy Grails (placed 2nd).

The Other Compos

As I'm not a graphician at all, I'll skip the graphics compos by just saying that korpi/HBC is overpoweringly good, and that there were a total of 4 Tekotuotanto-related entries in the freestyle & fast graphics compos.

Now things would start to get interesting, as there's the set of realtime compos (games, intros & demos) left. But as this is mainly a music blog, I'm going to turn you down by making things disappointingly short. I'll just violently mash things together and point out some of my realtime entry favourites in some order.

Dungeon by The Tribe (14th in gamedev compo)
An interesting concept and technically good, but the actual game is almost completely missing. Nevertheless I like it strangely much. Has anyone played the Ultima Underworld games lately?

Black Belt Sorvi Hero by Pizzalaatikko (1st in the gamedev compo)
Does someone remember the last year's *Insert Something Odd Here* Hero game? Anyway, this game is quite ugly but very unique and addictive. Who knows if we're going to witness a game about dishwashing or brain surgery next year.

Human Resistance by PWP (2nd in the oldskool demo compo)
Deep, cool and awesome. This is my favourite entry of the whole event this year. Even though the trollfaces are a small turnoff here, the story is very solid and I couldn't agree more with it.

anglerfish by cubicle (1st in the 4k intro compo)
Particles are IN nowadays. And this intro does some very impressive stuff with them, with solid psychedelic music and execution.

coder porn! by archee (2nd in the 4k intro compo)
I don't think I've seen this good realtime cloth simulation anywhere, let alone in a 4k intro. Thanks for this wicked stuff! I was actually kind of disappointed when the cloth came off in the end :)

Grandma by Rustbloom (5th in the demo compo)
This one is refreshingly different and kind of edgy. A simple 3D flyby with a coherent theme might just be everything you need.

Luna: Reactivation by Vovoid (3rd in the demo compo)
Even though I think this demo is too long and a little boring, it's still very stylish and ambitious. I think Vovoid had decided to really put some extra effort on this one.

Finally, I really don't need to say anything about Spin by ASD (1st in the demo compo) or uncovering static by fairlight & alcatraz (2nd in the demo compo, 1st in the cancelled 64k intro compo), as they're really in a class of their own: mindblowingly awesome. I was staggered to hear some classical instrument simulations in the latter 64k intro's soundtrack.

Commercial Break(down): Seagate Hard Drives!

Updated 24.8.2011

I have been very busy with my entries for Assembly. The d-day is day after tomorrow, and I just got an urge to advertise Seagate hard drives.


Fuck. I'm going to be in a terrible rush after all.

Update: After getting a proper WD Caviar drive as my Primary Master and reinstalling the OS and other stuff, the MBR decided to get corrupted. This is of course perfectly usual stuff, as somehow problems always seem to heap up. Makes you feel alive once in a while!

A Beginner Demoparty

What: a new demoparty
When: October 2010 & May 2011

Have you heard about a demoparty called Instanssi? If you have, good. If you haven't, that's even better. Because Instanssi will be the topic of this text.

Why am I so keen about the event? Well, I love it and want to get it known a little better. I'm closely involved with the event, I know the organizers and have been a semi-organizer myself. I've helped a little here and there, contributed soundtracks for the invitation demos (2010 and 2011) and made some entries for the compos as well.


"Instanssi" is Finnish and means "An Instance". And it has nothing to do with WoW, as an instance is a term used in programming. Well, of course you can just play games there for the whole weekend, but it's essentially a demoparty. Oh, and let's make that a beginner demoparty, for two different reasons. First, the organizers are still beginners at arranging a demoparty (though everything's gone fine). Second, the entry barrier for newcomers is kept low, and there's some effort to inspire potential new sceners. I think it has succeeded well, as the atmosphere at the two actual events has been fresh (even a bit raw!) and inspiring.

Some noteworthy new talents have risen up into the result sheets, and seems like they are on their way to the bigger waters as well. The newcomer rate at the 1st Instanssi's demo compo was something like 60%. It was a really hilarious and fresh experience. It was something that I had expected to see at the Alternative Party 2010's Beginner Demo Compo, which was - strangely - kind of ruined because of the surprisingly high quality of the entries.

One might start saying that the majority of Instanssi democompo entries are lame - including the winning demos - and not worth a single look, but that's certainly an effective way to depress newcomers and choke off the whole scene. I think the demos have been good. And every new group just simply can not be a little Fairlight just yet :)

The windows next to the entrance got some nice details.

Some pitching for a 4k demo compo entry going on...

...and everyone was having a good time. Thanks to Ville Salonen for these images from Instanssi 2011.

Two Instanssi events have already been organized. The 1st one was held in October 2010 and the 2nd iteration in May 2011. I will close this blog entry with embedded video renditions of the two invitation demos (that happen to have my soundtracks). In the future, as far as I know, the event is planned to be arranged annually around February-March. And btw, I hope to c u at the next Instanssi in 2012! :]


An Instance of Epicness by Hot Lambda Lovin'


An Instance of Purple by Hot Lambda Lovin'

Some cool stuff

• You can tell your story & pitch your entries in the compo screening
• Everything (that follows the rules) will be screened
• There's a compo where you can entry ANYTHING!
  
• There are DMX controllable lights at the party place that can be controlled by the visitors and that can be used in the demos, an interface is provided by the organizers
• It is encouraged to have source code released with the demo entries - a good way to demystify demo coding for newcomers
• The atmosphere is not saucy - the main thing is to start getting computers do cool things for you
  

Top Bits around the Internet vol.000

Topic: Demoscene Radios

Everyone knows the idea behind this kind of blog entry series. It's about linking and commenting inspiring discoveries. Here the finds will be related to music and demoscene.

Let's begin with an obvious pick, my favourite Internet radio - Nectarine Demoscene Radio - streaming some of the best demoscene music 24/7. On the page you'll find a stream list as well as a player you can listen to directly with a net browser. If you get registered, you may queue songs to the playlist. It really works as stimulating background music, especially if you happen to work as a coder :)

Of course there are other demoscene (or demoscene related) radios, too, like Scenesat or Mudia Art.

Check them out, tune in and find your favourite tunes!

Assembly 2010 Music Competition, my favourite selection

What: Demoparty Music Competition
When: 07.08.2010 (dd.mm.yyyy)
Get the entries from Scene.org

After Assembly 2009 I expected that the 'old great masters', GRiMM and Aikapallo, are going to strike back after being exceptionally left out of the podium. And there they are again, conquering the top positions with very fine songs.

This year the overall quality was very high. The number of entries was much higher than last year, too - which led to a very cruel preselection process. There were many memorable songs, and a large bunch of very promising material that was techically good but lacked some progression.

Let's skim through my favourite picks of the competition. The pieces are not in any kind of preference order. If I had to name my very top favourites of the selection, they might be 'Oh! A whoa!' , 'Hideout' and 'Believe in it'.



As We ARRR the Pirates by Cap'n Thrill, placed 3rd

Of course I can not be objective about my own piece, but I do still list it in my favourite picks. Even though the piece is quite generic in its own genre, it's not that generic as an Assembly music compo entry. It has its problems as well as good things, and I must say I am surprised by the outcome. For me it stands as a good reference for the sufficient amount of brute effort. A dedicated blog entry about this piece is on its way.


When There's no Beer by Aikapallo, placed 2nd

This narrative song is like a tribute to Skaven's songs 'Catch that goblin!!' and 'The Goblin Returns'. This piece is all about a good show well executed.


The Apocalypse Will Arrive On a NES Cartridge by GRiMM / Meridian, placed 1st

What a ridiculous name! (By saying that I mean I like it.) At the prize ceremony, GRiMM stated that Mega Man 2 was an important source of inspiration for the song. And there you have it - everything you'll ever need for digging out inspiration. Other Mega Man games will do, too, as MM4 taught me everything I needed to know about music when I was a kid. That is, however, a different story. This piece is like a remix of a collection mix of Mega Man tunes. The soundscape is left very dry, but that way the realistic instruments seem to match better with the NES 2A03 chip sounds.


Oh! A whoa! by Yolk / CNCD, placed 12th

This song makes me smile a lot. I love it. It's fresh and bizarre. Generally I don't like this kind of music, but excellent songs do force out exceptions about preferences. Many have complained about the low quality of the vocals. I think the lo-fi factor fits to the overall attitude. The build-up phase may be a tad long. I'm surprised to say this, but this one is my top favourite out of this year's entries.


Believe in it by 1nsane, placed 7th

Whoa, what a rhythm! With that very edgy mastering and daring soundscape, this song is brutal! If you had turned this into a fierce pirate battle song, you would've dropped me from the podium for sure. Even though this is a masterpiece, it kind of did not stand out as clearly as I expected. Although being a 'demostyle' piece, it misses a theme. Please add a theme, PLEASE make a pirate song with the same techniques! It would be so BAD!


Hideout by Byproduct, placed 6th

What a killer song! Outrageous melodies and arpeggios, stylish dark atmosphere, edgy sound texture and a raging flow. There's nothing else to say, really.


Old Man Belmont by Signal, was the best of the large bunch of non-preselected songs. Jury ranking: 14th

Signal has had bad luck over the years. Many of his very good songs - like this one here - have been among the best non-screened ones. This song is a very nice honor to the Castlevania video game series. (Simon Belmont appeared in the first Castlevania games.) I love the whip sound at 0:35. Maybe there could have been some more subtle sound effects? The final part is very good but short, I would've added some more highlight parts with the chuch organ. Without the screeching highlights, however, this piece could fit wery vell in a Castlevania game as gameplay music. My fast music entry C A S T L E M A N I A shares the very same genre with this piece.


Requiem by artz - not preselected, jury ranking: 24th

The most beautiful piece in the competition. It has a somewhat haunting atmosphere and dark shades in it. A requiem is a piece of music composed to honor a dead person. Whomever this piece might be dedicated to, it really does serve as an honor.


The Majestic Enemy by JPT - not preselected, jury ranking: 32th

This song reminds me of Vangelis's massive masterpiece Conquest Of Paradise. Very cinematic, well arranged and well processed material. Nothing's wrong with this one, but it would have needed more striking high points to stand out in the competition's huge mass of songs. 32th jury ranking still isn't that bad. While the Signal's piece would really need a game, this one is craving a movie.


Ugly by Castor - not preselected, jury ranking: 16th

This song has very good vocals. Overall the sound is very soft. The sound is completely ok, but maybe a little more crisp touch would've made it stand out better, or at least made the vocals more audible? I'm unable to hear all the lyrics clearly enough, but could this piece - by any chance - carry a message to Timbaland?


That's all about the Music Competition this time. The general Assembly 2010 report is on its way.

Checkpoint 1.1

I know I've been a slacker here. Look at all this recent silence! I really should write something new and at least explain something about my new set of pieces released at Assembly 2010. And yes, that's exactly what I am going to do in the near future.

And yes, I really should take a look at the todo-list.

I am not going to discontinue this blog, though there may be more pauses. I've been quite busy lately and have chosen to prefer slacking, composing and hanging around over writing when there's time to do nice things ;)

Checkpoint 1

The pace of my blogging has decreased dramatically. It's not that I'd have grown tired of this work already, but my studies continued and I've taken several new occupations this month. So I'm going to be extremely busy with all the new things I have to learn and make happen.

I do like writing this blog and consider it meaningful if it has even one single reader. (Actually I don't know if it has, as I don't monitor the activity any way because I don't know how to do it.)

This blog is an extrension to my music hobby. And when I have some spare energy to spend with music, I do composing rather than writing. And as I have only limited resources to focus on my hobbies during these months, it's not a big surprise that things get stalled around here. Still, I do try to serve you some interesting blog entries, and more importantly some new music. I hope something will be heard at Alternative Party next month..

The Autumn is my favourite season, so I'm really enjoying these crisp and colorful days before everything turns grey and brown.

Kanava X soundtrack

Released at Assembly 2003
as the soundtrack of a Wild Demo Compo entry “Kanava X by Tekotuotanto” that placed 5th.
the songs don't exist as individual pieces
Techniques: ModPlug Tracker, Yamaha DJX keyboard
see the film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi0XxWEOplo


Kanava X (transl. Channel X) is our group's first release. The name Tekotuotanto was used here for the first time, alongside with Studio Jänis. Studio Jänis was our “former” name, under which some of us did some short films for our high school's video production course. One remarkable film was a Ninja Documentary that had some ninjaspotter interviews:)


Kanava X is rough, grotesque and even terrible at times, but I think all the energy and huge potential was there already. In comparison with the newest Kanava, this one feels somewhat refreshing because of the coarseness. Nowadays this would be very easy to beat, but it represents our skill level at its best at that time. I remember one quote from during the making of Kanava DELTA, 6 years later: “Do you remember how easy it was to just cover everything up with a burp and a fart or two?”

The music

The work features my first released music. The songs aren't much more complete, longer or fancier than what can be heard in the film. Generally, this has been the case with all the Kanava Soundtracks. So many tunes are just unnamed short clips. Here's a list of the major songs, followed by some quick explanations:

The song list

The Opening/Ending song; The Kanava X Theme (project name Alkuilu): This theme was taken from a bigger “draft pool”, made with ModPlug Tracker. Some of the samples, like the drum kit and the orchestral hit, are ripped from other tracker songs (I don't remember the sources anymore). The sound quality is somewhat hissy and muffled, because a lot of the ripped samples were quite low on resolution and my own samples, recorded from my Yamaha DJX keyboard, were quite muffled too.
I like the melody very much, it is somewhat epic and very energetic. It became my “trademark” for a long time and I've received a lot of compliments about it. I have done two remixes of it: Remix Complete in 2003 with some added evolving themes and shorter X 2005 two years later. I've lost the remixes but luckily do still remember the most important additional theme, which has a killer melody!
The bigger “draft pool” song got never completed, but I've ripped its melodies into some other contexts. Actually, I like doing this kind of draft songs that can be gradually extracted later; I took Kanava DELTA's opening theme melody from the same piece – 6 years later.

The TV shop song: I don't remember a lot about this song. It was an individual project not intended for Kanava, but as it was much like a generic 80'ish elevator music song, it fitted in the TV Shop parody well. I lost the project file in a hard drive failure I suffered during the making of Kanava X.



Heikoin Penkki / Benchmark music: This is based on one of the Yamaha DJX keyboard's preset rhythms. This song shares the same chord rotation with the clip Listaykkönen.



The Jatkuu Tune: This was a really successful random impromptu, starting with a broken chord Cm.



Listaykkönen (Number One Chart Hit) (the trance song in one of the video scratch clips): This song was done by playing some patterns into my Yamaha DJX keyboard's internal memory. It is based on my favourite preset rhythm and arpeggio (unfortunately you can't customize their structure) and it has a very catchy (though cheesy and overused) flow of 4 different chords. I got requested a couple of years ago to compose a complete remake of this song. It's still on my to-do list, but I always have a chronic lack of time.



Action music: This is quite epic stuff alongside with the Theme track. It used the same sample set with some overdrive guitar. The guitar instrument has some added ModPlug Tracker's native distortion effect.



In addition to this, there's a lot of random noise I have not much to say about. They're self-explanatory :)

Icons 2008 brief report

I attended Icons to seek some variety, after having submitted a lot of entries to the Assembly event during the recent years. To support the small event, I also made two decent entries for it: one chiptune for the dance music compo and one video for the wild compo. When attending a demoparty, I just need to participate in some compos for the excitement.
The atmosphere was relaxed, and there were some very nice compo entries. The event was held in Kaapelitehdas, Helsinki. The weather was very nice and crisp, so I spent a lot of time just walking around the Kaapelitehdas area. Even though I wasn't very interested in “Boozicons” (analogically to Boozembly), I came up with a lot of things to do as I find the demoparty atmosphere inspiring for content creation.

My favourite picks in the competitions:

• 1K intro compo: Himalaya by TBC (1st) (Thank you for making 1K the new 4K. Very stunning.)


• Demo compo: fit-039: Boy by Fit (placed 1st) (Stylish, and has some good irony.)


• Wild compo: Bullet Time by HBC & Maturefurk (1st) (This was a recognizable work. The “Maxon Toffee” style was already becoming a phenomenom)


• Dance Music compo: Rokken rolli by Ilmarque&error303 (4th) (This tune has the best feeling and melodies of the top entries. The bass track is also really nice. This is actually really good and the only one I'd listen to voluntarily.)

Some pictures

The entrance

Kaapelitehdas at daylight

Kaapelitehdas by night

Valmet Children's wild compo entry Electronics at work was a short gig.

Alternative Party's invitation Punish your machine included some bribery: everyone got a popsicle :)

The video screen

There was a wall covered with Post-it-type stickers. Everyone could add their own effort on the wall. There were some really well done texts and logos. Too bad the stickers didn't stick to the wall really well.

I strolled a lot around the Ruoholahti area. The weather was fantastic: crisp and bright.