King Thrill 's Demoscene Music Blog

An Instance of Epicness

2011-09-01T12:00:00.003+03:00

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

2011-08-24T21:58:00.032+03:00

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

2011-08-24T11:31:00.020+03:00

(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

2011-08-13T20:57:00.035+03:00

-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!

2011-08-02T15:37:00.009+03:00

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

2011-06-07T15:44:00.036+03:00

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

2010-08-29T14:45:00.002+03:00

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

2010-08-28T14:04:00.020+03:00

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

2010-08-13T20:00:00.002+03:00

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

2009-09-25T20:09:00.004+03:00

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

2009-09-02T03:07:00.018+03:00

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

2009-08-29T15:38:00.016+03:00

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.

Stronger than a Storm

2009-08-28T08:21:00.005+03:00

Released at Assembly 2008 as an entry for Freestyle Music Compo
Place: N/A, did not qualify for screening (21th of 50 entries in the jury)
Techniques: ModPlug Tracker, Native Instruments FM8 VSTi, Native Instruments Battery 3 VSTi, Korg TR keyboard, Yamaha DJX keyboard.

This was a fast Machinae Supremacy Clone -type of song I made for Assembly Freestyle Music competition in 2008. I knew it was difficult to point out using this genre. The piece wasn't very unique and had some things made in a rush, so it was not a surprise it didn't qualify for the screen. Still I'm pleased about how high points it got in the jury, it got nearly screened.

I wanted to participate in the competition for the excitement, even though I had nothing new to give. So I made this tune in three days using some of my favourite chords that were playing in my head. This song's project name was Breeze as well (it shared the same project name with our group's short film). I was thinking of a decent name to the last minute, and Stronger than a Storm was the best candidate. I think this is quite a generic and “unnecessary” song, but it has a lot of energy and potential.

Rust Age (Timereal soundtrack)

2009-08-27T00:51:00.031+03:00

Released at Assembly 2008 (summer 2008)
as the Soundtrack of a Short Film “Timereal by Tekotuotanto” that placed 2nd in Short Film Compo
Techniques: ModPlug Tracker, Korg TR keyboard, Native Instruments Battery 3 VSTi

In this context, I won't give any “official” statements on behalf the whole film crew. This is a story from my viewpoint as a team member of the project.

In Timereal (project name Breeze) the main idea was to do some fancy high-speed cinematography and blend it with some beautiful timelapse scenes. The name Timereal is a twist from the word realtime, as it's not a realtime entry and every scene in it has an unnatural time scale. It was a really short project lasting about two weeks and having only two shooting days.

I felt it was going to be left somewhat meaningless, like a tech demo presenting only two different tricks, so I got an inspiration to write some “horrible scene poetry” to it. I did most of the writing in work during coffee breaks. If you hate the poetry, as many do, just blame me. I like it. And now the work has some content at least. Many consider the work somewhat angsty, but for me it's more like a physics lecture. I like it a lot and think it's very beautiful.

The soundtrack got cheesy as I didn't have much time to do it. The piano was left too bright and the noise sounds are a bit off. It was planned to be more dark and ambient. Still, overall, everything got a lot more succesful than I had thought. And maybe the bright piano actually helps it for not being too dark and angsty. (And yes, I hate angst too.)
This is one of the few songs I can play on the piano completely. As I was in a hurry, I drew a couple of themes together from my draft collection I often jam through on the piano. They worked well together and I'm pleased of the outcome. The first theme had a temporary name Rust Age, so I took the whole composition's name from it. The second theme was supposed to be something epic for a massive orchestra, but now it sounds like an opening track of some drama series. The last theme, named You are a sparkle was a completely new part composed for the work. I like it the most and will evolve and reuse it in some big orchestrated work.

The pictures are actual screenshots from the film.

The Alternative Party 2008 report

2009-08-26T00:49:00.020+03:00

This was the first time I attended The Alternative Party. I had plans to check it out a year earlier already, but at that time none of my friends were very interested. I would've had to travel alone and there wasn't anything groundbreakingly interesting in the schedule, so I passed the event.
This year, however, we had a nice squad of three people.

Punish your machine

This year's theme was steampunk and the punchline “Punish your machine”. The theme involved some added focus to oldskool hardware, and there was a really cool Old Computers' Exhibition Area where a lot of visitors' old machines could be tried out. It was not a really big surprise that I spent a lot of time there playing Super Mario Bros on the NES (luckily someone had brought a unit). For some reason, I had my PowerPak flash cartridge with me, but unfortunately it didn't start at that NES unit because it was unmodified. PowerPak apparently requires the “copy protection” lockout chip to be disabled.

The old computer exhibition area

The ALT way

I love AltParty for its effort at making a difference and evolving every year. It has a different theme and some unique competitions every year. Even though I felt that a lot of the content (especially the art exhibitions) was too avantgarde-ish for me, the event was refreshing. There were some interesting guests, and I enjoyed the gigs even though the speaker system was so massive that I had to wear earplugs even in the other end of the hall. There was a “funny” incident in the sleeping area, when a floor cleaning machine started to leak and the water spread around the floor.

The party place, Kaapelitehdas

Kaapelitehdas is a very nice place for this kind of medium-sized events. I like its rough industrial atmosphere (the place is a big old factory) and the location at the seaside is excellent.
A seaside view near the party place.

My top picks among the entries:

Doctor by Trilobit (1st place in Alternative demo competition)

Karat3d+ by Byterapers, Inc. (1st place in Dynamic demo competition)

First Canal by petrified/Accession (4th place in 1 Channel Tracker Music competition)

Download all entries here (scene.org).

The Codento Architect Challenge 2008 was very interesting and my favourite in the party program.

Tricks of the Warlocks

2009-08-25T17:24:00.041+03:00

Released at Alternative Party 2008 (fall 2008)
Placed 1st in 1-track tracked music compo
Platform: Impulse Tracker Module (*.it)
Techniques: ModPlug Tracker, Schism Tracker & Impulse Tracker on DosBox
Samples recorded from Korg TR, NI FM8, NI Battery 3

Download all the entries(scene.org)

"This has some proper oldskool demoscene spirit pushing the limits."

This was a very interesting project. The song is a single-channel Impulse Tracker tune made for Alternative Party's 1-track tracked music competition.

The competition

Alternative Party has a lot of very unique competitions. The 1-channel tracked music competition was so interesting that I had to stress my tracking tricks against the others. This was the main reason why I attended the event. The overall quality of the competition was astonishing considering the limitations.

My favourite picks:

First Canal by petrified/Accession (IT) (Placed 4th) (This is my top favourite pick. It has some very fine pitch envelope keyframing, a very charming dark soundscape and beutiful melody.)

lemoon by 505 (XM) (Placed 2nd) (A very complete, evolving and ambitious piece.)

Snaresucker by Serpent/Drainstorm (XM) (Placed 6th) (I was very impressed that all the sample information is in one single sample. So this is a 1-track & 1-sample song.)

The Project

It was a really challenging task to try to compose something worthwhile in the given limitations: the tracker module was allowed to utilize only 1 channel and the file size limit was 64 kilobytes uncompressed. If you have some knowledge about tracker music, you know how strict these rules are. The project name of the song was Requiem.

First I composed the piece quite normally as a simple 12-track module. Then I squeezed it into 1 track with some wicked tricks of the warlocks. The 1-track conversion was quite a pain, but finally I did it in just 4 hours while having a mild hangover (I attended a student event focused on drinking, called Kauppakadun Appro, a day before doing the task). At that time the techniques were already tested and waiting, so I just needed a little push to do the straightforward editing.

The Wicked Tricks

I had plenty of time to think of the techniques; In addition to studying, I worked as an assistant in a printing works at weekends. My job was nice but repetitive, so I had a lot of time during work to conceptualize the techniques needed.

The 1st concept

I wanted ambitiously to push the limits and use some strong melodies at the same time with some percussion sounds. So I tried to make a song using some samples with notes and drums mixed together. Soon it became clear that only very simple melodies would have been possible within the limitations. The 64k size limit would have forced me to use very low sound quality. I needed to think of something else.

The 2nd concept

(This requires lots of lore and knowledge about trackers to be understood. I don't remember all of the details anymore, so some glitches may occur.)

I started thinking that the Impulse Tracker's *.it format was the most advanced of the allowed ones, as it enabled a certain level of virtualization by the possibility to (1) use a same sample through different instruments, and to (2) play multiple instruments at the same time triggered from a same channel. After some research, all the neat tricks were based on these two premises.

The latter feature is widely used in Impulse Tracker songs for note offset after any new note on a same channel. After some testing, I was able to play a sustained sound and trigger some percussions over it from the same channel, without cutting any sounds. Now I was getting somewhere, but faced a new challenge: while the sustained instuments's 'new note action' set to 'continue' made it possible to trigger new simultaneous sustained sound layers, it got seemingly impossible to stop playing the sounds. I couldn't get the instrument go off even if I used a note off or note cut command binded to the correct instrument. I don't remember what caused this, but the sound got out of control right after triggering. There was one useful exception to this, though, using the 'duplicate check' options. If I triggered a new note (instead of note cut/off) using the same instrument, that command got registered.
So to cut the sound, I created a void sample and mapped the sustained instrument's lowest possible note (that is marked C-0 in tracker sequencers) to it. This made the instrument to go silent. At this point, I got a bit greedy and started experimenting with full triplet chords. For this, I needed to create three similar instruments using the same sample to be able to control every note of the chord individually. If I had used only one instrument, a new note for the same instrument would have overwritten the former because of duplicate check.

By abusing these tricks insane amounts, I was able to come up with an amazing 1-track tune. It has triplets, notated arpeggio, drums, a bass guitar and a solo instrument playing at the same time, triggered from a single track. All melodies are done using notes on the patterns. I didn't use preset instrument pitch envelopes to create melodies, which would've been the other way to achieve a great level of complexity with only one channel.

Some other 1-track tunes

When I launched the project, I was already aware of this song, which is a very impressive single-track tune that utilizes some finely done instrument pitch envelopes. I used it as the reference point for the technical level that had to be surpassed. In the AltParty's competition, there were songs that used this technique which I'd call pitch envelope keyframing. However, no other piece used the same technique as I did, which I call vertical note clustering. There is a newer song called Rainforest by Jakim of StageMagician (Youtube link) that uses all kinds of neat tricks.

The devious Vertical Note Clustering Trick

When I squeezed the tune from 12 channels to 1, I stretched the patterns and turned all horizontal pattern rows into vertical clusters into a single track. A cluster has all the stuff from a corresponding multi-channel row played back very rapidly, then accompanied with some duration correction to keep the BPM constant.

The differences between the two trackers

I used ModPlug Tracker for testing and composing, because it has the most easy-to-use user interface. It is also the most handy tracker for trimming the samples, because its sample editor has some sort of automated feature for searching suitable loop points to avoid crackle sounds.

These are the most used views of ModPlug Tracker and Impulse Tracker when playing a song. Impulse Tracker and Schism Tracker look identical.

I used Schism Tracker (a complete multi-platform Impulse Tracker clone) for testing and fine-tuning the song. I actually made some last minute changes at The ALT Party using my Asus eee pc running Ubuntu Linux. Then I used the original Impulse Tracker on DosBox MS-DOS emulation to make sure the song sounds right on the original platform. During testing, I noticed that Impulse Tracker squeezes file sizes smaller than the other trackers. Apparently, the *.it format has built-in sample compression for achieving smaller file sizes, and the original tracker has the most efficient algorithm for this. After noticing this, I was able to increase the sampling frequency of the most important string sample from 32000Hz to 44100Hz without exceeding the size limit.

So, if you are making some *.it tunes with a strict file size limit, use Impulse Tracker 2.14 for saving the final version to get some extra bytes. You can run it on any platform with DosBox.

Here are the instrument editor windows. Both programs offer all the same options when making a standard *.it tune. The selected instrument 7 belongs to the triplet set.

Playback issues

Some module music players, for instance the one used in WinAmp, cannot playback the song right (version 5.552 gets drowned after ca. 40 seconds of playback). This is because of the technique I use to cut sustained sounds. When sounds are cut using a void sample, all players don't close the sound layer but leave it open. After the amount of open sound layers grow big enough (probably 200), it starts interfering with the playback as no new layers can be created. So if the playback sound buggy, try some other player. Even the newest version of OpenMPT (1.17.02.54) fails in the section where an arpeggio effect is used. A note off command sets the arpeggio off, too, while it is still supposed to continue.

The resemblance issue with Carl Orff's Carmina Burana

I used my favourite song by Vanessa Mae, Contradanza, as the example for this composition. When I was composing the song on the piano, it felt somewhat familiar at times. My friend pointed out that the song my composition resembled is Carl Orff's Carmina Burana's first part from 1937. I wasn't very worried about it, because I had created the song individually. But it's true that both songs share a sequence that uses about the same chords in a same order. I did try to change the chords a bit, but that didn't produce any satisfying results so I left the original ones unchanged. But I knew there was a small risk that the song could get disqualified in the competition. The chords are the same I use most frequently in almost any of my songs: Am, G, Dm/A, F/C and C. In the competition, I heard some comments, as expected, about the resemblance, but the song was stated unique.

the new Teruminator Bot

2009-08-25T05:05:00.006+03:00

Released at Assembly 2009 (07.08.2009)
Placed 2nd in Fast Music Competition
Techniques: Renoise 2, EW/QL Complete Composer Collection, Korg TR keyboard

See the video from the actual screening (Youtube)

This year I had prepared a nice template from Kanava DELTA soundtrack's opening theme to avoid any technical problems during the Assembly Fast Music Compo's 90-minute sweaty period. Now I was able to use my favourite music genre as well, so I actually had some fun composing the song over-caffeinated. Of course I knew I was facing a bunch of very tough opponents, so there was no time to relax. I'm still not very familiar with the Renoise 2 interface, so I got short of time figuring some things out on the fly. I also failed to apply correct settings for the Renoise's native compression filters, which resulted too low sound levels in the final MP3 rendition. Even if I thought the result wasn't as solid as last year, especially when compared to the other pieces, it was enough for taking a second place again.

The name is like a sequel to the last year's Batman Nahkanuija & Yön Timot, having a certain reference to some well-known new movie. Even though it feels like cheap point-fishing, it must be noted that the name is a very important part of any work. It also seems that the organizers had reacted to this issue, as the maximum entry name was halved from ca. 60 characters to ca. 25. The original name was something like The New Teruminator Bot 4000 Does All Your Chores but it didn't fit in. I had same problems with the Extreme Music entry I was a Nintendo Girl. I learned that if you have an entry with a long name, have a secondary short-named version prepared too.

Batman Nahkanuija & Yön Timot

2009-08-25T03:16:00.012+03:00

Released at Assembly 2008 (01.08.2008)
Placed 2nd in Fast Music Compo
Techniques: ModPlug Tracker, Magix Music Studio 12 deLuxe, NI FM8, NI Battery 3, Korg TR keyboard

The name of this song is like a random jigsaw puzzle. Some love and some hate it. A new Batman film (The Dark Knight featuring the magnificent Heath Ledger's Joker role) was premiered some time before the Assembly event. The movie was so good that my friends insisted me to include “Batman” in the name. The word “Nahkanuija” was collected from the wall of a gas station toilet (Tähtihovi, Heinola) on the way to Assembly. The Latter half is some randomness picked up in the last minute from my friends after asking them to think of something cool as the pair for “Batman Nahkanuija”.

This is where I composed the song. I had a cool USB candlestick with led lights. It was formerly shot with a shotgun during the making of our Short Film entry Timereal. Here's my friend giving his votes to Demo Compo entries.

I used the b2p soundtrack's project file as a base template for this song, so they share the same instruments and soundscape. But of course this song is weaker because it was composed and mixed in only the given 90 minutes, while I had a couple of weeks to carve the b2p soundtrack into perfection. I think this song has some really nice semi-acoustic guitar sounds. The lead guitar solo was a quick last-minute addition recorded over the rendered content in Magix Music Studio from my Korg TR keyboard.

Actually, I did not have a choice but use the same template, because my FM8 VSTi didn't want to refresh & display its sound library so no new additions could be made. The b2p soundtrack was my former project and the only one with a decent set of instruments ready to use. I was quite mad while composing the song; cursing and slamming my PC keyboard as I would have liked to make a classical song instead of artificial rock. I was surprised how good the result was, though.

Irish Rain

2009-08-21T03:26:00.041+03:00

MP3 Download link
Released at Assembly 2009 (08.08.2009)
3rd place in the Freestyle Music Compo
See the video from the actual screening (Youtube)

Lyrics:
This is my home for eternity
On the plains watching seasons change
I've been around the world
Still I am here, waiting for the Irish rain to come

”Voin kuvitella kui jengi samoo jossai &%@!:ssa tän tahdis.” -a funny comment on the Assembly Qnet IRC channel during the competition.

The story & techniques

I made a rough draft of this composition in 2007. Then I buried it for almost 2 years before deciding to turn it into my Assembly 2009 Freestyle Music entry. The draft version was done using ModPlug Tracker and Native Instruments FM8 VSTi. It had a lot more synthetic, ambient, cold and eteric soundscape. In contrast, this remake has very fresh & trying-to-be-realistic sound and was made using Renoise 2 sequencer, East West Quantum Leap Complete Composers Collection VSTi & NI FM8 VSTi. The ”first version” didn't really have a name, but it should have deserved something obvious like 'Follow Me to the Elven Forest' as it's a bit cheesy. It's project name was 'Drama Cliff'. I might release the synth version in the future after rearranging it for Renoise 2.

The first version of the song from 2007 on ModPlug Tracker and Native Instruments FM8 VSTi. The VSTi bindings of the song have broken while platform and version changes, so I can't just make a straight export for comparison.

The release version from 2009 on Renoise 2, East West Quantum Leap Complete Composers Collection VSTi and FM8 VSTi. Goliath is one of the 7 Virtual Instruments included in the default EW/QL CCC set.

This is the Wordbuilder tool, with which the Symphonic Choirs VSTi (included in the CCC) is made sing. I used the phonetics view to fine-tune the pronunciation. I also tweaked the timings extensively. I had a lot of issues while this task, because I had to do this separately on 32-bit Windows XP that the new Play engine doesn't support very well. Things get nicer when I obtain a Virtual MIDI Cable for 64-bit Windows. I do tried some hardware midi routing around my PC as well but couldn't get it working.

At the Assembly event, there's a monstrous amount of bass in the PA system. So it's important to apply some frequency cutoff to prevent any unnecessary rumble. This was the first song I applied some serious mastering, though I used only Renoise's native filters for it by applying them on the master channel. The most important thing besides reasonable compression / volume maximization is to cut off too low and too high frequencies. This is how it's done in Renoise with two Filter3-filters. I got some excellent hints for this from the Renoise tutorials.

To get the Irish folk sound faithful enough, I browsed a lot of riverdance videos on Youtube and also tried to figure out what is possible with the different instruments in real life. My goal was to create as organic, rich and realistic sound as possible. I must have spent over 100 hours to carve every detail and carefully mix everything together.

I HAD to tweak the song into perfection, after hearing Virt's phenomenal Lorem Ipsum. That is the new reference point for the technical level you must be ready to expect from the winner candidates of any music competition. By the way, I was actually a bit disappointed that no one had utilized Vocaloid 2 for Assembly Music compos this year already.

The motivation

In the Assembly Freestyle Music Competition, there's always a ton of very generic electric music I'm not very fond of. In the past years, there's also been some very decent heavy metal songs (mainly from Aikapallo, GRiMM and Paavo ”Tarantula” Härkönen) that always place very high, but the concept is starting to get boring and repetitive. I wanted to try something more original but still recognisable, so I turned my piece into Irish Folk. My song was played right after GriMM's Aeniyasha, Darkmoon Magic and Aikapallo's Ninja Sisters metal songs, so my ”and now something completely different” effect worked perfectly!

The sound library

”east west quantum leap.. toihan on ihan järkyttävän hintanen äänikirjasto”

At the Assembly IRC channel, someone knew what the cryptic EW/QL-CCC meant. It stands for East West Quantum Leap Complete Composers Collection. The word limit for the Techniques used row was 5, so I shortened the product's name quite a bit.

The new PLAY edition came out in June 2009. I was already expecting it, and when it came available, I bought it instantly. If I hadn't got the VSTi on time, I probably wouldn't have participated in the competition. My plan from the beginning was to buy it and compose something ”realistic” with it to repel the heavy metal winning streak.

First impressions

After browsing the logs from IRCNet's and QuakeNet's official IRC channels from during the music competition, it is apparent that my song made a good first impression and initiated some discussion.

A heavily shortened & subjective summary from the IRCNet channel:
”wow, sounds nice, lovely, Irish folk meets LOTR”

...and from QuakeNet: ”LARP music!, Llllllllightning Bolt! yum, nice choir”

I was a Nintendo Girl

2009-08-21T02:22:00.026+03:00

MP3 Download link
See the video from the actual screening (Youtube)

"The time has come for the NES scene to come alive!" -nullsleep

Released at Assembly 2009 (07.08.2009)
1st place in the Extreme Music Compo
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
Techniques: FamiTracker 0.2.7bf, PowerPak flash cartridge

Lyrics:
I did not have a pony
I was a Nintendo Girl

”Let's see when Timba rips and abuses this little Nintendo Girl.” [See the Timbaland plagiarism controversy]

The story

The complete name of the song is the same as the lyrics: I did not have a pony, I was a Nintendo Girl. However, the Assembly PMS (the system through which the files & info was submitted) didn't accept such a long name so I had to trim it a bit. So this piece has two names now. Both of them are correct.

Technically, this is quite a straightforward tune. It has several different parts and fast transitions between them. Effects, neat tricks and arpeggios are used sparsely because I tried to maintain the recognisable 'simple & soft NES game sound'.

The theme of this song is nostalgia. I chose to have a clear theme because my last year's NES entry Power Quercetin wasn't very unforgettable. The soundscape is very similar to Mega Man series that was the primary source of inspiration. To make the tune stand out, I boosted the ”bling-factor” by adding some noises to create game-like feel. At least for me they trigger a kind of ”childhood slide show feeling”, as I was a Nintendo Kid. My favourite part of the song is the theme with the rising arpeggio sound (1:16-1:40 and 2:45-3:08 utilizing some cool single-track reverb).

I got the inspiration for this piece when I was playing Mega Man 9 on Wii and drinking liquor with my friends in spring. A week later many parts were ready and playable on the piano, but I had a lot of struggle with the whole picture and NES hardware limitations. The sequencing took place in July and everything was finished just in time.

A running NES system. The game is Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles 2. My apartment was a complete mess during the project. Here you can see the TV is on a couch.

Technical stuff

The singing is the most original element. It was also a real pain in the ass, even though it is not based on coded speech synthesis but some highly processed and precisely cut digitized samples. The same trick is used for example in the classic Blades of Steel hockey game title screen track. The hardware limitations are so strict (the samples are very lo-fi delta modulated pcm stuff) that it is really hard to get some real texture to them besides noise and crackle. I'm not very satisfied with the outcome, but it's still good enough and I ran out of time.

The singing consists of several very short samples. One sample has one syllable or a short word. In the Extreme Music Competition at Assembly the singing worked surprisingly well, because the reverb of the environment kind of extended the short muffled samples :)

I used FamiTracker version ” - 0.2.7 (bug fixed) - ” in PAL mode to create and export the tune. For playback on real hardware I used a Retrozone PowerPak cartridge on a PAL NES. The version number of the final song is 97.

I used this odd and old version of FamiTracker, because the binary exporting in the newest version (presently 0.3.0) did not work properly. Plus, the new version renders some effects differently in a way I'm not used to.

This is everything you need to get your code running on a NES: a PowerPak cartridge, a CF card and a CF card reader. The cart is expensive, but it's worth the money if you need it.

More NES music

I've listened to Ilmarque's Heartbound for NES (placed 2nd in the same competition) a lot and absolutely love it. It is technically marvellous! It is so skillfully made that it almost doesn't sound like a NES tune anymore. Well done! Technically I got beaten hands down... but, apparently, I had come up with a more memorable theme.

First impressions

(in Finnish through the official Assembly IRC channel @ IRCNet during the competition.)

note: Ilmarque's Heartbound (for NES) was shown just before Nintendo Girl so the hot topic on the channel was already the NES.

07.08./22:37 < Blaqua> no kyllä nessiin saa sympatiapisteet ainakin täältä
07.08./22:37 < Vision> lisää nessiä !
07.08./22:37 < Zouppen> nyt tulee kovaa nes-settiä
07.08./22:37 < Lykurgos> Kaikkea ne saakin aikaiseksi NES:illä
07.08./22:39 < McPupu> voittobiisi
07.08./22:39 < TheMe> laulua nesillä

Assembly 2009 report

2009-08-20T23:20:00.059+03:00

Experienced as a demoparty, not as a gaming convention.

I had been thinking about launching a this kind of blog for some time already, but after the smash success at the Assembly 2009 music competitions I decided to finally put this up. I think the time was ready and the general interest towards my pieces sufficient (well, I'm not expecting much, but still.. :)

The success exceeded all my expectations, as I got a ”full straight”: 1st place in the Extreme Music Competition (with a piece named I was a Nintendo Girl), 2nd place in the Fast Music Competition (The new Teruminator Bot) and 3rd place in the Freestyle Music Competition (Irish Rain). In addition to this, our group Tekotuotanto placed 1st in the Short Film Competition with Kanava DELTA, for which I contributed a massive amount of work too.

I doubt I'm able to repeat this kind of success. But I might try.

Here's a snapshot of the Assembly PMS. The Short Film jury feedback got apparently typed into various wrong fields. It's rare to see all of one's entries qualified. I would have liked to use a slash instead of a comma between my handle and group, but the PSM did not accept it. I was using Opera 9.64. Maybe I was having a wrong character set or missed some plugin.

Generally, this year's event was OK. I enjoyed the event and most things worked pretty well. But many details would have needed some more polish, I think many trivial things worked better last year. Some excellent improvements were made, though, for instance the introduction of the brief information spots at the beginning of every competition.

I had my Korg TR Music Workstation keyboard and a brand new workstation PC with me at the event for composing my Fast Music entry & just for general boasting. I got some other composing tasks on the fly as well: I made a soundtrack for my friend's video that participated in Puolenkuun Pelit Commercial Video competition (it came 2nd). I also composed the score for the Short Film Compo entry Uskomaton vojaasi by Suometar Filmi (placed 8th) after getting another surprise request.

Jury sessions, in general

For every competition, a jury session is held. In a jury session all the competition entries are shown and every jury participant ranks them on a scale from 1 to 5. This is done by filling out a form. Then, after the session, a mean value is calculated for every entry. If there are lots of entries, only the ones with the highest score are screened in the actual competition at the arena to the audience. Depending on the competition, some 30-100 per cent of the entries get screened. The most demanding competitions have the highest ”screening percentage”, because there aren't that much entries. Only total rubbish and entries that violate rules or laws are cut off there.

Graphics and music compos have always been the most popular with the highest number of entries. Therefore, a lot of preselection must be made in order to cut down the duration of the compo.

For instance, this year in the Freestyle Graphics Compo there were 29 entries, 15 of which were screened. So the percentage is roughly 50%, which is quite a high figure for this compo.

Generally, everyone can participate in the juries. The organizers have even been trying to increase the attractiveness of the jury sessions by giving away some snacks, sweets and soft drinks. However, the system has always been quite unclear and the number of jury participants quite low. I think it is a problem, because the jury results might not end up reflecting accurately the general opinion. This year I almost missed two of the juries, even though I actively looked forward attending them. The system must be made clearer, the tools are good but the execution just sucks.

A jury evaluation form

The freestyle music jury

One of the juries I attended was the Freestyle Music Compo's jury. This year there were 41 entries, 15 of which were screened (resulting a percentage of 37%). Some who had attended the same jury before noted that the overall quality of the pieces was very high this year. There's always a lot of very generic electric music I'm not very interested in. There were also some ”traditional” joke songs that amused us quite a lot and helped us to survive the 41-song streak (special thanks to The Resilar Song aka Mummon Kämpillä by TyypiZ. It was the only song we listened to twice!). Still, they don't deserve to be screened in the compo if there's lots of much more generally appealing pieces.

In the jury rating forms, there's also a small comment column. Some jury organizers copy these comments to the Assembly PMS system so the authors can get some honest feedback. Some of the jury members made markings in this column, thinking that they would be delivered to the authors. I wrote some comments, too, about technical quality, general feeling and originality for every single piece. Unfortunately, the comments got trashed as the jury organizer didn't want to do all the copying from the forms to the PMS system.

A hint for all the future Music Compo attenders: Make your songs point out somehow. Remember that the jury must listen to many very boring and generic tunes. Every winning song has something special in them.

I won't do any pseudo-jury listening tasks voluntarily again, sorry. But I will point out and comment a bit some of my personal favourites.

My Freestyle Music favourites:

Download the entries from here(scene.org)

symphonic dreams by rendi (placed 10th) (This would fit straight into any Final Fantasy game. The only entry that gives me shivers. A masterpiece!)

The last march of fairies by JPT (no compo placing, placed 16th of 41 in the jury) (I love this kind of music and I love this piece, too! I would've loved to hear this one screened. I think I can recognise quite a lot of Korg Triton sounds here :)

a 09 m by T101/Accession (placed 6th) (I love the dark atmosphere. This song's my favourite from among this year's metal entries. This is also the soundtrack for the Short Film entry GeekCamp IV Invitation by Accession)

[kuake] by paranoidx (placed 1st) (Funny lyrics that are written specially for the Assembly event, excellent singing, exceptional overall quality.)

Sovietski Electro by Rtzon King (placed 2nd) (I love the melody and the idea.)

Quantum Speed by Everdune (placed 10th too) (The rhythm flows very nicely. Plus, I like the 80's stuff.)

Ninja Sisters by Aikapallo (placed 4th)
AND
Aeniyasha, Darkmoon Magic by GriMM / Agentess M (placed 5th) (A huge amount of effort has been put into these songs. A worthwhile ”old masters's showcase”. Let's see what you come up with next year.)

FunAtASM by Nix3ll (no placing, was 20th in the jury) (I like the massiveness. Got an earworm from this one. The MP3 has too much compression / volume maximization, though. The author should release a new fixed version.)

Game by Capsizer (no placing, was 34th in the jury (I find this one catchy.)

Mirri by Trio DStruction (no placing, was 25th in the jury (This is terrible and cool at the same time. I really don't know what to think about this one. Made me laugh.)

Ride the Wild by S.Syrjänen, J.Kalilainen (placed 12th) (One of the best Machinae Supremacy clones I've heard)

My Extreme Music Favourites:

download(scene.org) (only briefly, because I don't have the energy to run many of the entries on different platforms and emulators. Please, include MP3 versions of your songs in the release package)

Oldskool section: Heartbound by ilmarque^trilobit (placed 2nd) (A very charming and skillfully made song. Ilmarque's style is recognisable. This piece pushes the unexpanded NES hardware very close to its maximum capacity.)

Nuskool: Summer Nights by Reaby / Puavohard (placed 11th) (Very nice, soft and cheesy. I love the melody. I wonder why this placed so low.)

My Fast Music favourites:

Download(scene.org)

Fast09 by Reaby (placed 5th) (I love the bright lead sound. Very sympathetic.)

kodin putkimies by Shroomi (placed 1st) (Very solid and fine. The name rocks!)

Press play on time by Castor / Immersion (placed 4th) (This one gets a platform bonus from me.)

chord jungle by luuk / 6th Fire (placed 3rd) (A very complete and fine song.)

My other favourites:

Demo: The Golden Path by United Force & Digital Dynamite (placed 3rd) (The beginning is STUNNING with all the cheesiness. Gets a little boring, but is still the most memorable entry.)

64k intro: Transform by Ate Bit (1st) (The vinyl scratching scene is fantastic. I also like the cartoon style shaders.)

4k intro: Muon Baryon by Youth Uprising (1st) (Yes, 4k is the new 64k.)

Oldskool demo: 3½ inches is enough by Unreal Voodoo (1st) (Funny, nice story.)

Short film: Bacon Fat by XETEK & red- (N/A) (This work uses some old tricks in a fresh and inspiring manner. I'd have loved to see this entry on the big screen.) AND Sentience by bad loop (5th) (Very aesthetic and soothing. The simple style fits well with the theme. I like the soundtrack very much.)

Real Wild demo: coder colors by throb+t-rex (1st) (This has some attitude! First I thought this was a bit too goofy, but it's perfectly fine.) AND Javascript Wii Emulator by Bemmu (2nd) (This has some really bizarre and funny scenes. Well done!)

Game development: Brainless by DDT (2nd) (I like the ambient music. A very fine execution of and old concept.)

Fast Graphics: Ja taas mennään by McLad (3rd) (Even though this is "just a photo", it is really well done and has some cool attitude. Can you go wrong with a skeleton riding a motorcycle over the edge?)

Extreme graphics: You'll be illin by HBT (1st) (This is a part of a wide panorama image from an oldskool demo Children of the Sign by Byterapers, inc. The whole image is really cool.)

Graphics: The Hummingbird by juriga (2nd) (A fantastic picture! I love the style and colors.)

GENERAL INFORMATION

2009-08-16T04:12:00.022+03:00

I think this is a natural topic to begin with. Please note that many pieces of this information are subject to change. I try to keep this entry updated.

What's this blog about?

Hello. Let me introduce the “King Thrill's Musical Blog”.
As the name suggests, this blog is about music. I am a Finnish self-taught amateur musician using a pseudonym "King Thrill". I will introduce and break to pieces many of my compositions and techniques and motives behind them. I hope this blog will serve as an informative reference point for new musicians who are establishing their own ways.

This blog may contain quite a lot of literal bugs, because English is not my mother tongue. Please try to bear with it.

Who am I?

I'm a Finnish university student from a city named Jyväskylä. I am studying Information systems, business and communication and striving towards an academic M.B.A. Grade.

Music is ultimately just a good hobby for me, but it has grown a pretty important, defining and costly part of my life. I am not considering to become a full-time professional musician at the moment, because of some monetary, quality, health and motivation issues (I think I'm going to explain this in detail in a dedicated blog entry in the near future). Still, I would absolutely love to make music as a freelancer on part-time basis for games, movies, presentations, commercials, events etc. – you name it.

Presently, my primary release channel is the demoscene, through demoparties and “art events” in Finland. I've been an active demoscene musician since 2003. My musical roots lie very deep in the demoscene, as I was introduced to “demoscene music” at the age of 9 ( - and presently, that was 15 years ago). I will most certainly write some blog entries promoting and showing great respect to the demoscene.

Other than music and studying, I produce short films, go jogging, have a blast with my friends, browse the Internet excessively and try to balance my life between action and serenity.
I don't really have any motto, but I agree that “Life is what you make of it – just begin with having a dream.”

My copyright policy

I am not a member of any copyright administration mafia (like the Finnish Gramex & Teosto), because they represent “the world already gone and forgotten”. Their business model is expensive, inefficient, old and clumsy, and it sets too much restrictions to the artists, too. Ultimately, they consider musical pieces as consumer products. But yes, it is quite a handy organization for “professional industrial-type mass producers” who release commercial albums for radio playback regularly.

All of the music I have released straight or through demoscene is owned by me, so I can freely set the rules for my songs. The rules are fair, very default and follow common sense and are as follows: The music I have released straight or through the demoscene may be distributed for free – but only for free. You're not allowed to make any profit with it. It may be played back in a non-commercial or demoscene context freely. Please credit the authors if possible. If you want to remix or use my music in a commercial context or event or as a part of a commercial or non-commercial production or release, please obtain my permission first.