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Playing
D&D last year, our Dungeon Master Josh
had us fighting in an epic battle against incredible odds.
And for the first time in many years, I was struck with the
urge to write music again. In this case, I decided to write
the orchestral soundtrack to this battle.
It was so much fun, I've decided to start writing music again.
And here's where it will go. How I'm going to find time to
do it between all the other weird projects I've got going
is another matter entirely. :)
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|
Wedding March |
mp3 |
| My
remake of Wagner's wedding march. This piece was played at
my wedding, and my beautiful bride Sarah walked down the aisle
to it.The DJ we hired managed to cut the last 30 seconds of
the song off (that I had spent several hours fine-tuning so
it would be Just Right! ARGH!), but everything turned out
beautifully nonetheless.
I had originally envisioned this piece as
a big triumphant synth-fest (think Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen),
but for once in my life I decided to go for subtle beauty
instead of bold strangeness. I thought it turned out very
well.
|
|
Violin Recessional |
mp3 |
| Now
THIS piece, on the other hand, I decided to let go a little
on. This is mostly a remake of Mendelssohn's wedding march,
but about half was me doing it my way. So if it sounds like
a cross between people getting married and a band of brave
adventurers having slain an evil dragon and brought peace
back to the kingdom, then you have correctly interpreted the
spirit of this music.
My princess was not in another castle.
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|
The Battle of Evensbrook |
mp3
| info |
| The
story of how four brave adventurers, with the help of an army
and a couple high-level NPC's take on an evil wizard, an evil
army, a black dragon, and a beholder. Thrills, chills, and
spills.
The accompanying text file details, indexed
by time elapsed, what is going on.
This is my best attempt
to date at doing an orchestral piece. Writing it made Josh
so happy he gave my cleric a magic +3 dire flail that did
3d6 divine fire damage. That's quality! :)
I also wrote this because I knew I was going
to need practice to do a decent job on the wedding music,
and the wedding was about 5 months away at this point and
I hadn't written a note in about 7 years. |
I
started writing music back in 1993, when I found a copy of
King Mod, and wrote a godawful tune called "Anal Electrocution",
chock full of Beavis and Butt-Head sound clips.
Fortunately, I also discovered that I could write music that
wasn't total ass, and soon I'd hooked up with Quarex
hooked me up with a copy of Multitracker Module Editor and
soon this was my favorite thing in the whole world to do (aside
from kicking people). I was inspired by a variety of sources,
but mostly B-movies and karate. Hey, I was 18. What do you
expect?
All of these songs were composed on my trusty 486, the same
machine I ran the original Zen/2 BBS on. (If you got a lot
of busy signals for no apparent reason, this was the reason.)
Sadly, I stopped writing music after I left for ISU in 1996,
for a variety of really stupid reasons.
|
|
Anal Electrocution |
mp3 |
| The first MODfile I ever wrote. Good god. There isn't really anything else I can say. :) |
|
Banjos in The Mist |
mp3 |
| Inspired
by a B-movie about killer tree roots, this was an experiment
I held to finally answer the question, "can banjos be
used to call down the forces of Rock?"
I submit to you, dear reader, that they can. |
|
Bassai Dai |
mp3 |
| One
of several songs I named after Shotokan karate kata. Probably
the only one that sounds remotely like I think the kata feels
today, but one of my better tunes nonetheless. |
|
Beach Babes from Beyond |
mp3 |
| A
fun, catchy little tune I wrote after watching "Beach Babes
from Beyond", a movie about space aliens with big boobs
trying to get home. Probably not a real surprise that my friend
Greg told me this sounded like porno music to him. |
|
Brokedick Doom |
mp3 |
'Brokedick'
is a term used in the miitary for somebody who drops out of
basic training.
This song is probably the closest I'll ever get to the military. |
|
Conan |
mp3 |
I was watching one of the Conan the Barbarian movies,
and decided to see if I could write sword and sorcery whoop-ass music like Basil Poledouris. Perhaps not, but it was an effort
worthy of a Cimmerian! (Several people told me they didn't think this sounded like barbarian music, but they were beheaded.)
The Battle of Evensbrook, my effort in the same vein almost 10 years later, turned out somewhat better. |
|
Dark Order |
mp3 |
| See
if you can tell which part of this song was my favorite. |
|
Doogie Howser |
mp3 |
| Just me trying to recreate the theme song from
Doogie Howser, MD. Not quite right, as I wrote it completely by ear
a couple years after the last time I heard it. It was harder to find TV themes in mp3 format before the Internet, OK? |
|
Doppleganger |
mp3 |
I wrote this shortly after going to my first Weird Al Yankovic
concert in 1994. I know this because I named one of the sound samples "Owen" after this guy I saw there that
everybody said only had 1 facial expression. And then a couple years I actually got to like hang out with him and stuff and later the same guy got me a job at a computer lab.
Lesson learned: none. But it makes for a weird story.
P.S. I am aware that "doppleganger" is not how you spell the name of the monster. It's, uh, a play on words... from, uh, how music makes sound waves and the doppler effect. Right. |
|
Dragon On My Face |
mp3 |
Wrote this piece of crap after playing way too much Mortal Kombat II 3 days after my shodan test.
Still widely regarded by many as their favorite tune I've ever written. |
|
Drugged Patriot |
mp3 |
| This was the first times I tried playing
with the various channel effects in Multitracker; in this case it was right after Quarex told me how to do arpeggiation.
So I jumped in with both feet and ended up with something weird that sounded kind of like LSD robots invaded colonial America. |
|
Eclipse |
mp3 |
| Probably
my favorite of all the songs I composed. This one was inspired
by the bathrobe Matthew Broderick wears at the end of "Ladyhawke". |
|
Eclipse (1 sample mix) |
mp3 |
| I was feeling experimental a couple months after I wrote Eclipse,
and I had the itch to try to write a song using only 1 instrument sample. So I decided to try and recreate Eclipse using just
an acoustic guitar sample, and ended up with something really cool that sounds vastly different from its parent. |
|
Enpi |
mp3 |
| Named
after Enpi, a kata which I had just learned when I wrote this.
Enpi is supposed to have the feeling of being a flying swallow.
While I do not think I succeeded in emulating that feel, it
turned out to be a pretty good tune nonetheless. |
|
Genie |
mp3 |
| Written
after I watched "Miracle Beach", a movie about a guy
who finds a magic lamp containing a beautiful genie who grants
him wealth and power. Then they fall in love and she gives up
her powers and he ends up homeless. |
|
Glasya |
mp3 |
I'm a dork. But more importantly, I used to be a horny teenage dork.
This song was named after Glasya,
the Princess of Hell (the pic is from her entry in D&D Monster Manual II). When I played D&D in high school, a friend and I had a great
(read: great for horny teenagers) idea for an adventure where my paladin character would go down into Hell
and save her and convert her to good and they'd get married and have lots of little paladins.
I wrote this about 2 years after that, and while trying to think up a name, I thought of our retarded adventures in Hell.
For all the parents worried that D&D corrupts your children, this is what happens. :) |
|
Kanku Dai |
mp3 |
Named
after Shotokan kata Kanku Dai, this was my 6th song, and the
one that made me realize that perhaps I don't completely suck
at this after all.
No, I don't know how I got a Spanish guitar
song out of the kata used to introduce karate to Japan. |
|
Lava Surfing |
mp3 |
| One of my earlier tunes. In the original MOD version, the ending is looped so the last 4 or 5
measures would never stop playing. I thought I was SO clever. Fortunately you are spared that fate in the mp3 version. :) |
|
Misguided Fury |
mp3 |
With this song, I predated the angry white boy massive guitar phase of pop music by about 5 years. At the time, I just wanted
to throw as many guitars in one place as I could and try to sonically destroy the skeleton of the user, freeing their soul from its earthly confines.
While it has a couple of cool points in it, this is basically just an aural turd that makes me motion sick when I listen to it when my sinuses are plugged. But give it a listen anyway. :) |
|
Mission Improbable |
mp3 |
| I think this was the third piece I ever wrote. This reminded me of the theme music from Tango and Cash,
although nobody else I know remembers what that sounds like so it's kind of a moot point. |
|
NeoNameless |
mp3 |
| I
was listening to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" when
I was trying to name this song, and all the things I was coming
up with were really disturbing even to me, so I decided not
to name it in my own special way. |
|
Nightbreed |
mp3 |
| Inspired
by the Clive Barker film "Night Breed". The ending
to this one still makes me headbang. |
|
Rabbit Lunch |
mp3 |
The first time I ever played with a c64 emulator, I found
a demo disk, and it had this cool Tasmanian Devil pic on it and played music and showed the lyrics to a song
about Bugs Bunny playing an electric guitar and defeating Taz. So I tried doing my own version of the song, and this is what came out.
It was several years later before I found out the song was "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniels Band,
and that my version doesn't sound a damn thing like it. Sorry, Charlie. :) |
|
Saskatchewan Twin |
mp3 |
I know what you're
thinking. Don't ask me where the title came from. Ok FINE. I'll
tell you then. Pushy &^%%
It was a movie about Canadians. |
|
Shatner's Wake |
mp3 |
No idea where I got the name from. At the time this was written,
I think the last anyone had seen of William Shatner was Star Trek VI.
Although I consider this one of my better songs, why does it remind me of "Stand by Me" and elves at the same time? |
|
Shodan |
mp3 |
Came
up with this one in the shower a few days before I took my
1st degree black belt (shodan) exam, and finished 10 days
afterward. There are 3 parts of this song: the pre-test jitters,
the test itself, and the happiness and relief upon passing.
Didn't come out exactly like I had
it in my head, but they rarely do. :) |
|
The Hunt |
mp3 |
| I think this was my second piece ever, and the first where I decided to try to like, make music instead of stringing
Beavis and Butthead WAV files together. |
|
Unsu |
mp3 |
Named after, and inspired by, the Shotokan kata Unsu. In this song, I was trying to get the feel for "hands in the clouds"
(that's what "Unsu" means in English). One of my better orchestral pieces of the time, except for one part that reminds me of the theme to Mork and Mindy.
|
|
VSM III - Genesis |
mp3 |
This is one you probably won't get if you weren't in Tranzik F/X. :)
There was this guy called Elrond, see, and he made this weird little tune called "VSM" (Very Small Mod). And for some reason, everybody remixed it. Hell, I made two myself. This is one of them. |
