My Projects

Track 1: Main Theme

Track 2: Unnamed Boss Music

I'm excited to announce that I've been working on the soundtrack for a game initially made for PirateSoftware's 16th game jam!

I'll add more info once the OST is done with an additional track and you hopefully see this in the Finished Projects section, which should theoretically happen by the 20th of February, for now you can find more info in my post about it (including the reply/comment/not sure what the proper term is)

The title of this track was inspired by a very interesting video essay I saw on youtube about the concept of Orientalism. Orientalism is a term essentially used to describe the way Hollywood film composers water down music deriving from different traditional mostly Middle Eastern cultures that get indiscriminately mixed and mashed together and constrained to 12 tone equal temperament (our western tuning system) to create a "desert" sound and appeal to western audiences. Think if Scottish Bagpiges were mixed together with Swiss Alphorns and yodeling and to create a "mountains" sound and then using modern composition techniques. Yes, you can do it and yes, maybe it even sounds good, but it makes absolutely no historical sense why you'd ever find this combination of things together and that it's composed in the way it is. And that brings us to Iberialism.

Iberialism is my absurd nonsensical combination of things that sound vaguely "Spanish" to people unfamiliar with genres that non-Spanish/Latin American people would associate with "Spanish". "Iberial" refers to the Iberial Peninsula, which is where Spain is geographically. If I had to take a stab at the genres I'm mashing together (this may be inaccurate, I didn't do my research which is adding further insult to injury) I'd say Flamneco, Ska, Surf Rock and I want to also include a Bossa Nova style break. It's ridiculous but I think I can make it work, and it's also by far my best sample library based work to date. My main inspirations for this track were the Deadly Six theme and Desert Ruins Act 1 from Sonic Lost World, which is one of my favorite soundtracks of all time.

Side note: I am also in desperate need of getting the snare drum to be in the forefront of the mix. Ignore the mixing please thank you

Crystal Cave is probably my best work in terms of sound design thus far. I want the story of this track to be one of a lone miner entering a cave full of luminescent, glistening crystals. After marveling at them, the miner attempts to mine the crystals, which results in them shattering in a million pieces, thus corrupting the cave and disrupting its natural state. I want the next section of the track to become glitchy, darker and more chaotic but in a beautiful, ear candy filled way.

Isolation is a song that I wrote while I was living alone for the first time in a mildly claustrophobic one room + bathroom apartment while studying civil engineering. I was practically completely alone at Uni since nobody else from my highschool went to study there, I was in a new city, I couldn't make any friends, it got incredibly lonely and this song emerged from that loneliness. It's part of a three to four song EP I have planned involving some of the ideas I came up with during Uni that I was unable to finish due to lack of remaining energy at the end of the day. Another track of the EP is actually finished, so I won't be putting it here, the third doesn't have enough for me to want to show it yet and I haven't even begun with the fourth track. Some of my inspirations for this track were probably I Don't Wanna Be Free and Last Cup Of Coffee.

As for the lyrics, they are as accurate as a depiction of my relationship with isolation as my songwriting skills allow. I love being alone for the quiet and the freedom and comfort of truly being able to be myself without any shame, and yet my relationship with it is a somewhat toxic one that I struggle to leave for more than a few days in favor of a chance of finding some form of companionship or friendship.

You may be wondering why I put this in the unfinished section - this is a full song after all. The truth is, I'm not happy with the vocals at all. Not only was my vocal placement was all over the place (I didn't get any singing lessons before this, which is a mistake that I have now corrected) but so was my mic placement. I did not have a mic stand, so I was forced to hold the mic in my hand in the absolute weirdest setup since my room is very echoey. On top of this, it's very obvious where my takes started and ended, at least to my ears, which made things sound even more discontinuous and jarring. These are all small details but they add up and I care about them. This is also why I haven't yet fully committed to mixing things properly.

I've been writing an automatic file organization app in Python as one of my myriad side projects to sort files based on file extension and/or creation date. This is a project fueled solely by spite towards an app called file juggler, which is the first thing that pops up if you search for an automatic file sorter. Even though this app probably does much more than mine, I haven't fully looked into it as the only thing I could see was its egregious price tag. I'm not paying the equivalent of 45 USD to do something I can write on my own completely for free, while also learning a lot along the process, which is also completely free thanks to Youtube University. If I do finish the app (which I may also just rewrite in C++ and Qt or QML at some point, I want the app to be cross-platform), I plan to open source the project and have it on github but also put it on a service like ko-fi or gumroad where you can name your own price for those who feel generous enough to donate their money in exchange for the time I've spent to make this.