Kef music

I’ve made a lot of music. Most of it is crappy or incomplete…or most likely both. That’s why there’s not much of it up here right now…I’m waiting to write stuff that’s actually good.

These are currently presented in a fairly arbitrary order, except I tend to place better tunes near the top of their respective sections.

Modules

A module is something made in a program called a tracker. Modules can sound like anything from MIDIs with soundfonts to stuff that’s really amazing. Most of my music’s in the “MIDI with soundfonts” category, since anything that’s really amazing is usually an electronica track of some kind, and I don’t dabble in that style of music very much. WinAmp should be able to play all of these, though it won’t necessarily sound the best it can.

The OGG versions of these are often, but not always, smaller. Also, they might sound slightly better, and you’re more likely to be able to play them. So for most of these there’s little reason to get the S3M/IT versions unless you know how to use a tracker and want to see how they work. By the way, don’t be afraid of OGG. It’s just like MP3, except better, and you probably can play it on your computer already.

• Dawn of Adventure (OGG) (S3M)
  Somebody wanted me to write music for a game. Being the lazy guy that I am, I only managed to produce this, and I don’t think it was used. However, I think it’s the best piece I have ever written. It is technically unfinished, since what I wrote already is a hard act for me to follow. It’s certainly not perfect, and there’s one part that sounds kind of fudged to my ear. But I decided to present it to you as it is.
• Twenty-Four Days An Hour (OGG) (IT)
  A very simple melody using only one instrument sound and four channels. It’s the theme song to a project (webcomic and Flash cartoon) that went nowhere. I have little desire to work on this project now even if I were in the mood to work on this sort of project. In other words, it’s probably dead for good…but I think its catchy little theme lives on.
• Always Another Day (OGG) (IT)
  (Here’s one where the IT is smaller.) This is another very simple piece. It’s the theme song to my graphic novel (if my graphic novel were a movie). I originally wrote it as a MIDI using a harp sound, although a couple of the notes were different, but the basic idea was there. I’m not sure why I chose a synthy beep for the melody in the IT version. Maybe it was a placeholder, but I keep it because it reminds me of a music box, as does the slowdown effect at the end.
• Happy For You (OGG) (IT)
  This is another fugue. I wrote this when I was in love with somebody, but she was in love with somebody else. So of course I had that bittersweet feeling where I was happy that they were happy, but I wasn’t really happy. It was going to be longer, but I never finished it.

• Learn, Damn It! (OGG) (IT)
  This was originally meant to be the background music for a cheesy instructional song, like the songs they played to teach us multiplication in school.

Lemmings

Once upon a time I was going to do the soundtrack for Lemmings DS, an unofficial port of Lemmings. Unfortunately, MrDictionary and I stopped communicating and it didn’t happen. Eventually, he released the game using the original Amiga soundtrack. However, I did end up with two complete (but not polished) tunes remade from the original soundtrack, so here they are.

• Tim 2 (OGG) (S3M)
  My favorite Lemmings tune. Don’t stop listening when it loops the first time…there’s a special segment that plays only on every other iteration. The extra segment was inspired by a very similar segment from the Acorn Archimedes port of the game. The Acorn version had that part instead of the normal ending, but I decided to make it lead into the ending instead.

• Tim 3 (OGG) (S3M)
  This one’s decidedly less finished. It needs a little extra something, though I’m not sure what. However, since I’m sure I’ll never complete it, I’m presenting it as-is.

MIDIs

I generally do not make MIDIs, but I’ve made a few regardless.

• Theme from Mindseeker
  Mindseeker is an obscure Famicom game that tries to teach the player psychic powers. Since nobody has yet won the James Randi Challenge, in which the first person who can provably demonstrate psychic ability is awarded $1,000,000, I can only assume that it has not yet succeeded.

• Happy For You
  The same as the IT/OGG version, only, um, it’s MIDI. (This was actually an automatic conversion from the IT file; I originally uploaded this thinking that I had made it separately by hand, but I eventually remembered that I hadn’t.)

NES music

These are “real” NES tunes in the sense that they can be played on a real NES.

Some of these are currently available only in NSF. NSF stands for NES Sound Format. An NSF player essentially emulates the NES’s CPU and sound hardware, so it’s like a real NES without the pretty pictures. If you don’t have an NSF player (if you don’t know, you almost certainly don’t), I recommend NSFplug for WinAmp. At least I think I do…it has some quirks. But oh well.

You can also listen to NSFs using FCE Ultra or Nestopia. There are probably other NES emulators that play them as well.

Some of these were made in FamiTracker, which is now both the best and easiest way to make NES music. The FTMs allow you to play the music from inside FamiTracker and see how it was made. If you don’t have FamiTracker, just get the NSFs or OGGs.

The ones not made in FamiTracker were made using mck, or more specifically, mck, mckc, MCKwatch, and DMCconv. These are cumbersome and obsolete tools and today have few advantages over FamiTracker.

• Mute City (NSF, OGG, FTM)
  The classic tune from F-Zero. Unlike the others, this was made using FamiTracker instead of mck. (Sept. 28, 2008: Tiny, tiny updates over the past few days, but I should be done. I fixed a single note, a problem with the volume in the bass, and the triplets at the end of the song.) The FTM is designed for version 0.2.7.
• Leisure Suit Larry Theme (NSF, OGG, FTM)
  My own arrangement of one of the catchiest video game tunes ever. This wasn’t based on any particular version of the theme, though since it’s on the NES, it tends more towards the feel of the theme from the first game, which bleeped and blooped through a monophonic PC speaker. The FTM was composed using version 0.2.8 WIP 2 and it will not load on earlier versions.
• Computer Virus from Kirby Super Star (NSF)
  I did this one as a half-joke. There’s one area of Kirby Super Star where you’re in an RPG-style battle with a computer. The music sounded extremely NES-like, so it made sense to actually do it as an NES tune. This sounds very much like it did in the Super Nintendo game — not exact, but close. The original composition was written by Jun Ishikawa.
• Lemmings Tim 2 (NSF)
  This was entered into an NSF contest in 2003. It lost badly, but so did pretty much everything that didn’t win. It’s not the best it could be, but it still sounded much better than the version in the original NES game, it’s very listenable, and I’m still a little proud of it. (I wrote this version several years before the S3M/OGG version.)
• The Picard Song [refrain] (NSF)
  Featured in this YTMND, which is a parody of the infamous Picard Song YTMND. The YTMND uses a WAV rip, so you don’t need an NSF player to hear what it sounds like there. (It’s a lower-quality sample than what you’ll hear from an NSF player, but I think it actually sounds better and more NES-like that way.) It’s a very short loop, a little less than 8 seconds long, but as catchy as ever. The original version was by DarkMateria (with of course some sampling of Patrick Stewart’s voice). Um…I didn’t get the bassline 100% accurate, but I don’t care. I also took a little liberty with the percussion line to make it sound good on the NES.

• Alternative Picard Song (NSF)
  The same as the above, except Picard says “N.E.S. Enterprise” instead of “U.S.S. Enterprise.”

Mario Paint

In 2001 I made a rendition of my favorite Lemmings tune — yes, again — for a Mario Paint contest held by Zophar’s Domain. (It didn’t win.)

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