Just to reiterate...

Project SAM's Orchestral Essentials is my new favourite sample library to work with. I did just a little bit of tweaking to my two favourite tracks that I posted last week.





Gotta say that I'm pretty happy with how these are sounding.

King Voxel Update

I just can't get enough of Project SAM's Orchestral Essentials. So instead of just goofing off, I'm at least trying to make this infatuation count for something and give King Voxel some much needed audio love.

Here's another pair of dungeon and boss battle tunes. Meet Maniask...

If Maniask had a theme song, it would be this (and actually is likely to be exactly this):

Maniask's Lair


King Voxel vs. Maniask


And while you're making your way to or from Maniask's lair, you might hear some soothing overworld ambience...
 

If you like what you're hearing, go check out the game. Maybe upvote it on Greenlight!

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Project SAM? Project SAM Project SAM Project SAM Project SAM Project SAM. PROJECT SAM!

They make good stuff.

I was waffling on the issue of buying Symphobia for some time now, so with the lower price point and very reasonable sampling of similar sonic superiority, I just couldn't resist grabbing Orchestral Essentials.

Now I can't decide what to upgrade next. Because I still want Symphobia (1 & 2), but I also wouldn't mind their True Strike Drums, or whatever this Lumina thing they've just announced is (I'm guessing a lot of beautiful choral stuff).

But back to Orchestral Essentials - even after hearing all the demos, I'm sort of amazed how good it sounds. Here's something I threw together quickly this afternoon, taking a break from some other audio work.


These samples are the most fun and inspiring thing I've acquired in years. My regular workflow is totally broken, as I have to temporarily abandon Reason to run the Kontakt VST. If Kontakt ever becomes Reason compatible, I'll probably actually cry tears of joy.

Unknowingly Attaching Profound Personal Meaning

So you'll never hear much of my first ever album, because it's riddled with all sorts of quantization and mixing errors to the extent that it's basically unlistenable, and I don't even have the original files to do anything to fix it. Sometimes I consider remixing a few tracks, because there were lots of glimmers of really good ideas. Today I decided I should relearn the title track on keyboard because... well, quite frankly because I have other work I should be doing and that seemed like a great way to procrastinate.

An interesting thing happened though. I found that I was playing the chords to what is maybe my favourite piece of music from Marvin's Mittens. So I decided to check just how similar these two pieces of music were. It turns out that the most epic mountain climbing that happens in Marvin's Mittens is eerily similar to a piece of music I wrote many years ago that was supposed to reflect a tiny robot rising, against the odds, in a hot air balloon. So the nostalgia invoking soundtrack of Marvin's Mittens is directly invoking nostalgia for hopes and dreams I once had for music making, adding a poignant double meaning to a few musical phrases that took me over a year to consciously realize.



I like to think there are three morals to this story.

1. Whatever brought you here up to this moment in your life, you should play Marvin's Mittens.
2. Robots in hot air balloons would be awesome.
3. The human brain is funny.

It wasn't too long after that first album that I made the music for Spin Crisis, which I just remixed into another five track set and posted on Bandcamp. Yeah, I've been digging through old stuff lately...

STARWHAL: Just the Tip - The Game

Ok, grab a friend and get ready to cross swords:

http://www.starwhal.com/

Show them your backside, stay on top, chase some tail - above all, don't let them break your heart. It's narhwals, fighting, in outer space. And it is good.

Oh, and don't forget that I wrote a bunch of music other than the one track currently featured in there. Just remixed a few of them, and I'm pretty much stuck in retro-inspired electro town. And I like it.



UPDATE: If you want to get the latest news and updates for STARWHAL, you  can follow the official Twitter feed here.