Post your best work of the year!

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Post your best work of the year!

Postby JonahB » Tue Dec 27, 2011 9:58 pm

I thought this might be a fun post for the composers here. 2012 is right around the corner and the best way to bring in the new year is by saying goodbye to the best of the old year. Share what you think is your best work of 2011 for everyone to hear, and comment on at least one of the other works posted as well. :mrgreen:

I've done a lot of music this year. I think I've completed nearly 40 songs in 2011. Some of it was good, some of it sucked. I mean really sucked. Bad. A few of them really surprised me. They came out so well that I almost can't believe I wrote them. I guess writing music can be unpredictable like that sometimes. A few of my best:

Town of Maniba
Evening Bells
Frozen in Time
Seasons

There's one more thing I wanted to share. Last year I put together a compilation of short clips from songs I had written in 2010. I thought it would be fun to do it again this year. It's a nice way for me to keep track of how I am improving and growing as a composer.

2011 Music Clips
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Re: Post your best work of the year!

Postby Charybdizs » Wed Dec 28, 2011 7:41 pm

I would love to show off all that I've done this year, but besides a few songs for the game who's soundtrack I've been working on, I've done little to nothing at all. Certainly nothing I've finished. I'll share my favorite, though.

Fume Shaft Part 1
Fume Shaft Part 2

The reason I chose this set, is because it represents something that is truly mine. When I made these songs, I had no preconceived idea of what they should be like. I had no other songs to receive ideas from, and I was forced to come up with something entirely original. My first taste of using music to represent something I've never heard represented by music before. That is, darkness, stinging eyes, and suffocation.

I plan on getting back in the composing loop soon. I have three songs I still need to do for it, and then I'm free. First thing I will do is finish up a song I've had somewhat done for a while, "Forest Heart". Then, I'm gonna work on making a chiptune album. We'll see how that turns out.

I do love Town of Maniba, Jonah. You really did something splendid there. Whereas most of your songs have this far off, dreamscape feeling, it's as if this one came down to earth. You can hear the birds, see the girl drawing water from the well, hear the children playing in the stream... Now that I think, it really does have a watery, flowing vibe to it. Sounds almost as if the song represents the river that feeds through the village. If it ever dried up, the song would have to change. :p
I dearly wish that all the VGM songs actually had a game. Of course they're beautiful on their own, but how they could use a story for us all to play through. I would buy it in a heartbeat, even though the typical sort of game it was isn't my usual fare.
I sometimes make belief and pretend I can compose
http://soundcloud.com/wesley_g/
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Re: Post your best work of the year!

Postby xian27 » Wed Dec 28, 2011 9:43 pm

My best work of the year on i wrote a poem about my life..!!!! :wink:
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Re: Post your best work of the year!

Postby JonahB » Fri Dec 30, 2011 7:58 pm

Fume Shaft Part 1
Fume Shaft Part 2

The reason I chose this set, is because it represents something that is truly mine. When I made these songs, I had no preconceived idea of what they should be like. I had no other songs to receive ideas from, and I was forced to come up with something entirely original. My first taste of using music to represent something I've never heard represented by music before. That is, darkness, stinging eyes, and suffocation.


Both of those pieces are excellent! There's a lot of atmosphere in them and they really do a great job of representing the scenery you described. Sounds really great. I could picture them fitting perfectly into a commercial game soundtrack.

I would love to show off all that I've done this year, but besides a few songs for the game who's soundtrack I've been working on, I've done little to nothing at all.


I've been thinking a lot about taking on a game soundtrack lately. Soundtrack work is one of my primary interests but the closest thing I've done to actually composing something for a game is the Project VGM thing. I've been putting it off due to time constraints, laziness, and a variety of other reasons, but I think I'm about ready to just give it a shot. Do you do work for commercial games or just hobby game developers? I think I'm gonna look for a small non-commercial game project that sounds interesting and volunteer to work on it. At the very least it will be an interesting learning experience. Two places I'm gonna look are Gamedev.net and Newgrounds. Do you have any suggestions for other places to look?

I do love Town of Maniba, Jonah. You really did something splendid there. Whereas most of your songs have this far off, dreamscape feeling, it's as if this one came down to earth. You can hear the birds, see the girl drawing water from the well, hear the children playing in the stream... Now that I think, it really does have a watery, flowing vibe to it. Sounds almost as if the song represents the river that feeds through the village. If it ever dried up, the song would have to change. :p


Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it! That song is a reminder to me of how unruly the song writing process can be. There are pieces I've put hours upon hours of work into only to realize later that it's so bad that no amount of work can save it. Town of Maniba was one of those rare tracks where everything I tried just worked. I did that entire piece in one short and easy session. I wish every song was that easy!

My best work of the year on i wrote a poem about my life..!!!! :wink:


Well I don't suppose this thread has to be exclusive to music! We'll enjoy reading it if you want to share. :D
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Re: Post your best work of the year!

Postby KungFuFurby » Sat Dec 31, 2011 11:43 am

The folks at stencyl.com might be looking for musicians. ^_^

My biggest success this year is Dangerous Dungeons. As a matter of fact, I did it in the style of real SNES music, and even produced a real SPC set of it after the game was released!

Play Dangerous Dungeons! (via Newgrounds)
Get the SPC set here!
My game music works:
Scribble Star by Winzenheimer and the Stencyl Team
Nine Pixel Game by KungFuFurby (my own creation! ^_^)
Arkanaut by Manuel/Satelite Play
Blackheist by Manuel/Satelite Play

And some others that haven't been released yet.
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Re: Post your best work of the year!

Postby JonahB » Sat Dec 31, 2011 7:08 pm

My biggest success this year is Dangerous Dungeons. As a matter of fact, I did it in the style of real SNES music, and even produced a real SPC set of it after the game was released!


That's a really fun little platformer! I take it Stencil is some sort of flash game development kit. I'll check it out and see if I find any projects that interest me. I've always loved that old school SPC sound. In this case it really fits the 16-bit era feel of that game. Excellent work!
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Re: Post your best work of the year!

Postby JetHawk95 » Mon Jan 02, 2012 9:52 am

Heres my best song/track of 2011 :')

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_bqMeTO6lk

Enjoy!

P.S Thanks for the Stencyl link, Ive joined and set a thread up :')
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Re: Post your best work of the year!

Postby Valerie Valens » Thu Jan 05, 2012 12:39 pm

I never got the time to properly arrange and record this though...
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Valerie - Compassion is the Way.mid
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OMIDIA - The best original MIDI archive ever. Register now and receive a free lazor!

Rios wrote:Hey. I'm the Jesus of heavy metal MIDIs here at VGmusic.


RIFK!!
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Re: Post your best work of the year!

Postby Bregalad » Tue Jan 10, 2012 4:26 pm

As a matter of fact, I did it in the style of real SNES music, and even produced a real SPC set of it after the game was released!

Did you use the Rock Organ from the S-YXG-50 ?
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Re: Post your best work of the year!

Postby KungFuFurby » Thu Jan 19, 2012 11:48 am

I don't know how I would get something like that out of a S-YXG-50... unless you're talking about a soundfont.

The source of the rock organ sample is actually very generic... you'd be surprised how generic. It does come from a soundfont, though... though with some quality reduction.

The idea is not to overuse samples from something like... does Scc1t2 ring a bell? Because that happens to be the soundfont it comes from. Using samples purely from something like that is not a good idea, and I didn't purely use that soundfont.
My game music works:
Scribble Star by Winzenheimer and the Stencyl Team
Nine Pixel Game by KungFuFurby (my own creation! ^_^)
Arkanaut by Manuel/Satelite Play
Blackheist by Manuel/Satelite Play

And some others that haven't been released yet.
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Re: Post your best work of the year!

Postby P3nエsXpert » Thu Jan 19, 2012 3:29 pm

It seems like I didn't make very much music during 2011, compared to other years. But in December, I randomly sat down and made a collection of short songs for fun. It amounts to three 'good' songs and three 'bad' songs.

I would say that the song "what a great day to be Algerian" is likely to be the best finished piece of music I made in the whole year.

Here it is:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30614076/yonahkarelian.zip
Thank you,
- Johnny
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Re: Post your best work of the year!

Postby AnthonyMorgan » Thu Jan 19, 2012 4:14 pm



I still had a small amount of doubt on your identity, but now it's unequivocal.
Fantastic album. ♥
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Re: Post your best work of the year!

Postby P3nエsXpert » Thu Jan 19, 2012 5:53 pm

AnthonyMorgan wrote:I still had a small amount of doubt on your identity, but now it's unequivocal.
Fantastic album. ♥


Heh heh, thanks. Yeah, I didn't expect to fool anyone.
Thank you,
- Johnny
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Re: Post your best work of the year!

Postby Alestance » Fri Jan 27, 2012 8:50 am

I haven't been around here for a few months at least. I'm always lurking, but I haven't made any real headway in furthering my skill. Anyway, I have a few I would consider my best of the year.

Industry Ruins Ground Zero - A Metroid Prime Soundtrack Emulation - Tried to capture the sound and ambiance of Metroid Prime's soundtrack here. I wrote this on December 2nd, but didn't really get the chance to upload it until a little bit ago.

Irzez Forest - Tried to capture the sound and ambiance of Metroid Prime's soundtrack here, as well, it was my first experiment with it, and I failed miserably. However the song is pretty good when left to stand on its own.

Magic Guitar - This isn't particularly a video game style song, but its probably my best work of 2011.

2011 is always going to be a sentimental year for me. January 18th 2011 I wrote my very first song. Prior to that, I had no music training or even really any desire to try this out. Never looking back, and onward to 2012.
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