Enjoy My Fantastic Music

I’ve composed some random music for some random game!

The Game

The game is made by for lovely EECS 494 guys. The game features a hero hanging on a roller-coaster-like-something, who use dash skill to eliminate enemies and find his way home.

As can be seen in the screenshot, the theme of the world is light and clean. The pacing of the game is pretty fast since the hero is sliding on the track just like Sonic. Thus, I decide to make a music which is delightful and has a fast pace.

The Music

I come up with two music pieces:

Super

This is an one-and-a-half-minute long background music. I have absolutely no experience in composing and no knowledge of music theory, so I make out the melody by record myself humming and then try to reproduce that using software. It turns out surprisingly I only used 3 notes (D, D and E) in my main melody. I also tried to add some variance by tweaking the melody a little bit as well as changing the key and instrument. An extra layer with preset channel is introduced also to make my music not so pale. To let the player feel the speed of the game, I emphasize the sound of drum and clap. The main melody, part A, will first come in, then it fades out, leaving only the background layer for two measures, then there’s part B and then A again with a new instrument and key.

Once

This is a 10-second short music which can be used in the game menu and other places. It’s also based on a melody that randomly comes to my head.

how I make these

I’m making this (kindergarten-level) music using FL Studio and its built-in keyboard piano. Fruity DX10 and Plucked! are two plugins I used to produce piano sound, both with their default settings. Arpeggio 6 is used to produce that wield background loop. When producing these music, I utilize the record functionality of FL Studio, play something on my keyboard, then carefully quantize the notes.

I’ve played lots of the game. I thought if I’ve heard a lot of game music, then I know what’s good and what’s bad, and I myself may be able to make a good one. Sadly after I hear my own music it’s not even close to good. But at least this is a start.