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[Hayden Scott-Baron]

I'm still hunting for music for Tumbledrop, and I can't seem to find anything that really sticks with me. I tried hiring a musician once, but the music tracks that he sent me weren't to my liking at all, so I had to let him go. I was wondering whether anyone has any music libraries that they could recommend. One of the problems I have is finding music that has a very short introduction, so that it fits neatly into the 10-20 seconds before gameplay starts, but in general I think I need to find more libraries.

The sites I've been using are as follows:

www.neosounds.com
Very good site with a lot of good music. I even bought one track which I thought would be perfect, but when I put it on the title screen it totally clashed with the visuals and timing.

www.sounddogs.com
I found this site a bit difficult to get around, but I suspect there seems to be some good tracks on there. Finding something suitable might take a while though, especially as their audio preview seems to respond slowly.

The other option is to make my own music. I worry about this, because I'm not musically trained or anything. I'm just a guy with a copy of Garage Band on the mac. The advantage would be that I could tailor my music to fit the sections that it would appear, but the disadvantage is that if my music is poor quality it would bring down my entire game.

Any thoughts or advice on obtaining music?

[increpare]

The other option is to make my own music. I worry about this, because I'm not musically trained or anything. I'm just a guy with a copy of Garage Band on the mac. The advantage would be that I could tailor my music to fit the sections that it would appear, but the disadvantage is that if my music is poor quality it would bring down my entire game.

If you did go that route, you could try running the tracks by us here, and you could depend on getting quite a detailed critique from several of us. 

[Farbs]

Music is fun, satisfying, and potentially a massive time sink.

I lost two weeks on the main tune for Polychromatic Funk Monkey, before realizing all I needed was a bare drumbeat and bassline.

The Game Win music for Fishie Fishie also took me a week, then I gave up and just re-orchestrated the hallelujah chorus. It was much better than everything I came up with. In contrast, I knocked out the Fishie title theme in a single session.

I guess it's really down to whether your skills and tools capable of supporting your game, and whether or not you have the time to spare. I think you're much more likely to get something that fits your game and sits nicely in the overall audioscape if you craft it yourself though.

[John Nesky]

http://www.jamendo.com/en/
http://incompetech.com/

Jamendo is a free music site with lots of artists that use various versions of the Creative Commons license. Some songs are free for commercial use, some aren't, but you can filter by the license if you care about that.

Kevin MacLeod at Incompetech is only one person, so he has necessarily has much less music than Jamendo, but he still has more than 400 songs and unlike Jamendo, none of them have lyrics and all of them are free for commercial use, so it's still worth checking out.

[ChevyRay]

I agree with Farbs. And yeah, you're not short of anybody here who'll give you great feedback on whether a song suits the game or not.

There are lots of musicians aching to write for games, though. You just gotta find 'em. Music that was written especially for a game always feels better, in my opinion.


EDIT: by the way your game is DAMN addictive. I'm gonna be seeing rainbows for a week. Ex-girlfriend loves it too. Great casual experience, almost meditative (save the REALLY hard levels)

[Siamey]

Im musician! Im song!

Hey guys, I write video game inspired electronic/orchestral music, as well as remix video game songs. I've done a couple little tracks for an indie game my friend made, and I really want to give scoring a cool game like this a try.

My album's page has a flash player with some demos of my stuff, they are each like 10 to 20 seconds long, so give the whole thing a listen if you have time!

http://www.protagonistrecords.net/?q=node/71

I (sometimes) like combining chiptuney stuff with newer synths and instruments, if that is something you are into. Most of my stuff is very melody driven but I'm always working on being a slick producer.

If you like any of this stuff, please give me a shot! I try hard to please! And by that I mean I try to write for the game at hand, and rework things until the designer is happy with the score, I'm definitely not cool with pasting on premade stuff I've done into a game.

Thanks!

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Thanks for the advice everyone, and I'm glad some of you enjoy my game!

I took everything on board, and this morning I decided to fire up Garageband and have a go at making a song for the first time ever.

I don't play an instrument, and I haven't followed any tutorials, but I am finding Garageband pretty easy to use.  So far my music sounds like this: musictest02.mp3. Obviously I have a long way to go, but I'm actually enjoying making music and I think it will be worth taking the time in order to gain more control over my games.

edit: URL fixed.

[increpare]

can't get the link to work :/

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

can't get the link to work :/

whoops, fixed!

[Problem Machine]

That is a GREAT first attempt. Can't wait to see what you'll be up to in a month or two if you stick with it 

[increpare]

Ah. You have little to worry about.  You already have something pretty nice to work with.

Some of the repeated marimba notes sound a bit weak (not just normally weak either, really wierdly weak). The electric guitar (?) sound combining with the percussion makes for a really nice texture.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Thanks, I'm glad you like what I have so far!

There's a lot to fix with the melody at the moment, and the transitions are clumsy as well.  The twangy noise is some sort of acoustic string instrument, but not electric guitar.  I'm feeling far less wary of making my own music for games in the future now, which is a massive relief. It's also quite a fun and relaxing task to work on. 

I think I need to take my time and keep practicing with this.

[Farbs]

You've clearly got a good feel for this. Nice work so far

[Gainsworthy]

 

How cute! Sounds like it'd fit rather nicely - certainly has the feel of the game captured. I like the Twangy String Instrument - maybe another tune should make more use of it.

[Bod]

The other option is to make my own music. I worry about this, because I'm not musically trained or anything. I'm just a guy with a copy of Garage Band on the mac. The advantage would be that I could tailor my music to fit the sections that it would appear, but the disadvantage is that if my music is poor quality it would bring down my entire game.

Any thoughts or advice on obtaining music?

This is a good one. You could hire a musician to act as an arranger. If you were able to create your own music and hand it over to a composer he/she may be able to do wonderful things for you! Tumbledrop is awesome by the way. Your track is good too. You could probably just ignore everything I'm about to say actually and go with what you've got. There are a couple of notes that seem to repeat needlessly when you could go with a silence about half way through but other than that it's got a brilliant feel to it.

While libraries are cheap (or not so cheap depending on which library you head to), they're usually nothing like a good collaboration.

If you've got the ability to compose yourself but don't feel it would be good enough for your game just hand it over to someone else and they can take the feel/emotion, melodies, harmonies, ideas, etcetera and turn it into something you'd hopefully be confident with.

Hope that helped, and was understandable; I'm not wearing my glasses so the screen is looking funky! :D

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Thanks for the advice. I agree that in some circumstances it would be useful to hand over tracks to a musician to spruce up, or to make some remixes and derivative accompanying tunes. That's definitely a good idea and something I'll bear in mind in future.

I think for now, however, I'm quite enjoying the idea of working solo on my games, at least for now.

[raiten]

Your music sounds really good, makes me think of Pikmin. I'm trying to use Jamendo but it's hard finding music that would go well with most games.

[mildmojo]

I (sometimes) like combining chiptuney stuff with newer synths and instruments, if that is something you are into. Most of my stuff is very melody driven but I'm always working on being a slick producer.

Checked out your samples; you've got some great stuff there.  I like the presence of newer instruments.  Nice drumlines, too.  A sprite would need to bob its head to the rhythm, I think.

I really like "Morning" and "Suspicion".

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Does anyone know how to get chiptunes, or indeed any non-apple, instruments into garageband? I tried the YMCK plugin, but it just created a horrible loud beep which I think messed up the audio in garageband, I had to restart the program.
 
edit: aha, the Bitcrusher effect has a number of retro filters which you can apply to any instrument. You can get some pretty oldscool sounding stuff.

[Kekskiller]

A few days ago a read an interesting thread about converting VST to Apple stuff. Check out this link: http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=5 . Could be help.