So yeah, these are some tracks I made. I used Cubase LE. For each one, I picked a different template, increased the tempo by 10 bpm per level, and made stuff up over the preset drum track.
The idea was to recreate the sort of bland cheerful music you get in every puzzle game and breakout clone, and to avoid getting too repetitive (except the last level, which has a solemn duty to be infuriating). In practice, that means 'use a formulaic structure, and aim for about 2 mins in length'.
Each track took 1-2 hours, so I made them all in a big lump over a weekend. I normally agonise over the details when making music, so this was an attempt to get away from that, by setting out to make something plain and generic.
Next, here's a melody-first thing. This is how I normally make pieces; I'll have a melody floating around in my brain for a while, then build a piece around it some weeks/months/later. The melody might be something I consciously invent, or it might just pop up in a dream, or something between the two; it varies.
This one is a WIP; I wanted to restrict myself to one instrument to work on the actual composition. I often add too many things and the track ends up muddy. There's some odd pacing, and I think I need to work on voicing so that it's not just 'main thing + arpeggios', and instead there are various songs interweaving.
This is some background music for the python-python game. It's meant to be reminiscent of (but worse than) the music for the Timesplitters 2 'snake' implementation, 'Anaconda'. Put this in the 'music' directory at the top level of pythonpython.
The game itself is over here
In a bid to stop this repo ballooning in size any more than it has already, I've started putting things on soundcloud instead. The lack of a download option means I'll have to find somewhere else for game soundtrack things, but it works for things that I just want to ramble on about.
It's over here. At time of writing, there are 3 pieces, and they're all Cubase things. And I briefly had 7 whole spambots following me!