Tag: Charlie’s Music Production Lessons

June 7, 2016

Episode 150: UBK on Music Production and Arranging

For this special 150th episode of Composer Quest, I got to talk with Gregory Scott, co-host of my favorite music production podcast, the UBK Happy Funtime Hour. Gregory answers my tough music production questions like: "what effect would you use if you could only choose ONE?" He also shares his process in creating the upcoming Sneaky Little Devil record with his wife Sarah.

Also in this episode, you'll get to hear the results of our MIDI Remix Quest, where composers swapped MIDI data and blindly added their own sounds.

May 12, 2016

Game Music Melee

A few weeks ago, I got to participate in a very fun live composing event at GlitchCon, called Game Music Melee. Three of us composers got up onstage to write video game music on the spot, based on game suggestions from the audience, in JUST 30 MINUTES. Not a lot of time. Emily Reese of the Level with Emily podcast hosted, and after two rounds of composing, she interviewed us about our process. It turned out so cool, I wanted to post it as this week's Composer Quest episode.

November 18, 2015

Music Production Lesson: Visual MIDI Improv

I was inspired by my interview with Cyriak Harris to create a piece of music purely by visually entering MIDI. Although Cyriak listens back and tweaks the notes as he goes, I decided to take it to another level and turn off my speakers until I was totally finished. I also tried to avoid anything I would normally do to make it musically "right," and just make visually-interesting patterns.

July 1, 2015

Transforming a Soap Opera Theme into a Chiptune Track

Challenging yourself to rearrange a piece of music is a good way to practice your composing skills without having to start from scratch. This week, I made it my goal to transform a cheesy soap opera theme into something that I'd actually want to listen to. In the end, it turned into an old-school video game track.

May 27, 2015

How to Layer Guitars Like a Delicious Cake

This week I've been working on a 30-second track for a contest hosted by UniqueSound. A music supervisor at the ad agency TBWA will be taking a listen to each entry, and one person will win $200. The challenge is basically to write music that could be used in a commercial, with the following style guidelines: indie pop, dreamy, electro, and ambient. Oh, and the track also has to "start mind-blowing" and have an "emotional explosion" ending. Since there was no video element to this challenge, I just had to picture blobs of brain and heart flying everywhere to capture the feelings they suggested.

December 3, 2014

N64 Composer Grant Kirkhope Talks Banjo-Kazooie, GoldenEye, Perfect Dark

It was an honor interviewing legendary composer Grant Kirkhope about his time at Rare, where he worked on some of the most popular video game soundtracks of all time. In this episode of Composer Quest, Grant talks about composing within the very small limits of the Nintendo 64 cartridge, and he shares some stories behind the soundtracks to Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, GoldenEye 007, and Perfect Dark. We also talk about Grant's more recent orchestral work for Kingdoms of Amalur and Civilization: Beyond Earth, and he shares his favorite chord progressions that keep coming back in his music.

November 20, 2014

How to Create a FEZ Track Like Disasterpeace

I had the privilege of watching Rich Vreeland (aka Disasterpeace) give a live music production demo at Gamer’s Rhapsody this past weekend. I recorded it for my new sub-podcast of Composer Quest, Charlie's Music Production Lessons. In the talk, you’ll get to hear Rich composing a track on the fly. He shares his secret ingredients in scoring the video game FEZ: the Massive synth, with heavy amounts of reverb, bitcrushing, randomness, and tape warble.