Going Home

I have spent the last few days spamming just about everyone I know with the news, but hey, why not write about it here as well? It can't hurt, can it?

The big news is that I just released a new soundtrack. It's a quickie and also quite cheap (should you choose to buy it), but in this case it's more the principle of the thing. I put up my music far too seldom and my friends told me so over and over again. I decided to listen to them and this is the result.

So, what is Home? It's a very small and quite unfinished game that was made during the Nordic Game Jam 2013 get-together. If you didn't know this already, NGJ has quickly grown to become one of the biggest - if not the biggest - game jams out there. It's three days long, with about two days of active jamming, and the end results are always a blast to watch/play. Home was created by Number Twenty Five Entertainment and it's about going home. Well, since the theme of NGJ13 was "grotesque", it's a bit more about jumping into the ocean carrying a lantern and then slowly becoming something other than a human. It was more than slightly inspired by Lovecraft and his Mythos, and essentially the player will eventually turn into a fish. Of sorts. The idea is that he/she will go home - the bottom of the ocean - and add his/her lantern to the pile of lanterns that already clutters the ocean floor. Then there's a big fish carrying a lantern and - glompf - the adventure ends.

It's deep.

What inspired me the most about Home was Karin Bruér's very distinctive artwork, which for some reason immediately made me think of Tove Jansson's Moomin books. Now, don't laugh; I'm sure you're thinking of the cuddly Japanese variant. The original books were much more mature, much darker and at the same time much more heartwarming. I grew up with those books and the world the characters inhabit has always been firmly stuck in my mind. Something about Karin's art made me think of that world and its solemn, sometimes melancholy atmosphere. That said, I sat down and began to work.

Or, well, I didn't.

I was using my girlfriend's HP laptop and it really didn't want to use Cubase 5 so I was forced to find an alternative. I won't write what I ended up using because, well, I won't, but my MIDI keyboard refused to work in any capacity. I had lugged that beast with me all the way from Sweden and it just didn't want to work. I ended up giving it away in the end. However, after a few hours of despair, a really cool guy let me borrow his MIDI keyboard which worked flawlessly. Then I started working.

So, I'm very satisfied with the end result. I like how it sounds; I had to run it through some mixing and volume automation before it was good to go, and I also wrote a remix specifically for the soundtrack (I don't really feel comfortable releasing such a small soundtrack without any extra content). I'm quite proud of the end result.

If you want to check it out, you can do it right here. If you like what you hear, please, consider buying it. The lowest price is $2 and you can pay more if you want to. You don't have to, but you can. Also, please, send the link to as many people as possible. Yes, it does make a difference.

Anyway, I'm off to work on future stuff. I'll be back!

A Christmas Carol

VERSE 1:
Lo and behold, a beautiful sight
A most welcome offer this cold, starry night
The answer to anyone's most pressing plight
The sequencer that will win in any fight

VERSE 2:
'Cause Cubase will help you, yes, Cubase will win
And throw all your problems straight into the bin
So notify all, even your next of kin
Oh, wait - no, I lied, I've committed a sin

REFRAIN:
Sonar is better than Cubase all day
Sonar is better, that's all I will say
And if you say "Cubase!" then I will say "Nay!"
'Cause Sonar kicks Cubase's ass anyway

VERSE 3:
See, Cubase is evil and terribly bad
at coping with anything that might be had
in VSTs, surely it will make you mad
or maybe not mad - maybe mostly just sad


REFRAIN:
Sonar is better than Cubase all day
Sonar is better, that's all I will say
And if you say "Cubase!" then I will say "Nay!"
'Cause Sonar kicks Cubase's ass anyway

BRIDGE:
"But surely you jest, it just can't be like that!"
"You're just way too negative, you loathsome gnat!"
"Yet sometimes I fear when I use VSTs"
"That Cubase might hang, fry or just up and freeze"


REFRAIN:
Sonar is better than Cubase all day
Sonar is better, that's all I will say
And if you say "Cubase!" then I will say "Nay!"
'Cause Sonar kicks Cubase's ass anyway

UP A SEMITONE!


REFRAIN:
Sonar is better than Cubase all day
Sonar is better, that's all I will say
And if you say "Cubase!" then I will say "Nay!"
'Cause Sonar kicks Cubase's ass anyway

(molto ritardando) 'Cause Sonar kicks Cubase's ass every-fucking-day!

New Computer IV: Revenge of the iLok

Ah, yes. The wonders of music software.

I remember way back when this was all very simple. You had a computer with a SoundBlaster 16 in it (32 if you were lucky) and a generic MIDI editing piece of software that let you do the basic stuff (y'know, piano roll, staff view... those things). You clicked somewhere and a note ended up where you clicked. You pressed play and - voilà - you suddenly heard something coming out of your speakers. Nothing was complicated; it was all MIDI, filtered through whatever your sound card was capable of.

These days... things are just a bit more complicated.

I've spent most of today trying to install two synths using the completely useless and utterly terrible PLAY engine (seriously, PLAY should be burned and sealed away forever so that it can't taint future generations of VST systems): Stormdrum 2 and EWQL Symphonic Choirs. See, the problem was that the installer .exe on both of the install CD:s didn't work. It just did not work. Either it launched, installed absolutely nothing worth 0 kb of HD space (Stormdrum 2) or it started installing and then failed due to a "fatal error" (Symphonic Choirs).

Wonderful.

I contaced the Soundsonline support and they told me to basically skip the whole installation and instead grab a software update from their site and then copy the library folders manually onto my HD. Well, sure. I did so for SD2 and then launched Cubase (which, by the way, will only start if there's an eLicenser plugged into one of my USB ports). I added the PLAY VST, saw that the SD2 library was added as a favourite and was pleasantly surprised. Then I tried to load an instrument. Eeerrrk. (That was the sound of a failure alarm going off.)

Nah, because you see, my product wasn't authorized. Never mind that the iLok - the other kind of USB dongle you need for your stuff - was plugged in, recognized by Windows and everything. Nuh-uh. It wasn't authorized. So I logged in at iLok.com (because iLok insists on doing this through an ActiveX plugin from their site instead of using a piece of software for no discernible reason) and it told me I didn't have an iLok plugged in. I did. I do. Arrrghhh.

I then tried to plug the iLok into basically every USB port available until I found one where Stormdrum2 didn't complain anymore. Satisfied - sort of - I moved on to Symphonic Choirs, thinking it would be the same thing there. Hahaha! Silly me. Nah, after copying six DVD:s worth of samples I tried to load them up and got a completely different error: "Invalid Product ID". Apparently something else was wrong now and I had no idea what.

This is where we currently are. I have emailed Soundsonline and asked them what the flying hell is wrong (in a nice and polite way) and now all I can do is wait. I'm just happy my entire project isn't completely dependent on that particular library.

Today's lesson: Buy things that use Kontakt and nothing bloody else.