The piece I've created is a mixture of many ideas I have had since starting my education in Full Sail. The genre of video game soundtracks is probably what I spend the most amount of time listening to. This piece is influenced by the soundtrack of a certain rouge-like indie game called Risk of Rain 2. The song is overall pretty calm and mellow until it's disturbed and cut into by a heavily amped electric guitar solo that lasts almost the entirety of the song. Which is something I’ve tried to recreate here. The Main function I had in mind when making this piece was a backing track for someone playing through stages in a video game. A slow paced start into a sudden fast paced scene.

The tempo I used for the track is 122 BPM, an even number that can be counted in halftime for a slow jam section I tried to create in the first 16 bars. The meter is 4/4, I chose this meter for its consistent downbeat and ease of use. I tend to struggle making percussion and drum tracks so relying on a backbeat grove works best for me. The structure of this piece can be simplified into a 16 bar slow jam to start, Which then picks up into 2, 8 bar, faster paced sections. The sounds used were pretty common drum and bass instruments. Blowing speakers for the drums, while the bass is split between the first 16 bars being a synth ES-P and the second half being Bass Keys under Synthesizer Bass instruments. I didn't want to use any unique sounds as that would take away from the lead melody.

This piece begins in C major for the first 16 bars with a chord structure that follows: C Major, D minor, A minor, F Major, G Major, C Major, G sus4, C Major, F Major, C Major, D minor, A minor, F Major, C Major, D minor, C Major, G sus4, and C Major. The piece then goes into the relative minor of C major which is A minor for the second half following this chord structure: A minor, F Major, E minor, F Major7, D minor, B diminished, E minor, C Major, A minor, A minor, F Major, E minor, F major7, D minor, B diminished, E minor, C Major, and to finish A minor. The instrument sound used for the Chord/Harmony track was the Powered Tube Piano keyboard. I chose this for its calm and mellow sound. Its presence is there and noticeable but it blends well and is never too much. I briefly mentioned this before but the lead is the main voice of the piece. The instrument used is the Amped Synth Lead Guitar. Its quick, abrasive and cuts above the other instruments in the track as it was intended to do. The melody features a lot of rising motifs to imply the instrument is supposed to soar and sing, keeping you company as you do the same in the “game”. 

The Audio track is me playing on my Euphonium. I’m playing a counter melody to the Amped synth Lead track on the second half of the piece. I’ve been playing the euphonium for 12+ years and honestly I haven't touched it in a few months due to me focusing on school and studies. I was surprised by how many plug-ins I could add to help enhance the sound. Using a tuner, pitch corrector, noise gate, compressor, and sending it on a bus to add some quality reverb. The two tracks I had synthesized are the bass and the lead in the first half of the piece. Both tracks used the ES-P. The Bass track was a preset I had created prior from a logic session that was created for a bunch of experimentation. The lead track was created for this track solely, I mainly wanted to see if I could recreate the sound of the other lead instrument used in this project. The audio I sampled is from my euphonium track, and I used it to add a little prelude to the actual euphonium track in the second half.

Last notable things to mention are the 2 dynamic and 2 time based effects ive added to the project. The two dynamic effects that were chosen were a compressor and a noise gate both used on the euphonium track. The noise gate was used to cut out background noises in the recording as well as eliminating any breaths that the mic picked up. The compressor was used to add a bit of depth to the sound. I used a tape delay on the Hi hat on a 16th delay on the second half of the piece. The reverb was used on the euphonium track to give me a concert hal type of resonance.