January 2010
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Tidying up for the new year...
Hello denizens of the Internet! There are a few new changes going on recently regarding the Music Gallery as well as a few updates here and there. The most prevalent update is the ability to directly download tracks from the Music page. Instead of a superfluous ‘Comments’ link (as no one has ever really commented on individual tracks—though you still can, please do so!) there is...
December 2009
1 post
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When discussing music with other musicians and...
November 2009
1 post
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Becoming ©2009 Leif Chappelle
The performances...
October 2009
3 posts
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On Friday November 6th and Saturday November 7th,...
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Chip Orchestral
I’ll forgive Naoshi Mizuta for stealing my awesome idea just this once, because what he’s doing with it is really interesting. I kid, of course, because while I’ve always entertained the concept of mixing orchestral ‘tunes with chiptunes, I haven’t actually done anything with it yet. So, beating me to the punch, is the really fantastic (samples of the) soundtrack...
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Long-Awaited News
My apologies for not updating the blog as regularly as I have in the past! Busyness has more or less prevented me from writing anything super pertinent recently, but I assure you that new stuff will be coming soon!
Among the various projects that this fall is bringing, I am currently working on a new collaboration for dance that should be finished around November. Once that is completed,...
August 2009
1 post
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Descending Further!
As I was recently informed by my friend and collaborator Otto Cate, the album that we worked on A Descent into the Darkness has been released on Amazon.com’s mp3 store!
Coming soon as well is an iTunes release, and the album has also made its debut on eMusic, Napster and Rhapsody. We’re certainly making the rounds! Exciting stuff.
July 2009
6 posts
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Alien music in the clouds!
While I had only just heard of it recently, SoundCloud is a neat new online service where you can host your original music online and it is extremely easy to share. The whole thing is linked up social network-style, so people can keep up to date with what people they’re following are releasing. The best thing about it to me is that it shows the exact wave-form in the player, making it very...
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At Night — ©2009 Leif Chappelle
...
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Cavernous — ©2009 Leif Chappelle
This week...
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To Another World and Back
It’s halfway through 2009, and I think by now it is a given that the gaming community as a whole has a soft spot for Nobuo Uematsu and his 22 years of notable compositions. Ever since 1989’s Symphonic Suite in fact, there have been concerts held of his music. Children in Japan’s elementary schools learn Theme of Love from Final Fantasy IV as part of their standard repertoire....
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Little Robot in the Big City
Adventure games were once a staple of the PC gaming scene. For me, actually, it was the solid basis of all things PC game. Whether it was getting absolutely boggled by the puzzles in Myst, or getting freaked out by the ambiance in 7th Guest or The 11th Hour, or laughing my ass off to the Secret of Monkey Island, or being blown away by what simple imagery and brilliant storytelling could do with...
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A Tale of Caves and Mimigas
About four and a half years ago, one guy (Daisuke Amaya) nicknamed Pixel put together an entirely self-made retro action-adventure game called Cave Story. Through the great efforts at Aeon Genesis, an English translation patch was made with the blessings of its original creator. About a month ago, I finally realized its existence.
Get the game + patch at Aeon Genesis
One thing particularly...
June 2009
1 post
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Bear Likes to Fly
A common ramble of mine is to go off on some tangent about how big-budget games are drifting more and more away from what made them great, and how game composers in the west are more and more being drafted from TV composers, film composers, and existing recording artists.
Well, please allow me to retract that statement just a little bit and make a sole exception.
Ever since I started watching...
May 2009
3 posts
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Backseat Driver ©2009 Leif Chappelle
Another...
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Greetings!
Well hello there! If you’ve somehow found your way over here, you must be in the know. For that, you automatically get five kudos points valid at any Woodland Alien outpost within the local star cluster. That said, this website is the only one that exists, so you’ve certainly lucked out!
In any case, I am extremely proud to finally launch the official website for Woodland Alien Music....
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Celluloid ©2009 Leif Chappelle
After posting last...
April 2009
1 post
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Maelstrom ©2009 Leif Chappelle
You may be...
March 2009
2 posts
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Iron Depths - Remix Theoretical Dungeon BGM
I had...
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Gaming's Pinocchio
…Becomes a Real Boy Girl
The Great Giana Sisters have a legacy in gaming. Scheduled to come out in 1987, a year after the US release of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros refined the platforming genre, the game was in stores for a brief moment… but it wouldn’t last long. Just as soon as it was released, legal pressure forced them to remove it from the market. The reason should...
February 2009
3 posts
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Famicom Chip-Love
Composer Yuzo Koshiro has seen the games industry through its infancy to its present incarnation. Beginning with the action RPG series Ys, through ActRaiser and the Streets of Rage series, he is probably one of the most diverse composers in games in terms of adaptability and variety of musical style. Most recently, he was behind the soundtracks for both Etrian Odyssey I and II for the DS.
...
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Just petals in the wind...
I grew up in the city; lived here all my life. It may or may not be related, but I’ve always had dreams of flying. Soaring up, beyond the buildings and into a limitless sky. There’s a certain kind of resonance then, on a personal level, that I have with the dreams of the city-bound potted ones in That Game Company’s Flower.
To back-track, Jenova Chen and fellow developers have...
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The Grind
Roleplaying Games belong to a vast genre that spans a good variety of media: table-top dungeon romps, epic linear adventures, free-form character development sandboxes, or flailing at eachother in fields. Aside from the latter, a relatively new blog that’s popped up at 1up.com called The Grind aims to cover the best of what RPGs have to offer.
Headed up by Jeremy Parish — an online...
January 2009
1 post
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Looking for my Shining Star
An independent game for PC created by Petri Purho, Crayon Physics Deluxe is a stylish set of puzzles in a world drawn entirely with crayons. Each level’s goal is simple: Get the little red ball to the star(s). The pull, as the title declares, is that every object drawn in the world brings with it a certain set of physical attributes based on its size, mass, etc. Small pebbles will plink off...
December 2008
2 posts
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Commence Snake Hating
On the independent games front, I made an awesome discovery this morning when browsing various forums. The discovery, much like the ones you’ll make in this game, seemed totally random yet here it is: Spelunky!
The basic idea behind this is crossing a platformer’s mechanics with the level generation behind Rogue-likes such as Shiren the Wanderer or the Mysterious Dungeon games. What...
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A Descent into the Darkness
Over the past...