[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
introspective music
Cavernous — ©2009 Leif Chappelle
This week has called for a bit of introspection. Without delving too far into what’s going on in my life right now, a forked threshold was put in front of me. This week was the limbo between where I was, and which direction at the fork I’m taking. Written in limbo, this piece could have been anything at the end. Where I took it post-limbo was entirely based on the result of the end of last week.
Now the less oblique part: I wrote this tune in a fancy little program called pxtone. Remember a few days back when I posted about Cave Story? The same guy created a wonderful 16bit audio suite that is extremely low-profile—my netbook runs it without a hitch, far better ironically than the 8bit tracker I have—and comes with tools to create instruments, effects, and most importantly a sequencer that is extremely intuitive to use.
The interface is very similar to one of Pixel’s games, in that it’s comprised of pixel art and feels very slick to use. Everything is managed with a series of piano rolls per instrument, and each instrument is monophonic. That being the case, as you drag out notes onto the roll, you can use an additional tool to create overlaps which makes for easy portamento implementation.
The only downside I’ve noticed so far is that the whole thing is based on quantized values (which makes sense, considering that it outputs a file format Pixel uses in his own games) so there’s no grace-notes unless you create a time signature with a ton of notes per measure. Slightly more of a hassle that way, but it works out!
In any case, enjoy the music, and enjoy your weekend!
