I know, I know – it’s been (literally) years since I made any updates to my music entries, but in all fairness I’ve been a busy man.  Working full-time, writing a 400 page novel, and being married to my best friend all consume a lot of time.

But no more excuses!  I’ve finished my novel and am currently working on signing up an agent, so with my newfound free time I’m working on updating my poor, forgotten music.

Here’s how this is going to work.

Starting with my earliest music entries, I’m rewriting each song description/article.  The old descriptions were thrown together in haste, then cut-and-pasted from T.H.I.S. (Tanner Helland Independent Sound, my old music studio), and they are in desperate need of a rewrite.  So first things first, the descriptions are being rewritten.  (This includes writing proper excerpts so song pages aren’t useless on the search results screen.)

Next, I am tweaking and fine-tuning the MIDIs for all MIDI-based songs.  This includes remixing most of my drum tracks, stripping out dissonant notes, and cleaning up sloppy orchestration.  This is the most time-consuming step of the process and most of you probably won’t even notice these little changes.

But that’s okay, because you will notice the final step in my revamp process.

The final step is to produce all MIDIs with full soundfont orchestration.  Previously, most of my MIDIs were generated with the default XP soundfont, leaving them sounding tinny, synthesized, and weak.  While professional soundfonts aren’t quite up to par with a real orchestra/rock band (obviously), they are markedly better than the default XP soundfont – and the corresponding difference in my music will be huge.  For example, check out Ominosity (old mp3 and new mp3) and Surreptitious (old mp3 and new mp3).  Notice the difference?

As each song is updated, the old mp3 will be renamed as <songname>_old.mp3 if you’d like to compare versions.  Otherwise, keep an eye out for updates as I work my way through my large music repository.

I am also looking into licensing all my music under a Creative Commons license, which I think would be a great move.  I’ll let you know if this formally happens.

Finally, if you’ve never listened to any of my music, now would be a good time!  :)  Here are some of my favorite tracks to get you started:

Bloody Tears (Castlevania II Remix)

Leaving Millie

Retribution

FFVII – Aerith’s Theme (Remix for Solo Piano)

And – dare I say it – once all my existing songs have been updated, you may even get to see some all-new, totally original music.

<gasp>

Stay tuned!

Anyway, after returning and glancing through several particularly boring entries, I’ve decided that many aspiring authors could stand to listen to a bit of music while they work.

So as a courtesy, here’s some recommended listening for your genre of choice:

Science Fiction Music

Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness

by Coheed and Cambria

While every Coheed and Cambria album is worthy of your listening, I found IV a particularly good album for writers. For those who don’t know, Claudio Sanchez (the band’s lead singer) is also a comic book author. C&C’s music tells the story of Claudio’s comic book series The Amory Wars, an epic space opera. Each album covers a wide array of styles; some songs are almost pop, others punk, some are really pretty acoustic numbers, and C&C’s classic metal sound is hard to beat. Even cooler is the band’s near-use of leitmotifs, as recurring themes throughout each album appear depending on the events and speakers.

Every C&C album is brilliant. Do check them out.

Fantasy Music

Final Fantasy S Generation

Anything Nobuo Uematsu, but I especially like Final Fantasy: S Generation

If you’ve lived this long and never heard of Final Fantasy, you’re lame. No really – you’re totally missing out on some of the most original music to come out of Japan in the last twenty years. Uematsu (the series’ long-time composer) was named as one of Time Magazine’s “Innovators,” and the recognition was well-warranted. Uematsu’s scores draw from a wide variety of styles and he’s done more to make video game music legitimate than perhaps anyone else in his field.

S Generation is a fantastic orchestral remix of songs from Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 9 – the games for the original PlayStation. I’m particularly fond of the beautiful orchestral arrangement of Aeris’ Theme, and the piano remix of Eyes on Me is second-to-none.

The otherworldly nature of fantasy writing could draw a lot of inspiration from the mystic beauty of Uematsu’s work.

Action/Adventure Music

Phobia

by Breaking Benjamin

This is perhaps the most epic rock album you’ll ever own. If you enjoy bands like Foo Fighters, Fuel, Evanescence, and 3 Doors Down, this album is especially likely to impress you.

Phobia is one of those rare albums where you can actually listen to the entire album start-to-finish without skipping a single track. Even stranger, the headline tracks from this album (Diary of Jane and Breath) aren’t even the best songs BB has to offer – Dance with the Devil and Evil Angel are both masterpieces, and the acoustic version of Diary of Jane almost eclipses the original.

This is perhaps my favorite hard rock album of all-time, and I wrote every action scene in The Zargansk Wars while listening to this killer CD.

More genres to follow in the future.