What did I enjoy and not enjoy about this project?
Looking into 8-bit music and the origins of its popularisation was very fun for me as I got to learn about what my parents grew up playing and learned that I like this style of music a lot. It was interesting to look at how game music is written, too, as it’s vastly different to modern major genres. Some research into the classics my dad introduced me to inspired the descending melody in the introduction and the panning that I applied to the introduction, bass and outro.
Using Logic was a nightmare for me. I couldn’t convey my ideas into the software for some reason, even though the input is similar to how Ableton works. Instead, I primarily worked on musescore and used an 8-bit conversion website before transferring it over to Logic to see how it might sound.
What do I think I did well?
Listening to game music from the 80s gave me a good idea of what I should be aiming for and looking into the game’s story and gameplay allowed me to alter the initial ideas I had into something more fitting for the task. For this reason, I think I wrote something that is suitable for the assignment and I’m proud of how it turned out. Specifically, the layering and alternating patterns of the bass intertwining with the main melody when the highest note is reached sounds like it makes a lot of sense.
What could I have changed?
I’d have liked to change the kick to something more impactful and experimented more with waveforms to alter tones for each part to my liking.
Was development documented appropriately?
As I composed my final submission in a total of 6 hours in one night, I wouldn’t call this documentation consistent but it’s plentiful as I made a production plan and showed every scrapped attempt and evaluated them. I used sheet music to compose all ideas so I could provide evidence by posting screenshots of that and I also recorded some ideas on piano alongside a score. Additionally, I screenshotted the retro synth settings for each section. Every change was noted