A massive compilation of tracks I’ve made from a wide range of years for contests, failed projects, or the sake of themselves.

This has been a huge project, several years in the making! There’s a lot of personal history packed into these tracks. The album is a bit of an eclectic mix because of that.

  1. Distort: This is a standalone track, not originally made for any specific project. Lots of fun experimentation with triangle waves (the original project filename was “trithing”).
  2. Uh,: A tiny experiment from 2010 I rediscovered. It’s not much of a song, but I thought it’d work as a cute transition.
  3. M\nW: This was made for MusicWeeklies 30; the theme was “pixels”. I always like songs like this that build from a single note. The style of the song changes a lot, but always centers around a single melodic idea. The “\n” in the title is a standard placeholder for a newline character; if replaced with an actual newline the result resembles the MusicWeeklies logo. My dream is for this track to be loaded in a piece of music software that interprets it as an actual newline, breaking the GUI. There’s gotta be one out there somewhere!
  4. M\r\nW: An ambient take on “M\nW”, made specifically for this album. It’s almost more like a continuation rather than a different song; “M\nW” is already pretty eclectic, this is just another style change! Originally there was a big long indulgent snare solo at the end, but it was dumb so I cut it down to just enough to convey the tempo change and transition into the next track. (Oh yeah, have you been listening to this album gaplessly? I recommend it. The best way to do this is !!!BUYING THE ALBUM!!!, though the Bandcamp streaming app is pretty close.) “\r\n” is a different newline placeholder used by certain OS’s.
  5. The Marvelous Misadventures of Trumpetman: I made this track for SDCompo 98. It’s a weird one! Unusually for me, I used lots of SNES soundfonts for this. I sustained notes like the marimba longer than they would be in real life, and likewise wrote improbably rapid trumpet lines. This highlights the artifice of the soundfonts, rather than awkwardly trying to avoid it.
  6. The Wonderful Wisdom of Trumpetmeister: Alternate take on Trumpetman made for this album. Focuses on the same soundfonts, but a lot less adventurous and a lot more crotchety.
  7. SDC99: Made for SDCompo 99, as the name implies. Lots of weird contrast here between distorted and clean elements. Also lots of fun manipulating the same synth loop in weird ways.
  8. Answer the Call: Tracks 1-7 flow into each other; this track is a kind of reset. “Answer the Call” was originally made for a failed concept album. It’s about setting out on a journey.
  9. Lair Espionage: From the same concept as “Answer the Call”. A silly combination of chiptune and James Bond-style spy thriller music. It’s super dumb and the composition is cliche, but I think it has a kind of charm to it.
  10. This Track is Haunted: I found this sitting in my project folder. I barely remember making it. It’s really catchy!
  11. Alien Wasteland: Originally created for an abandoned game project set in a Fallout-inspired alien planet.
  12. XLON: This was made for the same project as “Alien Wasteland” was. The XLON were a bunch of killer robots. I don’t recall what XLON stood for, but I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with the London Stock Exchange.
  13. Complex: Staccato saw waves part 1. At around 1:08 the melody is inverted, which is neat!
  14. Synthflute: Staccato saw waves part 2. A very old track. Features complex drum programming, with a weird meandering structure.
  15. SDC100: Staccato saw waves part 3. Made for SDCompo 100, as the name implies. This track was never finished, however, which is why it’s so short.
  16. Omnipotent Lens: Very old. The first couple bars highlight a cool bitcrushed bass. (The rest is kind of a drag.)
  17. Amate: This is a super old track. I really like the weird synth running through most of it. The original project file name for this track was “The Ultamate” (yes, with misspelling).
  18. Sky Blue Zone: I made this in 2012. I like the surreal tone going on! Bitcrushers followed by lowpass filters are always magical. Or terrible. It depends.
  19. Sky Blue Zone 2: This track was made specifically for this album. It was neat to take a song I worked on ages ago and do something new with it. I ended going in a more ambient direction, which I never would have done a few years ago.
  20. The Factory That Doesn’t Make Anything: One of the older tracks. I remember getting really excited about this simple 4-note motif.
  21. A Great Moment in Shiny History: Made for Andrew Huang’s “Shiny” challenge, which was about creating songs for a made-up genre. The description of the genre was as follows: “Shiny is a form of electronic indie pop from Japan, notable for its use of video game samples and general lack of bass frequencies.” It got featured in his showcase video, found here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-81ZybkgxU (Nobody told me the video thumbnail would look like that when I signed up ok please don’t judge)
  22. Time Tower: The main melodic motif is actually a bass drum sample pitched way up. I’m pretty sure it’s not actually in tune…
  23. Elevacuum: BGM for my Ludum Dare 34 entry. It’s basically BIT.TRIP VOID.
  24. Dimension Shift: Made for my Ludum Dare 37 entry, which centers around traveling between parallel universes of the same room. The song is comprised of multiple pieces it dynamically switches between for each parallel universe; these are arranged in sequence here, bookended by the noise fade from the title screen.
  25. Flooded Temple: I made this towards the end of 2016. I had a lot of fun trying to create a slowly evolving track; by the climax, it sounds entirely different from the intro. Then it reverts back to highlight the difference, like returning from a journey.
  26. Undistort: See you next time.