Game Audio Network Guild

For reasons (none bad), I closed my SoundCloud account.  I realize a lot of whom I followed/tracks I had commented on were from members of G.A.N.G..  This may have left an undesired 'blank' comment on some of your tracks.  SC appears to do a removal of all comments once a user deletes their account leaving behind only the @names in comment replies.  I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.  -Trevor

Continually progressing is what I do.  Finally catching up with the rest of the world, today I cracked open the wallet and got the internet going at home..  That's right, up until now I was using it wherever I could find it!  

I also bought a new computer to use as a DAW which is good since I used an old Power Mac G4 for most of my internet browsing which was deathly slow, so now the prior DAW will become the new internet machine!

The new DAW is another Mac mini; I know, not the best choice with the HD speed being a factor but in my current price range for now.  Installed is Logic Pro 9 and EWQLSO Gold.  It's specs are 2.53 Ghz Core2Duo, 4 gb DDR3 ram, and 320 GB HD.  As of now, it is my most powerful system to date.  It seems to be handling most tasks ok at the moment; still the ideal would be to get a Mac tower of the pro variety sometime in the future.

Four to Five years ago, my primary do it all DAW/internet computer was a Pentium 2, if anyone remembers those.  I made music with that computer easily for five years ;) nowadays, we're sending dual core machines better than any PC I own now to the recyclers.

But on the topic of audio, I tossed a couple of works in progress that I am working on with the new mini.  I will have to return my attention to 'mastering' some tracks in the new year and speaking of the new year..

I do wish you all, everybody, a happy holiday and much prosperity for the new year to you and yours! 

Thank you,

Trevs 

Hello to all who read this and thank you if you do.

But if you don't want to read, there is some music at the bottom :)

I suppose I am still fairly new here and not to be so mysterious, I thought I would share a bit.

It has been over 10 years now since I first composed a song using a computer; quite incredibly so using the DOS based program called "Impulse Tracker".  Prior to that I used looping software, but "IT" really allowed me to compose something from what seemed like scratch..

It was also ten years ago that I first used Fruity Loops 3 which ultimately gave me the bug!

It took me a couple of years to learn and teach myself all the new things that I wanted learn; starting with simple techno songs; now aiming for something that resembles soundtracks; often inspired by all the video game music made by the many G.A.N.G members here.

I began putting some of these 'songs' I made to use around five years ago or so.  That was when my music really began to take shape and a style was formed.  By 2006, I made my music public online and even got some stuff into a couple of games.

I worked with a lot of bands in the later part of the last decade recording and such and also began making a couple of video games of my own.  I didn't promote much and still have a lot of music that even now has not yet been heard.

This year, I made a challenge for myself.  I had to publicize more which ultimately helped me out.  Seeing as how I am so soundtrack driven; especially game soundtracks, I knew I had to do something a bit different and learned a lot through adapting what I already knew and combining it with online resources.

I made a realization while playing Mass Effect.  I was thinking that the soundtrack was amazing and really liked how it contained both electronic and classical instrumentation - I did a lot of electronic stuff, but wanted to do something orchestral so this union of genres seemed like something I wanted to pursue.  This also lead me here to G.A.N.G.

..So this year I stepped out of my comfort zone a bit, bought a Mac, and started using programs that I didn't know but it really didn't take long to learn how to use these programs such as Logic since it shares some similarities with FL Studio.

I made just over 100 mp3s this year to date in my free time.  Before going out and buying a bunch of expensive programs and stuff, since many of you know how much one can get into, I put my old stuff to work and gave it one good last run to see what sorts of things I could do.

One of the challenges I made for myself was to give myself a limit whilst attempting to produce some soundtrack-like material.  For those who know their computer hardware, the orchestral samples do tend to eat up quite a bit of resource.

Below are some songs that I made this year.  The first six were made entirely on a computer running Fruity Loops 3.56, Edirol Orchestral, and only 256 MB of ram on an over ten year old budget Duron chip clocked at 700 Mhz.  For the fun of it!  That was a challenge of patience ;)

The following six are more electronic on a Celeron computer with FL Studio 6.  Both sets of six tracks were made from start to finish in one week per set.  I have high standards for myself however these do not showcase anything in terms of high quality and were intended more for demoing purposes.  Some of them are a bit shrill sounding.

The last track Overpass was one of my early tracks using the new Mac Mini and Logic Pro Studio 9 with the default instruments. 

Feel free to listen to some of these 'sketches' skip through them, download them, whatever you would like.  The goal here was to play around with orchestral samples before buying higher quality and more updated stuff as well as combining the genres of orchestral and electronic; inspired by the ambient, spacey, and epic stuff as heard in Mass Effect:

Please enjoy and feel free to drop a comment!

Thanks again,

-Trevs.

1. Arrival http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13959236/ISO%20MP3%20128%20OCT%202010/01%20Arrival%20110%20Master.mp3

2. Impending http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13959236/ISO%20MP3%20128%20OCT%202010/02%20Impending%20118%20Master.mp3

3. Departure http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13959236/ISO%20MP3%20128%20OCT%202010/03%20Departure%2091%20Master.mp3

4. Aim http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13959236/ISO%20MP3%20128%20OCT%202010/04%20Aim%20111%20Master.mp3

5. Landing http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13959236/ISO%20MP3%20128%20OCT%202010/05%20Landing%2091%20Master.mp3

6. Append http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13959236/ISO%20MP3%20128%20OCT%202010/06%20Append%20104%20Master.mp3

7. Beat http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13959236/ISO%20MP3%20128%20OCT%202010/07%20Beat%2070%20Master.mp3

8. Collapsed http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13959236/ISO%20MP3%20128%20OCT%202010/08%20Collapsed%20118%20Master.mp3

9. Drone http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13959236/ISO%20MP3%20128%20OCT%202010/09%20Drone%20108%20Master.mp3

10. Endless http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13959236/ISO%20MP3%20128%20OCT%202010/10%20Endless%2082%20Master.mp3

11. The Case http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13959236/ISO%20MP3%20128%20OCT%202010/11%20The%20Case%2079%20Master.mp3

12. Scratch http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13959236/ISO%20MP3%20128%20OCT%202010/12%20Scratch%2095%20Master.mp3

13. Overpass http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13959236/ISO%20MP3%20128%20OCT%202010/13%20Overpass%2090%20Master.mp3

Greetings all!

October 1st.. wow, life is short and time goes by quicker as you get older it would seem. Still reflecting on my summer and wondering where it all went ;) but joining G.A.N.G. now is a good thing; maybe it'll help keep me out of the cold this winter!

 I had plans of joining G.A.N.G. back in March when I bought my first real Mac and was hacking out some comps in GarageBand and Logic shortly after.  I soon realized that I was too new at the DAW setup and I wasn't going to be putting out killer tunes right away ;) (still working) so I joined an independent composers forum based heavily on commentary to see if I could learn a few new tricks first.

 Here I am now, like a fish out of water no longer keeping my material to the confines of my own home.  I seek to share ideas but more so hope to learn, learn - learn, and then learn some more.  If I happen to be able to do some work, well then that's a sure bonus!  I make all my music by playing or programming each note into a piano roll via midi keyboard (Mac) or mouse (PC) then edit from there.

 I tossed a couple of samples to my mp3 player on my page.  They're no masterpieces by any means, but I put them in there to give visitors to my page an idear of the type of music I am working on.  More demos can be heard at my personal (lame) website :).

I spend a great deal of my spare time making music on a DAW.  Occasionally I enjoy having a jam with friends or recording local bands play live.  I enjoy going for long walks, working on cars, playing video games from the 8 bit days and up, and even work on creating my very own two-dimensional action/adventure and puzzle games; just to see how events and objects interact and programming instructions and stuff, plus I get to score the music to them :P.

 Thank you for having a read and taking an interest.

 I'll generate ideas and come up with something big through the help of this site :)

 -Trevs.