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Atonal Dreams Weekly Update 25 - More Distractions, Non-Game Music Albums, Flash EOL

4 years ago - Edited 4 years ago1,757 words

Another unproductive week! Bleh!! This week it was because I was distracted by composing some non-game music which I'm really excited about, and would love to release in some form along with a bunch of other music I've composed... but - like with everything these days - I wonder if there's any way to monetise them, since I'm hardly rolling in cash here. I've also been concerned about Flash's impending End of Life...

I thought I was off to a good start this week! Sort of. I was still creatively constipated about the script-writing, so I focused my attention on some of the technical aspects of the game for a bit. I fixed some bugs, and also updated the battle UI to include space for status effects, and an additional mental defence stat, which are things I've wanted to do for ages:



I only stuck with that for a few hours before getting distracted, though. There's a self-made tool I use that I've talked about before, which I use to track my moods and tasks, and I've been wanting to revise that for a while. "I'll be finished in a few hours so I'll do it this afternoon", I thought... then, of course, in typical hilariously-inaccurate-prediction fashion, I ended up spending like three days on it. WHOOPS. It was nice to have something I could just focus on and get lost in, though?

Then I got distracted by another thing...

My Music

I occasionally compose music just for its own sake, which I either play on my piano or add to a playlist I listen to when working to focus. I don't compose things as often as I'd like because time and inspiration are elusive, but I came up with another this week and spent a couple of days on it because I was so enthralled and excited by it! I find it deeply appealing and so satisfying both to play and to just know I created it. I feel I'm getting a lot better when it comes to understanding and making use of music theory concepts, and on a purely technical level, what I'm capable of now is many levels above what I made for my old games over a decade ago.

I looked through all the music I've composed in the last couple of years, and there are 11 non-game pieces I feel happy enough about that I could conceivable compile them into a 45-minute-long album (maybe called something like Melody Paintings), which I'd love to release somewhere... though I always feel I have to worry about monetising my creations these days, and I'm well aware that few - if any - people would be interested in paying real money for music that they have no particular emotional connection to.

Because that is why people like music, isn't it? Is it? I'm assuming people listen to popular music genres either because of sociocultural factors like the connotations of the genre or the image of the creator(s), and to instrumental soundtracks - if they do at all - because listening to them reminds them of the feelings they had while they first heard that music in its proper context (eg the adrenaline rush and/or compelling drama from a particular boss battle).

I say this though while listening to a random album on YouTube that I found purely through algorithm suggestion, and which I have zero emotional connection to. I don't even know anything about the connotations of the genre, creator, or whatever else. I'm listening to it because it's tough for me to find instrumental stuff I really like, so I experiment with stuff I randomly find on YouTube... because they're free, there's no barrier to entry to just searching for some soundtrack and listening to the entire thing to decide whether I like it or not.

So I could release my music on there... but then I don't get anything for it. I wish I didn't have to worry about monetising everything, but it's difficult knowing I've spent hours on this music only for it to be given out entirely for free.

I already have ∞ a Bandcamp page ∞, which I've had since 2009 (surprising). There are six soundtracks on there: MARDEK 1, 2, and 3, MARDEK Piano Collections, Clarence's Big Chance, and a game my ex made that I composed for (Vulpin Adventure). None of the soundtracks ever got many sales even when I was much more popular, though a few dollars have trickled in now and again over the years. The sales stats for 11 years look like this:



So that's about $520 per year. I bet you're deeply envious of this fortune and are frantically reassessing your own lives and wondering whether you could also walk this path to achieve similar staggering success.

It's frustrating to me that there are so many very technically skilled and creatively brilliant creators out there, but so many of them never receive wide recognition because the music they compose isn't even what most people think of when they speak of 'music'. Most people who'd say they 'like music' or ask what 'music' you like are probably thinking of lyrical songs made by bands or singer-songwriters. But there's so much absolutely beautiful stuff out there like this -



- which just gets relegated to the backgrounds of youtube videos or adverts, despite having much more interesting, clever colour to their composition than the majority of... ∞ 'accessible' popular stuff that's in the charts ∞. Instead, hordes of people openly bop their heads to crass millionaires aggressively boasting about their moist genitals. It's a shame.

The stuff I write is more similar to that (the video, not the damp cat/donkey hybrid song) than it is to the stuff in the charts... or even to more obscure stuff people might choose to listen to, maybe? I recently listened to ∞ music from the Homestuck Bandcamp page ∞, which I used to listen to a lot back when Homestuck was big and ongoing (I remember working on Alora Fane Regression at the time... some vivid memories). Only a few of the tracks stand out/appeal to me - I suppose this is always the way though? - while most are forgettable, or in some cases really unpleasant to me. Different tastes and all that. There are quite a few pieces by Toby Fox on there, and they're some of the better ones that I quite like.

Mostly, though, they have a very electronic, percussion-heavy, thickly timbral, energetic quality which I've also noticed characterises the compositions by composers I've seen on youtube (the sorts who do gimmick videos like "CAN I COMPOSE AN EPIC BOSS BATTLE THEME IN 3 SECONDS"). That's probably the sort of stuff that appeals to the young(ish) male/gamer/internet-denizen crowd, whereas my stuff's more gentle, softer, more inspired by classical music. More idiosyncratic?

I don't know. I like it, and I'm really proud of it! I just wonder a lot whether it'd appeal to any minds that aren't mine, since they don't have the "I made this" connection to it. Or even if they liked it, would they like it enough to help me financially in exchange?

I have a lot of music that I've been meaning to compile into an archive of some sort, and which people occasionally ask me about, but it'd take a lot of time to convert the files to the correct formats (I have lots of midis with no mp3 versions). Time I can't really afford to spend if it wouldn't get me any closer to earning enough money to live (I say even though I waste most of my time due to depression).

I'm wondering though whether to set up some kind of page where I could upload albums, both soundtracks and non-game stuff. I could stick with Bandcamp, or I could do some research into what alternatives there are which might actually give appreciative listeners an easy way to give a little back if they want. Ideally I want somewhere where there's a convenient list of all available albums, like Bandcamp has.

I feel like this came up recently since I'm getting severe deja vu here, but if you've ever bought music online, where have you bought it from? Would you be remotely interested in any soundtracks I'd put out, even if they're not from games you've played?

Making money from music is surely a huge field, just like making money from indie games, and it's unlikely that I'll ever excel at the marketing side of either. I probably face similar issues of not appealing to the masses in both domains, though...

Flash EOL

When I turned on my computer today, I was shown a notification from Flash Player telling me - not for the first time - that Flash's End Of Life is at the end of the year. Last week I talked about doing something about porting my old games from Flash to... something, though I got distracted by music composition so I never got around to deciding what to do with them.

On an info page regarding Flash's EOL, though, it says this:



What does this mean exactly? Would it mean that Adobe will actively stop the execution of Flash Player content, even old stuff? Would that interfere with the MARDEK version I put out? With anything I might do with my other games? I'm using a packaged Flash Player, after all, and it sounds like it'd actively suppress all versions of it? I hope not!



Since I've been struggling so much to focus on Atonal Dreams, I'm thinking maybe I could just stop working on it for the rest of this month/year. I could spend this time looking into porting those old Flash games, and converting my old and current music into albums that I'll put into some kind of online store. I'll have to try to push aside the mental fog for a while to try and focus on those things...

I also look forward to doing end-of-year reviews of my creative progress, so I'll be doing that for Atonal Dreams in the not-too-distant future. Hopefully it'll show that I've actually done quite a lot, even if on the day-to-day basis it feels like such a crawl.