Alora Fane

Gasp! I've actually done something I talked about, and have released a bunch of my old music as an album on a new Alora Fane Bandcamp page!

Last week, I talked about wanting to make available archives of both my old games and all the music I've ever composed in some way, and wondered how I might go about releasing them. While I suspect people reading this would be more interested in the games, the music was much less daunting, so I've been working on that first.

I talked about issues I was facing due to file types; most of my old stuff was only in midi form, no mp3s. Some people commented about how there must be easier ways to convert the midis to mp3s, but unfortunately there isn't without preserving the exact sound I was hearing back when I actually composed them (which uses the default Microsoft MIDI 'soundfont', which counts as an absence of a soundfont in music programs and as such they won't export mp3s using it. A program called SynthFont can kind of export using it, but it sounds slightly different and as such wasn't acceptable to me). I wanted to listen to them all again anyway, so I played them and used Audacity to record the 'loopback', essentially recording what the computer was playing. So now I have both lossless WAV and lossy MP3 versions that sound exactly as I heard them when I composed them. It didn't even take that long, and the process wasn't especially tedious once I got into the flow of things!

I've got a whole lot of music to convert in this way, so I started with some of the earliest (though not the earliest) music I composed during a period of naive free expression, during the years 2005-2006, when I was in my late teens (17-18), in my final years of school. It's from just before the MARDEK period, when I was working on stuff like Deliverance, though this album is purely non-game music; I'll put the game soundtracks in their own albums (probably specific to each game, though I could do a compilation, we'll see). I think I had most or all of it on the Fig Hunter site at some point, so if you were around then and checked that out, it might be at least slightly familiar/nostalgic to you.

I've named the album after ∞ the period in the Earth's history during which complex multicellular varieties of life all 'suddenly' appeared at once ∞, with almost all of the modern phyla represented alongside some bizarre experiments that didn't survive Nature's gauntlet. The Cambrian Explosion has always fascinated me, what with its trilobites and anomalocarises and everything!

I also dug up some old art I made during this same period to use as the album cover. These 'lingon' aliens I invented were a big thing in my mind during my childhood, and I rekindled that interest to some degree during my first forays into games development and digital art, so it seemed fitting!

The album is 48 tracks long, almost 3 hours. Long, I know, especially since it's not exactly high-quality stuff, but I approached it as giving essentially all my old stuff a nice, conveniently accessible home somewhere online for archiving purposes. Other albums would be much shorter!

Back when I composed this music, I had no idea about music theory and had only just started playing the piano (which I still can't play well). I'd never been part of a music scene in school or involved myself in any bands - garage or classical - and I didn't know anyone else who was interested in music at all. I didn't even listen to music, for the most part! And yet for whatever reason, I was possessed by this strong creative drive, and I just had to get it out in some form! So I let this pure creative energy pour out without caring what anyone would think or whether it was 'right' or if it meant anything... I miss that.

The results are... interesting, if you approach them with curiosity rather than a desire to be entertained or moved. So if you go in expecting 'good' music, you'll probably be disappointed! But if you go in curious to hear the pure creative outflow of a young mind finding its voice, there might be something of academic interest there.

I've noticed a few people on Twitter trying to make it as game composers, whose works are objectively technically inferior and subjectively less interesting than this old stuff, which I find interesting (I'd link to some, but that'd be cruel). Though I wonder whether that's just my bias since I made it! It's essentially impossible for me to hear it as someone else might, which is a shame since I do wonder how it sounds to fresh ears.

I noticed a few things while preparing this album:

- Since I started composing, my music has had a certain odd sound to it, unlike popular stuff, and I was never sure why. I know now that it's because I naturally composed in atypical musical modes - Mixolydian in particular - which I still do, though it's conscious now and wasn't back then!

- Titles make a huge difference! Now, I use evocative titles that paint a picture in themselves, but back then I was inspired by the classical stuff I was into at the time, which tended to have titles like Bagatelle No. 25... which are hard to remember and fairly meaningless. There's a reason people remember Fur Elise and Moonlight Sonata but not Bagatelle No. 25 or Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor! Some of my old pieces have nicer titles, though (I like Drunken Angel).

- The most interesting part of music to me, at least in terms of composing, is the arrangement of notes, not so much the timbre of the instruments. As such, it doesn't bother me if pieces are 'played by a computer' or that they're piano solos - as many of the tracks on this album are - since I'm focusing on the notes and the relationships between them rather than the specific tonal qualities of the soundwaves or whatever. The impression I get is that many people are more concerned about how things sound than the notes being played, though; if you're one of those, this album might be unpleasant to you!

I've gone with Bandcamp since that essentially meets all of the needs that I have. I've had a Bandcamp page for years - ∞ fighunter.bandcamp.com ∞ - but I wanted a fresh start with my new Alora Fane branding, and so I've created a new one at ∞ alorafane.bandcamp.com ∞. Currently this is the only album there, but I'll add more over time.

Technically you can buy the album - or individual tracks - with the price set at £6 for the whole album (or £1 for each track if bought alone), and the option to pay more if you want to. I'm not exactly expecting sales though, since that's not really the reason I'm 'releasing' this. It'd be great if people did enjoy it enough to give something back! But even if you don't want to, you can still listen to the whole album for free (I think it allows three listens of each track without paying).

I think I've set it up correctly - all you set for the payment details is a PayPal account, but I think customers are supposed to be able to use either PayPal or a credit card to pay - but if for whatever reason you decide to buy the album or a track or several and experience any issues, let me know!

As I said, though, the main purpose of this is just archiving. I'm oddly attached to this music - like a mother to her ugly, broken children - and giving it an 'official' place like this is satisfying to me, even if I'm the only one who'll ever listen to it.

(Aren't I a great salesman??)

I was also going to upload an album of recent tracks (2019-2020), as I've already got the files ready, because I thought it'd be interesting to be able to compare the old and new stuff directly. The main reason I haven't is because I need to provide album art, and I don't really have anything appropriate for my recent stuff!

That new album is only 11 tracks (47 minutes) though, much more reasonable, and I feel the quality of those tracks is significantly higher than these. I'll be looking into publishing it over the next week, probably.

I may or may not also re-upload the albums from the old Fig Hunter Bandcamp page to this one, with all the MARDEK albums combined into one (like the one you get in the Steam extras). I might add the Sindrel Song OST soon too, before revisiting the old soundtracks. Again I'm not expecting sales on them exactly, but it'll be nice to have them all in one place for the personal satisfaction if nothing else.

I've edited the site's top bar to include clearer links to this and other pages. I don't know why I didn't do this ages ago!

On another note, I've also been working a little bit at the AFC + Belief idea I talked about in ∞ this post ∞ four days ago. I've started by making a character model:

It's similar to another model I made... ∞ 4 months ago, apparently ∞ (I like having an archive to check back through), though it's newly-made from scratch, for the enjoyment/learning of it.

Here is is compared to the base model from Divine/Atonal Dreams (left), and that one from 4 months ago (right):

I did a lot of experimenting with proportions. The one on the right feels too proportional for my plans for this game, while the left one is fine but I wanted to experiment a bit anyway with something a big higher-poly. What I came up with is... okay, maybe, though I want to keep tweaking it until it feels right, which it currently doesn't.

I find relative proportions interesting, psychologically. Longer legs - relative to the rest of the body - look prettier, but using realistic body proportions and a massively enlarged head looks... maybe okay, maybe not? I think about this stuff too much!

It's Christmas next week! How did that happen?? Are you doing anything for it? I'm not! I'll likely spend the next week preparing more albums and working on this other game idea. I'll get back to Atonal Dreams in the new year.

I haven't got around to porting any old games yet, but I might also get around to that. The most difficult bit will be porting the first to itch.io or wherever; once I've done it the first time, subsequent games should be easier, like how subsequent albums should be less hassle now too. So maybe I should make that a goal to reach before the end of the year!

Oh, here's something though! There's a Steam Winter Sale starting soon, and both MARDEK and Sindrel Song have big discounts during this period. I should probably announce that somewhere! I haven't said anything on Twitter in weeks! Whoops! I should change that!

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