Current mood: getting close to hallucinating
Category: getting close to hallucinating Music

This is a personal story, a tale of my own ambition, desperation, and ultimate defeat. This is the story of a search for a long-lost ally who disappeared off the map. An ally who, perhaps, did not want to be found...

The search began weeks ago, when the need began to become clear.

Sequencing click by click, piece by piece, one note at a time, has been my preferred method for these three long years. But I have come to admit, keyed input has its advantages. The fluidity, the adaptability; let's call it what it is, the controlled randomness of playing a keyboard into a powerful sequencer provides the bounciness and human touch that my music is, at least in some cases, missing.


What the heck? With input quantize, pattern quantize and a capable and versatile metronome, why not?

So I began the search. I searched high...


...I searched low.


I checked the closets, the cupboards, and, yes, the dishwasher.

I cleaned out a nightmare not represented here, I emptied a bathroom closet where I found many valuable things... just not the one thing I was looking for.

I bought one of these about four years ago. I saw it floating around here for months, but now that I need it, it's nowhere to be found. This device was a key part of my first taking up the music business, a business that I have been making progress in ever since that one beautiful day at Guitar Center.

I guess I'll just have to buy a new one.

I'm getting dizzy now, so I'm gonna have to go to sleep.

Peace.

The Epic and Fruitless Search for an Ancient and Long-Lost MIDI Cable
This is a personal story, a tale of my own ambition, desperation, and ultimate defeat. This is the story of a search for a long-lost ally who disappeared off the map. An ally who, perhaps, did not want to be found...

The search began weeks ago, when the need began to become clear.

Sequencing click by click, piece by piece, one note at a time, has been my preferred method for these three long years. But I have come to admit, keyed input has its advantages. The fluidity, the adaptability; let's call it what it is, the controlled randomness of playing a keyboard into a powerful sequencer provides the bounciness and human touch that my music is, at least in some cases, missing.
..
..
What the heck? With input quantize, pattern quantize and a capable and versatile metronome, why not?

So I began the search. I searched high...
..

...I searched low.
..

I checked the closets, the cupboards, and, yes, the dishwasher.
..
I cleaned out a nightmare not represented here, I emptied a bathroom closet where I found many valuable things... just not the one thing I was looking for.
..
..
..
I bought one of these about four years ago. I saw it floating around here for months, but now that I need it, it's nowhere to be found. This device was a key part of my first taking up the music business, a business that I have been making progress in ever since that one beautiful day at Guitar Center.

I guess I'll just have to buy a new one.

I'm getting dizzy now, so I'm gonna have to go to sleep.

Peace.

Here's the text:

Well, it's not an official press release, but this pretty much sums it up:

Hey folks! There's a new piece up at soundclick. com/otherworldaudio.
It's called "Temple of the Valkyrie" and it's an Aggressive Ambient piece that evokes images of the high jungles and cloud-strewn mountains of the wild world. I hope you like it, if you've got comments you can leave them at my soundclick page, and if you do like it you can spread the word or even buy it to listen to offline. You could listen to it in the car, in the shower, while hiking, while you play a game, during your soaps, as a textured audio backdrop while you're making dinner, while you rustle cattle, as part of a custom soundtrack for your favorite film or computer game, or while you shoot off fireworks to celebrate the new year... the possibilities are endless! Don't miss out on the audio goodness!

Go take a look, it's good stuff!



Peace,
-Pietro

Hey all,

There's a site for amateur game developers. On Yoyogames.com, you can find small, simple (and occasionally more complex) independent games. For those of us with only a small amount of time (or attention) to devote to them, these games provide great amusement. I hope you enjoy.

Here's the first one:

Eggs with Legs (and Other Strange Things)

Cool little platformer with several play modes.
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/49775

Second:

A Square Shaped Adventure

Interesting semi-turn-based puzzle game possibly developed by a guy I knew in high school.
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/40290

The Lost Snowmen

I didn't get a chance to play this one, but it looked interesting. In addition, the game it's based off of is arguably one of the titles that got Blizzard Entertainment off the ground.

http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/50105

--
Pete Marquardt
Game Music Composer/Sound Designer
www.soundclick.com/otherworldaudio

Fish and chips are terrific. Yum.

For that is the time of fish and chips.

Hey all, I'm glad to announce that after several months of work, the Dreaming Prophecies are finally released! These pieces tell the story of an embattled alternate world called Annihilas. The people once shared this world with their god, the Aspect of Redemption. But millennia ago this deity left and entered the heavens to look for warriors to fight a final battle it sensed to be approaching.
Now the people have to fend for themselves as the greatest armies that their enemies can gather lay siege to their cities and homes. You are a societal pariah from another reality who has been summoned to Annihilas by a creature calling itself the Dreaming Prophet. It means to show you this world's troubles, insisting that they foretell a cataclysmic war threatening your own world. You are reluctant to believe it.

I encourage you all to download the free tracks if you like them, and if you've got the cash, consider picking up the paid tracks. To everybody who listens and rates this music, thank you! I hope you all enjoy what I've put together and will leave me any comments you've got! Check in on my Soundclick page here every once in a while, and you can stay on top of the different projects and side projects I have going.

I send my best wishes to all of you, and look forward to hearing what you think!
-Pete

I thought I'd make a small statement (or heck, discussion if people are interested) about the issue of music sharing and selling, especially involving the internet.

Let me start off by sharing my understanding of the situation facing the recording industry as of right now.
The internet has revolutionized virtually every aspect of commerce, information sharing, and media, not only in mainstream American culture, but in much of the world. This includes places we might not immediately think of as web-savvy, politically free, or technologically inclined, places like China and India, Eastern Europe, and parts of Africa and even the Middle East. But make no mistake, the information revolution has reached across the globe and through a remarkable variety of social strata.
Since the end of the last century, the realization of just how universal the openness of information is has led to the sharing of social and political ideas and viewpoints, humor, still and motion images, and, yes, copyrighted music, video and software. The old routes by which these packages traveled have, like the Silk Road or the Orient Express, been in many cases left behind by an inability or, in some cases, an unwillingness to accept what is unarguably the new way of the world.
The world, of course, did not wait for newspapers, television stations, movie studios and record companies, and these venues have found themselves playing catch-up or, in many cases, disappearing from the world they once sat on top of.
This brings us to the issue at hand: should an artist's work be distributed without necessarily having his or her consent or knowledge, and without any money being exchanged for the transfer?
On the surface, the idea that music is free to anybody who wants it, anywhere in the world, at any time, is a beautiful idea. For the last two counts, I agree. And in a perfect world even the first would never be a problem.
But as an artist who hopes to release work of his own in the near future, I have to say that if composers and performers cannot be paid for their work, they will disappear. The reason that the best, the world-class musicians are able to produce work that is so out of this world that it resonates across national borders, social differences, and generations, is in large part due to the fact that, as professionals, that's what they do. Even writing the pieces that I do, which are by no means world famous, it is clear to me that to produce top-notch music, there is room in your life for very little else. For the best musicians, music is a passion that consumes their hearts, minds, souls, and lives. There's a reason that few musicians have anything resembling careers outside of their artistry. If we can't make a living off of our music, we'll have to find some other way to get by.
Fortunately, in response to the lethargy and greed exhibited by many large record labels, bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have bypassed the middle men and now offer their work directly to their faithful. This could be the future for musicians, the way to reconcile a mobile culture that has easy access to information, with a need for integrity. A way to foster mutual respect between artists and the people who make them the successes they are. I encourage fans of any musical genre to at least give a look to the web sites of the two aforementioned bands. As one fan put it, we can now "pay the artist, not the corporation." After the zeal with which the RIAA and others pursue the people who threaten their fiscal objectives, it does my heart, and the hearts of many music fans, good, to see that the musicians aren't out to squeeze the pennies out of their followers' pockets.
While I bear no ill will to people who share music, I would ask everybody who has a stake in the musical culture of our world to support and encourage the direct li

Lookin like I'll be working with a team on a new game. Check out my song Einheriand, it's my audition piece I'ma send to them. Today is a good day to play...

Command and Conquer 2:Tiberian Sun. In my opinion. Gotta start figurin out how to get some commotion going about my stuff...

More on that later perhaps? If for the first time in my life I faithfully update a blog...

Crystals are good. Go get some. They're shiney and sparkly. Enjoy your crystals.

I worked on Cut and Run today and it kind of morphed into something else, so I named it Smoothbore. I'm really tired and I probly dont have much to say. Still waiting for that encoder. I want crackdown in time to get to the beta.

I'm still working on getting better at composition. I finished up the techno song I was working on, and named it Afflicted Soul. I'm writing another piece now called Cut and Run. I want it to be for the game I'm working on on my own, as a fast-paced and kind of anxious piece. Once I finally get that mp3 encoder, I'll probably have like five pieces to put up. I hope I'm not just trying to turn out songs on a schedule, but that I'm really working on them and making them the best they can be.
I have yet to come up with an "iconic theme," but I guess it's foolhardy to think I'll conceive one this early in the game. I hope my songs have meaning.

This is my first blog on this site. So what to write about? I don't know if I'll ever be popular or make friends online to read this, I'll have to start looking for people. I've written a few songs so far that I've been able to put up here. Right now, though, I'm out of an mp3 encoder, so I can't upload any of the new stuff I've written. Pieces waiting to be uploaded include three for a project I'm kind of just calling Atlantis right now, which I'm doing with the College of DuPage Jolly Game Club, and another song I haven't really named yet for a game I want to do on my own. Of course, that requires either learning GML, buying and learning a good Flash maker, or both. Plus, I'll eventually wanna sell it on XNA, but that's a blog more for my myspace, which I'll try to put a link to somewhere.
I'm sort of in between pieces right now, since I don't really have a direction to go. I've been asked to do a battle song for the Atlantis game, but I'm not really having much inspiration along that line. I really, really like Project5, and I'm going to have to get into live recording some time. Okay, that's really all I have for yall fer now.
Beware the Dark Princess. She strikes in the night!