Aymes Music

Trail Tracker

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 20:26:00 +0000

So there's a compo over at the Roam game website where they're inviting backers to submit a background ambient tune that might find it's way into the game.

So I decided to write something and I quite like what I did so I've put it up on the YouTubes (along with a quick sketch I did for something to look at while you watch it.)

Let me know if you have any thoughts about it!

First Video on YouTube! And more bits of news.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 11:54:00 +0000

YouTube?

I'm considering doing a few videos on youtube with some original compositions as I feel I've got quite a few songs building up in my head that are no use in games but are more stand-alone.

So as a test I've quickly put up "Height Highest" with some crappy pictures of Renoise for the visual part of it (gah, silly desktop video recorders).

I've got an orchestral piece in the works that will probably be the second one I put up there, but I'll probably search for a nice picture on Deviant Art that I can use (with permission of course!)

The plan is to try and do one a month, but who knows if I'll be able to stick with that!

So what's the other news?

I'm self employed! I'm now full time writing games over at BumpkinBrothers HQ thanks to the success of The Tribloos 2.

This also means I will probably have some spare time to write music again (woo hoo!) The last time I remember having such time was 10 years ago, so that's weird.

Anyway, you know me, I'm not going to prattle on here about stuff too much. If you need some music or just want to say hi, my email address is on the right. So's my twitter badge thingy.

Links going down for a little while...

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 27 May 2013 11:17:00 +0000

I'm in the process of changing my links for things right now, from box.net over to dropbox or elsewhere because I've recently quit my job to make games and music full time! (So I can't afford the monthly fee for box.net anymore).

I'll be adding more stuff soon though as I've actually got some time to write music! Exploring some great new VSTs at the moment. More soon...

I've been listening to - Dust: An Elysian Tail

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:16:00 +0000

Being a massive Alexander Brandon fan I picked this up over on Bandcamp when he mentioned it (possibly on Facebook? I forget) and then totally failed to listen to it for several months.

Then while I was doing a bit of coding work the other day and was looking for something different to listen to I noticed it sitting in my music-to-listen-to folder.

Alex did the album with a UK based group (Ireland possibly?) called Hyperduck Soundworks (so now I'm a fan of theirs too!)

Check out the album here:
Dust: An Elysian Tail - Original Soundtrack by HyperDuck SoundWorks
Wonderful stuff, highly recommend listening to it all and it's only a fiver on Bandcamp!

The Tribloos 2 Soundtrack out now!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 08:27:00 +0000

About 2 weeks ago our latest game The Tribloos 2 was released!

It's been doing quite well over on BigFishGames...amazingly well actually for only our second casual game release.

Obviously I wrote all the music for it again (as I usually do for our games) so thought I'd share the soundtrack here which you can get on Bandcamp for pay-what-you-want. (eg. you can actually get it for no cost at all!)

The Tribloos 2 OST by Andy Yates (aymes)
Let me know what you think!

Ella's Umbrella Song

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 06:48:00 +0000

Yes I know it's hard to believe, but I'm here with a new tune to listen to (I say it's hard to believe - I have a 20min original soundtrack for Tribloos 2 which I've not yet released!)

So last weekend (just before new year) the BumpkinBrothers did a gamejam and we made a game in 48 hours for the IndieSpeedRun competition. My jobs during this were producer (heh), backup artist and musician.

On the second day I came up with this and I'm a little bit pleased with it:

It uses Garritan Personal Orchestra, Real Guitar and of course was all made in Renoise. The game will be available to play soon over at the BumpkinBrothers site

Tribloos 2 music progress

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:17:00 +0000

Work progresses well on the Tribloos 2 sound track. I've got about 7mins 30secs worth after a week and a bit across 6 separate tunes (one of which still needs some work.) Rather than going for a few long tunes I've decided to go for lots of different short (about 1 min) tunes that go better with the varying scenery. Therefore I've still got another 10/15 tunes to write before I'm done which feels like quite a lot! But I'll be getting the first Beta of the game out before then anyway so that I'm not completely drowning in music! So, here's one of the tunes I've been working on, a remix of an old chip tune I wrote but now in orchestral form:
Hopefully more to come next week!

Back and with a (virtual) guitar

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:15:00 +0000

Well since last posting a lot has been happening!

We've been looking after our new baby boy which has, unfortunately, removed most of my time for making music for fun (sad face!)

But I just wanted to report that I'm back on the horse tracker and even bought a new VST! Wow, that's only taken me two years...

It's called "Real Guitar" which I'm sure many people will have heard of and it's working out very nicely so far. I've been in need of a good guitar VST for years really and this fits the bill as it handles chords, strumming and even has input facilities for Guitar Hero game controllers! Must get me one of those now...

Much easier than learning guitar (which I just don't have time for these days.)

Also I've had a few people buy my albums on bandcamp recently to which I say: THANK YOU!

Can't stress this enough, and to have it bought at more than the $1 asking prices makes it even more amazing.

Thank you again and again guys!

So what am I working on now? I'm in music making mode for my latest game: Tribloos 2 coming to PC/Mac within the next few months as well as our other Bumpkin Brothers game "Ian Fell In The Machine"...coming to iPhone within the next few months!

In the process however I've been coming up with "offcuts" that don't really fit the games but I really like anyway. I'm hoping to turn these into independent tunes that I put up on youtube (not done this yet - scary!) and possibly bandcamp again for those that just want the music files.

Thanks again for visiting, hoping to have some exciting stuff to show very soon.

Chubby Jump!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:23:00 +0000

I should have mentioned this earlier but...y'know...Christmas.

But as I eluded to in a recent post I've had a commission to write a short piece for an iphone game: Chubby Jump, which features Roundie the reindeer. Here's the synopsis from the youtube video:

Roundie, the chubby reindeer, has a heavy weight. Though he can fly like all other stags of ol' good Santa, he can't fly that fast. All of the other reindeers used to laugh and call him names. They never let poor Roundie join in any reindeer games.
Then one groggy Christmas eve, Santa came to say "Roundie, I got a job for you. Go gather the gifts that fell off my sleigh. You know how much cost we lose for those undelivered gifts every year? Go and make my day!"
Roundie got excited and overjoyed for his mission and ran out of his stable right away. Roundie then realized that there were thousands of the fallen gifts every year -- and Santa had been doing it for over a thousand years so far! Oh my god!

And here is the youtube video itself which features my tune.

To get Chubby Jump for your iphone, click 'ere

The Reign Deer!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 17:08:00 +0000

Recently I've been asked to do a tune for an upcoming iphone/android project! It was great fun as always (can't wait to see the game published) and I'll talk more on that once it's been released.

However during the "creative process" I first came up with something that was slightly off the mark.

It's called "Reign Deer" and was supposed to have a Christmas feel to it and loop at 1 min (so it's not too long!) But I really liked it so decided to share it with anyone who happened to be passing:

Did I mention Swings and Rounderbouts?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 May 2011 07:04:00 +0000

Which was recently added to my main demo?

Check out track 5 on the main demo page! It features me doing some violining "live" y'know.

I actually created this quite a long time ago (probably almost 10 years ago!) So it also uses Buzz Tracker which I was really into at the time. I took this tune to "The Gathering 2002" and entered the music contest there where I came...probably last if I remember correctly!

In my defence it was the only song with a melody and I was against 20 trance tunes, needless to say I should have listened to the previous years entries to see what style I should have written instead!

Anyway I quite like it, it has a haunted quality about it so let me know what you think!

I've Been Listening To: Invincible (Two Steps From Hell)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 23 May 2011 22:54:00 +0000

Time for a short review while I pause to gather up my creative juices for my next stint at the keyboard. Today I'll be talking about the album "Invincible" from Two Steps From Hell.

Obviously this isn't my normal thing so I'll hide my ramblings after one of these "jump" things...

What Is It?
Orchestral film/trailer type music.

What's Good About It?
Two tracks in particular stand out for me. The first is "Heart of Courage" which was used in both the Mass Effect 2 trailer and also the trailer for Voyage Of The Dawn Tredder (sp?) This really is one of the most stirring Stand-And-Fight pieces of music I've ever heard. The use of short, low bowed strings is probably the big characteristic of the piece and it's that rhythm along with it's majestic choir and high string theme which provides momentum.
The second great track from this album is definitely (for me) To Glory which has a completely different kind of momentum but is equally as strong. While Heart of Courage feels more like a precursor to a battle, To Glory takes you into that battle, through hoards of enemies and the feeling that you have the power to take on anything. Again there is a continuous riff which has a very Celtic feel to it. I got the feeling I was hearing about a sci-fi battle but fought by Scottish descendants or perhaps something fought on Scottish ground. Very powerful stuff.

What's bad about it?
Heart of Courage feels too short!
Hard to criticise that really but there's a kind of hint that it should continue at the end and I wanted to hear that continuation!
So many of the tracks are great so I haven't got too much bad to say about it. Wait, no I have!
Everything is very trailery, like it all builds up all the time. There's very little difference in the volume between tracks it's kind of an "All or Nothing!" Feeling. It works very well if you're in a defiant mood but I would have liked to have heard some more reflective pieces that didn't feel they needed to live up to the momentum of the rest of the album.

Worth listening to?
Blimey yes. If you only buy one track this week I would suggest you make it Heart Of Courage or To Glory. The whole bloomin' album is good though and it's worth a quick listen through on Amazon (which is by far the cheapest place to buy it) to see if it's worth going the whole hog.

Unfortunately it's not (yet) available on Napster, so that's no good. Itunes have it (which is where I got it from) but it'll cost you more from there.

Tell Me A Story Mr Tribloo?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 18 May 2011 07:09:00 +0000

I love music that you can relate to a really good story. I think that's why I like the Final Fantasy sound tracks so much.

I've been posting at a few forums recently in order to drum up some interest in my music services. I've had quite a few visitors but no enquiries yet. That's fine to be honest, I'm still working pretty hard on my latest game, The Tribloos over at Bumpkin HQ.

So for the game I've been working on the storyboards that take you through the "world" transitions. Yesterday evening however I just couldn't figure out how the next storyboard should go so instead decided to fire up all my music stuff and just mess around. As usual because I wasn't trying to force creativity something came of it all and my new storyboard tune was created!

And here it is (no download link though because I want to use this for my own project!)

More tunes added!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 09 May 2011 10:52:00 +0000

I've updated the Old Tunes section with ones I wrote from the year 2001 now. I've also started mentioning which my favorites are if you're interested!

In other news I'll be advertising my services on other sites soon, I've had a bit of interest but nothing concrete yet. Looking forward to my first new composing project.

Also, I entered the Ludum Dare #20 (or 48, whichever it was) last weekend with a game called "Fish With Weapon" for which I've had some very encouraging comments about the music! Whey!

Now available for work!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:33:00 +0000

It's been a few years since I did this and the scene has changed quite dramatically, but the need for decent music and memorable melodies hasn't!

Therefore I've decided to start offering my compositional services once again to the community and start putting myself out there again.

For those that are interested my portfolio is now up and ready to be viewed (either from the menu bar at the top of the page or by clicking here

So eleven years ago...

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 06:50:00 +0000

I'd just moved out of my family home and into a shared house which meant I could spend all night on the internet playing games and writing music. For the next 3 years writing music and entering small music competitions was pretty much all I did so I have a fairly substantial collection of "Mod" music files from that era.

As I've been asked a few times recently I've decided to try and make more of those available than are already on The Modarchive on this site.

So today I've uploaded some select tunes from the year 2000 which can now be found in my portfolio pages (menu bar at the top of the page) or you can just click on this link.

As usual any comments are welcome!

Dipping my toe into the murky waters of BandCamp

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 21:57:00 +0000

Since I've used BandCamp in the past to buy music I thought I would give it a try for selling music!

Rather than go to the trouble of writing a brand new album (I actually do have something in the long-term works) I decided to release a couple of game soundtracks I've written over the last few years just to preview the difficulty in getting noticed on BandCamp.

Well a few hours after putting the sound tracks on there I had....1 partial play and a skipped play! Hmmm, so not that easy eh? I guess there's no change there, it's all about how you sell yourself and how much effort you feel you can put into marketing. Which, for me, isn't much when it comes to music!

Anyway, it looks pretty neat on there so that's a plus at least. And you never know, I may earn a dollar! Wooooo....

Now I'm going to try out their player on this blog. Lets see how this works out:

The trouble with Tribloos and other bits

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 09:05:00 +0000

I've been a bit quiet here this year so far, mainly because I've been working on a new gaming project called "The Tribloos". A casual game made completely by yours truly featuring small blue fury creatures!

It's a lot of fun going back to creating games again rather than just writing about them, plus it gives me extra incentive to write some tunage again. I've actually written two tunes for it already which is pretty prolific for me these days!

Here's one of them (possibly not completely finished yet) which is quite "elevator-music-ish" (on purpose! :P )

So aside from all this I've been thinking of doing some official releases which I've not done for years. I've been listening to a lot of independent music over at BandCamp (after seeing that's where Alexander Brandon (AKA Siren) now releases his stuff)

I've got a couple of ideas for an album or two that I might release. The great thing about BandCamp is that it gives people the option to give money for your music, or to have it for free! (Or you can set a minimum charge.)

I'm not entirely keen on asking for money for myself for music, but if I did ask for money it would probably be to then donate any proceeds to a charity. Personally my chosen charity would be Cancer Research because a cure for all cancer variants would be something I'd love to see in my lifetime.

*Anyway* more on all of this soon hopefully...

Feelings and Music

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 13:41:00 +0000

Not long ago I wrote a piece for a game a friend and I are planning to create. Since it could be some time until that game gets finished I've decided to post it here.

It's far more sombre than Potato man (from my previous post) but I kind of like the emotion I got into it:

The Potato Man!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 09:58:00 +0000

For our work at BumpkinLabs I am required to write musical background pieces that reflect the mood and style of the game.

Generally I ignore the requirements and write what I feel like, like this:

Orchestral sounds are good stuff!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 11:58:00 +0000

I've been dividing my time up between writing music and creating 3D models for our new project over at Bumpkin Labs. This has regretibly meant that I've been unable to spend time on writing much music for my album project or for any competitions recently.

However I did recently buy, obviously for music related projects, is Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 (GPO) and I've been thinking for a while how I can describe my experiences of it.

I actually bought it by accident! Honestly! Even though it's probably the cheapest orchestral VST you can buy at $150 that's still a fair chunk for a hobbiest like myself. I initially wanted to see the final paypal screen before buying so I could check to see if any VAT/Sales Tax was going to be applied - which it turns out is absorbed into the $150, so that's good news.

So the confirmation arrived and I attempted to download it, which through no fault of Garritan, was an absolute nightmare and so typical of my connection to drop to pre-broadband speeds just on the day I'd spent loads of cash on something I wasn't going to be sure about until I'd used it!

*Anyway* the next day I was finally able to download the huge file and see if it worked in Renoise, my musical software of choice, which thankfully it did.

I learned a few things very quickly, like how you need several instances of GPO working at once, which it's designed for, and how to create ensembles and to take notice of instrument ranges.

This probably works differently to how it does with many other music programs, Renoise is certainly a bit different to most! And luckily there's quite a bit of information out there on how to adapt Garritan to your preferred program. I noticed there was at least a Cubase tutorial on the Garritan site and I've seen this used in FruityLoops too somewhere.

Best to get used to the preset ensembles first, this really helps with learning how the system works and introduces you to combining instruments. Take special notice of the channels number to the right of every instrument you include, especially when using it in Renoise, as this can allow you to play instruments at the same time within the same instance. This can be changed just by clicking on it. Also there are some slight discrepancies in the tuning of some instruments, but luckily these can be tweaked too.

I also had a quick go at using the .mid importer in the aria player to convert a piece my dad wrote. It worked after a fashion but some of the instrument assignments were wrong and I could have done with a proper MIDI based program to make it work. If I know what the assignments are supposed to be though it would work fine! Maybe I'll try that again later...

Something else I learned quickly was that GPO is flipping brilliant and is usually the first VST I'll load when starting a new tune. I've already polished off a great menu theme for the Bumpkin Brothers project and also some in-game musical ideas that I'll be expanding on, but I can't really share those here (I need to maintain some degree of seperation between projects.)

However, when I said I hadn't had time to work on my piano album earlier in this post, well that was kind of a non-truth. I haven't been playing my actual musical keyboard recently, but I have written a piano piece using GPO and the excellent concert piano that comes with it (thank you, thank you, thank you for including that Garritan!)

And that's something I feel I can share, it's a work in progress so this could be different if anyone comes back and plays it later. It's likely to be the first or last piece on my piano based album (I really need a name for that) unless I use it elsewhere.

Anyway, here it is.

Music and the Machine

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 06:45:00 +0000

Something I've been up to recently (and by recently I mean almost the whole of the last 12 months) is being part of the BumpkinBrothers Duo, which so far has turned out two iphone apps and one PC game. Not bad in a year I reckon.

One of my main duties is to create the music for these wonderful creations and I've been working on the menu music for the afforemention PC game The Machine, before it goes on sale on Impulse (oh yeah!) I'd written two pieces for it so far, one we've used for the main in-game music and one we've decided to not use for the game at all! This time we needed something for the menu so I could go a bit more melodic (I didn't want to distract attention from the game in the previous tunes I wrote but here it didn't matter so much)

After a few false starts (about 10 of them!) I finally came up with something I liked the sound of. Whether or not it really fits will be aparant when we start using it and seeing how it transitions between the two tunes which, although use the same drum set and rhythm devices are otherwise a bit different!

So here it is:

The Old Nokia 3210 and wot I wrote with it

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 20:00:00 +0000

There was talk at my work about the old Nokia 3210 mobile phone the other day and how it's still in demand because of it's simplicity, clear menus and controls not to mention it's super long battery life!

Back in the early 00's I also wanted one very badly, but for a completely different reason! You see it was the first (and one of the only) mobile phones that you could compose your own ring tones for and because back then I was even more into writing music for games than I am now I was incredibly excited when I finally got one....and did nothing with it for months!

That was mainly because I'm not much of an outdoors person so I'm nearly always near a computer and therefore didn't need a mobile composing tool.

However, when I finally ended a relationship with an old GF back in May 2001 I found myself stuck at Kidderminster Railway Station at about 11pm at night with an old guy who'd had a bit too much to drink. While he snored gently in the corner of the shelter I decided to have a go at writing something on my phone to pass the time.

Now the 3210 only allows you to write monotone ring tones, before the days of polyphonic and MIDI enabled phones, so the following recording isn't from the phone itself but is rather a remix I did using a chip pack and Impulse Tracker a few days after writing the original.

Still it's turned out to be one of my more popular tunes over the years and in some ways I'm sad I no longer have the phone itself (In fact I have no idea at all where it went!)

Here we are then, I present: "Twiddle!"

Piano Tryouts

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 07:06:00 +0000

I was hoping to get some more of these done, but on the basis that I'd like to post here at least once a week I thought I would share my latest effort (from a few days ago now.)

So here's a piece I'm calling "Bring you home" which does have lyrics but I won't be sharing them here! It's an original composition by myself and, well i'm quite proud of the tune but not so much my performance of it! A bit more practice is required...

The obligatory "Hello" post

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:15:00 +0000

I've starting a new blog! You're reading it right now you wonderful person you.

Back in the Naughties (between 1996 and 2005) I was pretty active as a tracker composer, many readers will already know what "trackers" are but if not there's additional reading available on the subject over at Wikipedia. I never really got anywhere aside from a couple of game credits to my name and a fairly impressive download count over at modararchive.

In 2005 I started concentrating more on my programming and my new job as well as trying my hand at a great many other projects over the last 5 years. Some of which still continue!

However I've never stopped writing music, although my output quantity is certainly less than it was I still enjoy coming up with a new melody now and then. This weekend I started recording some of my "live" piano playing and it made me think that perhaps I should take a shot at doing something more.

So I had a good look at what equipment I currently have:

Software:
Renoise
Schism Tracker

VSTs:
Mostly synths

Hardware:
PC with integrated soundcard on motherboard (hehe)
Yamaha DJX

So what are my goals? And will this equipment support me?

Goal 1: Writing Orchestral music
Something that has always eluded me has been orchestral scores, the likes of Jeremy Soule type stuff for example. I'm pretty sure I could cook up some great stuff if I had the right VSTs - but which to get and how much will it cost?

Goal 2: Create a Piano only album
I absolutely love playing piano but I don't really use it as a compositional tool would you believe? Most of my creativeness comes from using a tracker (I find myself very creative with generation 2 programs) But getting back to this, I'd love to try and come up with about 10 pieces that I could play on the piano and create some kind of album out of them.

Goal 3: Make some money from my music
Well I'd be lying to myself if I said I would do all of this for free. It's no good waiting for someone to come along and offer you some cash for being creative, you have to make that decision yourself. I don't particularaly want to be "signed" to any label or anything but wouldn't be completely opposed if somehow I was considered good enough for one! Also I'm not sure I want to write music for anything in particular, like games or TV or such, it's not that I don't believe I could but I generally find constrictions like that make me less creative. I'm not saying never though so if you're planning to offer me a big bag'o'cash to write computer game music for your project don't let me put you off! *wink*

Goal 4: Enter and win some free compos!
I used to love doing this when I was younger. I used to get up at 4am on a Sunday morning, log onto Esper.net (which still exists) and the #traxinspace channel and enter one-hour-compos with many of the guys there (I'll talk more on this later.) So I know there are some compos out there still, the sound devotion renoise compo runs every two weeks I believe so that could be somewhere to start...

So it looks like I could achieve 2 out of my 4 goals straight away, which is creating a piano album (although as good as my DJX is, the piano on it is still General Midi - ugh) and entering some compos to get my name out there again.

I also have some ideas to boost my creativity which I'll be sharing over the next few weeks. Even better than that however (depending on your point of view I suppose) is I'll be sharing some of my previously unshared works here soon, tunes that have never seen the light of the internet for you wonderful people to listen to.