Quote from iamafractal on November 19, 2007, 3:06 pm

I'm listening to your music now... excellent stuff! i'm really looking forward to hearing it in portal.

one musical moment in portal that i really liked was the incidental music that played in the level right as you got the orange portal gun.

I was watching DEXTER last night, and there was this scene when the incidental music just drops down like a lead weight. ..and the camera goes all wide angle...

in s0208, the music i'm talking about starts right at about 15:28... then 15:53 more... the music builds, then...by 16:27, they are using a fisheye lens which really makes the viewer feel like control is being lost.... even more so at 18:00-18:20

The same sort of thing happens in level 16, when we first really encounter a large back room...

so to utilize wide angle/slow motion/creepy music... would be really cool...

the expansive music on level 18, introducing such a large space, was also something that to me is a strong part of what adds emotion to portal.

i heard that people's memory is much better when strong emotion is involved. so strong emotional music definitely belongs.

Quote from ebola on November 19, 2007, 4:31 pm

very impressive. i wish i could make stuff like this for my mods

Quote from Madrick on November 20, 2007, 1:07 pm

Absolutely incredible. If I could map worth a crap, I'd use this music.

Also checked out your site; really like your stuff. Being a fan of NiN, I appreciated the remix of The Hand that Feeds

Quote from TEZT on November 22, 2007, 11:13 am

I really like this. I've noticed you a lot in the forums doing GLaDOS voices, too. Are you a sound engineer or something? What do you use for the music?

Quote from hamsteralliance on November 22, 2007, 3:03 pm

Thanks for all the nice comments above! I'm not done, btw - I finished up a new track last night and I'm working on two more right now.

TEZT wrote:

I really like this. I've noticed you a lot in the forums doing GLaDOS voices, too. Are you a sound engineer or something? What do you use for the music?

I'm a freelance music producer and sound engineer...with a really big emphasis on free. Basically, I feel charging money for music (the kind you do for the love of music) is criminal. That's probably not the best explanation and it gets a lot deeper than that but that's my basic stance on music and why I'm here giving away music and GLaDOS voices.

I've done music and sound design for various indie films, animations and stuff and music in general since 1996.

As for software I use Jeskola Buzz Tracker. It's freeware and based off the concept of modular routing...where every sound and effect is separate...and you build sounds with lots of little boxes.

Sadly the Buzz website is currently down and has been for a few weeks. :O

But, here's a screenshot of what it looks like with the latest track from THA Radio open:
http://www.hamsteralliance.com/buzz/ima ... chines.jpg

Mmm...boxes.

Quote from hamsteralliance on November 22, 2007, 6:18 pm

Alright, new stuff up top.

I like, "The Cake Is A Lie" - I think the melody works pretty good. It could be used for a double-chamber. As in...when you get to the exit and you're supposed to be rewarded...it turns out you were tricked and the exit really just loops around to where you started...but like something in the chamber could break or a wall panel could fall off giving you access to a new path and some puzzles to figure out before finally getting to the real exit.

Endless Chamber actually has a lot of noise going on so it could compliment a very large and busy chamber. One with a lot of moving parts that just looks really intimidating.

Lemme know what you think and if you have any suggestions or ideas for where to go next. I'm just putting my self in Chell's leg braces and imagining everything that might be going through her mind at any given moment.

Quote from hamsteralliance on November 24, 2007, 2:58 am

Three new tracks yet again.

I'm playing around with the different stages of emotion that Chell might be going through.

They Should Have Sent A Theoretical Physicist is Chell being truly fascinated and somewhat overwhelmed by the massive size of this facility. Everything here is so new to her.

Tunneling Deeper is her descent into the weird back-workings of the Aperture Science labs. Alice descending down the rabbit hole. The sound is pretty dark and sparse with a few pickup spots.

Contemplating in Silence is Chell trying to find a quiet spot to think about WTF is going on and how she got in here in the first place. She's reading the writing on the walls as machinery hums all around her.

blah blah blah, right?

Enjoy!

Quote from MrTwoVideoCards on November 30, 2007, 9:18 pm

espen180 wrote:

System error sounds very right for me. Well, it depends on if your music can compare with the works of Irrational Games or Looking Glass Studios.

Looking glass FTW, Irrational games FTL.

Quote from Crooked Paul on December 1, 2007, 9:56 am

hamsteralliance wrote:

They Should Have Sent A Theoretical Physicist is Chell being truly fascinated and somewhat overwhelmed by the massive size of this facility. Everything here is so new to her.

(snip)

blah blah blah, right?

My old favorite title, "Don't Talk About Portal Club," has been replaced by "They Should Have Sent a Theoretical Physicist..."

Dude, you go ahead and blah blah blah all you want. I love your titles. They fit the game, and they describe the mood of each track. For me, that makes the songs more memorable.

One of the things that irks me about electronic music is they'll have an 8-minute song in three movements and call it something deliberately obscure like "Pastiche," so nondescript and hard to remember. Grr.