As promised here's an enlightening article from Mr. Foetus on his music making process- thanks, Mr. Foetus!

Read more to see what he has to say on the subject!

Greetings, carbons!

My name is Jarrel, or "Mr. Foetus". If you haven't read Blyka's previous blog entry, I'm one of the new staff members assigned to music composition/arrangement and concept art. It's great to be a part of the team! Manly hugs for you all. Let's get married.

We thought it would be a pretty cool idea to give a bit of "behind the scenes" of the TLT development process. You saw Karimn's process, so today I'm here to fill you guys in on the process I go through when creating the other music for TLT, as well as inspiration and some other things. Oh, and there will be cake involved (more on that later). But first off, a bit of backstory:

I've taken two music classes in my life; one class was voice lessons with an awesome opera singer that reminded me of a portly Tim Curry, and the other was a piano class that I dropped after a week because the teacher reminded me of a more Aryan Adolf Hitler. Everything I know (which isn't a lot, but it's enough for now) I learned by myself. I think the best way to learn something creative is through your own trial and error. A teacher can tell you the general specifics, but in the end the only person who can teach you the meat of it is yourself. Why bake a mass-produced cake when you can screw up a hundred times and end up creating a beautiful, original cake that's wholly yours?

I first started making music when I was around 11 or 12 years-old (somewhere around the late 90s). I picked up the programme Music MasterWorks for the PC (You can try it out if you want). It's a programme used to make MIDI songs--you know, the kind of music game developers used to make for PC games back in the golden retro years. Those were the days...

I was just as attached to computers then as I am now, so I spent a lot of my day fiddling about in the programme. As you can guess, a lot of my compositions were inspired by my obsession at the time: Megaman Legends. Pirate battles, lounge themes, town themes, creepy dig-site music, odd variations of the Apple Market theme, and everything in between. I made all of it in hopes that, one day, I could put it into a real Megaman Legends game. Who would have thought I'd get anywhere close to that dream?

After over 5 years of MIDI composition, I dropped Music MasterWorks in favour of a more hefty, unrestricted programme: Fruity Loops (or FL Studio, as I prefer to call it). However, while Megaman Legends was (and still is) one of my favourite games of all time, I didn't really make as many Legends songs as I did in the past. But I would say that a lot of the non-Legends work I made was inspired in some way by the Legends music. And I see my years creating Legends music in MMW (and what little I did in FL Studio) as a subconscious training I put myself through so I could do exactly what I'm doing now. Hurray!

Anyway, enough about my shady past of damsels and dames (thinking about it that way makes it less boring). You're here to read about how to properly shot web, so I will deliver.

I went onto using various other programmes for music composition, but what I use for TLT is FL Studio (and Audacity for post-production).

“What about real-life-hand-finger-mouth-instruments, Mr. Foetus?” You say.

No real-life-hand-finger-mouth-instruments, reader. Just click, click, click.

“That's a lot of clicking, Mr. Foetus. You're insane. You're an insane silly face.” You say.

Well, that's a given. But seriously, you'd think it would be tough adding notes through clicks, but after a while the process becomes quicker and more fluid. I learned a long time ago that if you don't have all the ingredients to bake a cake (i.e. You're completely broke), you can find another way around. Just don't ask me about using a mouse to do artwork. Seriously. No. Just no.

Alright, check it out. This is my general setup within FL Studio:

"Invading Forces" (click to enlarge)

1) This window—Playlist--is the main window that I put various "pieces" of the song into that make up the finished song you hear.
2) The mid-left window—the Step sequence--is a "piece" of the song, where I import all sorts of instruments and put down notes.
3) This window—the Piano roll--is where I put down the notes for the "piece" of the song (we're currently looking at the "Electric 3" instrument that you can see in the Step sequence on the mid-left; this is the wobbly instrument you hear in the lead of "Invading Forces").
4) This is the Browser, where I can locate and utilize various instruments that I've found or were built within the programme (the instruments we're looking at are things I found).
5) Lastly, the window on the mid-right is the Mixer, where I can add effects to the instruments and improve the quality of the song.

I would get into the instruments I use for the TLT music, but the process is long and meandering. I use a lot of workarounds and could sit there for a half hour editing an instrument so I could find a specific sound I'm looking for; the lead in Hanmuru Doll took forever. Once I get the sound, I can't just put the notes down and call it a day; one off note (whether in pitch, volume, or even location in panning) can make or destroy a part or all of a song. This is what's great about music programmes, you have a lot more freedom when creating instruments.

Now, I've worked with so many genres of music that I couldn't even list all of them in one sitting. Electronica, chiptune, industrial, Celtic, baroque, EBM, trip hop, rock/metal, and all sorts of other stuff (without real instruments; as I said, you can break the rules when baking a cake). I find it incredibly fun to try out new genres of music, just to see if I can do them or not. Sometimes I fail miserably, other times go much smoother. So, how do I tackle the Megaman Legends style? Well, part of the reason why I can do the style decently is because I've engraved it into my brain, as you know. But that often isn't enough. What do you do when you need to make music that sounds like the music in some other games? Well, you play the other games.

I've always been able to immerse myself into a game's universe--sometimes a bit more than I should, actually--so that usually gives me enough inspiration to start a song. I could even spew out an entire song in a few hours if I'm inspired enough (Even Makoto Tomazawa, the original composer for Legends 1 and 2, created several songs per day). As Blyka said in the staff post, I literally threw together the Invading Forces song just to show what I was capable of--I didn't even think it was anything that could get put into the game. Game immersion really goes a long way. Aside from that, it definitely helps that I'm also working on concept art as well, because I can inspire myself by listening to my tracks while I draw or looking at my art before I start on a song. It's a pretty awesome creative loop, I think.

To be honest, at the moment I wouldn't consider myself a soundtrack composer. You could probably listen to my usual music in the car, or while passed out on the couch, or in some weird nightclub somewhere filled with deformed people. But I still love composing game music.

Something I find interesting when creating solo music and game music is that the layouts are very much different. With your everyday music, you have your intro, your verse, your bridge, your chorus, and so on. But with video game music the song needs to repeat; there is never a real ending. Of course, some composers do put an ending to the song, but I always find that it leaves an awkward moment of silence in gameplay when the song ends and then replays. The song needs to be repeated so that the player has a constant stream of emotion, with no pauses or breaks (unless the emotion calls for it).

In creating this repeat, the pieces need to fit together so that the musical flow is sustained. I find that a steady rise and fall in the emotion of a song can achieve this. Start off with a general “idea” of the emotion, then gradually pull the listener in until they're chin-deep. Then ease them out until they're back at the beginning of the next loop. Imagining the listener strapped into a rollercoaster is probably a suitable visual—just make sure the rollercoaster is at the correct speed, or the Apple Market theme would sound mortifying.

So, that's basically my music process (and the most I've ever written about myself outside of school). I hope it wasn't too boring and long. If you got to this point then applaud your bravery and courage. Here, have some cake:

It's been nice working with this team, and I can only hope that a meteor doesn't crash into me and prevent me from continuing! That would be mildly uncomfortable. I hope you guys enjoy what I've done and continue to do so in the future!

See you around!