Errant Knight Music

I’ve had the good fortune to partner with Mark H. Walker to compose the soundtrack to his upcoming Lock n’ Load PC game. The Lock n’ Load game system is a tactical simulation of squad level combat and has spawned several board games and expansions, covering Vietnam, WW2, and even the Battle of Mogadishu(on which Blackhawk Down was based). The PC version covers WW2’s Stalingrad battles, but aims to be anything but the usual wargame fair. As such, Mark and I decided to pursue a new, exciting sound to suit the game.

The following is a preview of what we’ve cooked up:

Lock n’ Load Theme - Preview Version

The tabla are a kind of Indian drums used in traditional Indian music as well as pop. The left-hand drum has a pitch-shifting, talking drum kind of sound. The right hand drum produces a high pitched ring that’s tuned to the key of the performance. As a fan and student of Indian classic music, I wanted to create a track that blended tabla percussion with traditional Western instruments like the violin and piano, with a healthy dose of modern sensibilities thrown in. The result is the following:

The world is yours

Having worked extensively with Sony Acid Pro software and Propellerhead Reason, I welcomed the chance to try out Apple’s new music program GarageBand.

Garageband ships standard with all new Macs and has generated a lot of buzz for being an easy to use program with a lot of power hidden under the hood. I was anxious to see if GarageBand lived up to the hype. I sat down with my PowerBook, some Sennheiser studio headphones, and a few hours later I had this tune:

Tranquil

Was GarageBand worth all the fuss? You be the judge.

Another tune I composed with GarageBand. Never did come up with a good title.

Garage

I first started creating computer music when a friend introduced me to Acid Pro 4.0. I made my first track in a few hours, and it still seems to be a lot of people’s favorite even though I’ve moved on to more complex projects. I guess that’s art for you. Click below to hear Spanish guitar married with some good ol’ drums and bass.

Spanish Bass

I wanted to experiment more with textures and pads, so I decided to work on a more ambient kind of piece. I used healthy doses of delay to create rhythmic echoes and applied a heavy dose of reverb to everything.

Ambient

I had been experimenting with loop-based music composition for some time when I came up with the idea for this song. As my wife and I were listening to a CD of beatnik poetry, she made the comment that the poets had an almost musical quality. So in the spirit of experimental beatnik poetry, I decided to compose an experimental piece combining spoken word, loops, and improvisational guitar. After all, the beatniks loved poetry and music. Why not try combining them with a more modern context? And as any good guitarist will tell you, any reason to use your wah pedal is a good reason. Here’s the result:

Beatnik

One of my favorite instruments is electric piano. Originally, electric pianos were designed to replace conventional pianos, but the early electro-mechanical instruments ended up creating a sound of their own. Newer software-based keyboard solutions often times merely emulate the sound of the Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos. I thought it’d be fun to write a song around electric piano, so I combined some electric piano phrases with drums, bass, flute, and some modern synth sounds. I ended up with something jazzy and a little groovy. See what you think:

Groovin’