[Nicol Armarfi]

{For once, I'm not quite sure where to put this, but I'm assuming this forum is the most appropriate}

I've been writing the music for a small, strange visual novel for about a year now, and it's finally been completed.

For those of you that don't know what the hell I'm talking about, a visual novel is more or less a story set to a collection of accompanying pictures and music to illustrate the events. This particular visual novel is a very weird story with appropriately weird visuals, and a fair 45 track soundtrack, of which I contributed 14 pieces of original music.

To give you a sense of what this thing is all about, here's a quote from the original thread:

I won’t be giving away much info, just be warned that T.C.G. is weird, awkward, even nonsensical. Don’t even bother if you expect to see human faces, because there aren’t any. It’s an astral voyage mixed with dream imagery so I felt it needed to have some of that confusion so akin to dreams. Getting this effect wasn't an easy task...

You can download the VN here: MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service, currently only on Windows.

If you can't be bothered to read it, the soundtrack is available seperately here: MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service.

If you'd like to read more about this... thing, or comment on it, you can do so here: Lemma Soft Forums • View topic - The Circular Gate Project (you can post without registering).

[The-Real-Link]

Cool! I'll have to check it out as soon as I get time. I get a week off of school soon, so I'll try to listen to/read it then!

[JrvUnleashed]

Weird...(not in a bad way, just weird)

Any particular inspiration? It's not really my style. It's probably a Japanese thing . Too much clicking for me. I'd rather just see the pictures and not have to click anything. I found myself just clicking 100's of times to get through the drawn out dialogues because I wanted to here the music, but once it got to the techno part my brain went into defensive mode and forced my hand to click out of it. Sorry, I can't listen to techno, it's just unbearably annoying, no matter what kind of techno, so no offense to you personally. The bass drum in techno is just too annoying for me.

Then again, I'm not really into the whole futuristic music. I'd rather here classical style, so my opinion is most likely biased due to that.

[Nicol Armarfi]

There are actually only 3 or 4 techno tracks, not withstanding the one bonus track (which is some sort of rock-techno fusion). Basically what happens is as the story progresses so does the soundtrack, from primitive techno (I like to call techno the autistic kid of music, as it's designed specifically to be simple and repetitive), to a more modern video game style (Final Fantasy and etc.), and finally to the finale, which is an orchestral arrangement of Chopin's Heroic Polonaise.

For quick reference, my tracks are available in MP3 form seperately here: http://nicol.chendo.net/MP3. Tracks 1, 7, 9-12 are completely devoid of any techno instrumentation or styles, 4 and 6 are strange ambient backing tracks and 8 is some sort of transitional piece with an orchestra along with techno drums; the remainder are the purely techno pieces.

[JrvUnleashed]

What programs did you use for the finale? Those sounds are fantastic.

[Nicol Armarfi]

Just Finale 2008 with the GPO sounds that come packaged with it; they really are quite realistic.

[JrvUnleashed]

Damn, I really wish I had 600 dollars to blow on finale.

[Nicol Armarfi]

Even without purchasing Finale, you can buy the GPO sounds seperately for general use (Garritan - World's Leading Provider of Quality Software Instruments), for less than 1/3 the price of Finale. Together with a free MIDI sampling software that supports VSTi, you should be able to get an audio file of same or similar quality to the one I made for this VN.

[The-Real-Link]

Yea. GPO is not too pricey. I only have the VSTi's that came with Finale 2010. Which is a pretty good set, but I'd like more. I want to get the World Instruments set, and the Garritan Steinway set. I would prefer "Ivory", but my PC would probably explode if I tried to run that thing....and I don't just have $2,400 to throw around either!

[JrvUnleashed]

I only wish Allegro had GPO sounds. Seeing as how it's 400 dollars cheaper that would be much more manageable.