I made 100 songs!

[x0_000]

www.geocities.com/x0_000/themes1.zip

So, back in August of 2005 I was doing a sort of mini-project which involved making theme songs by request. It ended with me trying to make songs for a variety of genres (mostly stuff that involves guitar, though.) Some are great, some are terrible, some are vanilla. They're also pretty short, raging from 0:50~1:30 and are designed to be looped.

Now, despite the topic title, the zip file only contains 95 songs. That's because 5 of them are only available through mp3. Those are:

Invaders From Outer Space - Galaxarian's Super CO Power
Robot Funk - Epoch's Theme
Jazzy Dunes - Katt's Theme
They Came From Outer Space - Ridn's Theme
RGB - Xavier's Theme

Now, if you're crazy enough to sit through and listen to all 100 of them, then that's really, REALLY appreciated. But if you don't feel like it, here's a list of the ones that I am proud of, and I would definitely appreciate it if you commented on any of these, at the very least:

02. Death From Above - Meteor Strike
11. Fallen One - Sinclair's Theme
20. Ice Casino - King Frost's Theme
23. Rock Star - Ozzy's Theme
24. Crystal Meth - Valexis' Theme
29. Blazing - Jared's Theme
30. Mass Destruction - Ember's Theme
33. Invaders From Outer Space - Galaxarian's Super CO Power
39. Robot Funk - Epoch's Theme
40. Gathering Darkness - William's Theme
48. Une Brise D'Été - Robert's Theme
51. 20,000 Leagues - Shui's Theme
63. Feel A Fear - Raven's Theme
69. El Hombre De La Estrella Roja - Artemis' Theme v2
77. They Came From Outer Space - Ridn's Theme
78. Argentum - Nathan's Theme
93. Breath - Aira's Theme

Some final notes: The MIDI names have an additional (CO by <name>) in them. That just refers to the person who requested it. If you read the txt file in the zip, you'll also notice that some themes have mp3 versions (those have 1 asterisk next to them, and these aren't supposed to be looped.) You can listen to some of the mp3s either at

SoundClick artist: X0-000 - Band page with free MP3 music downloads on SoundClick
or
Songs by x0_000, Citizen of ACIDplanet.com

[x0_000]

So uh, is 100 songs a bit overwhelming or something ;o;

[aether]

... can't say I'd really like to sit through 100 of ANYONE's songs, haha. At least not in one go.

I'm curious though - do you find that a lot of your music sounds the same? That's not a statement (I haven't heard anything yet), but since you've got them all compiled here, do you find any similarities?

That's something that drives me crazy about my stuff ... I end up having favorite rhythms, chord progressions, instruments ..

[Rush More!]

didn't have a chance to look through them yet, but I'll listen to at least the ones you've suggested. The amount of music is quite a lot though, so I may not listen to every single one, if you don't mind.

[Enoch-Fox]

IS THIS ADVANCE WARS FAN MUSIC>

[Rush More!]

Didn't realize these would be midi. because of that, I'm not gonna comment on sound quality- the combination of them being midi in the first place renders just about any comment I could make on them ineffective. Compositionally, however, I've got your back.

.02- not bad at all, I enjoy the feel, its got a sort of final fantasy 7 crisis/boss music feel. But one thing that sort of music generally does that you don't in this piece is spend a lot of time building up and breaking down. you seem to spend all your time building in this piece.

.11- I don't know if its just the midi filetype which prevent me from hearing this the way its meant to be heard, but at least to me, it seems to be a bit chaotic. A fun piece, but I feel like every single instrument is changing/gating on every quarter notes. It could be better if there was some more standard (pad-like?) element.

.20- completely ignoring the fact that you used an instrument which resembles steel drums, (which originated in trinidad and tobago) in an ice casino, I have to say this has a really fun feel. you've got just enough melodic variety to keep it interesting, while preventing it from sounding over-done.

.23- I have to say I can't really give you much critique on this one. It's a bit more melodic and laid back than I was expecting for a song called Rockstar, but oh well. It also seems to just cut off, though that could have been my computer. compositionally, well done, though.

.24- the bass overpowers your mix, but whatever.at the begging, and in the parts where the loud bass arps, it seems like a bunch of the notes are out of key, but it could just be stylistic.

.29- not what I was expecting from the title blazing, but I can see how it fits. The key it's written in has a very warm feel, and the arps help cement that. If I were you, I'd focus a bit more on the percussion of this piece- I feel like it could be completely badass if you only made the drums more believeable (and potentially rock-ish)

.30- Max 300 much? It felt like a slight more chilled out version of a max song. I feel like if you focused a bit more on the kickdrum rhythms, as max does, you could make this even better.

all your songs seem to cut off without much real closure. Also, forgive me if I'm only pointing out negative stuff- your music is good, I'm just a terrible, bitter human being. That and I feel like it'd be useless if you just read "this is good" for every piece and nothing else.

.33- This song makes me think "why the hell is everything else he's done midi?" The quality of this so much increased from that of your other songs, just by virtue of the fact that its not midi, that it puts it in a league of its own. I also really enjoy it. Could use a bit of balancing on the sfx though.

.40- I like the cadence of your drums. The entire feel of this piece screams to me castlevania music. Only thing I'd do differently is when you change movements, you could both change the cadence of the drums and the tempo a little, to increase dramatic tension or somesuch nonsense.


.39- Get Slayer 2 for more realistic guitar sounds. Though the song itself is melodically and otherwise awesome, it needs to be heavily EQ'd and seperated- it's suffering from wall of sound syndrome right now.

.48- something about this piece sounds somewhat minimal in the beggining, and then the reeds come in. When the harp or pizz strings (I can't tell which) comes in, however, it gets overwhelmed- being in the same sonic frequencies as some of the drums, you get an aspect of WOS syndrome wherein your harp just sounds like precussion instead of a melodic instrument.






.51- oh my god strong bad music. Down to the exact same patch. I feel like your arpegios on the strongbad synth, however, have like three notes out of key.
your gated synth towards the end also sounds just like precussion.

.63- melodically, somewhat boring- nothing really happens. you've got two movements and a single solo, but the things sound somewhat similar and then it just cuts off in the middle of the solo (at least, for me it does)

.69- its got a full sound and a sort of samba-ish feel that I'm really digging. you deffinitely could have gone either spanish or arabic with this- I'm glad you picked spanish because its awesome. Now, though, I'm pissed because it just cut off. why did it do that?

.77- more compression on your drums, please. If you're going to do jungle, again, btw, you should know- the focus is generally somewhat more shifted towards precussion, even if you've got interesting melodies. because of that, more precussive variation is expected- yours has a bit of a lack. I also don't particularly love the melodies. sue me.

.78- something about this piece has a distinctly tripletted feel. something about the melody makes me think asian. I don't know what it is.

.93- saving some great stuff for last, eh? obviously you are , because this is melodically superior. your bottle blow, however, doesn't sound real at all. and then it just cuts off :[

In summary- make more stuff thats not midi- It not only sounds better, but you're pretty damn decent at it, at least. work on percussive variation. Keep being awesome.

[x0_000]

Well to answer your questions, the first reason I make most of these in MIDI is because people keep asking for stuff that involves an electric guitar and as you may have noticed, I don't really have access to the best material, haha. I don't really like using Slayer for personal reasons, so I grab most of my sounds from soundfonts.

The other reason for MIDI (and also why it cuts off abruptly) is because I designed these in mind for a GBA style background music so the MIDIs are designed to loop (ergo, the cutoff. if you load the MIDI in FL Studio and listen to the loop it should be fairly smooth.) Size was also an issue back then and MIDIs are amazingly small =D

@etherstyle:

I can't quite say that it sounds similar, one of my traits is that I can never stick to one genre XD.

Anyway, thanks for the comments so far! I understand how insane it can get trying to go through 100 songs <_<;;;, so comments on even one of them are appreciated!