Category: Music

Here’s a game I put together over the weekend for Ludum Dare 29. The theme for this weekend was “Beneath the Surface” and the idea was to make an outer space fracking game.

You are controlling the latest in space fracking technology, a little rover with the task of retrieving space resources from a moon or asteroid or whatever. Use your shockwave (spacebar) to frack open the resources, and then drill (shift) to extract the resources for processing. But watch out for enemy rovers sent by rival corporations!

The enemy rovers are a less sophisticated model without cutting-edge fracking technology, but they have been extracting all the available resources for a while and will not hesitate to hit you with a shotgun blast and steal all your newly fracked resources. Avoid them carefully, or use your shockwave to blast them out of the way!

Watch out for the space fracking protesters, too. You don’t want to cause a PR disaster by accidentally running one of them over!

Play the current build here: http://guscost.github.io/spacefrack

Vote for Space Frack: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=31734

 

I recently developed a prototype music keyboard for the iPad, in order to play around with the idea. It’s called the THIMBL Keyboard and it looks like this.

Each octave-row maps the twelve semitones to six positions on each hand: Thumb, Half (between Thumb and Index), Index, Middle, Big (ring finger), and Little, thus the THIMBL acronym. This keyboard is very interesting because it has no diatonic bias like a standard piano keyboard, but it does have a bias toward certain keys, i.e. the Left Index position is always a C note. The player moves up and down octaves by moving the hands vertically, so chord inversions are very easy to find. However, this layout means that a C Major scale is not especially simple to play without knowing the right sequence of steps, or memorizing finger positions.

I’ve been practicing some basic technique with this prototype, and have discovered a few things about how it behaves. It seems unorthodox at first, but after learning the intervals between each pair of finger positions, playing music by ear becomes much easier. There are some expected problems with touchscreen controls, as the fingers can’t rest on the key surfaces, and the keys don’t overlap in tiers, but in general this prototype is more durable and easier to maintain than the last version. I’d still like to build a production-quality model but this works surprisingly well in the meantime. Check it out if you’re interested!

I’ve also put together some vertically-oriented notation paper which helps with transcribing and playing music. Time is measured in rows and finger positions correspond to columns of cells. You’ll have to find some way to indicate the octave of each note in this grid, I’d recommend color-coding notes to match the octave colors on the keyboard.

Music is a big part of my life. I have a voracious appetite for recorded music, and I’m working on my own humble contribution to the universe of sound. Like many aspiring composers, I’ve dreamed of creating songs that touch many lives. It hasn’t been easy – profound communication through music is an especially difficult task. In today’s world where every musical idea is measured, recorded, licensed, and purchased, that task is harder than it has ever been. I attended school with several people who are now working musicians, struggling for excellence in a craft which has been commoditized to the point of disposability.

Maybe digital distribution and piracy didn’t cause this, but many of us have still forgotten to respect the artistic process. If I were to release an original music demo, it would almost certainly be lost in a sea of other free legal or illegal content, and the prospect of eventually making usable money in this way without staging live events is not great. It feels like a step backwards, if not an unexpected development.

Knowing this, I decided to make a demo which subverts the trend. My first release of original music is now available, but only in an interactive format. MixBall is a special game that mixes the music while you play. I’m not charging money yet, but you’ll have to spend time and energy “beating” each mix, so it might make you think a bit about value. If it achieves that, I will consider it a success. The catchy tunes are a bonus, hopefully you’ll enjoy them too.

You might be wondering why this countercultural experiment is hosted on Apple’s App Store and requires an iOS device. The answer has to do with hardware limitations. I was interested in building for Android as well, but low-latency sound requires considerate effort, and Apple has the whole portable music pedigree to boot. Hopefully that doesn’t offend anyone.

Get MixBall today in the App Store!