Well, it's late fall (as much as the weather here has been mostly pleasant & only the tiniest bit chilly). I can smell all the fallen leaves on my brisk bike rides in to work in the mornings, and we're starting to see more and more overcast days. It's wild to think there's only one more 2025 Moon Melody after this one. I went back to the ocarina to write this & then polished it up a bit in MuseScore.

I've been working on organizing my different music projects into a single catalog page, so it's easy for folks to look through all the different projects at a glance. I followed the same structure that I used for my "Mega Music Bundle" back in 2023, but this is a lot more browsable. And there are download links for most albums too, so you can listen to pretty much all of it, too!

To save on bandwidth, the download links are torrents, not direct downloads--but I've got some instructions at the top of the catalog page for how to do that, if you're unfamiliar with torrenting!

I was a day late on this one--I got busy working on another project yesterday & forgot to do my moon melody! For October I felt I should try to be a little spooky, but I've also been feeling both contemplative & a little melancholy lately, and this melody I think has a bit of all three of those. It's kind of an oddball too, because although I would consider it to be in d minor, the F note seems to carry the most weight. I was even musing about the very last measure--whether to have it go C-Bb-A-E-F or C-Bb-G-E-F. The former is what I stuck with, because that would make more sense for d-minor (am to dm: a v-i chord resolution), whereas the latter would make the most sense for F major (C7 to F: a V7-I chord resolution). Just listening to it, though, the latter option even feels a little more natural than what I went with. But I think with some accompaniment to map out the chords more concretely, the former will work the best for a d-minor interpretation of the melody.

Anyway, I'm rambling now! I just think it's always interesting when all you have is a melody -- there's often several different ways to interpret the underlying structure, since the melody itself generally just hints at it.

This is another one that I wrote on the computer instead of the ocarina. With most of these, I've really been focused on the melody itself--coming up with a tune in my head & scoring it. But this one I ended up a lot more focused on playing with the chords & trying to make some interesting chord transitions. So I also included the chord letters in the score!

I'm a day late on this Moon Melody as well, but here it is! This one I actually composed in Renoise instead of MuseScore, and using the MIDI keyboard instead of transcribing what I was playing on ocarina. The result is a little different in feel, and while I can almost play it on ocarina, I can't play it very well. I like it though! Writing out the melody in Renoise was fun & felt very natural. It makes me want to try a whole piece where I just start with the melody & then build everything out around that.

I'm a little late on this one!! I came up with this short tune a few days ago in the morning right before work & recorded a quick video of it. But I've been so busy this week, I only just got around to transcribing it. This is one I wanna come back to & expand upon at some point--I like where it's starting off, but it could probably use a little more!

PARANORMALL is a collaborative album I did with my game design group! As a group, we made up an imaginary horror/adventure game set in an abandoned shopping mall, then we each contributed tracks to create its soundtrack. I also worked with a couple friends--Johanna Morgan and Barbara Magiera--on several of the tracks. Johanna wrote bass parts & then I added things like drums & keys to flesh out the track. And Barbara recorded a number of voice acting samples as the Mall's haunted P.A. System, which both Jo & I used on a handful of our tracks.

Flyover Indies hosts one or two Music Dailies challenges each year, so this project was part Flyover Dailies, part FAWM, since we were also participating in February Album-Writing Month. After those challenges ended, I spent some time putting together a liner-notes style booklet with some of the game lore we came up with, as well as some sketches & art we created for the project. I also finished up two more tracks that weren't ready in time for the challenge: "The Labs" and "Boss Fight".

This was such a fun project, and I honestly wish PARANORMALL could be a real video game (although it would take a ton of work to make, and I'm not exactly volunteering!). I was getting into a groove using Renoise & playing with sampling & generating samples in Pebble. I also recorded a bunch of samples of this metal popcorn bucket, so whenever you hear the clangy percussion, that's probably what that is!

New moon melody! I've been listening to a lot of Animal Crossing music, & I think this one is partly influenced by K.K. Slider's "Neapolitan", which gets stuck in my head a lot.

I've got a new zine out! This is a tiny one--made for the Odd-Sized Zine Jam using one of the new micro-zine sizes in the ZineArranger update!

The Thin Slice is part perzine, part photo zine--combining short 'thoughts' with close-cut crops from old photos of mine. You can download it free on itch--either to print or to read digitally! (I recommend printing it out if you get the chance! It makes a cute little booklet.)

Today's another new moon! This time I tried to make myself practice some of the harder notes on the 12-hole ocarina--the low A, B, and C#. I have a hard time playing that second part, but when I get it, I think this one sounds pretty good!

Come make a funky zine with us! I'm hosting an 'Odd Size Zine Jam' for the next couple weeks on itch.io, where the challenge is just to make a zine with an unusual size, layout, or folding pattern. The jam runs until June 16th, so there's plenty of time to pop in and make a lil zine!

And note that there are plenty of new & funky size options on the Zine Arranger Beta, so if you want to use that for your zine & help test the new update, that would be sweet too!

I've been working on a big update for The ZineArranger, with 7 new size options--from 1/16th down to 1/64th!--as well as some other features! It still needs a lot of testing, but The Beta Version is up now if you'd like to try it!

Read the full patch notes here.

New moon! New tune! This one's a little short, since it's been a busy day, but I like it! Maybe I'll build on it someday.
Moon Melody #4

It's a new moon today (and a partial solar eclipse for some of ya!), so that means it's time for our 3rd Moon Melody! I just wrote this this morning, so I'm still getting the hang of playing it on the ocarina.

A few months ago I made a HTML/CSS template for printing out sheets of FediCards! I wanted to print some of my own personal card to give to friends & family, but I figure I might as well share the template, so people can print their own FediCards (or the ones they've collected)!

I added the template to the Fedi Trading Card Maker page on itch.io--just scroll down & look for the spot to download the "Card Sheet HTML Template"!

In February, for February Album Writing Month, my game design group did a month-long music jam where we all worked on songs for a hypothetical soundtrack for a made-up survival horror / adventure game!

The game is set in an abandoned shopping mall next to the mysterious Crater Lake. A group of teens ventured inside to check out the empty shopping center, only to find it haunted with a variety of supernatural and interdimensional creatures. After the teens wind up trapped inside, some of their older siblings & their friends venture in to rescue them, with the help of a duo of Paranormal Investigators.

So far as a group we've created 14 tracks--enough to 'win' the FAWM challenge! We're taking the first couple of weeks to finalize things & then we plan to put the album together for release sometime toward the end of the month. Here's a list of what we've made so far:

1. Paranormal Investigator Van by Frazier Krohn - A 'safe area' / 'save spot' theme for a van full of strange gadgets & devices.
2. Mushroom Jungle by Just Nate - Theme for a fungal play-area, inspired by the mushroom kids' area in Independence Center (KCMO).
3. Staff Hallways - Alert! by me & Barbara Magiera - A chase theme for when you set off the alarm going into the staff-only area.
4. Terebi Heaven by Gage Bradley - A ghostly theme for a haunted Japanese electronics store.
5. Mushroom Fight! by Just Nate - Battle theme for the aforementioned mushrooms.
6. Post Box Theme by Johanna Morgan & me - Motif for the various post-boxes players can use to store & transfer items.
7. Welcome! (Main Menu Theme) by me & Barbara Magiera - A main menu theme & welcome message from the mall.
8. Parking Garage by Johanna Morgan & me - Theme for the mall's vast & crumbling underground parking system.
9. Lonely Halls by me, Johanna Morgan, and Cody - Background theme for traveling inside the mall.
10. Game Over by Johanna Morgan and Barbara Magiera - A game over tune & farewelle message from the mall.
11. I could have left sooner by Harmon - A mid-game moment of regret.
12. First Floor by Frazier Krohn - An early stage tune for inside the mall.
13. Pretzel Shack by me - A jingle for one of the mall's strangely functional food shops.
14. Dark Corridors by me - A theme for the long, mysterious hallways deep inside the staff-only area.