for YM2612 + SN76489
by MetallicOrwell
I have a tendency to become complacent when I really get into the rhythm of cranking out one cover after another, so from time to time I have to stop and force myself to compose originals. You learn a lot about music by making covers, sure, but you learn even more when you put that into practice and make your own songs. Taking other people's music apart and building it back up in your own style is satisfying, but it's nothing compared to creating art out of nothing. It's the experience of starting out with a few chords and simple notes, and seeing your composition grow and become more and more, until you utter a somewhat incredulous "I did this?". It's quite something. So, here's a new piece all my own: "Lunar Light". Let's do this.
It's said that to a writer nothing is scarier than a blank page (true), and I guess to a musician nothing is scarier than a blank grid (unless you still use sheet music or something). There are just too many possibilities, and I have to decide on a specific style in order to narrow it down to the point where I can actually start composing something. Now, this piece is titled "Lunar Light" as a reference to "Stellar Light", a track from the Eschatos OST, because I used that as my initial inspiration. I'm not sure the result sounds all that similar, though, because once this thing took off, it went all over the place. It definitely sounds very video game-y; it would be right at home in a shmup. Also, the sound design is quite similar to my own cover of "Survive" from Eschatos, so there's that as well.
Lunar Light begins with a melody played on an electric piano and a few chords; it's in the key of A and it mostly alternates between minor (Aeolian) and major (Ionian) every bar. Thinking back, I don't think this is the first time I've done this, but this time it was deliberate. So in the second bar you get that cheeky F# to spice it up, for example, but the melody is mostly in minor (the chords alternate between the two modes a lot more). There's even a G# diminished chord in there, I don't know how that happened. They were supposed to be played on an electric piano with some choir vocals to back it up, but when it was time to adapt the MIDI sketch into a tracker sequence for the Mega Drive, I decided on my own string ensemble to make it sound fuller. You get a more complex version of the melody with some hi-hats in the background to build a little bit of tension, and then comes the transition. I swear the brass in this part sounds like flamingo or something.
When the song proper begins, we have a somewhat fast galloping rhythm (150bpm) on the bass and drums, as well as the exact same chords as before, but the way the bass guitar is used changes the feel completely. In the intro I used a descending chord progression, but here it's like this: root note for two bars, go down two steps, go up one step, then repeat. So, in addition to locking in with the drums, the bass guitar can function basically as an additional note of the chords, or even as a sort of drone or pedal note. This may seem really obvious if you're an experienced musician, but I'm not, and discovering these things is quite delightful. Fragmented learning rocks. Now, the chords are now played on several brassy instruments (the same ones I used in my Eschatos cover), and in some parts they do quick stabs instead of sustaining the notes. They sound quite potent, and they're the result of what I learned by peeking into SilverRIFF's .dmf files. It was tempting to just fill the entire song with those awesome brass stabs, but I think alternating between that and sustained notes works better because of the contrast.
Enough about the chords for now, though. The melody is still played on a piano in this section as well as the chorus, but I also use my trumpet synth in many sections. Throughout the song, the square waves are used mostly for arpeggios, because it's an incredibly easy way to fill out the song's sound, and it does work, especially if you use echoes. You know, you have those two square wave channels over at the SN76489's side. They can't really do a whole lot, and by themselves they sound like a toy keyboard from the early 80s compared to the full, 4-OP FM synthesis of the mighty YM2612. But they're there, so you might as well use them for something, right? Well, in a fast and energetic piece like this, the easiest way to do that is to use the first square wave channel to do arpeggios or glissandi, and the second one to play the same notes at a lower volume, with a delay, and a slight detune, creating some nice echoes. It's somewhat lazy, but again, it does work. That being said, in some sections I actually use them for counterpoint. Yeah, they play an extra melody that complements the main one that's being played on the piano or trumpet synth.
As the song goes on and we get into the pre-chorus, the modal fuckery begins, so buckle up. The root note changes from A to E, the fifth note of the scale, for increased tension. But since I'm still using the A minor note pool, this actually puts me in E Phrygian. I did the same thing way back when I composed The Metallic Maiden, so it's nothing new, really. FL Studio's piano roll lets you snap the notes to scale, so if you change the tonic while keeping the note pool the same, you are also changing the mode to whatever shares said note pool. But wait: I'm still alternating between minor and major, both in the chords and the melody--except that I'm in Phrygian now, right? This would mean that in this section I'm actually using Phrygian and Mixolydian (what the fuck is it with these names, are we talking about music or mythology?). But it gets more complicated, because E Mixolydian is supposed to have a G#, and I'm using regular G. So I guess it's E Mixolydian with a flattened third? I told you it was gonna get fucky. If you want to figure this shit out go ahead--I'm kind of at a loss here.
But wait, it gets weirder! Almost from the beginning I had this idea of composing this piece mostly in A minor, but the chorus would be in C major (again, same note pool, so it sounds coherent even when you change modes). I got this idea from the Iron Maiden (of course) song Run To The Hills, which uses the same concept, and in fact the chord progression I used for the chorus is identical. However, I put a sneaky A# in there in addition to regular A, because it worked better. So it's not C major with a raised sixth or flattened seventh, it's eight notes in total. Am I borrowing that A# from the chromatic scale, or from the C minor scale, since there's some of that at the end of some of the measures? This is screwing with my brain, but I think I kind of like it. If you're an expert musician who can explain this weird shit to me, please feel free to leave a comment.
Anyhow, I think it does work. In the pre-chorus I change between modes quickly, so when the chorus hits, it's not too jarring. It's got a floaty, dreamy feeling, but it's almost... too happy in places. That's usually my problem with music written in major; it sounds so bright and cheerful that it's actually slightly annoying. I suppose it depends on how you use the mode, too. I'll say one thing: it feels extremely easy to write melodies when using major.
I do believe we've talked about the compositional aspect enough, so let's move on to sound design. For most of Lunar Light, I used channel FM 1 for the bass, channels FM 2, FM 3 and FM 4 for the chords, FM 5 for the melody, and FM 6 for PCM drums. I actually wasn't planning on using three full channels for the chords; I thought I could get away with deleting the root note, and to be fair you can do that and the chord will still sound correct, even if less full. But those brass stabs just sound so good, and they would've been weakened if I had cheaped out on polyphony to make room for an echo channel or something. It's that magical combination of modified Sakimoto brass and that one patch I pilfered from a SilverRIFF .dmf file. We also have modified Sakimoto (again) choirs in one of the sections, which sounds kind of like Motoi Sakuraba, to be honest. As always, the drum samples are mostly from the Arachno Soundfont, while the toms are from the Yamaha MU-2000 EX.
That should be about it. In reality I could probably make this write-up twice as long, but I think that was enough. Creating Lunar Light has been quite the experience, and I've learned a lot and had a lot of fun. I just think music is pretty neat, really.
See you around.
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