Post Competition EDIT : as you probably know why now all my megaupload links are dead. If you want to get the .xrns and check the song you can still grab it for free here : on my dropbox public folder.
Of course I’m in too he he hehehe.
A few tips (non obligatory but should help if you’ve got no idea).
To achieve the goals of this challenge, competitors will need a bit of organisation. Because there are several things in it : battlespace fx & background music or ambient soundtrack.
A) Sci Fi Fx.
You need first to prepare your sound fx. But, in a battle space, there are enemies. You’ve got to define 2 different types of sound fx for the 2 different opponents.
There will probably be human vs aliens. So you’ll have to define human technology sounds, and alien technology sounds.
And this challenge allow you to use your DSP Line in Devices, especially to make CPU starfighter “robotic voices” or “alien voices”.
BTW, do you know som famous robotic voices ?
- Just play some few episodes of Battlestar Galactica (the old one), (the cylon voices were somehow interesting)
- just have a look on old things, “forbidden planet” (robby the robot)
- what about “dr who” daleks ?
Most of those voices could be reproduced with simple DSP chains, including of course the RingMOD and but also some other DSPs with very small delays & lots of feedbacks.
After that you should try to reproduce the laserbeam fx, the explosion fx, the starfighter fx…
B ) Background music / soundtrack.
If you’re good at making computergame music, you’re lucky, soundtrackers have been used for ages to make the background music for shoot them ups games. Check the CHIPS instrument. You’ll see that this one is composed of sub-samples of a SIN, COSINE, TAN, SQUARE, NOISE wave. Just copy and / or remove or isolate the subsamples and make new instruments with it. Be creative, use instruments envelopes. Frankly I could do the entire song and effects only with chipsounds.
For those who feel as talented as Hans Zimmer or John Williams, I’ve added a good quality 32Bits “classical” soundset that will help them to prepare a quite nice hollywood-like background score. Just check the classical samples, and loop them forward, you’ll see I’ve allready do the job for you.
If you don’t have time for hollywood music and just want to create “ambient music” no problem. It’s easy to make “cosmic pads” with Renoise. A “cosmic pad” is a pad with just slow phaser effects, with some BPM synced pink noises, and a few high frequency random blips (blips are made with ultra high and short sinewaves).
Anyway that’s the same thing as for sound fx, you should to prepare 2 kind of background themes, one for the humans and one for the opponents. The easiest way to start with the alien music is to apply a “modal change” on the humans music. But of course you’re free to do whatever you want on this point, if you want to make a new kind of Imperial Dubstep March with the help of classical instruments and robotic blips, that would be the birth of a new crazy thing never heard before.
