T w e n t y S i d e d

I’m holding to my goal of doing one of these every week, and of posting my failures along with my successes. Success generates warm fuzzy praise, but failure often generates more useful advice.

So last week someone mentioned the Mass Effect music. I love the original Mass Effect music. I mean, everyone loves the menu theme, but I dig a lot of the in-game music as well. So I wanted to take a crack at it.

Specifically, I was aiming for some of the low, understated combat music you hear on Eden Prime. There’s a nice bit when you get to the train where there’s a strong pulsing electronic beat underneath the music. So I figured I’d aim for that.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was doing. Instead of listening to the soundtrack, puzzling over it, and picking some ideas to work with, I just sort of started smashing notes together. I got sidetracked on this little project where I’d forgotten all about Mass Effect and I was just coming up with a bunch of different variations on the same theme and chord progression. Eventually I had six or seven different parts all layered together in a huge pile. None of it was bad, but none of it really stood out.

In an effort to make lemonade from lemons, I pulled the different bits apart into distinct sections and stuck audio clips from the game between them.

The result is… hear for yourself: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Button Masher: The 7th Geth”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.