How often have you turned through the night. Each turn of your body turns a new page in your dream. The doors to the Dreamworld make no sense and the rooms even less. You can't find your footing though there is something beautiful to it all, something deep, maybe even precious . As the night grows old however things become more...blurry and muffled. Tainted with confusion, your dreams twist and bend. They rot into a vile, distorted mess. 

The nightmares begin.

Black pages form forbidden origami. It's impossible to comprehend. The energy. The pounding. The flesh. The smell. Nothing makes sense. It all comes apart the body the mind the soul it all makes sense nothing makes sense everything is nothing and nothing is everything nothing everything nothing everything nothing everything nothing all everything is nothing to everything nothing I am nothing everything I am no yes no yes no I

Good morning, did you sleep well?

Well, I'm not gonna lie, this is pretty different in tone and pace than the original. I wanted to be conservative at first but then I kinda went west into the forest and wanted to see what I could see! With the beautiful midi made for us, I went and eventually just found this image of celebration. Didn't know what to celebrate initially but I wanted a much less...crazy jungle! One that reminded me more of like a Lion King or Ferngully. I had this image of the cute monkey babies being born and this traditional celebratory festival. Lots of greenery, people (monkeys lol) laughing and playing. Eating beautiful food and drinking lots of fruit juice. All to celebrate the recent births in the monkey tribe! The end result is something much different than the original but the same DNA is there. The melody, harmonies, structure is pretty much all the same, albeit slowed down and more relaxed. Just a fun siesta all for the newborn, beautiful monkey babies!

This is more of a concept piece than a straightforward mix. My goal was to recreate a space in my head that was uncomfortable. A place that's not exactly as it should be. A place where the unnatural can form--a place for monsters. Initially, floating around is the low motif of the main theme. It is...very unsure. Not quite the same and ever evolving into something more sinister. Here, I wanted to create the essence of a monster, eventually showing you its claws and leaving you to face this new reality that it exists in. That you now exist in.

Further down the road as you get used to the piece and this new atmosphere there is something familiar about. Voices, choirs...church choirs (seeing as this part of the game takes place in a church). Still there is something a bit off and dissonant about it all. This ends in a cumulation of voices but a single message. Crucifixus. Condemnation. Leaving you to wonder...what the hell did I just go through? What were those demons? What the hell is this place?!

From an actual creation standpoint, I sort of ran out of time and I couldn't EQ some things but I dont think anything reached a level of egregious. I'm happy with this little experiment and I learned a lot.

My first original song for 2022. It' uses parts of another song I made but is quite different. Honestly, composing music isn't my forte but what I love about it is that it allows me to take ideas that I've had for a remaster or remake that I couldn't fit make work and give them new life. Some of those ideas have been for something in this style. Hip Hop? ChillHop? Chill beats? I really don't know what to call it but here it is! 

The title "Spin" comes from the feeling or action that sometimes I find my mind start to do. Just going in circles and not able to break this circular motion of thought and emotion. The end result is a blurry image and thoughts unclear. The colors don't make sense but are somehow familiar and there's noise everywhere, like rain. I think that comes across in this song not only in the effects but in the melodic line as well. Never quite breaking that feeling, that tiny chord progression. 

Well, I nearly didn't make it but here we are. I cried, I was frustrated, and I was mad at myself for many things. I didn't make music for a long while, I couldn't make music like I wanted to and I felt like the musician in me had died. Then, after trying to come back...my literal music did die. Felt like I hit rock bottom until that hard drive span back up and began to breathe life. I could have gotten my VSTs back from the maker thankfully (though I'd need a new hard drive for the space) but the files...the music...my life's blood gone. Then I cried again haha. But how does one who is dead cry? What does it sound like? What does it feel like? That is the inspiration for this song. Chaotic, unworldly, and yet...familiar. Not something you could imagine living but not exactly...dead either. A being stuck between two worlds. And a bit disturbing. Fitting seeing as my word was Macabre and the story that this song comes from tells us that when dealing with death...things aren't always as we think they'd seem. Often, those surprises can be quite troubling. So is this song.

From a technical standpoint I think the mix is both too loud and there are some EQ issues. Unfortunately I've run out of time to fix them, but I think if you lower the volume its very much tolerable. It just can't be too loud. Probably perfect for YouTube though LOL. Anyway, here is "A Cry After Death" and hopefully the first of a few more songs before years end.

, I wanted to channel some of the flavor of Xenogears and some of that "ethnic" vibe that is sort of non-descript yet everyone kind of knows haha. I suppose at this point its a mix of things. Anywho, I choose to bring that out in the choir sections and added some percussion in inclusion to the original. Lastly, there are two different soloists. One is a lady vocalist and the other is a Xin Di I think. I can't remember which Chinese flute I used haha. There is an outro I used for this version which I would have cut for this competition since its meat and potatoes so I won't comment on that. So just a nice conservative approach with some added goodies here and there. I wish I had a non-YouTube version to share! 

I got really busy and tired so I couldn't finish 100% but here is my submission. I also got locked out of registration and then realized where the answers were posted haha...Oh well. The link should be okay for download.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/166qewkUBGGLapLYh_8dnHzStdGnmcvOL/view?usp=sharing