notes-jin-jeong

Notes from Jin Jeong

Demo 1

• An arrangement of the A-type Tetris theme by Hirokazu Tanaka (also originally known as Korobeiniki)
• Link to repo
• ./run.sh tutorials/synthesis/tetris.cpp, then press ‘Q’
• As my first piece, I mainly wanted to play around with allolib. I thought the sounds that it could produce would work well for a retro/8-bit vibe, so I thought I’d try my hand at recreating the tetris theme. It uses four different voices to emulate 8-bit music, which typically uses three voices and a percussive element. The file was based on the SimpleSineEnv.cpp file, and uses modified square and triangle waves for the voices.

Demo 2

• Untitled Original
• Link to repo
• ./run.sh tutorials/synthesis/bass.cpp, then press ‘A’
• I was largely inspired by this video, and I wanted to see if I could emulate that sort of bouncy retro bass sound. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to accomplish that, as I wasn’t able to figure out how to give the bass more shape, although it did have some percussive hits on note changes that I liked. The bass solo itself is just an original composition that I came up with to test out the sound. This is when I began using Noteflight in order to create music scores to reference rather than typing out code with the melody in my brain.

(I was gone for a cycle [and a half?] of presentations due to my sister’s graduation in New York)

Demos 3-4

• Untitled Original
• Link to repo
• ./run.sh tutorials/synthesis/idk.cpp
• Another foray into video game music. This time, I was largely inspired by the game “Mother 3” for the GBA, namely this particular song. If you listen to the video you’ll definitely be able to hear some of the ideas I took inspiration from. For the song itself, I was mainly just freestyling. Creating a song with different parts that are supposed to mesh together is a lot more difficult than I expected, and I didn’t expect it to be easy in the first place. The song sent through multiple iterations as I built upon what I had previously completed and tweaked some parts as I went along.
• As for the arrangement, I wasn’t going for anything particularly specific other than a similar vibe to the song I linked above, and the fact that I wanted it to be a little somber in tone, but not sad. The second part is a little more grandiose and triumphant, but not entirely happy either. For the last iteration, I created another transition to brign it all back to the original motif, with some modified elements so that it wasn’t all the same.
• The process was a lot of fun, but using voices in Allolib proves to be a little difficult when trying to get the sound I want. Having four different voices all playing notes at the same time can easily cause the overall sound to be extremely muddy and disorienting, so I was forced to bring the volume of two accompanying voices down in order for it to sound decent. Which is a shame because I really liked how the piece sounds when all voices are clear and can be heard. You can hear and see the original score here.
• The instruments were tweaked to further fit the vibe that I wanted, but I do wish they were a little less fuzzy.