I uploaded a new piece of music to YouTube earlier today called The Stormbringer’s Apprentice:
I write in the description:
This piece provides the themes for a villain called Stormov, from my book Insane Fantasy. He’s an apprentice for the mysterious “Stormbringer”, and helps to entice new recruits for his master’s evil plans. His themes are mostly dark, but there is a hint of adventure in there as well, as he lures potential helpers with temptations of worldly power.
Also, this is my first video to feature my own attempt at programming my own custom “music animation machine” programmed in Java with jMonkeyEngine. The frame rate is not as smooth as I’d like it to be (I’m still screen-capturing it), but it’s not horrible at least. Anyway, I think I’ll enjoy playing around with it. Obviously it’s inspired by Stephen Malinowski’s work, as I’ve been using his decade-old “Music Animation Machine” program for a long time now.
As mentioned above, this piece is animated with my own custom “music animation machine.” I may release the source code for it at some point for anyone who’s interested in it, but you’d have to download jMonkeyEngine to compile it and run it yourself; I’m not really interested in making into a standalone program right now, as I hope to continue fooling around with the code. The code is also sloppy and contains features I never finished programming, as it’s all part of an ongoing MIDI sequencer project. Also, it doesn’t actually even play MIDI files… it only makes the shapes and animations based on a MIDI file, which is all I need it to do as I sync videos with tracks recorded from Overture in Windows Movie Maker before adding titles and uploading to YouTube.
In case you missed it, last week I posted this track called Storybook Overture:
So that makes five tracks completed so for my upcoming album (which I have no idea what I’ll name yet): Lullaby of the Westwind Woods, The Storm Cometh, A Stargazer’s Lullaby, Storybook Overture, and The Stormbringer’s Apprentice. Together they amount to over 20 minutes, so I’m over 1/3rd finished the album!
In other news, I’ve had several people email me over the last few months asking about whatever happened to the melody generator. Well, I was contacted by a shady underground group that secretly controls the world, and they warned me that the world simply is not ready for something so powerful.
Actually, the project just got to be too frustrating. It was getting enough interest that people were thirsty to learn how it worked, yet not enough interest to fund a Kickstarter, and I just didn’t (and don’t) have the time to give it the attention it needs. I of course haven’t given up on it, but it’s on the back-burner for now until I can get my life sorted a bit more. In the meantime, I’d just rather spend my free time writing music and books and programming games, as those projects tend to actually generate some income. Not much, but something. So I have absolutely no idea when I’ll be able to get back to working on the melody generator. Could be later this year, could be two or three years down the road.
I have an email list here if you’d like to be updated when I actually return to the project: Melody Generator News.
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