Howdy doody, y'all! 🤠

It's been a while! In this newsletter I've got quite a few bits of...well...news I want to share! There's new free stuff, an AWESOME new Pigments preset bank I made with Jason Graves (Dead Space, Far Cry Primal, Call of Duty), a fun live stream you might get some good info out of, and something very special that I can't believe I actually got to do.

Let's get into it!

New Pigments Bank: BLACKLIGHT

Check It Out Here!

Throughout my time on YouTube and stuff I've gotten a lot of absolutely insane opportunities and connections but this is something I NEVER thought I'd be able to say: I'm now actually pretty good friends with one of my favorite video game composers, Jason Graves.

If you've never heard of Jason, I'm almost certain you've heard his music in something if you're a gamer.

He's an insanely talented composer that's worked on many of my favorite games, and he's an incredibly nice dude too.

Long story short: we were hanging out at his house late last year and noodling around in his studio sampling a bunch of weird ideas. Then we asked ourselves the all too important question "wait...what are we actually going to do with these sounds?"

And so, BLACKLIGHT was born. This is brand-new library for Arturia Pigments 6 featuring 81 new custom samples recorded and processed by myself and Jason Graves and a whopping 120 custom presets.

Of course, all presets are fully macro'd and feature modwheel assignments so you can download them and do the most important thing of all right out of the box: make cool sh*t.

For those of you who want to check it out before buying or can't afford the full pack (all good, trust me I've been there) we've also released a free version with 20 presets that you can grab!

Free Version Here!

AURAS:ROOMS

As you probably know, last year I announced that I wanted to make my own free series of instruments since Spitfire (and basically every other company, I swear) has turned everything that was once good and free into stupid subscription based garbage with some kind of awful DRM sentinel portal bloatware.

So, I launched the 'auras' series with one simple motto:

**No Strings Attached. No Subscription Bullsh*t. Just Sound.**

That said - it turns out that making free instrument libraries all by yourself is incredibly time consuming, expensive, and tedious. But, it's incredibly important to me to make these tools free and accessible to everyone so that people can do awesome things with them for free.

I'm not sure why I didn't figure that out before dedicating myself to this project but...whatever.

ANYWAYS...

It's been a while since I've had time to work on one of these releases, but I'm really happy to say the newest edition of the 'auras' project is here!

Meet AURAS:ROOMS

Get It Here!

This new instrument was recorded at Sweetwater's campus in Fort Wayne, Indiana and I had one single goal: sample as much as possible from every room of the largest music store in the United States...in one day.

Last September, I spent a bit over $10,000 to finance a month-long road trip (and all the gear it took) to record the first few releases of the 'auras' project and this is release #2 from that road trip.

That means I'm only...6 months late but I mean hey, I'm one person and this is a LOT of work, okay?

It's out now, it runs in the FREE Decent Sampler plugin, and it's all yours as always for the low, low price of $0.

More releases are coming soon, so stay tuned!

Game Composition Live Stream

Play The Free Demo On Steam!

As I write this email, Steam's 'Next Fest' is going on! It's one of my favorite Steam events because TONS of indie publishers release demos for their games and I almost always discover some weird hidden gem that I get insanely hyped for.

Usually during Next Fest, I'll pick a game that doesn't have music quite yet and write some concept music on a stream. This is a fun way to showcase indie game projects that I really love, and a fun way for you to tune in and learn about the process of writing music for video games and media.

I've actually got two streams planned, but the first one is for Hypogea which is a neat platformer game where you're a little robot thing that jumps around and explores a crazy underground labyrinth. It's a game that's absolutely dripping with atmosphere and I think is a very interesting one to write some concept music for!

If you want to learn about making music for games or just hang out and chat, you can tune in here!

Stream Link

New Course Coming (VERY) Soon!

Last, but not least: I am CRAZY excited to say that my course breaking down the score of Avowed is almost here!

I can't believe Obsidian and Microsoft gave this project the green light, but they did...somehow.

It was a good amount of negotiating, but in this course I'll be breaking down the entire score I did for the game including all the stuff not on the OST release!

Believe it or not I actually wrote, edited, mixed, and mastered the entire score from my spare bedroom studio in my house - and now I want to show you exactly how I did it.

This course goes WAY into the weeds from preproduction and planning, my initial pitch demo, studio and session prep, into theme writing, dynamic music system design and composition, and just about everything else in between including some interviews with the producer of the OST!

The entire course is over 10 hours of content and dives into every excruciating detail of how the soundtrack was made and hopefully will act as a great resource for those of you who pick it up to learn about not only the process of making music for games but what it takes to think like a game composer and work on massive projects like this.

Can't wait to share it with you - more details (and a special newsletter member discount, of course) coming soon!

That's All, Y'all

That was a long one, I know. But it's been a long time since I've sent a newsletter and I've kinda been under a rock working on all this stuff so I figured it's best to catch you up on all the happenings while I've still got time to make a newsletter!

I've got some other really wicked things in the pipeline that I'm excited to share with you all, but for now I have to go get back to work on those things so that they actually get done and I can share them with you...😅

Thanks for hanging in there with me - enjoy the new free instrument, I hope you dig the Pigments library, and more stuff is on the way...eventually!

Cheers! ☕

~venus

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