VDZ Compilation 2010 readme

[This is the readme.txt from the rar at http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BTV5U05O ]

VDZ Compilation 2010
This compilation contains all of the music I've released in 2010 (only the released music, not all music I've made in 2010).
The Cyberharvest x Deck of Cards was added as a bonus track.

All of the songs in this compilation are (c) 2010 VDZ and licensed licensed under cc by-nc (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial). This means that:
-This music is free.
-You are allowed, and in fact encouraged, to share and distribute this music in any way you like.
-You are allowed to use this music in any non-commercial work (for example, using it as BGM for a game).
-You are allowed (and very much encouraged) to rearrange, remix, and do whatever to make a derivative work of this. If you make something like that, I'd love to hear about it.
-However, you must credit me for the creation of this music if this is reasonably possible (when hosting it on a site, leave the tags on the music or mention my name with the download, or if used in a game, put it in the boring credit roll at the end). Naturally, this only applies if you can be reasonably expected to do so (you wouldn't need to mention my name in a 30-second video using my music, that'd just be annoying to the viewers).
In the unlikely case somebody's interested in using my music for commercial purposes, that's possible too; just send me an e-mail. If there isn't much money involved, I'll probably let you use my music for free; the 'non-commercial' is just in place so that if somebody ever wanted to use my music for a purpose involving lots of money, I'd like to have a tiny share of that money.

This compilation contains two soundtracks from games I've worked on both as musician and as programmer: Legiona and ShootOut.
Legiona ( http://www.stack.nl/~vdz/legiona/ ) is a simple RPG game, consisting of only combat, map selection and item buying/selling. You fight monsters in traditional RPG style, and unlock more areas as you level up, eventually becoming able to fight the final boss.
ShootOut ( http://www.stack.nl/~vdz/shootout/ ) is a two-player online turn-based strategy game where both players control a character and try to kill eachother using weapons. However, the server is currently down, and the game unbalanced and buggy. It'll probably eventually relaunch when it's fixed. Probably.

Ruined World is a rearrangement of a track from Chrono Trigger, not a fully original creation. I do not hold all rights to it.



Tracks in this compilation:

-tindeck tracks-
-
240 seconds (warm feeling version)
Adventure Sewers
As Usual
Castle of Tears
Celtico
Creation
Current
Daily Life
Dead World
Depths Below the Oceans, Peaks Above the Mountains
Distant Voices
Eternity
Field of War
Floating Bubble
Forever
Golden Journey
Hills
Illusion
Infinite Castle
Legend
Location
Lo-Fi
Mist
New
Nine
Oddysey
Orchestral Rain
Paradise
Rocks
Room-2
Ruined World
Safety
Search
Shipwreck
Snowfield
Speed
Spiral
Tension
The Cyberharvest x Deck of Cards
The Unknown
Time
TindeckCollaboration-001
To The Stars
Tranquility
Twilight
Universe
Valley
White Dawn
Workshop

-legiona soundtrack-
Legiona
Combat
Battle Over
Out Shopping
Let's Go
Enemy Approaches
Enemy Skies
Fear
The Final Battle
Peace Returns

-shootout soundtrack-
Battle Start
Despair
Decisive Strike
Imminent Victory
Battle Won
Battle Lost
Surrounded by Walls
Sea Battle
Distorted Reality



Track-specific comments:

---
I liked the loops in this track, so I released separate MP3s containing only two loops, so people can listen to it over and over and over and over and over again.

-240 seconds (warm feeling version)-
This is a simple rearrangement of an earlier track I've made, 240 seconds ( http://freedownloads.last.fm/download/299313347/240%2Bseconds.mp3 ).

-Adventure Sewers-
The odd name of this track comes from the fact that it made me think of adventure and the fact that the preset used for one of the VSTs in this track was named 'Sewer Tube'.

-As Usual-
Composed for the En Bloc soundtrack. Will probably be used in En Bloc.

-Castle of Tears-
Actually a 2009 Q4 track, this one was released because I did not have the inspiration to create new tracks for a while.

-Celtico-
The chanting you hear is from a rather unique VST called the Deelay Lama. I had used it before on two unreleased tracks, but they didn't sound good enough. I was glad I was able to use the VST with good results with this track.

-Creation-
This was kind of a revolutionary track for me. Although I had known more or less what note velocity did, this was the first track where I actually used note velocity properly.

-Current-
Around the time I made this track, I was messing around with Vocaloid software, and tried to get a Vocaloid to sing with this track. However, I fail at Vocaloid and it sounded horrible, so my tracks remain vocalless.

-Daily Life-
Composed for the En Bloc soundtrack, but did not fit the story. It probably won't be in En Bloc.

-Depths Below the Oceans, Peaks Above the Mountains-
At the moment of writing, I still consider this to be the best track I've ever made. There's so much awesomeness in it.
The way it starts out sublty yet interestingly, the parts that are separate yet fitting each other, the way it keeps building up without becoming boring, and the amazing climax.
I love it. And then at the end, it also has a really nice outro. I hope I can make something this good again in 2011.

-Eternity-
I should use the saxophone more in my music. That is all.

-Floating Bubble-
This is definitely an interesting track. Whereas most of my tracks, even if they start out calm, eventually become wild and loud and exciting, this is just one long calming track.

-Hills-
I really like the chorus of this one, but I get the feeling I didn't manage to use its full potential.

-Legend-
I really like this one too. It's a bit like DBTOPATM in how it slowly builds up without becoming boring. However, it never becomes as awesome as DBTOPATM.

-Mist-
An electric guitar-ish sound?! Yes, it's been a long time since I used something like that. Maybe I should use that kind of sound more often?

-New-
I disovered inudge soon after composing this track, so I ended up making the chorus in inudge: http://inudge.net/#/3jnv7

-Nine-
Named Nine because it used a 9/4 time signature. Although, when I posted this track, somebody disagreed, saying it could easier be composed in 3/4 and 4/4. A complicated discussion ensued from which the conclusion was that I am almost completely ignorant when it comes to music theory. Well, it's fine as long as I know how to make stuff that sounds good, right?

-Oddysey-
Another case of VST naming, this track was made right after I discovered the DSK Odisea, and heavily features said VST.

-Paradise-
I used to be all enthusiastic about this track. Now it's a 'classic which isn't that amazing in hindsight' to me; it definitely was revolutionary (this track influenced tracks like To The Stars, Twilight and Depths Below The Oceans, Peaks Above the Mountains, and was a great influence on my music in general), but it has been surpassed multiple times now.

-Rocks-
Heavily inspired by Dimension Wall ( http://freedownloads.last.fm/download/209814692/Dimension%2BWall.mp3 ), one of my earliest tracks.
Rocks was made well before its release, but I don't remember when exactly. I seem to have lost its FLP file, so unfortunately it's not included in this compilation.
If you're wondering, the weird effects on the guitar-ish are made by tapping other notes while playing a note on a VST that can only play a single note at once; certain such VSTs respond interestingly to that. Dimension Wall was built all around this trick.

-Room-2-
The actual name of this track is 'Room', and it was made for the En Bloc soundtrack (and will probably be in En Bloc). I used to add the -X suffix to tracks to indicate which version it is, each improvement being a different version.

-Ruined World-
Improved version of the rearrangement I made a year earlier. Original track is the 2300 AD overworld music from legendary SNES RPG Chrono Trigger.
Currently in OCRemix's submission inbox...

-Shipwreck-
For some reason, I tend to name tracks heavily featuring the accordeon after sea-related things.

-Snowfield-
Christmas track. Bells seem to give a Christmasy vibe, and I think an organ like this also gives a bit of a wintery vibe. Or is that just me?

-Speed-
Right after release, somebody commented that the name didn't fit. That was because I quickly made up a name because someone on IRC wanted to hear it right after I finished composing it.

-Spiral-
There are odd tracks, and there are tracks that make me wonder whether it was really me who made them. I definitely remember making this one, though, so it must have been me.
I'm not quite sure how to describe this track. It's really nice, though. The sound is a bit raw, but it's so damn catchy I had no qualms about releasing it like this.

-The Cyberharvest x Deck of Cards-
A rearrangement/mash-up of my earlier tracks The Cyberharvest ( http://freedownloads.last.fm/download/344410890/The%2BCyberharvest.mp3 ) and Deck of Cards ( http://freedownloads.last.fm/download/352474122/Deck%2Bof%2BCards.mp3 ).
Bonus track for this compilation. It's not all that good, so it wouldn't see a normal release, but I guess it's nice if you like The Cyberharvest and/or Deck of Cards.

-The Unknown-
Experimental ambient track. Made solely to give off a creepy vibe.

-Time-
The clock sample as percussion was inspired by Takeshi Abo's Scheme (from the Remember11 soundtrack), which also features a clock-like sound as background percussion.

-TindeckCollaboration-001-
The idea was that posters from the Tindeck forums would download the latest version of the track, add or change something, then re-upload the track, raising the version number at the end by one. However, as the Tindeck forums died, so did the project.
I'd still like to see this idea executed succesfully sometime.

-To The Stars-
I almost didn't release this one because the mixing/mastering/whateveryoucallitwhenitjustsoundsbad sucks and I wasn't able to fix it. However, I liked it enough to eventually release it anyways. Another similar track, Elevator Mountain, didn't make the cut, however, and remains only on my hard drive.

-Tranquility-
People tend to think of beautiful quiet places when hearing the word tranquility (or destroying all enchantments for 3 mana, but that's a different thing), but it doesn't have to be like that.
Tranquility only means quiet/peaceful/serene. This song depicts a quiet post-apocalyptic world, where no artificial sounds are heard in the barren landscape...

-Universe-
This is basically what happens when you combine Current with Legend. The way it sounds comes from Current, whereas the style of composition comes from Legend.

-White Dawn-
Did you know Christmas is two days long in The Netherlands (the 25th and the 26th)? Neither did I know that Christmas was only one day in other countries.
This was the track I released for the second day of Christmas.

-Workshop-
I rarely use samples. When I decided to go experimental and create a track almost entirely composed of samples, this happened.
Other than the cello, all sounds in this track are samples from freesound.org.

-Enemy Skies-
I did a lot of interesting things with this, mainly with the Gross Beat effect VST. I should closely examine this track again to see what exactly I did, since I did multiple things I otherwise never do.

-The Final Battle-
Church organ? Check. Distorted drums? Check. Background choir? Check. Ominous chanting? Check. Fuck yes, I love tracks like this.
If you listen closely, you'll notice that from 1:24 onwards, the church organ plays the Legiona main theme. A fitting track for an epic final boss fight.
(Unfortunately, the actual final boss fight wasn't nearly as epic as the track suggests, but at least it was somewhat grand compared to the other battles in the game.)

-Despair-
I love this track. It's both great to listen to and a great 'YOU ARE LOSING' BGM.
For that reason, it was also released on Tindeck before the rest of the soundtrack was released on Last.fm.

-Imminent Victory-
Like Despair, I love how fitting this track is. It really gives off a 'you're going to win!' vibe.

-Surrounded by Walls-
This song uses the bass guitar as lead instrument, something I should do more often. However, the result of this is also that it sounds terrible on devices that don't play low notes properly, such as my laptop speaker.



I hope you enjoy my music (because, well, that's why musicians make music in the first place, isnt it?).
New tracks are released weekly on my Tindeck and announced through my Twitter (links below).
If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, criticism, pent-up hate or anything else regarding my music, feel free to e-mail me.

E-mail: veadezwaan@yahoo.co.uk
Tindeck: http://tindeck.com/users/VDZ
Twitter: http://twitter.com/VDZ