It occurs to me that I never made the new Glitch Theme that I finished earlier available here. So, let's fix that, shall we?
Enjoy!
New Music from Solatrus
Hey all! Been out of town recently, and in addition to being inspired to create an ambient album inspired by the urban cityscape of Los Angeles, I'm also happy to see that Solatrus has update his site with a new Starbound cue: "Forsaken Grotto":
I'm really impressed by this cue, and I think it makes a great addition to the soundtrack. So, you know-- go give him some money! :)
New Ambient Album: "City Parallax"
City Parallax features just under 1 hour of ambient music inspired by urban landscape. Each track focuses on the intersection of 3 elements of the cityscape, using mellow piano improvisations above electronic substructures.
All tracks uploaded as original 24-bit, 48Khz source export WAV files.
Hylotl Music!
I decided that the previous Hylotl cue was too big and not nearly unique enough for the Hylotl race, so I started from scratch. Today, we finished it up:
"But," you ask, "what about the other Hylotl cue you wrote?". I'm going to pull it for now, because it doesn't really fit with what Hylotl needs to feel like. But I thought I'd make it available, for free-- just click, download, and enjoy! You can also listen to the original Hylotl track below, if you'd rather just stream it:
New Royalty-Free Track: "Ominous Underscore"
I have a new royalty-free track that just got approved at AudioJungle: "Ominous Underscore". Description and sample below:
Dark, ambient music perfect for video games, film, or any project that needs ominous, ethereal music. Featuring full strings, brass, and electronic percussion, this piece fits nicely in the modern orchestral style featured in modern action films and games. Clocking in at 3:31, there are several statements of main themes, giving you and your project editors flexibility to fade in and out as you choose, and loop beneath gameplay, menus, or other static elements.
Royalty-Free Music
I recently built a page to advertise royalty-free music I've written. Aside from sales of the Starbound Orchestral OST, my primary income from music composition comes from licenses of my music for games, videos, and other projects.
If you've already bought an OST (or gotten it with the preorder) and are still interested in supporting me as a composer, this is a great way to show your support and get great music for use in your projects-- whatever the size. (By using the links on my site to get to your content, you really help out-- in addition to getting 50% of your license fee, I also get a referral kickback for pointing you to AudioJungle).
Licenses come in two flavors: regular, and extended. Basically, regular licenses work well if you're doing something simple that isn't sold-- background music on YouTube videos, music for Twitch livestreams, etc. Extended licenses are great if you're looking to include the music in a product-- an iOS game, for example.
If you use my music in one of your projects or videos, make sure to let me know! I'd love to promote them here.
Below are the most recent tracks. I have several in the review queue as well, which will be added to the list as they are approved.
Preview of WIP Starbound Cues
I've been working on a few cues inspired by the races in Starbound, starting with the Novakid and the Hylotl races. While I'm still finalizing each piece, I thought I'd post the most complete versions of each for the community, since so many people were asking.
Below are non-finalized versions of each. Please note, we haven't necessarily decided if/how/where/when these will be in the game, but at the very least, you can be assured I'm using these music materials for each of the races:
Novakid: "I was the Sun (Before it was Cool)"
(Thanks to Jon Dodson for the awesome title!):
Hylotl: "The Eternal Tide"
Hopefully the community enjoys these pieces-- I'm hoping to write at least 1 specific piece for each race to give them a theme and a musical style. They'll be written using a pretty standard orchestral instrumentation, and feature a unique melody for each race.
Support Starbound's Composers!
Good news everyone! A few days after I put up the Starbound Orchestral OST for sale, Solatrus, one of the other Starbound contributors, has made his tracks available for purchase as well. We've been overwhelmed by the huge amount of support that the preorder has garnered, and while we're aware that your preorder came with a soundtrack, if you feel inclined, this is the best way to support the Starbound composers directly. We're working hard on adding tracks-- including two new tracks on the Orchestral OST and soon to be released work from Solatrus, including a tremendously epic remix of "Stellar Formation".
If you've already contributed to the pre-order: thank you! We hope you love the music that came with your order, and we're working hard on making that soundtrack even better. If you haven't-- consider supporting development through the preorder process, or, if you're inclined, by purchasing music from us, the composers:
Solatrus: Selections from Starbound
Curtis Schweitzer: Starbound, the Orchestral OST
Finally-- thank you! The support of the community, especially the huge amount of kind notes, encouraging emails, positive tweets, and supportive forum postings has kept us going. I know I speak on behalf of all the Starbound development team in saying that you are a breathtakingly awesome community, and we look forward to getting this game-- and its music-- into your hands as soon as we can!
$1 Million
Starbound Orchestral OST
I've been given the ok to sell my contributions to the the Starbound project here on my site, and, after a few days of collecting tracks, editing album art, and uploading files, I can happily say that the Starbound Orchestral OST is available. $10 gets you over 4 hours of orchestral and synthetic music from Starbound, including all of the "Experimental" tracks originally available on Soundcloud. Included in this album are two new orchestral tracks-- "Nomads (Passacaglia)" and "Accretion Disc".
All of the mp3's are high quality-- 192kbps for the Experimental tracks and 320kbps for the Orchestral tracks. You can listen to all of the tracks at the OST page before your purchase-- all purchases are handled through Stripe. You'll need to download the album in sections-- with such high bitrates, it takes up more than 500MB, which is larger than my ecommerce system will handle in a single file. Just follow the instructions to redeem Parts 2 and 3 of the soundtrack.
And of course: Enjoy!
Track listing:
Horsehead Nebula 1 7:36
Stellar Formation 2 7:49
Eridanus Supervoid 3 7:33
Haiku 4 7:36
Cygnus X1 5 13:23
Psyche 6 5:26
Large Magellanic Cloud 7 6:14
Epsilon Indi 8 10:58
Hymn to the Stars 9 4:38
Europa 10 6:05
Atlas 11 4:07
Casiopeia 12 6:05
Mercury 13 6:26
Temple of Kluex 14 8:36
Mira 15 20:05
Procyon 16 9:09
Blue Straggler 17 5:43
Nomads (Passacaglia) 18 10:08
Accretion Disc 19 4:58
Tranquility Base 20 11:55
Vast, Immortal Suns 21 4:05
(Experimental OST) Arctic Battle 1 22 2:24
(Experimental OST) Arctic Battle 2 23 1:55
(Experimental OST) Arctic Battle 3 24 1:40
(Experimental OST) Arctic Constellation 1 25 11:04
(Experimental OST) Arctic Constellation 2 26 9:25
(Experimental OST) Arctic Exploration 1 27 4:16
(Experimental OST) Arctic Exploration 2 28 4:00
(Experimental OST) Crystal Battle 1 29 3:08
(Experimental OST) Crystal Exploration 1 30 3:04
(Experimental OST) Crystal Exploration 2 31 4:21
(Experimental OST) Desert Battle 2 32 3:38
(Experimental OST) Desert Exploration 1 33 2:30
(Experimental OST) Desert Exploration 2 34 3:06
(Experimental OST) Glitch 35 3:20
(Experimental OST) Inviolate 36 2:47
(Experimental OST) Lava Exploration 2 37 4:48
(Experimental OST) Lava: Exploration 1 38 3:20
(Experimental OST) Ocean Battle 1 39 1:22
(Experimental OST) Ocean Exploration 2 40 3:23
(Experimental OST) Tentacle Battle 1 41 1:27
(Experimental OST) Tentacle Exploration 1 42 2:40
(Experimental OST) Planetarium 43 4:18
(Experimental OST) On the Beach at Night-- Original Version 44 4:17
Pixel Portraits
Switching to Squarespace
I have long maintained my own Wordpress-powered site, and before that, joined Wordpress.com a few weeks after they opened to the public. I've built Wordpress sites for employers, friends, and even spent some time running my own hardware out of my own home to keep a WP-powered site online.
In other words, I know Wordpress. I know a little PHP. I'm pretty good with Linux (or at the very least, I'd like to think I can keep a secure LAMP machine up and running without having to rely on anyone but my ISP).
So, why Squarespace?
I've heard a lot about the service-- I've been an avid listener to This Week in Tech and its associated Leo Laporte-hosted podcasts since long before Squarespace started their advertising binge there. Even though I've been a loyal customer of Laughing Squid for several years (and would recommend them wholeheartedly to anyone who wants fantastic Wordpress hosting), I kept finding myself wishing I didn't have to manage plugins or run Wordpress updates or go buy premium Wordpress themes just to keep a modern site online. Wishing that I had a simple, working WYSIWYG editor that didn't insert random " " into my text, that actually produced the same layout every time-- without the need for endless boxee plugins or markdown editors or irritatingly unreliable HTML5 audio players.
Add to that the fact that e-commerce on Wordpress can be a nightmare-- do a search for "wordpress e-commerce" and see what I mean-- and I finally just got tired of it. Tired of editing PHP and CSS by hand, tired of hearing about how easy it was to do thing things I wanted to do, if only I moved to Squarespace.
So I tried it. And within 24 hours, I had a site that I was really happy with. Editors that I was familiar with. E-commerce ready to turn on with the click of a button.
Call me dumb, or a n00b, or lazy. Its probably true. But I've built a Squarespace site in less time that it used to take me to hunt down that plugin I wanted so badly, or find a premium theme that worked with the most recent version of Wordpress. I bought 1 beautiful stock image with some money I'd made on AudioJungle, and I was good to go.
It was that easy.
And I've never been happier with my site.