Black Castle Ruins, live

Finally, I finished a live version of the first music demo:


And that is why I say no to samples.

I'm actually not sure how I feel about the timpani anymore, but I figured I'd leave it in. I have versions exported both ways, actually, and put the one without timp on my personal soundcloud. When I first wrote the piece I felt like it needed something to push it forward, but when you have a real person playing instead of just the samples, the tension is there on its own. On the other hand, I often neglect percussion, which rarely seems to be a popular choice, so I'm probably missing the point.

I wrote second short piece weeks ago that I meant to record at the same time as this one, but it was too much to do all at once. I've been recording with some small regularity lately, though, so at least setup and settings don't seem like as big of an undertaking anymore.

The next one will be a campfire/party sort of piece - the kind of thing you get together and play for entertainment with other village people who feel like socializing, drinking, and maybe dancing. Incredibly different from what I just posted. After that I think I have enough understanding of the workings of the game to take a stab at some sort of atmosphere or looping piece that could theoretically work in an actual gameplay scenario. Then I guess we'll see if anything starts to settle in and indicate a good real direction to go, or make more crazy things and just see what happens (nose-flute playing boars? eh? eh?).