Now Playing: The Junkyard
Topic: Original Music
Remember back to the early 1990s (if you can, that is) -- there was a really nifty line of action figures called the Incredible Crash Dummies. They were, unfortunately, discontinued in the US in 1995 and Europe in 2001. However, they stuck around long enough to justify the production of a 21-minute-long Incredible Crash Dummies cartoon, rendered entirely in CGI (the character models came from the television advertisements).
Without re-writing my webpage on this subject, the Crash Dummies were an integral part of my childhood. In fact, Jim Morgan's theme to the pilot Crash Dummies episode was a key factor in my deciding to become composer.
However, even though 1993 seems very recent to me, it actually hasn't been 1993 for 18 years! Eighteen! Someone born on the day that The Incredible Crash Dummies aired will graduate from high-school this year! The line of action figures, though, is a bit older. It will turn 20 in, I think, November.
So, rather than let this momentous occasion pass unnoticed, I decided to use my Game Maker to make a Crash Dummies adventure game. Whilst the game, itself, is not finished (I'm likely to put it up on my other website when it is), I have finished with the overworld theme. And, to commemorate the niftiest line of toys since ROB, I've decided to post the theme's MIDI here.
The Junkyard
The game's title is Spin's Junkyard Adventure. As the name implies, it involves Spin exploring the Junkyard (where I always imagined that Junkman's lair was) in order to find all of Slick's parts. The Junkyard is one-half of the game's entire soundtrack (thus far, anyway) -- it plays during gameplay.
The song is based on Koji Kondo's principle that a level's background score should reflect the type of adventure the player-character is likely to find there. It's only a minute long, meaning that it can make two or three complete loops by the time the player finishes the level. Since it's likely to loop many times by the end of the game, I made sure that it wouldn't get terribly irritating. A lot of upstart Flash game composers make the mistake of writing short songs for long levels which include many of the standard MIDI sins -- putting a saw-wave in the melody line, trying to make the GM1 Distortion Guitar sound like its real-world counterpart (lots of slides and vibrato), and using a two-measure drum loop, for example.
I don't know the exact genre into which The Junkyard fits, but I used no synth-lead or synth-pad sounds at all, just the pseudo-acoustic ones. Plus, the chord on which the song is built, C-minor 6 (notated "Cm6") suggests neither the major key ("happy") nor the minor key ("sad"), but rather a sort of stealthy, misterioso situation.
The melody isn't really based on anything but the chosen chord. I suppose that parallels could be found between it and Morgan's Crash Dummies theme if one looks hard enough, but no reference was intended.
Also, the song is intended to loop ad infinitum.
I may, in the future, expand on this song to make it longer and more complex, but for the moment, I think it serves its purpose as a game underscore.
I appreciate feedback, also. So, if you liked it, didn't like it, think you can make it better, what-have-you, don't hesitate to post a comment.
Merci beaucoup. Rétournez a demain, peut-être.
