keyofw

Composer, performer, music director


I've been on a kick of creating soundtracks to games that don't exist. Here's the absolutely real, not fake Penultimate Fantasy III, an homage to NES JRPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. This is the title track for the game.

While the goal was to write something emulating the style and sound of the NES, I didn't actually restrict myself entirely to the hardware. I kept myself to 4 of the 5 available "sound channels" and used only the waveforms possible on an NES, but after exporting the sheet music to MIDI I put it all in a DAW and used the Magical 8-bit plugin VST to produce the final audio, which means there are some things that are either extraordinarily difficult to do on an NES or just downright impossible. For instance, any volume adjustments in this track were done by affecting the attack and release of the MIDI in a way the NES couldn't actually do. Otherwise this is supposed to sound like what you would hear from the hardware.

This being the third such project of mine, I wanted to really stretch myself compositionally. Part of that involved writing more complex harmonies and melodies, with tracks that featured moods not normally appearing in JRPG soundtracks. I thought I was so clever with this one but it turns out Dragon Quest IV already did all of this. Oops.

Thanks for listening, friends.


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