ZATH Audio

A soundtrack approaches…

zath — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:58:17 +0000

Here’s some music I made for an iPhone game a while back. I’m not sure if it was all used or not, but I had fun making it and I like the way it turned out.

Sci-Fi Superheroes by matthewsteele

Trailer!

zath — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 12:45:48 +0000

I made the music for a trailer. It’s for the Dungeons of Dredmor expansion, Realm of the Diggle Gods. The trailer was produced by Ian Strandberg of Verbal Processing

Things for class

zath — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 20:44:06 +0000

Made both of these during/after class to build technique in Finale and Digital Performer. w00t!
Something for Class by matthewsteele

Learning DP 2 by matthewsteele

I don’t think I’ll be uploading everything I do for class to the Soundcloud, but it’s received so little love for the last year or so.

Bandcamp folks,

zath — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 01:24:41 +0000

the answer to the question is: YES*

* For those of you who did not approach from http://zath.bandcamp.com/
Go there, and check out the sidebar for the question. Er, if you want to!

Try to deTECT it.

zath — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 23:44:18 +0000

Hello friends,
I was trawling my old music collection and found a chiptune remix of a song you may recognize. Check it oot!
It was one of a handful of tunes for a PC game that didn’t quite materialize, attached to the webcomic Goats. It had something to do with kittens and poptarts, and for whatever reason we decided that all the music should be chiptune remixes of well-known 80s songs.

The above link takes you to 8bitcollective, where a couple of other remixes of mine are held. Enjoy!

New site design

zath — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 20:04:50 +0000

Heya, folks. I spent a few hours fiddling with the site design and made it prettier. I hope everything works the way it should. I’m still trying to add twitter functionality, so the sidebar
(over there ——> )
will show my recent @zath tweets. I’m also tooling around with a Contact page, because ultimately this site should be a portfolio site and allow potential clients to reach me for a quote, yeah? :)

Soundtrack!

zath — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 07:48:06 +0000

Short update for big news. The Dungeons of Dredmor Soundtrack has been released at my Bandcamp site. The game will be released on Steam in a couple of days. Exciting!

Genesis tracker?

zath — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:12:34 +0000

What I don’t understand is that if TFM Music Maker works as a music-tracker for 2 YM2203 chips (sounds like the FM in a Genesis but monaural) and Mod2PSG can work as a music-tracker for SN76489 chips (the PSG in a Genesis or Sega Master System or Game Gear), why they can’t make a single music-tracker that has both kinds of chips, and some kind of fake DAC, and arbitrary stereo? That way, in order to make Genesis chiptunes, I wouldn’t have to match two different kind of tempo settings in two programs and, even after that, artificially stretch a wave output from one to match the other?!

I suppose the answer is that the goal of emulation is to make the end result authentic. So they’d rather make a tracker with one YM2612 chip that is capable of working with the SN76489 and its own DAC rather than all that jury rigging. And perhaps the speed/tempo settings on YM2203 and SN76489 chips are incompatible but the YM2612 can control the SN76489 or they’re both controlled by the Genesis central processor… or something. I should ask somebody who knows about this kind of stuff.

Reality selected

zath — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 05:28:47 +0000

The alternate reality that I inhabit is the one where I don’t get $ quickly enough to join the program this year, and then the program falls through because too many other people have the same problem. I am told that there are plans to try and get the PNWFS certificate program attached to a university of some sort in order to become accredited, so the banks will consider all students as “in-school” and maybe even allow students to obtain federal financial aid. If this happens, I will do my best to go next year!

Infrequent blogger

zath — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:50:54 +0000

So! I had that recital I mentioned in my previous post. It was a collection of computer music, a piece for cello and “tape”, a film score, and the bridges piece. I need to revise the film score so it can be recorded and accompany the film on the soundtrack.

Reed and I will be moving to Seattle before September 7, because that’s when the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring program starts. Totally awesome! I’m currently immersed in a world of apartment hunting, which is exciting. I like to think about how this decision would influence a lot of potential outcomes, and therefore would theoretically work as a central point from which several alternate realities spring. But that’s really nerdy so I’ll just ponder that one on my own.

The school itself will be on Mercer Island. We may end up moving into an apartment on the island itself, which is cool. I’ve never lived on an island before (unless you say “This Island Earth” but then that’s less unique because there’s X Billion others in the same boat). The alternative would be to find a place in Seattle or Bellevue and then ride the bike to class, which I would also be fine with. There’s also the question of finding some kind of part-time weekend or evening job to make ends meet.

I recently completed a 4-week class on the history of electronic music. Interesting stuff. My appreciation for cerebral music is increasing, but I think I’ll still be able to handle “that sounds nice”. The class was taught by Christopher Penrose, who is working on a spectral synth for the iPad called Synthtronica.

I’m sure there’s more to say but I’m not sure what it is just yet.

Here’s a youtube video of one of the pieces I presented at my recital: