You may be more familiar with the Joypad Records moniker that provided licensing and distribution for Pokemon: Kanto Symphony and Lindsey Stirling‘s recently released Skyrim Cover.

What does this mean for me:

• I will continue to write music under “Josh Whelchel,” and score for video games. I am an extremely passionate composer and am lucky to be working with truly talented musicians and developers on Castle Story, Scrolls, Kromaia, and others. I recently released the soundtrack to Rise of the Blobs (the music is fun but CHECK OUT THE GAME!).

• re:discover will be helping grow the Bundle Dragon platform that I created in 2012.  Their team is hugely knowledgable on all the things a programmer is oft not, such as marketing and legal matters. More importantly, Bundle Dragon could simply not continue to exist as a one man effort, and I could not think of any group of individuals better suited to help launch the platform.

• re:discover also now owns and operates the Game Music Bundle brand under my supervision – and this makes a lot of sense. With their Joypad Records efforts, the re:discover team has been growing their catalog at an alarming pace and have enabled video game musicians to release their music on popular platforms like iTunes and Amazon without needing to rely on an anonymous aggregator such as CDBaby or Tunecore. Consequently, those artists (Disasterpeace, Hyperduck SoundWorks, and many more) are making more per sale than ever before. …and I’m ALL about the artists making more money for their work, duh!

• FMBlastr is not dead – it’s being actively developed and should arrive in Reason Racks very soon.

There is more news coming soon, and I can not WAIT to share it with everyone.

If you are a fellow video game composer or interested individual, do not hesitate to contact us about getting on iTunes and the other big platforms via Joypad Records (it is a NON-EXCLUSIVE agreement, and you can still do ANYTHING with your music – they can even pay multiple rights holders through preassigned splits).  Even more impressing: Joypad Records can legally license and pay publishers for cover songs.  In the past, I know our community has largely ignored this issue, but now the solution is easy and affordable (and hey, you don’t have to pay ANY large sum upfront for digital sales – goodbye HFA!).

Check out the full press release on A Cappella Records’ blog.

Listen below:

It should be no surprise that Mattias and I have been hard at work on the Scrolls soundtrack.  But we’ve had something else up our sleeves as well – Castle Story.  We recently completed scoring the trailer to this amazing looking RTS by Sauropod Studio.  I, for one, am extremely pleased with the results.  Watch the video above, and if you’d like to support the game and help it reach its fundraising goal of $80,000, take a walk over to Kickstarter - or just tell ALL of your friends. (;

This has been one of my first two big projects using Reason 6.5 – I’d feel rude if I didn’t share with everyone how much I love this product.  Having literally infinite control over the sounds and overall tone of everything you write is incredibly empowering.  It’s also made collaborating with Mattias very easy and hassle free (thanks as well to Dropbox).

Thanks!

Quick update: It looks like the project was funded within a number of hours. Woo!
Update 2: Mattias and I took the plunge and got a bandcamp together.

Mattias and I have been working on the Scrolls soundtrack together, and really started digging recently around the alpha release.  One of the things we’re really striving to do is find the right pacing for a strategic CCG atmosphere.  Games can be paced anywhere from 5 to over thirty minutes (and way longer, of course) – and the rhythm of a conflict may change dramatically throughout.

We initially wanted to stray away from traditional “epic” style battle pieces (such as what’s heard in Ravenmark) – imagine playing a thirty minute match to something like that.  Simply not appropriate.  Instead, we’re playing with the oriental/ethnic flare mixed with Fantasy to create a fitting atmosphere and sprinkling a bit of tension throughout.  We have plans to incorporate more dynamic aspects and ambiences as well, but at the current point in development, things just aren’t there yet (but they will be!).  Mattias actually crafted several versions of the beautiful Deck Building theme that can be heard in game that alternate with primary element of the deck you are building – and you will hear those soon. As alpha players may have also noticed, music currently doesn’t loop (which it shouldn’t), but is tailed by silence – this will eventually be resolved with musical ambiences, alternating tracks, and more.

We’d love to hear from the players and fans of Scrolls about what you think we should do, and what you would like to hear.  I’m attaching a track that Mattias and I co-wrote that is intended to alternate with what you currently hear in the game.  Let us know what you think below.

Scrolls – Ancients (Cave Battle)

Ravenmark has an expansion coming soon, so I figured I should show off some of the new music. Here is a character theme, one of four tracks that was written for the update. Enjoy!

When the update comes out, I will add the tracks to the soundtrack, and lower the price (I might even make it free for a time).

I’ve been busy with lots of new projects and hopefully I’ll have things to share sooner than later, thanks for staying interested.

Cheers!

Just scroll down to see the “DAW of the Future”

The debate of MAC vs. PC has long been a problem among digital composers. On the one hand, Apple’s MAC OS provides so many usability enhancements over its Windows counterpart that it is easy to see why so many composers would prefer the clean and uniform interface over the often messy and disgruntled Windows experience (although, with the advent of Windows 8 and metro, this may be changing). The other common complaint about PCs are their aptitude for crashing. On the other hand, since I switched over to a MAC a few months ago, I haven’t experienced a single inspiration-shattering crash or memory fault (knock on wood!).

For any power composer, however, the drawbacks of Apple’s system are in the price-tag. To build an Apple iMac to the same specifications as its PC counterpart costs a modest amount more – one of the most frequently spoken drawbacks of the Apple brand.

So how does one achieve the ultimate modern composing experience – the ease of use of the Macintosh operating system with the power and affordability of a custom-built PC? Well, simply put – the answer is unfortunately: you don’t. But I’ve found a way to come close! The answer is to use both.

For as long as I’ve been composing on a modern computer, I’ve been in search of that ultimate composition experience. I had read about composers who had amazing and elaborate orchestral templates where all of the samples were preloaded into computers separate of their master workstation. It conjures an image not so different from how I imagine Pixar’s render farms look – of course, in reality, it need not be so complicated.

Thanks to software like Vienna Ensemble Pro, it has become possible to very easily drive a cross-platform sample machine (in this case, an affordable PC equipped with 7200RPM hard drives that don’t cost a fortune and lots of DDR3 RAM that you don’t have to breach a warranty to install). What’s even better is that it finally gave me an excuse to create that orchestral template – one where all of the my string sections are elaborately setup (thanks, LASS, for the groupings!). The secondary advantage to this setup is that I can run my CPU intensive reverb (in this case, Altiverb 7) on my MAC host running Cubase 6.5 and not worry about any buffer under-runs or extensive latency which would normally be created by this setup.

The obvious disadvantage here, of course, is that it’s kind of a pain to control the PC. You can either have it plugged into an entirely separate monitor, keyboard, and mouse, or you can remotely control it via VNC or alternatives like Logmein. I’ll save you some trouble – nothing will kill your workflow like having to jump over to a separate computer – it’s frustrating and can kill your workflow when you want to perform the simple task of loading an extra instrument. And VNC: slow, even on a wired LAN.

The best way I’ve found to control a remote sample machine is to use Logmein.com and an iPad. The touch interface turns out to be incredibly intuitive, and controlling Kontakt (or other software) turns out to be pretty easy on the device. Of course, before I made the realization, I was using Logmein.com in a browser window – this works fine and was actually faster than VNC in my experience. The whole process of switching back and forth between the java applet and Cubase, however, was beginning to give me a headache – and without two monitors I’d have deemed it impossible.

So, in conclusion, I’d like to present my DAW of the Future for the professional composer (of course, many of these things can be substituted, and there are plenty of arguments for why a second computer would never be needed which I tend to agree with – this is obviously for those of whom prefer the user experience provided by OS X):

Moogle (PC)

• Windows 7 Professional (64 bit)
• Intel i7 CPU (3.07ghz) – a lot cheaper from newegg.com than in a new iMac
• 24gb of DDR3 RAM – also cheaper in a PC
• 2 x 1TB 7200RPM Western Digital HDDs - Samples on one, OS and projects on the other (important to separate them, see below)
• 1 x 120gb Corsair SSD drive - contrary to most people, I have my most common samples here (LASS + and EWQLSO) – this makes loading FAST and no worries of disk skips. Common practices encourage installation of your OS and vitals on this drive. I’ve had no problems with this and things are still very snappy.
• Native Instruments Komplete – namely Kontakt is the big player here
• Vienna Ensemble Pro – for AUDIO and MIDI over LAN
• Logmein.com (free!)
• M-Audio Delta I/O – I technically do not need this anymore!

In my case, this setup was mostly facilitated by the fact that I had already built my powerful PC and I was in need of a MAC for development. (plus – have you used Sparrow for email yet?)

Also, because I can only “see” my PC through a remote screen, I’ve reduced my Skyrim playtime by 100%! That means I have more time to WORK!

The soundtrack is available for PRE-ORDER now, which currently costs $3.99. The pre-order comes with 4 tracks which you can listen to online now. Currently, I plan on raising the price to $4.99 on release, so this is a good way to save a dollar and buy something small and sweet for your parents with all that saved cash.

To further entice you, here is a FIFTH unheard track from Ravenmark, which you can download for free here:

Climactic (Battle Jeopardy!)

The soundtrack consists of ten tracks which rely heavily on the harpsichord. The styles are pretty diverse within, featuring a fughetta (short informal fugue), toccata, and even some quirky jazzish stuff. Let me know what you think!

“The soundtrack is very medieval sounding with a bit of techno beats thrown in. If more classic/medieval/renaissance music is your thing, you’ll love this soundtrack” – the independent games musician network