Takoyaki Surprise OST by Meredosia

\This soundtrack was commissioned to me by my friend Matt Edson of Red Triangle Games. Takoyaki Surprise is an action game where you control both and octopus and his swordfish companion to fight off evil food and save the princess. Of all my releases, this probably had the longest production time, mostly because I was writing the soundtrack as the game was being made. And the game took about two years. This turned out to be a good thing because I was able to learn new skills while working on the project and apply them when it came time to get everything finalized for release. I was even able to get my friend Emily Timm (of Sun Urchins and Ghost Mice) to sing lead on the credits' song.

Typically with rock albums, I'll write the songs and make a quick demo, get around to recording drums, get around to recording guitars, and get around to doing vocals. This soundtrack was sequenced with OpenMPT where the performances are perfect as soon as you type in your desired notes, so there was no 'getting around' to doing anything. At times I tried to get ahead of the project and ended up having to start songs all over, which is fine. It's never a waste of time to write music. And you'd better believe those scrapped songs are going to show up somewhere.

You might notice how most songs are themed around a different type of food, which was a very fun challenge for me. In fact, some of the songs were based on jingles I'd jokingly written for restaurants I had no intention of patronizing. Either way, I love having a theme to write a song around instead of going into natural minor riffs and singing about being a misunderstood artist.

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ODWMYLTF OST by Meredosia

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This is the first game soundtrack I was commissioned to do, starting in December 2021, making January 2022 the most prolific month of my life as I wanted to get most of the soundtrack done before the end of my holiday break from work. This release took a while to get onto PJ Records because I was more or less waiting for a proper title screen. I was hired for the soundtrack long before the game was halfway through production, and it seems to be part 7 in an epically imagined story.

That's okay. I had a really fun time chatting with developer Hedera Helix, making tweaks to my songs late into the night. It was great to work with someone with a vision for their stylized jrpg game. This was my first project tracking for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive's YM2612 chip. I barely knew how to track chiptunes at the time. But I powered on into it, coming up with a few real hits. So check it out, and let me know what you think. Maybe help spread the word so I can get hired for more soundtracks like this. Please.

Liquid Crystal by Meredosia

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When I first started making chip music I was challenged by the required use of a noise channel for drums. Naturally, you might want to use the noise channel in concert with the bass, but there are also limited octaves for most 8-bit sound chips. To overcome this, I figured the most challenging thing would be to make a heavy metal album for the Game Boy Sound System. Some of these pieces started as songs for a band I played in called Slortar (later Rahzar). Others were for a song set with the made-up genre of 'high school metal', and others were for a new Glatisant album. The cover art meant for one of four parts of a full album I'd been recording in 2015/2016. But that album never came to be. Still, the initial drawing translated well to pixel art. While there is some stylistic range here, I'm proud to have produced a heavy metal album entirely for the gameboy. Enjoy.

Tim-Tim 2: The Almighty Gnome Soundtrack by Meredosia

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This is the 2nd commission I got to do a game soundtrack, but the First to get a commercial release. This game was in development for a long time, and I knew I wanted to do the soundtrack for it. So I bugged Spoonweaver about it until he gave me the go ahead. I tried to give him a deal by charging for the overall minutes for the soundtrack. And it might have been a mistake on my end to try to make all of the songs around 30 seconds long, seeing how they repeat throughout the game's levels. But I think the end result is awesome. I used Deflemask to program the YM2612 chip (from the Sega Genesis), and I think it sounds good. You should check out the game and maybe pass my name along to any of your friends who happen to be into game design. Thanks to game music, this last January was the most prolific month of my life. And I just want more.

Wood for the Trees by Meredosia

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While I was making my Megadrove collection this last fall, it did occur to me that I should start making real chiptunes. But where to start? After playing with Deflemask, doing stuff for the Famicom's Ricoh 2A03 chip and PCM expansion, it seemed like I'd need to make a bunch of NES songs in order to become good at it. Then I could make an album of it, and move onto the next system. The title comes from the lyrics of my song Gwydion's Pride. I used to tell my audience how I looked upon them as my own personal forest for whom I'd brought a gift, a bundle of firewood.

The cover design was supposed to be used in a four part album of PJ Baby's, which I was planning until the project's abrupt dissolve. So I prettied up the art with some color pixel stuff I've been practicing. And it's a pretty album, worth a listen. I promise. I don't know that anyone dislikes video game music when it's done with such love. So here you go, trees.

Megadrove by Meredosia

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I've always loved video game music, and for a while have thought I should try to make this kind of stuff on a professional level. But with electronic music, I have trouble with Options Paralysis, in which it's hard to choose a direction instead of wasting the day playing with different synth voices. So for this collection, I decided to use all fm/pcm samples from Sega Genesis games. That being the case, these aren't true chip tunes, but I could transpose them into a tracker if needed. Either way, I kind of like the voices I chose for these tracks. Some took parts from my old tunes, and others were first composed when I was learning LMMS in 2016. I decided not to make tapes of this collection, mostly because it's entirely digital, and sounds great with digital compression. Check out the google drive link to get the tracks in tiny .ogg files.