Hello blind musicians from all around the world!
We, at myTrueSound, are very excited to invite you to become a part of our enthusiastic team. We hope to launch by 1st September our new audio game called AudioWizards (for iOS and Android), and we have thought that it could be cool if your music can make it also to the game, so it can be listened and enjoyed by hopefully tens of thousands of people.
AudioWizards is a battle mode game where the player is a magician in a world of might and magic. The task in the game is to defend the village from the attacks of evil creatures taking the form of the four basic elements; water, electricity, ground, and fire. The game includes very basic visuals, and the main game mechanics are based on 3D-audio. The game includes ten levels, each of them lasting 5 minutes, where each new level has a different background music. Therefore, after playing and unlocking the ten levels, you have gotten to hear ten fantastic music tracks created all of them by blind musicians.
Our goal is that all music and sound effects in the game are being created and played by blind musicians and audio designers. So far, all sound effects were created by English audio designer Justin Macleod, and the music by Finnish musician Mikko Herranen. But that is not enough! We also want your music, if it has what it needs.
So, we have decided to launch a competition for the game music and we invite you all to take part. The goal is to select the work of five musicians to be featured on the game.
Here are the rules and most important info:
1. Listen to the demo songs included in this post (also direct links here https://youtu.be/uJGEigQxgZc, here https://youtu.be/o7AEOMf_qWI, and here https://youtu.be/adE4FGx4Blg), and get the feel of what kind of music and atmosphere could work in the world of magic. Your music does not need to be very similar to what Mikko did already, but it needs to suit the game anyhow.
2. Compose your own song to participate. The length needs to be minimum 1 minute long and maximum 5 minutes long. The final song for the game needs to be 5 minutes long, but you don’t need to do it so long for now.
3. Send the song to contact@mytruesound.com in MP3, MIDI format, or just by sharing a link where we can download it.
4. Deadline for the song 30.6.2019, but you can send it as soon as you have it.
5. The best five compositions, not the best five productions wins. This means, it’s about the music and the atmosphere, not about mixing or sound design. Concentrate on the composition and make it really magical. Consider that some players might need tens of times to pass the level where your song is located (yeah, some levels are going to be pretty hard), and therefore, the music needs to be cool, nice, enjoyable, and so on, so people don’t get bored of it too early!
6. The winning songs will be finalized (mixed, arranged or whatever needs to be done) by Finnish music producer Mikko Herranen together with the winners.
7. The winning songs will be released in the game as game music.
8. The winners will get a payment of 150 € (please, understand our budget is very limited) plus their name on the credits of the game.
9. The winners will get an economic bonus of 200 € if the game is downloaded over 10 000 times from the app stores in a period of 1 year (we hope you help us here with the marketing, ‘smile’).
10. The IPR of the selected songs will be shared. That means, the musician is able to use that music further for any personal or professional purpose, except when that will damage the reputation or honor of myTrueSound (very unlikely because we all are cool). The company, us, will be able to use the music for an unlimited period of time on any future launch, update, or any activity related to the business activities of the company, e.g. marketing.
11. The competition is only open to blind and low vision musicians, but certainly we won’t ask any evidence.
If you have any questions, just ask!
Best regards
myTrueSound team
Comments
Cues
Hello,
Thank you so much for having us perform and feature our music.
You mentioned that the track needs to be five minutes long. Are there any particular cues at certain time periods, e.g. the main character jumps through a window, sneaks around, etc, or is the track intended to be just background music. In other words, is the music linked to specific scenes?
It would be helpful to know what specific levels, or scenarios we should be composing for, so that the track could be as immersive as possible.
For example, I would use a light-hearted track for the tutorial, and maybe compose a bit darker music around the end of the game, since that is where often boss battles happen.
I understand if you cannot reveal specifics about the game in public, please feel free to contact me at robjoy88 (at) gmail (dot) com (replace (at) and (dot) accordingly), so that we may discuss your exact requirements in detail, if needed.
Erion
answer to #1Cues - Erion
Thanks for your question!
Enemies are going to attack from different directions, and within each level, normally there is a difficulty curve, e.g. gets harder as you progress, and each level is harder than the previous.
However, our code enables us to put more enemies in those parts of your music where there is more action, and put less enemies or make them move slower if the music gets quieter. What we are trying, is that the pace of the enemies matches the tempo of the music composition, in a way, that all actions needed by the player are somehow in harmony with the bits of the music.
However, the music is in the background, and could be that players put down its volume if it is not good enough. That is why to me, at least at this moment, the most important is the music. It should be so good that players would want to buy your record after playing the game! And sure, it has to match the atmosphere of the game.
If you have more questions, sure we can have a chat
regards
david
Hi David,
Hi David,
I think I have an idea of what you are after now, thank you!
My preferred style is orchestral, in particular, epic and hybrid trailer music, something similar to Immediate Music, Two Steps from Hell or Thomas Bergersen, so I will have to tune down the epicness and huge sections a bit, But you have an entry from me. I am working on a project at the moment, but I think the deadline should be manageable. I'd like to have something ready in about two weeks from now.
music
I have written a piece on my piano but don
t have studio equipment wich may not be sufficient but I have a good recording.
to Pizza
Hi Pizza. As we said in the text, it is all about the composition and what your music communicate to the player. Don't worry about the recording studio at this phase. Try your best with the equipment you have. Mikko Herranen would be very happy to record your music again in his studio if that it is needed.
i have
Hi David,
I'm mostly playing instrumental/ inspiring/ uplifting, I have tried to do epics, but i'm not very good in that area... yet. I'll give it a shot. When is the deadline?
Hay able to do epic
Hi, I'm able to do epic stuff. When is the deadline for this?
Deadline is 30th June,
Deadline is 30th June,
Level locations
Hi David,
It's really cool you have opened submissions up for the music in this game. I will certainly submit something. Would you be able to give us an idea what kind of locations the player might be visiting? Dungeons, forests, ice palaces, boiling volcanos, the abyss of miserable empty dreams? It might help to to know this to ensure our pieces fit. A volcano might, for instance sound much different than an ice cavern.
Never mind
Sorry David, I missed that part of the description where you talked about defending a village. o that answers that question.:)
Level Locations (answer to Remy)
Hi Remy (long time!!!)
This was actually a very good question, and before I answer, I could tell more about the game.
The game was created by students of the Turku University of Applied Sciences (where I work 8 hours a day in addition to myTrueSound). Well, actually, only the tutorial and the first level is done so far, but now we have contracted three of those students to get the work done until the end. I think they will get it on time, but it is going to be challenging.
Only one of the students working on the original idea was good with the visuals, but her time was limited and she is not one of those continuing. So that is why we had to reduce the number of environments where the action takes place. We considered many environments (your idea about the volcano is great!!) but it is going to be impossible with the resources we have. I wish in the future the situation is different. Actually I wonder if there is going to be a future ;)
But anyhow, the visuals are just not important to us. This is an audiogame, and the fact of bringing visuals aims to just bring some sighted players to play this kind of games, and to avoid problems with Apple Store (if you remember the "back button" problem we had with GoldGun). At the end, the visuals don't help the player very much, because you can hear the enemies approaching from far away, but they only appear visually one or two seconds before reaching you.
So getting back to your question, I would say that you can imagine to be in caves, and in very thick forest covered by fog. We will work on the script in the next two weeks on the script which precedes every level, and let's see if we add some more environments, but I doubt. Anyhow, imagination is the limit, so if your music can make the players to feel like they are in a volcano or any other place, please, be my guest.
Thanks Remy again!
regards
and so far so good!
Hi
Regarding the competition for the music of our next game AudioWizards, we got so far 17 songs from 13 blind musicians. Awesome!.
Most of them are really fantastic, but still we want to catch the attention of other great artists. If you want to make a career into game music, and you think you might have what it takes, this would be a good chance.
Perhaps soon, some other indie developers will follow us, and one day it will be common that your names are in the credits of great games. Wouldn't that be cool?!
Competition will be closed in 9 days, but still you have time!
Please, visit our site where all the rules are described.
https://www.mytruesound.com/post/music-competition-get-ur-music-on-a-game
Very best regards
david
Listen now all the music sent to the competition
Thanks to all participants!. We have send you a couple of emails.
Music Competition has ended! For everyone who participated, thank you! The competition was a success and we have received almost 40 tracks in total! We have begun the reviews so stay tuned for the following weeks or so!
Now, all the music can be heard in
https://www.mytruesound.com/audiowizards-music
Hope you enjoy it. The forty tracks can be heard one by one.
Nice
Congradulations to everyone else who entered. Listening to my competition now, and there are a few I really like. Whoever makes it, there are certainly a lot of talented musicians here.
update
Thanks Remy for commenting. I love the one you sent! Mikko did too. But I can tell you all that it is being very difficult. First I listened to all the songs for many days while I was working, trying to feel the different stiles of each composition. I did that for many days, but I could not yet make decisions. At some point I spent 2 hours in a row analyzing one by one. Then AudioWizards Team (5) made their selection, and Mikko also his.Today then we put all the opinions together, on a long telephone meeting with Mikko. We were listening one by one the 10 songs that he liked most, and then the 10 that I preferred. Perhaps we were fully agree only on five of them, but not at all in all the rest. If from 40 we have to go with a maximum of seven, it is going to be hard to say which ones don't pass.
And it is not only about the music we like, and the harmony between type of music and instrumentation. There are other things in the selection. For instance the guys got a new version ready for today. We tested with two songs, in order to see how it feels to play. With the first one, which was one of my favorites, the result was not as desired. So perhaps we put it out. And then with the second, which was the selected by the programmers, the result was quite fun actually to play. So even though some song is good, perhaps when you play it with the rhythm of the game mechanics, and with the sounds that the game elements have, becomes a whole different story.
Let's see. I can comment more if it is needed. Also, we are sending to the participants information about the process on a parallel line, with more formal information. And Mikko will contact one by one the 10 or 12 that perhaps start to test with.
All in all. At this moment all the songs can be heard on the site. We tested accessibility, and it seemed to work (www.mytruesound.com/audiowizards-music) .
The songs are ordered in random number but each of them is identify by a number from 1 to 40 and the name of the track the artist provided. We didn't provide artist names (and we deleted from the name file when it was necessary) because we didn't ask permission for it on time, and according to GDPR we can not disclose anyone's personal information without explicit agreement. And all that has become a very long and serious process; ) . I tell that because a participant was wondering why we didn't credit her for participating.
We actually encourage all participants to tell to their friends what their song can be heard. We also put a text bar where you can enter the name of the favorite. It would be interesting to read what peoples think.
regards
Thank you
I was wondering why there weren't any names. Makes sense though. It actually sounds like a very overwhelming process to narrow it down. I don't envy all of you at all. I am very interested to see what the finished game will sound like musically speaking. I find your process interesting to learn about and appreciate that you posted a little bit about it.
One question. I submitted my audio track, but did you also need the MIDI files from all of us? I remember seeing something about that on one of the emails, or maybe a forum post.