'Mechanical Magic' - New Original Music - 30 Min. Songwriting Challenge - Submission for Splinterland's Music/Lore Contest! Electronic/IDM/Instrumental + Walkthrough!

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(Edited)

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So for this contest, I wanted

to write something related to the mechanical/magic creatures in Splinterlands, like the Enchanted Defender, so I figured some really weird, ultra-digital sounding synths might capture part of that Technomancy-vibe. Originally, I intended to try and write a medieval-epic-adventure sort of chord progression, but with synths to have a digital timbre, but as I worked on it, I sort of veered away from that. I'm happy with the result, it's kinda weird, which I'm always cool with lol, and wound up sounding pretty good despite only spending a few minutes mixing. Oh I forgot to mention, I gave myself 30 minutes to achieve this, so some things probably should've been removed, others added, but I ran up against the clock, so be nice, lol.

Listen to Mechanical Magic here.

Tracks 1 and 2 are the drums,

with everything except the kick in Track 1, and just the kicks in Track 2 (so I could adjust the volume of everything but the kicks, as they were all a bit loud, and doing them individually would waste precious seconds, haha). Tracks 4 provides our root note of B, on the 1 of each measure with a floaty, ambient synth pad, while Track 3 plays a little descending line: B, G#, G, and F. The F natural gives a nice dissonance in the last bar of each 4-bar section, before resolving back to B. Track 5 adds the bell melody, pictured below, and Track 6 the synth-bass, which wound up being my favorite part of the tune.

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Track 5, Bell melody.
Listen to Mechanical Magic here.

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Track 6, bass.

Track 7 adds another synth,

which just harmonizes over the previous tracks. This one is sidechained to a compressor in Track 8, which is actually turned off, so the effect is heard in Track 7, but the actual kick-pattern (it's a drumrack) isn't in the song. The last two instruments are Tracks 9 and 10, which add the wild, glitchy sort of line at the end of the song, my second favorite thing in here. I've attached a screenshot of that below. Any notes that are overlapping will be effected by the portamento, which gives it that bendy, warbly vibe as it tries to reach each note before the next one comes.

Listen to Mechanical Magic here.

The next two tracks are both used

for various audio clips, added as accents on the 1st beat of various sections, and for cresendos/swells into certain parts. The last track, #13, was going to be added over the end of the song with Tracks 9 and 10, but I didn't like it at all; way too much going on, it totally drowned out other things, so it fades in as the song is fading out, just to add a little variation to what you hear as the song disappears.

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Tracks 9 and 10.

Make sure to support the other contestants here! Thanks for listening!



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4 comments
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Here’s a free 100% vote from the @contestkings community!
If you run a contest and need support click here to connect with us today.

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Woohoo!

You have been manually curated by the @steemmonsters team!

Enjoy your juicy upvote and keep creating excellent Splinterlands content!

Awesome beats! And thanks for the screenshots of the work. I enjoy seeing 'what it takes'. 😍

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thanks for listening to it! I appreciate the support!

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Hello @grapthar, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!

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