"From the first transmission to Break the Dance, each song I had produced up to this point had one overreaching goal in mind: to make people move. As you might imagine, this has many meanings and is part of the reason that my name starts with an initial rather than a word. Towards the end of that list, however, the movement focus became dancing. Don't get me wrong, I love electronic music for electronic music's sake, but there's nothing like seeing people physically move to your beats and melodies. As a producer, I felt like my tracks had achieved that groove with Break the Dance, the answer (remastered), and sonophobia. My plan from there on in was to keep writing dance tracks while approaching the UK record labels with my work in hopes of getting some tracks signed on; however, an interesting cartoonist dubbed redbeard_prime had another vision in mind.

In the midst of my hard dance production extravaganza, I received an email from this cartoonist extrodinare with a proposition to start making some game music. Taking him up on the offer was one of the most fortunate things that has ever happened to my artistic career because it led to the formation of TOOBIX as well as opening a whole new world of electronic music for me. The full story is beyond the scope fo this short mlog post, but if you're interested in all the details then check this out

Like hard trance, video game music was one of those genres that fit like a glove. I guess it's not surprising considering my love for gaming and game music. Really, the two have been a part of my life since I was at least 8 and probably a little before, and if you checked out the link above then you know that game music is what got me started in the music biz in the first place. Well, with the formation of TOOBIX I was no longer just listening to the great scores, I was producing them.

redbeard_prime and I had several visionary game ideas when we first started out back in 2005. One of these ideas was in the form of a new wave RPG that not only has an intense, novel storyline but also contains several novel game play approaches to the genre. In turn, I thought that the music should also reflect this novelty and wanted to come up with something that would not only characterize the sound of the game but provide gamers with a soundtrack unlike any that they've experienced in other games. 'nuevo' was my first attempt at that.

The song itself is really rather simple. The instrumentation is familiar with piano and a strings section leading the way around three to four basic chords. The percussion, however, is sharply contrasted to these acoustic instruments as it is distinctly electronic. I think it not only gives the song a cool, stylistic sound, but during gameplay it will serve to keep the gamer moving. I mean this in the sense of guiding the characters as they move throughout the story, of course, but I also mean this in the sense of the gamer themselves physically moving to the beat of the track. With this approach I'm trying less to make background music and trying more to make the game music to be an equally good auditory experience as the gameplay and art are mental and visual experiences.

The theme of the melody, of course, was deliberate as well. Unlike some of our flash games like FVF and Hampton, this forthcoming RPG has a much, much darker tone. This stems from the absolutely tragic characters that you will meet and guide throughout the game. For this reason, many of the game melodies (especially the character theme songs) have the same inner-saddness and yerning melodies that the strings and piano have in 'nuevo.' Just as a tragic character is more interesting than a perfect character, I think that these heart-grabbing melodies will be far more mind gripping than the randomness sensation produced by music playing in the background. Not only that, I hope that these songs will have a place in listener's lives outside the worlds that the prime and I create. 'nuevo' is a perfect example of this as I played a solo piano version as my best friend's bridal party walked down the isle in his wedding and even used it to score a reception slide show I produced for them. I will always remember the impact it had as I looked out into the tears of the audience.

Looking back at my adding game music to my production repitoire, I always distinctly separated it from its cousin genre of dance. In actuality, no matter what tempo, instrumentation, or rhythm one of my songs has that defines its genre, all of my tracks have been written with the same goal in mind: to mentally, physically, and emotionally move the listener. The only difference now is that the listeners include one of my favorite groups of people. Gamers, welcome to Toobix's world of music."

e-effect, 01-03-08