SNOWY_FOX'S PROFILE

I'm an amateur composer and game designer, currently trying to turn my hobbies into a career. I've been dabbling with RPG Maker for many years, and recently also started tinkering with Godot, but I'm yet to release anything more than a small prototype.

Music is my main creative focus, and my contributions to the RMN Music Pack earned me the Judges' Choice award, and I also joint-won the Community Choice award with Miles "Kunsel" Mulet. I also contributed to and mastered its sequel, RMN Music Pack 2. I currently live in Oxfordshire, England.

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Summoner of Sounds

A Game for Two Players update!

I've spent a while today fiddling a bit more with the track. The guitar is now a few shades softer, and is joined by the dulcimer. Both have been given a few little flourishes to help back up the other instruments here and there. The percussion has also received a few little extras, adding a little breathing space at the very beginning and, if the track isn't looping in a game, at the end.

Other than that, I've given the mix many little tweaks here and there, using EQ to give a little boost to the high end of the bass and the claps' mid-range. The claps also have a touch of chorus for a little more crunchiness and presence. The rest was mostly just volume and pan tweaks. Overall, I think the track sounds a lot more balanced now. Let me know what you guys think.

A Game for Two Players 1.1 (MP3 version)

A Game for Two Players 1.1 (OGG version)

RMN Composer Introductions

Woah wait, I hadn't already made a post here!? Fixing that now.

I've been playing and composing music for as long as I can remember. Longer, actually. I was enchanted from a very early age by computer games and their music, and started out trying to play the tunes I heard bleeping out of my family's Master System. For my entire life since then, my goal has always been to compose music for games (though since achieving that much, the goal has shifted to making a living from it).

Click the amazing and magical Show button below to reveal many interesting things!

Name(s)

Snowy, Snowy Fox, Toby, Toby Wilkinson, Snow, Snowbutt, and Shut Up Snow are all common things I get called.


Where to Find My Work

The best place to find my music is in my house. If you break in, find my desktop and scour through it you'll find all of my finished tracks for the past several years, and several works-in-progress as a bonus!

I'd prefer it, though, if you settled for looking for what I've distributed online, on FurAffinity, SoundCloud and my own website.


Contact Info for Commissions

You can try PMing me here on RMN, though it might go unnoticed for a while. I'm more diligent with checking my email. You can either get me up to scratch on all the details there, or send me your Skype name so we can chat about it there, by voice or text. The same goes for Steam.

As of writing, my business email address is TobySFWilkinson@gmail.com


Musical Styles and Influences

I'm most comfortable with (sampled) orchestral and light electronic music, though I'm also proficient with more ambient and chillout tracks (including darker- or creepier-sounding backing tracks), chiptunes, rock, drum & bass and dubstep, hip-hop, and pretty much anything that might be needed - though all mentioned are among styles I've at least dabbled in at some point.

My biggest musical influences have always been the games I've grown up playing - composer-wise, the biggest standouts for me are Nobou Uematsu (of course) and Jeremy Soule (who, incidentally, has also named Uematsu as one of his biggest influences. It's like mandatory for RPG soundtrack composers or something). Naming games, other big sources of musical inspiration are Suikoden (especially Suikoden II), Ys, Sonic the Hedgehog, Myst, Zelda, and RPG Maker itself (XP's soundtrack still the best), among about a bajillion others.


Audio Software

Reason all the way, dude. For composing, at least. For audio editing and conversion I stick with good old Audacity.


Instruments

I was raised on classical piano, and have always had access to keyboards too. Since moving away from the house that contained my Mum's piano, I've shifted exclusively to synthesizers - that goes for from-scratch sound design as well as simply playing them. For a long while now, my weapon of choice has been my trusty Roland GAIA SH-01.


Proudest Accomplishment

My proudest accomplishment as a musician is right here on RMN - the RMN Music Pack is one of the most fun projects I've worked on, and since its release has been extremely successful. I submitted three tracks to it, achieving the Judges' Choice award for best composer, and joint-winning the Community Choice award with Kunsel.



If you like my music and think it would fit your game, get in touch! I'm open for commission any time. If you'd like to know more about me and my work, check out my website, FoxAudio Creations. You can also find free and commercially-licensed tracks there for use in your projects right out of the digital box.

Summoner of Sounds

Kept you waiting, huh?

Hi everyone! I've been keeping a (distant) eye on Summoner of Sounds while I've been getting RL stuff out of the way. But the stuff is stuffed, my muse has reappeared and was all "bitch make some music!" and I was like "okay."

My first thought when I saw this month's theme was to crack out LittleSoundDJ, but that didn't go very far. Then this tune popped into my head and I ran with it. Here's the result!

A Game for Two Players (MP3 version)

A Game for Two Players (OGG version)

The OGG verion already includes loop comments, so feel free to whack it into your RPG Maker project and see how it sounds there! I made this track pretty quickly so it's definitely open to critique and polishing (for one thing, I already think the guitar could come down a shade in volume...).

Good to be back, guys! Let me know what you think.


EDIT 09.12.15
New improved version!

RMN Music Pack

author=GameOverGames Productions
I used a couple songs from this in a game. I loved listening the whole pack!

Is this game released? We demand links!


(Edit to avoid double-posting)
And I still haven't done that looping tutorial. ._.

RMN v4.5 (and beyond) Feature Idea List

I've thought for a while the Help Requests & Resources section could do with an overhaul. At the moment, all requests and offerings for all kinds of resources are dumped into the same subforum like a list of BBS threads.

This is fine for discussions, but it would make a lot more sense to split it up a bit for requesting and offering resources - those two things should be in their own sections.

You could even go a step further and divide those into subcategories for different kinds of resources. Either way, it would make it much easier for people to find what they're looking for, instead of having to wade through what they're not.

XP Music Pack

Funny you should say that, Kentona... I actually did an RPGXP track in LittleSoundDJ last year. ;P

I'm tempted to download a Mario Paint ROM just to do an RPGXP track in that, now. XD

And LockeZ, yeah, it sounds to me like the MIDIs' composers just left the voice changes out. It's just a piece of info that's supposed to be put at the start of each track to tell the sound card what instrument to play that track in. Without it, usually it just defaults to a piano. But I guess RPG Maker just leaves it silent.

XP Music Pack

@LockeZ: I haven't worked with raw MIDI files in several years, and I don't have a program anymore to look at the actual MIDI information in a list, but it sounds to me like the files either don't contain voice change information, or somehow contain it incorrectly. Did you make them yourself? If so, what program do you use?

@The rest of the Internet: RPGMakerWeb staff have said they're working on fixing it. I'll sit on my paws for now and leave them to it. I've got other music projects to be finishing anyway.

XP Music Pack

author=Liberty
Why not approach the official forum mods and ask them if they'd be interested in a remastering of quality?

I'm actually very tempted to. I believe someone else on the official forum was looking down the same road, so I may have some competition.


author=LockeZ
Depends on how well your sound card renders midis. A lot of modern ones, uh, don't. I know mine is actually missing an instrument or two, so there are certain tracks of some midis that just don't even play.

That's the problem with midi music - every computer plays it differently.

Really? Even in-engine? I'm pretty sure they had DirectX handle the MIDI processing in the RMXP engine, with a built-in soundfont based on the default Windows one of the time, with an addition of soft reverb to make it sound less... well, shit. The results spoke for themselves, of course.

I haven't tried putting MIDI music into VX Ace, so I'm not sure if it still works the same way.


I am very tempted by the idea of poking Enterbrain about doing my own version, though. I could certainly use the motivation to get back on the music-making horse.

XP Music Pack

Enterbrain are promoting the new XP Music Pack by Kain Vinosec. Having listened and re-listened to the previews, I'm making this the first music pack they've released since VX Ace that I won't be buying. Quoting from the post I made on the official forum:

In my opinion, RPG Maker XP had the best music of the series. I've heard the original tracks until they've been burned into my very brainage... and I'm sorry, but this pack just doesn't do it justice.

Kain's MIDI to audio conversions sound unpolished, unfinished even. The mixing is haphazard - all of the supporting instruments and phrases seem to be taking the centre stage, while the melodies and rhythms sink back and are lost in the mix, helped down by too much reverb.

He also seems to have misunderstood some of the original composer's clever MIDI tricks. The flute in Field 1, for example, was originally split over two tracks. The first plays the melody, panned to the left, while the second plays it again after a short delay, panned to the right and at half the volume. The result is a pleasant and subtle echo effect. Kain has missed this point totally, and left the volume the same for both tracks in his DAW. The result is two loud flutes playing the same melody and sounding like they're just competing for the listener's attention.

Since the release of VX Ace, this is the first music pack Enterbrain have promoted that I won't be buying. Without some serious additional mixing and mastering work, this is not worth $20.00.

I haven't been in the RMN community long, but I've been here throughout the RMN Music Pack project, and I know the RPG Maker community at large is capable of better than this. Guided by Happy, we released a music pack with much higher mixing and mastering standards than this for free.

Before the RMN Music Pack project was announced, I had actually just started work on my own vision for an XP music pack. Rather than haphazardly converting the original MIDIs, I was recomposing my favourite tracks from scratch, and trying to improve on them to bring them up to a similar feel and sound to RPG Maker 3's gorgeous music, while retaining their brilliant melodies and the "gamey" orchestral sound they had. A tall order, but I love XP's music enough that I aimed for it.

Now, I'm not a petty fox, but I can't help but feel a little bit cheated that, in the midst of me working on this project, someone else has taken the music I love and charged twenty Dollars apiece for doing very little work to it.

I guess I'm just ranting here. But, in the wake of the RMN Music Pack, I refuse to believe that nobody else is going to listen to the XP Music Pack and notice its mixing and mastering issues.

Opinions, plox.

EDIT
Kain Vinosec did not do the conversions. From here on in, I will direct my frustrations towards Enterbrain themselves. *Shakes fist in the general direction of Japan*

RMN Music Pack

author=amerkevicius
Out of curiosity, since this was mentioned briefly before, but are there plans to also release the tracks that didn't get approved for the set in a downloadable file?


Not on their own, but you can still download them separately here.

Since they're not in the music pack, the original composers may have quietly held onto the rights to them. You should probably run a request by the composers before you use their music in your game.