Preface
Behind the Scenes highlights the development process of one of my projects. Today's focus is the MEGAKILLER album, for which I will be showing demos and detail how things came about.
About MEGAKILLER
MEGAKILLER is a 16-track album I released on August 8th, 2021. It's available for purchase on Bandcamp, but if you're listening along for the demos, you may find using the Youtube Video more comfortable as a reference.
Early development
In late May 2021, I discovered the Synth1 VST plugin for myself and started making small demos in a couple hours each, focusing on a small sample set of preset instruments, in an attempt to learn how to work with them. At the same time, I used this opportunity to improve at creating beats and basslines, giving all demos a generally more gritty note than the somber stroill that is my prior album We Are.
Each of those demos I then posted under a funny name to my audiomack, a place for one-off experiments and demos. When on June 29th I posted the MEGAKILLER demo, I thought that there was more potential hidden behind it; my mind instantly jumped to making it the title track of a new album, with the remaining 15 demos filling out the rest.
The following chapters will detail the creation of each track in order of the start of their involvement in the album.
MEGAKILLER [Audiomack Demo]
The mood of the titular track is distinctly rooted in villainy. Being the last song completed for the demos, its initial shape was quickly set and hardly modified. The majority of changes concern instrumentalization, minor note progressions and the ending section. The middle section from the final track was also added for more variety in villainy. Sometime near the end of its development, I added the organ lead, which plays a glitchy version of the melody, accentuating the 'KILLER's evilness.
Being a villain, MEGAKILLER has also managed to sneak its motif and its 4-note me-ga-KIl-ler progression into other tracks of the album.
DESTRUCTOR BEAM [Audiomack Demo]
The most noticable change that happened to DESTRUCTOR BEAM throughout its development is the increased focus on its bassy, nigh empty-sounding sections. A lot of work has gone into making the instrumentalisation of the final version varied without giving up the hollowness rooted within the track's core.
BARASTYR'S BLADE [Audiomack Demo]
The first bass-focused song started for the project has received a minor tempo change and some adjustments in the mixing, more than anything. With it and some other demos, the changes necessary to finalize the tracks were more minor than with others, mostly consisting of the aforementioned changes and some tweaks to the intensity of certain sections to break up the pacing.
O, BEHOLD THE OVERLORD [Audiomack Demo]
Pulled in due to recency rather than its reliance on Synth1 samples, O, BEHOLD THE OVERLORD initially was quite distanced from the other demos, focusing more on the (now everpresent) choir samples and piano. As I've updated it, changes made led to it fitting in more snugly among its bretheren, with the elongated opening serving as a melancholy break from the MEGAKILLIN'.
What Remains [Audiomack Demo]
While usually my tracks start with some kind of melody or rhythm, What Remains flowed entirely out of its ice palace-like repeating note progression. All adjustements made after the demo's release merely piled on top of what was already there, bringing the track to new heights and making it more dramatic, to lead smoothly into the KILLER's appearance at last.
Jetpack [Audiomack Demo]
Jetpack is a bit of an unusual demo in that it started much earlier than its initial audiomack release - shortly after the release of We Are, infact - but was quickly dropped. As such it became somewhat of a "honorary We Are track" in my mind, returning to space for a more calm section of the album. Its post-demo adjustments are mostly contained to making the 2nd half distinct from the first.
Torrentダイブ [Audiomack Demo]
Torrent has had a troubled development, first branching off into Torrent Alternative and then into the named-to-sound-like-some-kind-of-anime-spinoff-game Torrentダイブ (Torrent DIVE). Much like DESTRUCTOR BEAM it carries an emptiness in its heart, though it is much more calm than its beam-shaped counterpart.
Moment of Silence [Audiomack Demo]
The demo for Moment of Silence was already nigh-perfect, so it felt like a shame to leave it out due to being from before the Synth1 experiment. Not much happened here; I just hid the MEGAKILLER motif and tweaked the mixing slightly.
In a new Reality [NO DEMO]
Eventually I realized that it would be nice to have a song that eases the listener out of the endless journey the end of We Are stuck them in and into this new, rhythmical world of the MEGAKILLER. Serving as a bridge between Space and KILL, In a new Reality (codename: gerald) slowly builds up to where the blurred image of the MEGAKILLER comes into focus, introducing its melody for the first time, and borrowing some of the drums that didn't exist in We Are... This is different territory.
Goodbye World [Audiomack Demo]
A cheery demo which found its true MEGAKILLER identity by cooling off a little. At this point I certainly didn't want an overrreliance on bassy, high-energy songs, but rather a mix of those and calm, yet somber counterparts that fit the more tragic side of the post-MEGAKILLER environment. Goodbye World, punning the ever-popular Hello World program, marks the moment the ravaging of the world enters its final stages.
The Wastes Downtown [Audiomack Demo]
"Slowing Down" is also the primary change that happened to The Wastes Downtown between demo and final version. Sometimes initial drafts end up a little too hectic, and it's fun to experiment with how their melodies would work best at different speeds.
ABSOLUTE ZERO HEAT DEATH CANNON [Audiomack Demo]
SPEAKING OF SPEED, heh-heh-heh...
Speed modulation is very fun to play with, and in a way the way AZHDC turned out is a homage to some of the high-tempo techno I've been listening to throughout the years... though it's certainly only trying to be the former. With the name of this song being in reference to the movie Promare, now seems like about as good a time as any to mention that the track titles written in ALL CAPS are attack names of the fictional MEGAKILLER.
ΟΙΩΝΟΣ [Audiomack Demo]
An omen - is it good or bad? Knowing the MEGAKILLER, it's probably bad. However, I loved exploring the more hopeful and serene sound in the final mixing of this track. It was a bumpy road to get there, as the rugged instruments in the embedded and audiomack demos show, but in the end, the omen is here to be interpreted.
CAЯNAGE [Audiomack Demo]
Having dabbled in more bass-oriented sounds with Torrent and DESTRUCTOR BEAM, I was keen to give a more dubsteppy sound a shot sooner or later. So... I picked a 2018 demo I liked and messed with it a little. For a couple of iterations, this one sounded too empty, lacking instrumental variety during its "hollow" portions. I've got that dubsteppy sound out of my system for a while, but I think I learned a lot about the herculean effort that goes into its mixing here.
Empty Night Sky [Audiomack Demo]
The first and final versions of Empty Night Sky are nothing alike.
I struggled a lot with adapting this demo into something that fits the overall vibe of the album, and the end result is something that can hardly be traced back to its origins. By the time I got around to this one, my mind was deeply entrenched in its aim to get better at using drums than Synth1. And thus this playful demo turned into one of the more calm tracks with the snap of my fingers - so swiftly that I never shared pre-final-version demos with friends to embed here.
MEGAKILLER PHASE 2 [NO DEMO]
One of my bigger musical inspirations for this album in particular is the Doppelganger album by LeaF. Listening to that, you might recognize a couple of tropes: The recurrence of the titular album's melody in other songs, and the return of the other songs' instrumentalisations in the final track. While my attempt isn't nearly as refined as theirs, it was something fun I wanted to give a shot.
The return of past instrumentalisations was a bit of a bumpy feature to realize, in part due to frequent LMMS crashes when over 100 instrument tracks were involved - but I'm rather pleased with the result.
The idea of two Megakiller tracks came about early on in the album's development, when I had given in to feature creep for a bit, developing a storyline involving a hero who would stand up to the MEGAKILLER, defeat him at the halfway point of the album, and then end up killed by PHASE 2 after the MEGAKILLER's repair protocol automatically regenerates him. I scrapped it for a while, until very late into development, when I felt I'd be disappointed if I didn't took the chance to have a PHASE 2.
THE SONGS THAT WEREN'T MEANT TO BE
There are three songs, two of which are audiomack demos, which didn't make the cut due to being too difficult to produce or adapt for me at the current time. The demos in question are j incarnate and sequel to maths, which would have certainly seen alterations similar in scope to Empty Night Sky.
The song that wasn't meant to be which never even got a demo is called Repair Protocol and relates to the aforementioned plotline about the failed hero. It would have been a vocal song about how the MEGAKILLER would self-repair, with cheesy lyrics to boot! Though it was confounded by the classic weakness of me being unable to sing (well (so far)).
Certainly it's an area I need to dip my toes in eventually, but that time is not now.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Over the course of We Are and MEGAKILLER I feel like I've grown a lot more confident in my ability to create music. At the same time, the places in which I am still lacking are becoming more obvious to me as well. We Are focused on ambience, melodies and somberness, while MEGAKILLER focused on harsh instruments, adapting melodies into different contexts, trying out new genres, beats and basslines. Next, I am looking towards improving my chord-game and handling of more organic sounds. I'm also not quite where I want to be with regards to harmonic richness.
I suppose we'll see where these thoughts will lead me next.
I guess I'm also learning blogposting now.
