What is Legacy of Mages?

My brother created a stop-motion animation during a period of unemployment (no, seriously—and I'm proud of him) and asked me to write music and do sound effects for it. When he told me what it was, I immediately decided I was going to use Famitracker and a lot of 8-bit sound effects.

The series is five episodes of Dungeons and Dragons-style, fantasy-world misadventures. Some of it is pretty hilarious. Some of it is absolutely bananas. Some of it is a little hokey/cheesy. It has a lot of heart, though.

If you're interested in watching the series, check it out here at Legacy of Mages.

The Music

The rest of this entry is really just me talking about almost all of the music that I wrote for it (minus the intro—it gets played literally every episode, it being the intro and all, but I actually kind of low-key hate it now because some of my attempted "tricks" fell flat (pun intended) and I've gotten a lot better as a composer).

So yeah, let's get to it.

The Adventurers

This isn't actually the intro, but let's pretend it is. I wrote this for something more serious, but it never ended out happening. I'm still pretty pleased with it, all considered, so it deserves a place here.

Inside the Adventurer's Guild

Here, I present to you the music that plays probably the most in the entire series. I'm actually really pleased about it: it sounds sort of royal, a bit bureaucratic, a bit town-ish—which is exactly what it needed to be. It's not the most exciting of tunes, but I think it turned out pretty nicely.

Battle Theme

There are actually two battle themes in the series, both within the same episode. I modeled it very, very heavily after the old Final Fantasy battle themes as written by Nobuo Uematsu.

Victory Theme

This actually is the credits theme, but I wrote it as a victory theme, haha. It borrows a bit of its style from old NES Megaman games, particularly Megaman II. I don't know that in this version I got the balance quite right in parts of it (I think the high note is a bit too loud), but overall I'm satisfied. I also think that it has a certain kind of hastened pace to it because of how I manipulated meter. :3

Sea Flashes

Okay, this one is probably the one I'm second-most proud of (the one I'm most proud of is at the very end). It's just... I really feel like I got the hang of Famitracker at this point (at the least the basics) by the time I started and finished this one.

Non-alcoholic Ale Jig

I had never written Celtic music before, but it seemed appropriate with the story of the episode, so I gave it a go. It was absolutely bizarre writing something that was so simple and easy to guide by intuition, but required a lot of tweaking to get it to feel properly idiomatic. The B section is not quite idiomatic with some of how it goes, but I think that's okay. I also am tickled that I managed to get the Noise channel to sound just a little like a bodhrán, haha.

Unexpecteds

For this one, I needed to write something especially mischievous. Treacherously so. There are a couple interesting flavors of things going on in here. I really want to rework the bass because the trick I used (not really a trick, just bad writing; I offset the bass just a bit rhythmically) doesn't really work and just sounds wrong. However, that aside, I'm really pleased with how this turned out. I think it is probably one of the most compositionally creative and silly things I've put together—a lot of humor while still being a sort of serious piece.

Snowstorm and the Deadly Chase

This is technically two songs: one peaceful in a snowdrift, and the other when the yeti finds you and is like, "Ooh, fleshy smol creature for me to monch, come close omnomnomnomnom," and you run away.

Plane-Breaker the Annihilator

Last but not least, I present to you: the boss music. It is the only track in the entire series that uses something other than Famitracker; I used Reaper, emulated guitars, some odd chiptune sounds, and ended up with something that borrows inspiration from the Mother Brain fight in Super Metroid and, oddly enough, Kirby Superstar. The funny thing is, the boss music really only needed to be about fifteen seconds in duration for the episode, but I got very carried away and turned it into something truly of epic proportions (at least considering the limitations of my abilities, especially at that time, and the ask for the episode).

Closing Commentary

At any rate, I appreciate your taking a tour of pieces I wrote. I really did enjoy this project a lot and sometimes dream up excuses to maybe play with Famitracker again.

It means a lot to me if you took the time to listen and enjoyed what I created. Please: be well, take care, and dream deeply. 💖