New Song: Devoid (Originally by Far From Words)
After a couple months of no updates we've finally finished another one our "Retakes." This time it's Devoid, another song originally by Far From Words. Of the three Far From Words' songs we've redone this is by far the most changed with completely different instrumentation for every track. The core song is still present but we've added a completely new ending as well as modified many of the guitar and keyboard parts.
I apologize for the lack of updates but the last couple months have not allowed for much time to focus on both music and Veil, although both are very much still being worked on. Veil is coming along, although there hasn't been a lot of new material that would be worthy of a post on this site. I'm mainly working with Unity getting some stuff working how I want along with a lot of texture and environmental modeling that is half-complete. Look for some new updates soon, however.
As for musically, with the completion of Devoid, Nick and I are planning to record a full album worth of new material that's never been recorded. While working on that we may continue to do some re-recordings of other old songs but that's not for certain until we know how much time we want to devote to working on our new material.
It’s Song 3 From Veil!
As I work on the slow task of finishing one of the main environments in Veil, I'll be posting a few music tracks from the game. The song today is: Song 3! Catchy name.
Eventually, the individual songs may have actual names but since I can't say for sure where they're going to be used yet I don't want to start naming them. Plus, I hate naming things, especially instrumental tracks where any sort of name will influence the listeners expectations for the song.
Progress on Veil is slow but still continuing. I'm mostly working on the first main neighborhood and have been focusing on the last step of texturing. Once that's completed I'll take a final look at the environment, add any last details that I feel are missing and then one of the biggest sections of the first episode will be complete.
The Other Far From Words’ Songs: Take Me
There's a couple reasons why we probably won't be doing a re-recording of Take Me. One, both versions we've done in the past sound pretty close to what we'd want and there isn't much more we'd like to do to the song. And two, Take Me barely fits in with the other Far From Words material and actually fits more in with Murnau and some of the later projects we've worked on. It's a much slower, darker, and longer song than most of the more poppy and catchy songs by Far From Words. It's still a great song and one we're proud of but it doesn't feel necessary to do a "Retake" of it.
Take Me has been recorded a couple of time. First, was a demo by myself and later we recorded a studio version for our Be Nameless EP. The major difference between the recordings is the addition of Jacob Medendorp's piano part on the studio version but for the most part the structure of the song is unchanged.
Veil Update: 11-20-2011
It's been awhile since I posted an update on my progress with Veil so I've deemed it necessary to fill everyone in. For the last couple months I've been focusing on getting the majority of the environments and all the objects/items/details within them modeled and put together. It's been a long process as there's a lot of little details I want to put in the game and it's setting so I haven't found a good opportunity to post an update on anything in particular.
The good news is once I have the first neighborhood area for the game completed, which, I'm working on now, the rest of the environments will go much more quickly as I'll be able to reuse many of the models and textures I'm creating now. The screenshot above is an early shot of the first neighborhood the player, James, will appear in. It's not a finished screenshot as some details are missing and much of the texturing is placeholders or not there altogether. I feel it does start to give off a good idea of the style of the environments however. As I get further along I'll start to post more complete screenshots of the environment.
In addition to working on the environments I've been working on my Unity coding skills as well as writing and recording more music for Veil. While I probably won't post updates on the coding I will be posting some more music from the game in the coming weeks.
The Other Far From Words’ Songs: The Empty Sea
In addition to the selection of Far From Words’ songs that Nick and I are re-recording there are still quite a few other Far From Words’ songs left due to us not wanting to spend years on the Far From Words material alone. In some ways we’re not necessarily picking the best Far From Words songs to redo as we are looking at all the material and deciding what would benefit the most from a new recording.
The Empty Sea is one such song that we’re skipping for a few reasons. The main one I feel is it never was a song that we played that much together. I wrote and recorded the demo one day and the use of drum machine and effects just didn’t work that well with a live band. If we did re-record the song I feel we would substantially change it and The Empty Sea would end up being a completely different song, possibly not for the better.
So, while it’s a decent, if not unique, Far From Words song, it just didn’t fit in with what we wanted to do with the Retakes. There was lot of other material we were more interested in focusing on so we decided to skip it.
New Song: Don’t Let Us Get Sick (Warren Zevon Cover)
This recording is something new for me for two reasons: One, I rarely record guitar and vocals at the same time as I usually opt to overdub the vocals later after getting all the instruments recorded. And two, I very rarely cover someone else's material. Since I first started playing guitar I've only learned a handful of songs by other musicians as I've always focused on writing and playing my own material. Occasionally, however, I'll get distracted by a song I've heard and Don't Let Us Get Sick by Warren Zevon is the latest song to do that.
With this recording the rareness of covers by me may change as I'd like to try doing a series of cover recordings of songs by favorite artists of mine, starting with Warren Zevon. All of the covers in the series would be in a similar live/minimalistic style to this recording.
So, it begins. I hope to keep the cover series regularly updated but that may not happen too often depending on what's going on with other projects. Enjoy!
Re-recordings Preview: Devoid by Far From Words
The next song Nick and I will be re-recording is another Far From Words' track called Devoid. The song has been recorded a couple of times: once as an early demo by me before the band was formed and a second time with the entire band as part of our full-length album rehearsals. This second recording was part of the same project to link every song on the album together by short little instrumental tracks and the Intro to Devoid comes immediately after the Night Falls live demo I previously posted.
It's hard to say at this point how much will change in the new recording of Devoid when compared to the old versions but we do have plans to change up the ending of the song a bit. Our Retakes of Always and Night Falls stuck pretty close to the original songs and I think Devoid will keep a lot of the verse/chorus structure and then we'll figure out just how much of the outro we want to mess with. Also, when you listen to the two different takes of the song we've done in the past you'll notice that the early demo and the live demo have a very different tempo. Our plans are to stick to the faster tempo of the earlier demo but that may change depending on what naturally feels right for this new recording.
Download the original Devoid demo here.
Download the Intro to Devoid live demo here.
Video: Murnau – Is He the Man? (Live)
This is one of the very few recordings of Murnau in concert and I believe it to be the last concert we ever played. Soon after we decided to primarily focus on writing and recording and we've been doing that ever since.
The song being performed is called Is He the Man? and was one of about 8 new songs we had written after finishing our first album. None of the songs we regularly played in our live set during that time have ever been recorded so this video is probably the best version that exists. As Nick and I work our way through the material we've been re-recording we plan on eventually revisiting these unrecorded Murnau songs and finally getting them recorded.
I apologize for the poor sound quality in the video. The combination of loud music and a handheld camcorder often do not mix well.
New Song!: Night Falls (Originally by Far From Words)
Our second Far From Words' retake is officially finished. It feels great to finally have a recorded version of Night Falls that we're happy with as it was always an incredibly fun song to play live but we never had a chance to record something permanent.
Not much has changed from how the song was originally written to this new recording. The tempo has been sped up and a second guitar part has been added but overall its the exact same song. Nick and I are extremely satisfied with the final mix as it catches the atmosphere that we really wanted the recorded version to have. Now it's onto the next Far From Words' song which hopefully turns out just as well as the last two.
Introducing Uncle Craig from Veil
Uncle Craig is a character you'll be seeing a lot of in Veil. At times, Veil is just as much about Uncle Craig's story as is it James' and the two have a strange yet close relationship as they rely on each other throughout their daily lives.
Fun fact!: In the Veil trailer, the man's voice you hear talking for a few seconds is actually Uncle Craig.
Below is the original concept art Tom Kyzivat created for Uncle Craig. As with James' model, I stuck pretty close to the original concept while adjusting it to fit the style of Veil with a low-poly character and de-saturated grainy textures. The model for Uncle Craig (above) is pretty close to complete although there's a few aspects that I plan on touching up in the future.
