Thirty Nine Years

The opening number to a musical that will probably never happen, this is what happens when you put two uniquely talented musicians together and learn to let go of a few things for the good of the song. My little sister, Emily, has a knack for lyrics and melody, where my strengths are evident in the structure/arrangement of the score as a whole.

It just goes to show you, sometimes you pour your heart and soul into something and it still doesn't quite work out.

Stick with this one, it gets much bigger at the end.

The Discovery

The Discovery by Andy16

A theme I worked out on the piano at my parents house, this would come to define the hero's journey in the Average Joe movie. By the time I made this track, we had been working on the movie for too long and I was tired of using the same theme over and over. I had decided to write my own theme, and not copy off of anybody. The whole thing is pretty simple, three sets of three repeated chords to keep up interest (your brain probably expects the motif to be four measures long, so it doesn't quite feel right until the fourth set, which is in the middle of the next overall nine measure theme, so you never quite feel like you heard the same thing twice) and written in 4/4 (so it's easy to follow the beat).

All of the chords in this song are in a major key, but the roots of the chords form a minor chord, allowing me to start the song with a slow "moody" sound and end with a fast triumphant sound without changing the tempo. Right about 48 seconds into the track you will know what I mean by that.

This track was written in FL Studio.

The One That's Not The Theme Anymore

The Theme to Average Joe's Great Escape by Andy16

Eventually the discussion came up that if we (the guys that are now the Faux Reel guys) ever wanted to sell our stuff, I couldn't use samples, due to copyright reasons. This meant that I had to come up with the whole song all by myself. At the time, that was kind of scary. All of my original songs before that either took me months to come up with or had an attention span of around 1:40. We were talking about making a movie. That's an HOUR of music that I would have to come up with. A.K.A. scary.

So I just copied notes. This song features a melody that is cut and pasted together from all the themes of the movies that OUR movie was referencing. If you don't see it, just go back and listen to the Terminator theme. I copied it note for note.

I remember loving the way that this one sounded. Now it's nothing compared to the stuff that replaced it. If you watch the Average Joe movie, you can see how it found it's way in, but it's not the song it used to be.

Hunted

Hunted by Andy16

After I had a good hold on how to use FL Studio and make it sound good, I realized that I could do the music for my YouTube videos. It took a lot of editing to make other people's music fit those videos, and now I could just take the ideas that I liked and make the songs I wanted to make, and make them the right length for my videos, too.

This one was made for a short that never happened, called "Hunted", where it gets it's name from. It has samples from the Firefly Soundtrack, the song "Crazy On You" by Heart, and even The Matrix, The Incredibles, and Pirates of the Caribbean.

3XOSC

3XOSC by Andy16

I forget what the main inspiration for this song was, but I think the references are obvious. It uses instruments that sound like they are from a classic video game, which are always important to me. The writing sounds like it could be from Animusic. The beat in the middle could be from an early Fatboy Slim song (just not as "big").

The point was to use FL Studio to make a completely original song with the in-program instruments, in other words, no samples from my awesome song library. I think I did a pretty good job, but that "no samples" thing means the drums don't have much energy.

It is called "3XOSC" because one of the instruments has 3 oscillators, and is named as such in FL Studio.

Speaking of FL Studio instruments, the one that plays really long, high-pitched notes is my favorite. It's under the "Sytrus" section and it's called "Distant". I use it in a lot of my songs. Also, it's one of the most fun instruments to play live while Casey and I are DJ-ing.

Omen Finding

Omen Finding by Andy16

After "Danger!", I became obsessed with sampling. I had such a huge library of songs from the greatest film scores, mixes, etc. and all of them needed to be edited together. The possibilities are still endless.

The main sample in this track is from Thomas Newman's film score for the Pixar movie "Finding Nemo". The name of the track comes from switching the positions of the words and spelling "Nemo" backwards (just in case you needed help figuring that out). There is also a sample from Propellerhead's "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" which is a breakbeat mix of the theme from the James Bond movies.

You might recognize the beginning half of this song from the Nranimation short "Magic", but there is a whole last segment that didn't make it into that short, so stick with it.

Danger!

Danger by Andy16

This track marks the beginning of a new era for me. This is when my friend Casey introduced me to FL Studio... AND TOGETHER WE FORMED: PANDAS IN COLOR!!!!!!!

To me, this was crazy. I could mix all of my programs together into one, and some of the instruments in this program "actually sounded good". Most of all, this program would let me utilize SAMPLES!!!! ...Woah...

Named after a quote from a TV show we've never seen (specifically a robot from "Lost in Space"), this track still holds up against all of the songs Casey and I have written since.

The main orchestral riff that fuels this song was, of course, written in Finale with Garritan. The drums were all from FL Studio (rhythms highly influenced by my drum line days), and the OH SO AMAZING SAMPLES (!!!!!) were edited in Virtual DJ.