👋 Welcome, I'm Steven Melin and I'm an award-winning music composer in Atlanta, GA with 15 years of commercial experience. With dozens of audio awards & nominations, my music has been heard by millions across over 100+ films, television shows, trailers, advertisements, video games, & audio drama podcasts, including The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise, Dancing with the Stars, The Dr. Oz Show, Monster Sanctuary, The White Vault, Dark Dice, & The Boar Knight.
I'm the founder of Video Game Music Alliance, #1 Best-Selling Amazon author of Family-First Composer, & one of the highest-selling video game music pack creators online (18,000+ sales and counting).
Here on KZread, I focus on 3 things:
1. Live Composing Show: Every Thurs @ 12p Eastern I compose real projects live with you.
2. Video Game Music (VGM) Packs: I showcase my latest releases, available now for licensing.
3. Video Game Music (VGM) Piano Covers: I share my latest piano arrangements of popular VGM tunes.
Пікірлер
Hi Steven, good rescoring, I just wonder if there's a way to buy the 16-bit Toolkit Bundle monster sanctuary toolkit and Beard Blade Toolkit ?
Sorry nope, you’ll just have to download them for free here :) drive.google.com/file/d/1iY6cMnpLEuxR73CpNE7iZ9shGnXuFXi0/view?usp=drivesdk
Cool!
8 is my fav game + soundtrack... i smiled ear to ear when it finally played ❤
36:10 Having absolutely no experience with any of this and literally 10 minutes ago downloaded FMOD just to have a look at it, it seems it can do unlimited subfolders. Not sure if that's the equivalent to what he's talking about, but you can at least make a typical organized tree structure of all your events
wait i cant find videos 1-3
Yeah, the rest of the course is here: videogamemusicalliance.thinkific.com/courses/beginners-guide-to-game-music-theory Also free to watch inside VGM Alliance membership!
So awesome! Thanks for sharing!
I hope you learn somethin!
Amazing!
You’re amazing!
This is so good, Peter really knows what he is doing. Will have to watch a few more times to get it all!
No doubt! This was a killer masterclass
Thank you for this vid! Big fan of you and Austin! Dreamteam! Edit: and of Dallas of course!
Thanks a bunch! These mixes are incredibly fun 🤘
Jordan! 😍🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🔥
Our boi Jordan crushing it! 🙌🔥
@@mpeacockmusic frrrr 🤣💯♥️♥️♥️🔥
Do you like cabbage
I do not 🥬
You're so talented at playing. The fact you can go from playing single notes to something that sounds instinctively like music is so impressive to me
I just released my first Video Game Music Pack thanks to you! You've been an inspiration to me for 3 years and I've learned so much from you! Thank you so much! ❤
WOW !👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
So easy to understand and interesting, great work thank you
If there are videos I always come back to, this is one of them (and the one I'm interested the most!). Thank you a lot, Steven! 🙌🏼
Reaper is the number one for flexible, but i like Digital Performer Out Warm Sound. Reaper need to work the ouput sound better.
The only thing holding me back from wanting to throw myself into becoming a composer is money and time. I REALLY want to do music composition for video games for a living (preferably, horror games) but I feel like it will take me some time to build the client base necessary to start getting paid enough to pay my bills. I try my hardest to find time to work on my music comp stuff after my 9-5 (currently working on a music pack which should be out by the end of the year) but it is taking me sooooo much longer to make progress than I would like so that I can turn this dream into a reality. Does anyone have any tips on how to juggle a 9-5 so that I can survive in this economy while also making meaningful progress towards becoming a VGM composer?
I hear you! Sounds like multiple income streams will be your way forward: kzread.info/dash/bejne/dK2Tu5aAo6usZNo.htmlsi=6RhHkt0om7o6Xgzy You may want to check out my book Family-First Composer :) I talk a ton about your situation of juggling family life and building a career. I hope these resources are helpful!
My childhood... I would keep my game boy on beside my pillow at a low volume and fall asleep to this song, this took me back to that comforting feeling ❤
Nice live as usual. What I don't understand is: am I the only one having loss of everything when I make a Stem: Level, Stereo image, Dynamic... Making it sound better on the original project. It's a thing I battle with in general : all what I create sounds better in my Daw Project than exported, no matter my settings. On internet people said "it's not normal, you should have the exact same rendered". When I import a file in a new comp, everything sounds so low... Thanks for all you're doing it so interimesting
Hmm, it sounds like you may have some settings on your Stereo Out / Master channel causing some changes when you export your file.
I just wanna point out that the advice in step one is a bit paradoxical, where a game dev wants a range or styles, but only for one game genre. Also marketing yourself for one genre can be kind of a gamble and isn't as sure-fire as you make it out to be. For example: Hideki Naganuma makes music for Jet Set Radio styled games but games like that only get released once every like 5 years.... You won't be seeing much work for that let alone will the market size be good. If you want to assess risk, approach it like the stock market. Have a diverse portfolio. However Steven is right about honing in on one style/genre the best, but you should remain flexible. Being a specialist and master of one in music is a recipe for disaster. Otherwise most musicians/artists wouldn't have 12 different streams of income lol
Seems like finally I have some light into darkness... but so much things ahead... Need to watch in one more time... but it is brilliant.
it’s crazy cuz just watching this you can understand a lot of choices in the FFXIV collective soundtracks. seems they all got similar ideas/notes from nobuo’s work haha. that song he writes at the end sounds straight out of XIV
Oh wow, that's real cool! 80 min of music is crazy. These stories are really inspiring.🔥 It's nice to see others making something out of one of their passions in life.
Wow! Congratz
Do you have the video where you composed mystical workshop ost ? it's my fav
thats awesome !
Real nice success story. Good luck to him for his future.🫡
This was quite a journey to sit through. Inspired me to fix up my own low brass instrument racks
Finally caught up with the stream, these things are always a masterclass and a condensed education. Thanks, Steven!
Beautiful
I hate that I can't make it in real-time, but I always love coming to watch the replays. For the type of music that I'm writing right now, I get so much out of watching you go through the process of creating your work! I hope to be able to save up money in time to join VGM so I could get into the nitty-gritty and really grow as a composer! Sending my appreciation from the land of the rising sun!
Thats pretty sick man.
I’ve always heard it described as the “flat six major seven” but this approach makes a lot of sense as well.
Oh interesting!
I'd like to think he adapted the 7 one based of the Advent Children's Piano version since the tempo is a bit faster, which is cool
Recommended to me in 2024 and I love it like a chocobo loves gysahl greens 💛
That’s high praise! 🙏
There is also Loopback. It works so easy and is very user friendly.
Awesome!
Hi Steven, really great vid. So cool to see your inner thoughts and reasoning behind decisions but mainly it's cool to see your creative flow, especially with articulation. I was wondering how you are changing the articulations via drawing in new midi 'notes'. Is it a feature of the DAW you're using or of the plugin? I'm using East West Sound Libraries and would love to figure something similar out to get a more realistic feel Thanks so much for all the amazing content! Genuinely informative and inspiring
Thanks for the kind words! I’m using libraries that have “keyswitch” patches. East West has some patches that are like this too! These patches have multiple articulations in one, triggered by playing a certain key on the keyboard (or drawing in with MIDI note). Very useful for keeping an entire instrument on one track!
The huge thing about cold messaging is that it's an incredibly common tactic by scammers, so if you cold message someone offering your services, they're going to assume it's a scam 90% of the time.
True! That’s why it’s important to keep all messages human and personal.
Here it is, 4 years later, and Steven's video is still the best! I had earlier played around with the Reastream plugin in my DAW (Cakewalk) and OBS, but couldn't get it to work. So I watched Steven's video, followed all the steps, and it works! (Note: JBridge still costs $17. But after you order it, a notice popped up saying that getting a download link is not automatic. I would receive an email with a download link within 24 hours. And, I did receive an email within about 12 hours.) Thank you, Steven!
Glad to hear it! Yeah, I still use this method too! I’ve never found a better solution.
Love it. Immediately subbed.
wish I could catch these as they happen, but I love coming to these videos to see how the process goes!
Hey Steven, would you advise for or against including game references in the titles for the free music I'll release to generate leads? For example listing a Synth heavy retro style track as 'Free Metroid Fusion Style Game Music' or a viola and piano heavy piece as 'Free 2D metroidvania game music in the style of Hollow Knight' Not sure if its better as it narrows down on the specificity of the style or if it automatically deters some game developers as they might not want that specific sound? Thanks! Love all your content
Great question! I’d advise against using game titles for copyright reasons. But in the track description or tags you could use the game title so it pops up in searches.
I wish the choir weren't so far away. I would definitely audition! :D
10:08 🥺
Bro
I want to be a kid again .