Music portfolio of composer Jonathan Alexander

Jonathan Alexander (蔣智海) - Music & Sound | Audio Design

🎬Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mp-Z35WtxLY

🎷🎹Shoutout to @insaneintherainmusic for sharing the piano backing track and giving me a fantastic excuse to try out big-band writing!

I've spent the last month doing a score study of @crosenmusic's arrangement of "Bob-omb Battlefield" from Super Mario 64 and used it to inform my own short rendition. This is also the first project where I used music notation via musescore to sketch the parts instead of recording straight into my computer🎼! It's definitely taken some time to get used to, but it made the job of learning to write and perform the 4-voice saxophone soli waayyy easier!

One of the hardest parts recording this was performing the high notes on trumpet and trombone🎺. With trumpet, I'm slowly figuring out the importance of ab-crunching the high notes to get that brash brassy sound associated with big-band jazz writing, and learning to "whistle" the upper pitches has allowed me to extend my range up to a semi-comfortable C6!

While recording, I also fell down the rabbit hole of learning the hammond b3 organ via Logic Pro X's stock virtual plugin -- it's really worth doing a deep dive into and I'm excited to feature more 3-voice organ playing in the future! ~I didn't realize just how well the left hand and foot pedals function as a bass replacement😊

I'd highly recommend checking out @the8bitbigband and their YouTube channel! I've learned so much from their score reductions!

Bob-omb Battlefield - Big Band Arrangement (ft. insaneintherain (piano)) ｜ 🎬Link in Description🎬

Some music I wrote inspired by a cat game 😺

The game’s aesthetic felt perfect for fingerstyle guitar and elements of folk music; mandolins, lute, banjo, and dulcimers a`ll sing above the pulse of an Irish Bodhrán, also known as a frame drum 🪕🥁.

For guitar, I wrote using Ample's free Guitar M Lite VST, primarily for its outstanding UI. This way, composing a natural feeling part and transcribing off the animated visual was a piece of cake 🍰! The hardest part was simply learning to play it haha—it’s been nearly 10 years since my Sungha Jung / Tommy Emmanuel phase.

Inspired by Catrophy by Occlusional, Copeland's Appalachian Trail, and Chance Thomas' work on Settlers by Ubisoft.

Settlers of Cat-an | Folk, European, Game Trailer | REMASTER

Hybrid orchestral synth music composed as a demo for a top-down rogue-like. Live violin and flute were recorded and layered in by yours truly. Synth loops and orchestral VSTs are mixed together to evoke a feeling of old meets new. Mix and arrangement focuses primarily on the higher frequencies (aiming for nice and crispy👌😌). Used voices in a folk style (reminiscent of Balkan voices, but with Logic's free South African Voices). Tremulated them in the style of River Boy of Cult of the Lamb fame—may he rest in peace.

Echoes of Relics | Hybrid Synth Orchestral, Game OST, Beat Driven

Written using the Chinese Orchestra, inspired by soundtracks including Genshin Impact and Kung-Fu Panda. The piece was composed swiftly after writing the percussive introduction in a spur of inspiration. The main melody is first introduced by a wailing suona, accompanied by the dizi and erhu as the piece develops. Needless to say, writing such a percussive and lively piece was an absolute joy to compose!

The Phoenix Gate | Chinese Orchestra, Action, Game Loop, Percussive, BGM, VGM,

A short looping game soundtrack written for chamber orchestra, inspired by Genshin Impact, Zelda Breath of the Wild, and the works of composer Gareth Coker. Chamber woodwinds take the centre stage to evoke a  light, whimsical atmosphere, and an English Horn takes the lead as the main soloist. The piece is sprinkled with accents of high metal and wooden percussion, chosen to represent the merchant's assortment of many wares. This is my first project orchestrating with Orchestral Tools' Berlin Orchestra, where the more intimate ORTF, close, leader, and spot microphones were essential in mixing the proper space for this piece. Tree and AB mics were used solely for the purpose of reverb. This is the second piece in which I've applied a top-down mixing workflow, the previous being "The Phoenix Gate."

The Village Merchant | Orchestral, Game OST, Looping, Shop Theme

🎵Composer | Producer | Musician
🎮Music & Sound | #gameaudio design
👇Music & Links | #vgm #bgm 🥰
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