This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License and ©2012 Gregory Weaver.
One time a while ago my game-programming friend Nick was working on a farming game project on his spare time. We were just talking about it when I decided that I'd write something for his work. Actually, I thought that it would be neat if I did a different theme for each day of the week, and maybe even a different version of each theme based on the varying weather patterns that we humans face in any given day.
I started to write "Monday's Theme," the sunny version, first. Then, for some reason, I stopped, and the tune was subsequently lost until last night, when I just happened to stumble across it in my iTunes. I listened to it and thought that maybe I'd get back to that one day after I wrote a few more tunes--it wasn't really a priority of mine.
Then I woke up this morning and it was stuck in my head. Thinking that maybe this was a sign, I worked on it a bit this evening.
"Monday's Theme" is a very lazy, easy-going tune. I imagine that if there were actually people playing this, the banjo player would be sitting in a rocking chair on a porch, hat over his or her face with a long piece of wheat hanging out (or something equally as stereotypical). The whistler would be working out in the field, harvesting, gearing up for a long, hard work week, but not getting into things too quickly. Since everyone is so laid back and unworried, they're just strumming along, not particularly worried about being exactly in time (I think that the rhythmic relativity is a little charming; if you all say it's obnoxious then I'll tighten things up a bit).
Check it out and tell me what you think:
*Note: You can listen to the final version of Monday's Theme in my 2013 Demo Reel, but if you'd like to hear this draft still, please go to my original blog site for the embedded audio.
Nick and I exchanged e-mails after I sent my original take to him:
"Did you listen to any of the Harvest Moon music before composing that?" "No, haha, is it similar?" "Mostly just instrument choice I guess."
In the last e-mail he inserted a link to this video:
I have played Harvest Moon before, yes, but I swear I didn't listen to it at all and hadn't played the game in years. Plus, I had only played the SNES version. I'm almost afraid to listen to it.
As for how the song's going to continue, I'm going to insert some parts that extend the banjo and the bass parts a little before the whistler starts his "improvised" section and go from there. There will also likely be a section that features the banjo player improvising. In the end, I need to make a track long enough to keep the listener interested for a good number of minutes before the thing loops lest watering tiny individual plots of land will become even more obnoxious (maybe Nick's game wouldn't make you do that; we may never know).
Look forward to a recount of MAGFest and a draft of another tune soonish!
