New website and official demo!

If you're viewing this on the new website, this might be a bit more meta than you were asking for.

- THE WEBSITE -

If in the last few hours you scrambled to find out if there've been any goings ons on this blog by going directly to scorevgm.com, you may have found yourself in uncharted territory that looks exactly like the picture above.

I know it's a little frightening, but please DON'T PANIC.

What you stumbled upon is my new website, which I created over the last two days using Squarespace. Before I go into details about the why, please note that if you follow my blog using WordPress, everything will be just fine.

Or, at least, it should be fine, heh. I'm going to continue to use WordPress as my main blogging tool, seeing as I can easily import my blog posts into my new site from here. Not to mention, I wouldn't want to lose any of you, dear readers. Many of you have been following [Score.] since its beginnings, and I would certainly never want to alienate you from my stuff, or me from our interactions!

The idea for a new website for [Score.] came about after I finished up my demo late last week (more on that later). I thought, 'Okay, I'm finally ready to send my content out to developers--let's do this,' but then came to the realization that my site was really just a blog and not an actual website, per se. To increase the professional look of my business, I needed the site to be focused around what my business is about and what I offer, not just around blog posts about constructing my compositions, reviewing other people's work, and the like.

So on Monday, I was scrambling to get a site together. Luckily, my friend Matt Pollard suggested a while ago that I create a portfolio website for myself and recommended Squarespace to me. Squarespace is a pretty user-friendly, powerful website construction platform. Any frustrations that I have had with it so far I've been able to work around, and I think that I've only touched the tip of the iceberg of what it offers at this point. The main thing that I still need to do is edit my old blog posts because the special embed codes that you can use on WordPress didn't magically change over to useable code when being imported to Squarespace like I desperately wanted them to. Otherwise, most everything else seems to be running pretty smoothly! I'm happy with the results.

One other thing of note is that I've decided to register my business officially as "[Score.] Musicworks" because, well, [Score.] alone doesn't really say anything and "Score Productions" already exists and has been around since the '60s!

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- THE DEMO -

I may be a month off my initial target, but my demo has been created and is ready to be presented to unsuspecting developers!

Any of you who have been following this blog regularly probably won't be surprised by the tracks I included in the demo. The setlist is as follows:

1. "Demo 2013 Sampler" (a track that includes 15-30 second clips of all of the tunes on the demo)
2. "Mr. A.C. (Keep Your Cool)"
3. "Behemoth"
4. "Fanfare and Jubilee"
5. "Monday's Theme"
6. "Hypothesis 209"
7. "A Binding Harmony"
8. "Heart of the Woods"

Now, I know that some of you out there maaay be saying, "But what about 'Happy-Go-Lucky'--I love that track!" or something very similar regarding another one of my tunes. The truth is, while I would love to have just crammed in as much music as possible on the demo, it's just not very practical. There were certain self-inflicted rules that I followed when compiling the tracks. I decided that I needed to answer such questions as:

• Which tracks best show off the diversity of my ability?
• Which tracks are the most solid compositionally?
• Which tracks will best grab the attention of the listener?

That last one was especially important, and it factored in to the order of the demo as well. While I'd like to think that whoever puts in my disc will take the time to sit down and listen to each tune, giving them all a meaningful listen, I cannot afford to think that way. I need to play to the the listener with the least amount of time and the shortest attention span.

In order to achieve success in taking up his or her time, I created the sampler track and ordered the tunes in a way that I think would keep the listener's interest. If you'd like, go ahead and give it a listen:

• "Mr. A.C." was an obvious choice for the first tune because of the pick-up hit in the beginning. It also is one of my favorites because it's significantly different from the other tunes, plus I have a definite interest in making that kind of sound work in games.
• "Behemoth" is next because it was made to sound like tunes that are often found in modern games. It's romping vibe was written to be a crowd-pleaser.
• "Fanfare and Jubilee" has, to me, a very likable and exciting 'hook,' so I wanted that to be in the mix as early as possible.
• Though I would rather have had "A Binding Harmony" next because it's one of my favorites, I needed to make sure that the track diversity stayed strong. "Monday's Theme" and "Hypothesis 209" are the tunes most unlike any of the other ones, save for "Mr. A.C.".
• I like "Heart of the Woods," but it was the obvious choice to play last simply because it's another orchestral track. Not to mention, the end is of the tune is probably the most fit to close out the demo.

So there you have it! I have a couple of more tasks to fulfill before I send out my packets, but it's finally getting to be that time. Thanks for listening, reading, and any other support you've thrown my way!

Special thanks goes out to my parents; my girlfriend, Jen Doo; my other family members; and my friends for all of their love and support. Thanks also to Natalie Parisi for all of  hard work she's done creating and manipulating my logo!