Colors & Chords

Music written to artwork by awesome internet artists. Artists, submit your work!

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Hey all! Between the end of our Kickstarter and my audio deadline, I haven’t had any time to compose something new for the blog this week. So in the meantime, here’s cat lady Misaki’s wake up alarm--featuring actual cat meows.

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Hey all! There’s only a few days left for the Sparkler Kickstarter, and we’re super close to our goal! So, if you like my work and you’ve got a game or story you need some music for, please consider buying my commission tier! Or check out some of the other tiers to get some sweet books, ebooks, or Sparkler subscriptions!

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Hey! Do you still accept artwork? :D

Yep! I’d love to get more artwork! You can use the submit box here :D

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Listen/purchase: Two Merfriends by Rebecca Scoble

The artwork for this track is by sharkberries aka Sharkie. The characters here are mer OCs of them and one of their friends!

My influences for this one were probably the weirdest combination of songs so far. Cape Breton Lullaby, which is a lovely choral piece that I sang in Elementary school and really stuck with me for all these years, and a medley of the Mario water level songs from a bunch of different games. I think the mixolydian scale of Cape Breton Lullaby gives the piece a slightly off-kilter feel, which I like for a song about non-human creatures. And listening to Mario music was really helpful for studying how composers who were seriously limited by technology decided to represent water and swimming, and get an idea of what kinds of sounds I wanted to use.

Anyway, it’s really fun to write music for characters like this! I hope it’s clear which of the instruments and themes represents each of them.

(My co-editor and best friend tokyodemons and I are very familiar with this particular friend dynamic–the big, quiet, serious one and the little extroverted one who gets all up in the other’s space. So yes, I’m drawing from my own life here :D)

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Aaaah! Look it’s my art and music!!! This is so cute I love it!! I want to wake up to this every morning, except I should because I end up hating whatever wakes me up but it’s just so nice ; v ; Thank you !!!

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I’m so glad you like the piece! I had a really fun time writing it, and your art is lovely! 

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Listen/purchase: Two Merfriends by Rebecca Scoble

The artwork for this track is by sharkberries aka Sharkie. The characters here are mer OCs of them and one of their friends!

My influences for this one were probably the weirdest combination of songs so far. Cape Breton Lullaby, which is a lovely choral piece that I sang in Elementary school and really stuck with me for all these years, and a medley of the Mario water level songs from a bunch of different games. I think the mixolydian scale of Cape Breton Lullaby gives the piece a slightly off-kilter feel, which I like for a song about non-human creatures. And listening to Mario music was really helpful for studying how composers who were seriously limited by technology decided to represent water and swimming, and get an idea of what kinds of sounds I wanted to use.

Anyway, it’s really fun to write music for characters like this! I hope it’s clear which of the instruments and themes represents each of them.

(My co-editor and best friend tokyodemons and I are very familiar with this particular friend dynamic–the big, quiet, serious one and the little extroverted one who gets all up in the other’s space. So yes, I’m drawing from my own life here :D)

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Hello, artists of Tumblr! 

I’m a composer working on a project called Colors and Chords, where I write music based on pieces of artwork. Thing is, I’m almost out of artwork! 

If you think it’d be cool to have a song written for a piece of your artwork, please submit something to me!

Here are some of the details:

Submit art of any style and any subject--I love variety, and the challenge of this project is writing music in a ton of different styles and moods. It can be something you did a while ago, or something new--whatever you want.

No fanart, please--you need to own all the characters in the work you send me. 

If I use your artwork, I will always credit you and link to the website of your choice whenever it’s used. You can see how I’ve credited people so far on tumblr, Bandcamp, and Youtube.

There’s more info about rights on the submit page, and you can ask me questions here!

Thank you!

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Listen/purchase: The Outlaw by Rebecca Scoble

The artwork for this piece is by my good friend Jesse Hodson, an extremely talented photographer, artist, and voice actor (for anyone who knows my audio dramas, he plays Robbie in Awake). A surprising number of the most influential stories of my life are sci fi westerns or other post-apocalyptic fiction, so I really wanted to do this one justice. The intro to this piece is pure Firefly, but my biggest influence was the first Trigun OST, which I was so into back in the early 2000s and I immediately knew I had to dig up again once I started working on this. I wish I could do justice to the amazing instrument combos Tsuneo Imahori used on that soundtrack! I love that when writing music for this kind of mixed genre image, you get to mix music genres, too! Striking a balance between analog and digital was really important to me with this one–acoustic guitar, synth bass, and a combination of digital and real-sounding percussion. And don’t ask how long it took me to dig up that vibraslap sound. I couldn’t remember the name of the instrument at first, I ended up having to watch a ton of percussion youtube videos to try to match the sound I wanted. Somehow, typing “that loud buzzy wooden sound that decays” into google wasn’t helpful. Vibraslap sound from Freesound.org, used under an Attribution license: Vibraslap Med.aif by adethefade

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Friday reblog!

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Listen/purchase: The Outlaw by Rebecca Scoble

The artwork for this piece is by my good friend Jesse Hodson, an extremely talented photographer, artist, and voice actor (for anyone who knows my audio dramas, he plays Robbie in Awake). A surprising number of the most influential stories of my life are sci fi westerns or other post-apocalyptic fiction, so I really wanted to do this one justice. The intro to this piece is pure Firefly, but my biggest influence was the first Trigun OST, which I was so into back in the early 2000s and I immediately knew I had to dig up again once I started working on this. I wish I could do justice to the amazing instrument combos Tsuneo Imahori used on that soundtrack! I love that when writing music for this kind of mixed genre image, you get to mix music genres, too! Striking a balance between analog and digital was really important to me with this one--acoustic guitar, synth bass, and a combination of digital and real-sounding percussion. And don't ask how long it took me to dig up that vibraslap sound. I couldn't remember the name of the instrument at first, I ended up having to watch a ton of percussion youtube videos to try to match the sound I wanted. Somehow, typing "that loud buzzy wooden sound that decays" into google wasn't helpful. Vibraslap sound from Freesound.org, used under an Attribution license: Vibraslap Med.aif by adethefade

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About Me - Audio Masterpost

Hey all! I feel a little weird doing this because this blog is so new, but I recently put up a music commission tier as part of the Sparkler Kickstarter so I thought I should have a masterpost of all my work in one place.

I’m Rebecca Scoble, and I write music and work with audio. I’m the head of the audio department at Sparkler Monthly Magazine, which is a digital fiction magazine modeled off shojo and josei magazines in Japan--I direct and edit all of our audio dramas, plus write the music and create many of the sound effects. 

First off, if you’d like to commission me, or just support year three of our magazine, check out the Sparkler Monthly Kickstarter! My tier is called the “REBECCA SCOBLE SPECIAL” and it costs $180 and comes with a VIP year-long subscription to Sparkler.

Here’s the (mostly) full list of my music and audio projects:

Sparkler audio series: 

Cat Lover’s Circumstances (listen on Sparkler, Bandcamp)

Modern-day geeky supernatural, ongoing. 

Awake (listen on Sparkler, Bandcamp, purchase complete set with extras)

Sci-fi drama mystery, complete. 

Tokyo Demons Audiobook (listen on Sparkler, Bandcamp - part 1, part 2)

Urban fantasy action/adventure, audio book 1 complete. 

Sparkler Podcast (listen on Sparkler, iTunes)

Wrote the intro/outro song, I’m one of the podcasters/interviewers about 2/3 of the time.

Non-Sparkler personal music projects:

Colors and Chords (follow on tumblr, Youtube, Bandcamp, Facebook)

I write music based on artwork submitted to me by artists from around the internet.

Extra music projects:

/report podcast--theme music for seasons 2+ (intro and outro)

Personal social media (where I talk about music sometimes, but also tons of other random things):

tumblr: beccasmash

twitter

Anyway, that’s most of it--at least the stuff that still exists online to link to. Feel free to use the askbox or email audio (at) chromaticpress.com with any questions. 

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7FtLwvUtew)

And here’s the Youtube version of the new piece. I’ve got a Youtube now, I figure I can keep things up on both Youtube and Bandcamp for now at least.

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Listen/purchase: Kara in the Snow by Rebecca Scoble

The artwork for this piece is from Becca Hillburn’s 7″ Kara, which is a lovely children’s watercolor comic about a 7-inch tall girl and her adventures when a regular family moves in nearby. It’s absolutely the wrong season for this image (at least in my part of the world), but I loved the color palette and the way she painted the sky. The big inspiration for this one was Miyazaki, since I think his movies share a similar feel. And this is definitely a “real instruments” kind of story, so I stuck with simple twinkly piano.

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Listen/purchase: Drippy - Night Sky by Rebecca Scoble

The artwork for this piece is a design created by my good friend Corky Lunn (you can also buy this artwork on a DS case)! When I decided to start this blog, I immediately thought of this design as a good place to start and asked her if I could use it, because I already had an idea for the piece I would write–something that feels like a beginning, and would give me a chance to play with goopy-sounding synths and twinkly percussion.

(note: this is a repost of my first piece--I’m playing with posting through bandcamp instead of directly through tumblr. I think it’s coming out better).

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Visit Original Link

The artwork for this piece is a design created by my good friend Corky Lunn (you can also buy this artwork on a DS case)! When I decided to start this blog, I immediately thought of this design as a good place to start and asked her if I could use it, because I already had an idea for the piece I would write--something that feels like a beginning, and would give me a chance to play with goopy-sounding synths and twinkly percussion. 

Click the picture twice to see the full version