game music | Ben Prunty's Blog

Here’s what I’ve been up to – New music!

September 3, 2014 by Ben

It’s been about a year, so I figure it’s time I wrote another update on what I’ve been up to. Here are my projects! Star Crawlers Star Crawlers is a first-person, procedurally-generated RPG. Think Legend of Grimrock, Eye of the Beholder, or Lands of Lore, but on derelict space ships. It’s coming along nicely. Here’s a track from the game. FranknJohn It’s a goofy beat-em-up roguelike where you swing your head on a chain and smack enemies with it. It […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Color Sky, FranknJohn, game music, games, Gravity Ghost, Scale, Star Crawlers, UCSC

FTL music rearrangements!

June 8, 2014 by Ben

I absolutely love music rearrangement. OC Remix is one of my favorite sites and has been a huge influence on my own work. When a melody is strong enough, (or the arrangement artist is simply good enough) it can be used pretty much endlessly in different forms and contexts. After FTL came out, there have been a number of really cool rearrangements made by awesome artists, and I’m going to share them with you here. I honestly still can’t get over […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: FTL, game music, remix

The most important advice I can give to an aspiring game musician

March 3, 2014 by Ben

As you probably know, I made the music for FTL, Gravity Ghost, Star Crawlers and a bunch of other games that are on their way. I am what you would call a successful indie; I get to write music full time and make a comfortable living doing what I do. I’m going to tell you a little about myself and the things I learned, because I think the information might be useful to an aspiring indie, musician or otherwise. First, […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: advice, career, game music, story time

Ben’s Reading List: all the best books I read on my way to becoming a game composer

October 30, 2013 by Ben

Sorry video games and music; the written word is my favorite medium. Thankfully though, my prodigious appetite for more words fits well with my tendency to teach myself everything. In the last 15 years or so I’ve digested a lot of books in my journey to become a musician for games. Here are the best ones. They don’t all involve music or games, but I found them all invaluable. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Music Theory – I pimp this […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: advice, books, career, game music, recommendations

A guided tour through the FTL soundtrack: analysis of themes.

July 11, 2013 by Ben

As I mention in the text writeup included with every copy, the FTL soundtrack is very self-referential. Lots of sounds, melodies and chords show up multiple times throughout. Here I’m going to break down three of the major motifs, point out each time they pop up, and tell you a bit about them and how they fit in with everything else. You might want to pull up the soundtrack in bandcamp so you can follow along. The Space Cruise Chords This is […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: composition, FTL, game music

Here’s what I used to make the FTL soundtrack

January 3, 2013 by Ben

I get a lot of people asking me what tools I used to make the FTL soundtrack. I started answering them individually, but I think a blog post would be more efficient and useful to everyone. So here goes! I have a Macbook Pro that’s the center of my setup. I record everything into Cubase, my DAW of choice. There are many quality DAWs out there. I hear Reason and FL Studio are good too. I originally purchased Cubase because ten years ago, when I knew nothing about […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: FTL, game music, hardware, music production