Turning a Loop into a Texture Rich VGM Track

Hello! I am Peter Roberts, composer and sound designer. I founded Copper Cloud Game Audio to bring custom, quality, and affordable game audio to the Indie Dev community. This is volume 2 of a 10 part series where I break down my track Rejuvenation Trance, which is part of my Multi-Genre Music Asset Pack. In this installment, I introduce the arrangment technique I used to create Rejuvenation Trace. I take an “overly dense” loop, and utilize the idea of changing textures and dynamic shaping to shape the separate elements of this loop into a full track! I believe texture and timbre are often overlooked aspects of educational composer YouTube content and I will be exploring the concepts in detail over the coming weeks. Website: https://www.coppercloudgameaudio.com/ Multi-Genre Music Pack: https://www.coppercloudgameaudio.com/... Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/coppercloud.... itch.io: https://coppercloud.itch.io/ Unity Asset Store: https://assetstore.unity.com/publishe... Timestamps: 00:00 intro 00:49 writer’s block 01:07 stuck in the loop 01:43 create an overly dense loop 02:17 when this works 03:38 my dense loop overview 04:24 listening to the dense loop 05:06 pads 05:53 pluck 06:27 arpeggios 06:53 high sparkle 07:04 MIDI clips 07:27 bass 08:04 strings 08:22 melody 09:08 counter-melody 09:29 drum groove 09:39 structural decisions for better results 11:33 reasoning behind structural decisions 12:10 adding drums and changing energy 12:18 adding pads 14:09 adding high sparkle 14:42 adding arpeggios 15:46 painting the background 16:08 adding more arpeggios 16:18 adding strings 16:31 adding bass 17:02 fading bass in 17:35 building the ending 18:10 adding melody 19:26 adding counter-melody 19:56 layering melody and counter-melody 21:02 decisions about overall shaping 21:34 building a white-noise effect for added impact 24:12 reason for using white-noise 24:24 reason for using filter animations 25:02 adding filter animations to the whole track 27:52 using volume automation with bass heavy sounds 28:32 adding another white-noise transition 29:26 filter and volume automations for secondary dynamic wave 31:13 filter automations for smooth ending 32:02 fixing drums 33:04 adding 3rd white-noise transition 33:40 finishing touches to automations 34:28 looking at automations to see shape of the piece 35:00 Serendipitous Sync – VERY IMPORTANT IN VGM 36:20 my hopes for you 36:44 on the next episode 37:02 outro