Imphenzia

If you are looking for totally free sound effects, you may be in the right place. If you are looking for free sound effects of explosions, laser weapons, and alarms you have definitely come to the right place! My library of sound effects currently contains 96 free effects (25 alarm effects, 35 explosions, and 36 laser effects.) You can preview and download all the effects as WAV files (16bit 44.1KHz Stereo), Vorbis OGG files (encoded at the bitrates 128kbps and 64kbps), and MP3 files (encoded at VBR 190kbps.) To make browsing easier you can click on this link to browse the sound effect library with only the free ones visible =)

I decided to learn a bit more about modelling and texture mapping low poly 3D objects for games. My object of choice was a space ship and there are many skilled people out there who can do this ten times better than me, but at the same time I wanted to share my experience because you never know, someone might find it helpful =) [caption id="attachment_313" align="alignright" width="620" caption="Figure 1: Render of final space ship"] [/caption] The space ship pictured above (Figure 1) is a render of my final object. It consists of 252 faces (polygons) and 249 vertices (intersecting points.) Additional detail is added by also creating a slightly higher detailed version (1900 faces and 2125 vertices) used to render a "normal map" which is effectively a bump map adding extra detail to the low polygon version. I'll explain how I did that as well. Before getting started I'd also like to point out that this is not a full detailed clic...

It was after I broke my collar bone in a motocross accident in 2002 that I decided to create a 2D top-down racing game. I named the project Computer Touring Car Championship (CTCC) and for nearly 10 years it has been in the development pipe. In recent years the game also got it's proper name, "Performa Cars." You would maybe expect a masterpiece after 10 years, but the sad fact is that the past 8 years or so very little development time has been put into this particular game because a release has been hindered by development problems related to online network multiplayer gaming. The original design of Performa Cars simply doesn't allow it and rather than the game remaining unreleased I have finally made a big decision. I am now putting the finishing touches on releasing Performa Cars as a  FREEWARE . It'll will also be classified as an "Alpha" release since it may still contain some bugs and multiplayer is only possible through the split screen functiona...

Current level of inspiration when it comes to composing music for Imphenzia Soundtrack is peaking at an all time high. Mainly because the soundtrack website has gone through such a huge transformation making it easy and enjoyable to add new content. Content which is easy to find and easy to browse through with the new interface and advanced filtering capabilities. Inspiration is, in fact, so high that I am frustrated that I can't make an impulse purchase of Abynsth 5 from the Native Instruments website. There is an error in their shopping cart system and I emailed them about it yesterday but I haven't had a reply yet... Are they not keen to make a sale? The decision has also been made to buy the download version of Absynth rather than the boxed one (a dilemma that got the better of me the other day ). My friend, who I believe may be the only person in the world that reads this blog, pointed out to me that having a box littering the room is quite useless. I agree so the downloa...

Had to rush my wife to hospital yesterday and 2 hours later our second child, a little baby girl, was born. Right now I've just come home to pick up some things and I'm back off to pick them up. Will be back tonight and I'm eager to write a bit about how certain notes can affect your mood. I plan to dig a bit deeper on that subject on my journey with composing game music.

Following the launch of the revamped website, Imphenzia Soundtrack is currently my main priority. I tend to switch focus between Imphenzia Music (my trance music), Imphenzia Soundtrack, and Imphenzia Games depending on where I find most motivation at any given time. Shifting Focus The first half of this year I put a lot of effort into Imphenzia Music by rebuilding the entire web site from scratch, creating a new web shop, introducing Full Access feature, releasing new singles, releasing the Chillout album , introducing all my music to digital stores and Spotify. I also made the decision to allow full length streaming of ALL my tracks (previously high quality streaming was only allowing the first two minutes.) I'm not sure if that was the right thing to do because since then the number of Full Access users have dropped and now one person every other month opts for (the low end of) Full Access. I will keep things as they are, but I think the lack of interest in downloading my music ...

In a recent post I expressed some unhappiness with Spotify's lack of interest in independent artists. While walking around in the garden with the "Computer Sweden" newspaper (August 12, 2011) I stumbled upon an article forcing me to whine more on this topic. The Article... ...explains that the employees of Spotify are jackpot winners. The shares that Spotify offered to sell to its employees last year have increased in value from around $950'000 to $45'000'000. That is an increase of 4737% which is, of course, great news for the employees that purchased shares. I'm happy for them! This share increase is, however, not what caught my attention. As I read on I find out that the shares rocketed in value following new investment funding injected into Spotify by Digital Sky Technologies and, Klein Perkins, and Accel. Figures show that this year alone, investment companies have pumped in over $100'000'000 (that is $100 million ) into Spotify. At the same ...

The goal that I set in my post yesterday was to finish off the Once Upon a Platform level kit variations and release it. It's now 1:55 am and I have just finished the task. It wasn't easy because I spent much of the day with my son (I am on paternity leave) and once he was in bed I watched a movie ( True Grit ) with my wife. So what did I accomplish today? I composed the following short pieces of music (in addition to the loops I composed yesterday): Game Over loop Menu Music loop Boss music loop Life Lost music hit Get Ready music hit Stage Completed music hit I then down-mixed and mastered all 13 variations where 10 variations are seamless loops that have to be cropped (thank heaven for my seamless loop cropping script =). Once all the mastered audio files were in place I watermarked the 13 tracks and created OGG and MP3-previews for my site. Then, of course, I encoded the audio files that you get in the license mail which is WAV, OGG 128kbps, OGG 64kbps, and M...

Today I've been working on a new addition for the non-exclusive music library  and to totally switch from the orchestral music I composed yesterday I have taken a memory trip back in time. "Once Upon a Platform" is a new Level Kit of music mainly designed to be used in happy cheerful and cute platform games. So far I have composed the short, medium, and long stage loops - but during a discussion with a good friend of mine, who listened to the preview of the long loop, he noted that the long loop varied quite a bit in mood - as if it should be split into two separate tracks. My initial intention was to keep the long loop interesting by alternating the music quite a bit, but I have to admit that he was on to something. When he added (I translate from our chat conversation in Swedish) "In my mind I have just sorted out the first transition in the track... He [the player] just ate a mushroom." This spawned the idea. Yes, d@mn it, it's a classic Super Mario mome...

It may not be a new concept in the game industry itself, but creating what I refer to as a Level Kit is a new concept for me. Previously I've mainly created full length tracks and seamless loops of various lengths and styles but I suspect that game developers may appreciate these new Level Kits. The idea is to create variations of a track or theme which will cover most stages and situations of a game. Today I have composed and released Battle Zone Level Kit  which is an orchestral military style set of music files: Get Ready Music Hit (5 seconds) [Play Preview] Stage Completed Music Hit (14 seconds) [Play Preview] Game Over Loop (23 seconds) [Play Preview] Life Lost Music Hit (5 seconds)  [Play Preview] Menu Loop (15 seconds)  [Play Preview] Stage Short Loop (16 seconds)  [Play Preview] Stage Medium Loop (32 seconds)  [Play Preview] Stage Long Loop (111 seconds)  [Play Preview] Boss Loop (13 seconds) [Play Preview] Of course you can license each variation...

The latest addition to my library of Non-Exclusive game music is " Fantasy RPG " - a collection of 8 short seamless orchestral loops for games with a fantasy or medieval theme. The loops can, of course, be used for many other purposes as, for example, the battle loops are quite universal in time and game genres. You can play the Intense Battle Full Loop to get an appreciation of what it sounds like (Note: the audio file is watermarked if you are wondering why my voice disturbs you gently half way through :) The loops are very short, only between 10 and 32 seconds in length, making them especially suitable for small games with shorter gameplay. The short duration also makes them incredible cheap with excellent value for money as they are practically given away priced between $3 and $10 each for indie game developers. Details for the curious To create these loops I use Steinberg Cubase 5.5 as a sequencer. The orchestral library I use is Symphonic Orchestra Gold  by EastWest S...

In my previous post  I described how I create seamless music loops in Cubase and Sound Forge. I also mentioned that I have a Javascript for Sound Forge that I use to save time in performing the task to crop out the center third of the audio file along with fading the start and finish of the loop to remove any clicks at the loop point. You can  Download Seamless Loop Javascript for Sound Forge . Remember that you can't just magically rung this script on any old piece of audio to make a seamless loop of it - you need to follow the directions of the YouTube Tutorial  to produce the audio file suitable for making a seamless loop. Let's have a look at what the script does Basically, I took the sample script that you get with Sound Forge that Crops and Fades a piece of audio. I then made the following alterations: var smpLength : Int64 = Math.round(wnd.File.Length / 3); The above line of code creates the variable smpLength , which is a 64 bit integer, to a third of the length of the...

Making seamless loops is an essential part in creating music suitable for games. Loops will keep the distribution size of games to a minimum and it also makes the audio cheaper to license which is crucial for smaller indie game developers. Although I've been making music as the trance artist " Imphenzia " for 14 years, which is starting to sound like a very long time also making me sound old, I've only been releasing music for games during the past 3-4 years as " Imphenzia Soundtrack ." I mention this for no apparent reason at all, so lets move on. I've created a video tutorial of how I go about when creating a seamless loop. In this case it's an orchestral movie-style piece of music that will be added to my library of non-exclusive music. I use Steinberg Cubase 5.5 and Sony Sound Forge 10 to create the loop but you will probably be able to replicate the steps in your sequencer and audio editor of choice. Time for the tutorial - have a look at it and...

The hype is to be on Spotify since it's a great idea that appeals to many artists, including me. What better way to battle piracy than to offer it free with advertisement funding (like a modern radio station where you just select the playlist) or through premium subscriptions? This is how the industry should have approached the digital world instead of Digital Rights Management (DRM.) What I feel Spotify has failed miserably with is how independent artists are treated. So why have Spotify failed to accommodate the indie artist? Well, it's a modern and entirely digital service so why can't they offer independent artists a simple control panel with the ability to upload and manage their music for free? Why do we have to go through aggregators, and pay what to most of us is an uncomfortable sum of money, to reach a this purely digital streaming service? I can only guess that Spotify's focus is elsewhere, and that focus is the big named artists and their record labels. I f...

I have released a total number of 6 albums and 4 maxi singles as an independent artist and on my official web site . For over a year I was trying to figure out which digital "aggregator" to use in order to reach digital retail stores (like iTunes, AmazonMP3) and the streaming service Spotify. I looked at aggregators such as TuneCore, CD Baby, Record Union, and Ubetoo. The first thing that struck me was how terrible the terms and conditions are , something all of the mentioned aggregators have in common. Basically you sign up giving them exclusive distribution rights (their intention is for selected digital stores that they have partnered with, but their terms and conditions they take a shotgun approach and just say "all" digital stores and streaming rights.) In the fine print there are also some awful clauses where; sure you can terminate the contract at any time, BUT, we want a whole bunch of clauses to remain in effect even after termination. After contacting the ...

Shortly following the release of the new Imphenzia Soundtrack site I've had some feedback that the watermark of "Imphenzia" every 5 seconds is annoying - understandably so. I used to offer my music in very low quality without watermarks for previewing but I found that some tracks were being used anyway. The tracks that were used without license were, however, only used in videos on Youtube and never in any games which supports my experience that indie game developers really want to do the right thing and license the assets they use properly. In order to make the watermark less annoying I have now altered the previews. I've created a VBScript that automatically loops through all the original WAV files and watermarks them. In my VBScript I use the free utility Sound eXchange (SoX) to extract the duration in samples of the original WAV file. I then have a Watermark audio file which is 20 minutes in duration (longer than my longest piece of music) and using SoX I can then...

[caption id="attachment_191" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Screenshot of Imphenzia Soundtrack"] [/caption] I’ve worked hard into the early hours every night for the past month but I’ve launched the new Imphenzia Soundtrack site. I already had my design template finished as it uses the same design as my artist site (and spacebox4096.com and beatball2.com ) but it took a lot of time creating the new filter functionality to enable easy browsing of the hundreds of music tracks and sound effects. I’ve taken a conscious decision to not add fallback functionality for visitors without javascript enabled. It simply takes way too long and there are so few of them that it’s not worthwhile. I also had a lot of troubles with browser compatibility but the site works in the browsers I have installed Chrome 13, Firefox 3.6, IE8, and I’ve had to force fallback to IE8 for IE9 browsers as IE9 hates me and jQuery =) I’ll deal with that some other day and...