So I get this weird message from my friend. He’s somebody I used to work on video games with a lot. And when you do that kind of work, you end up getting a lot of weird requests.
Now, I don’t have time to do this one. But the first thing I think to myself is, wow, this would make a great class. And here’s why.
Working on a music brief gets you out of your own head. A song like this is short. And anything you can get to the finish line is worth a lot more than something you can’t.
And because it’s a Christmas song, there are thousands of them out there. So it takes the onus off of you composing something. Projects like this are about arrangement and production.
They let you focus on the interesting part of the problem, which is how are we going to distill all the whimsy and fun that is a chiptune song into something that we can make from a simple Christmas song arrangement. Sometimes you all ask me how I learned all this stuff. I’m inquisitive and I’m patient.
I wasn’t scared of having my ass handed to me on the bandstand. But also, and this is important, I take requests. And if you want to learn to do this stuff, maybe you should too.
