Aaron Freed’s Creative Portfolio
Contents
- Contents
- A No-Longer-Brief Introductory Note
- Ludography
- Major Credits (Published)
- Eternal X
- Apotheosis X
- Dungeons Presents Hellpak: Vol. 1 – Not Recommended by Doctors
- Major Credits (Unpublished/Incomplete)
- Tempus Irae Redux
- Where Monsters Are in Dreams
- Return to Marathon Chapter 2
- Marathon Chronicles
- Dungeons Presents Hellpak: Vol. 2 – An Exercise in Questionable Taste
- Other Credits (Published)
- Trojan Standalone Edition
- Marathon Phoenix SE
- Marathon Rubicon X
- Selected Discography
- A General Overview
- Selected Works, 2014–2023
- Selected Solo Works
- Compositions 2023–2024
- See You Starside: The Marathon Soundtrack Reimagined
- Demos 2014
- Compositions 1993–1997
- Marathon Remixes (1997)
- Selected Collaborations
- Eternal X 1.3 OST
- Tempus Irae Redux OST
- Dungeons Presents Hellpak: Vol. 2 – An Exercise in Questionable Taste OST
- Other Marathon Projects
- VAF
- @MarathonVidmaster YouTube channel
- Aleph One Mapmaking Guide
- Marathon Remixes & Fan Soundtracks
- Remastered Pathways into Darkness & Marathon Trilogy Sounds
- Aleph Bet
- Other Long-Form Writing
- Music Writing
- Musical Modes and the Circle of Fifths
- Music Reviews
A No-Longer-Brief Introductory Note
This is a selected (and far from exhaustive) portfolio of my creative work, either with others or solo. Most, although hardly all, relates to Bungie’s Marathon trilogy, a series I’ve been modding for since 1997. Much also relates to sound in some way, as:
- I’m classically trained in music performance, composition, & arrangement
- I’ve also gained sound production expertise from thousands of hours using computers for tasks like:
- composing music
- working on sound for game mods
- remastering music for my own personal listening
- editing videos
Most of this content requires the open-source Aleph One engine to play; a basic familiarity with the Marathon trilogy will also help. (For those unfamiliar with it, the Marathon trilogy, released from 1994 to 1996, was one of Bungie’s big series before Halo; I tell people that it was roughly the Doom (1993) to Halo’s Quake, down to the parallel of being one of Bungie’s big series before Halo.) Aleph One enables you to play the Marathon trilogy on Windows, Linux, and modern MacOS; here are links to self-contained releases of the trilogy and to a standalone version of the Aleph One app that enables you to play third-party content.
I’m probably one of the most prolific modders in Marathon’s history, with credits in five major published mods ranging from “remastered the music” (Phoenix) to “co-led the scenario & contributed to every aspect of its development” (Eternal). I’ve remastered the 400+ sounds in the Marathon trilogy, plus hundreds of sounds from Pathways into Darkness & several major Marathon mods. Some of these were in especially rough shape (especially Pathways’) & improved miraculously, while others already sounded pretty good & experienced only minor improvements. I also have an ongoing project to locate the CD-quality sources of Marathon sounds & remix them from their sources.
I’m also the leader of a project that’s become Aleph One’s third main texturing utility, which I’ve renamed to VAF. I also have beginners’ and advanced Marathon mapmaking guides, a Marathon Vidmaster’s Challenge YouTube channel, a Marathon music repository, & a catalog of links to Marathon content (currently part of the beginners’ mapmaking guide, though I’m planning to split it off to its own page soon). You may also be interested in:
- “Personal Projects 101”, including a YouTube channel trailer & my favorite gameplay footage & music videos
- My discography page, featuring free downloads of:
- Nearly all music I’ve released as a musician, composer, or arranger
- Several albums I’ve mastered or remastered
- My commentary on my most recent musical compositions.
Please contact me if you have any questions/praise/constructive criticism/job offers.
N.B. I listed the dates when I worked on a project, not its entire development cycle (e.g., I remastered Phoenix’s music in 2020, but it’s been in development since no later than 2010). Partly this is because the latter didn’t seem as relevant for the purposes of this list, & partly it’s because I didn’t always know those dates. Also, “major credits” means that I consider my roles on those releases to have been major – I intend no commentary on which of those releases are more significant.
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Ludography
Major Credits (Published)
Eternal X (2018–)
- One of the Marathon trilogy’s biggest, best-known, & most acclaimed third-party scenarios
- Codirector (alongside Forrest Cameranesi) since version 1.2.1; have been de facto project leader since 2020
- Additional credits include music, sound design, level design, writing, Lua scripting, & graphics
- Personally mixed, remixed, or remastered every sound effect in the game in iZotope RX
- I’ve been heavily involved in the soundtrack’s production since 1.2 & its arrangements throughout 1.3:
- I remastered 1.2’s OST to compensate for digital clipping & lossy compression artifacts, employing iZotope RX’s declipper to compensate for the former & a process I’ve taken to calling “upmastering” for the latter: create pitch-shifted duplicates of lower frequencies by an octave or more; high pass the duplicates; make further EQ adjustments as needed; mix-paste the results. This works surprisingly well because many, though admittedly by no means all, sounds have even harmonic resonance, wherein a 440 Hz note (A4) resonates at 880 Hz (A5), 1,760 Hz (A6), 3,520 Hz (A7), etc.
- 1.3 OST is over seven hours long & contains unique music for every level
- I pieced together multiple composers’ arrangements into suites averaging over eight minutes per level
- OST contains over eighty minutes of my arrangements & over two hours of collaborations with others
- I remastered Dr Craig Hardgrove’s tracks again after he released higher-quality versions in 2024; here are my standalone remasters of these releases. Many of these remasters are featured in 1.3’s OST; I remixed others in Logic Pro from his GarageBand source files
- There are two different FLAC versions of 1.3’s soundtrack, one meant for in-game use and the other meant for listening outside the game; I explain the differences on my Marathon soundtracks page
- The 1.3 previews are perfectly playable from start to finish, but Eternal is still under active development. We released preview 6 on 2023-03-07 (with a hotfix on 2023-03-29) and hope to finish version 1.3 in late 2024
- I’ve speedrun Eternal on Total Carnage. My PB is just under two hours & fifteen minutes, which I believe is technically the world record, but I doubt anyone else has ever even run it on TC. Nonetheless, speedrunning it has helped me identify several annoying design elements that have since been removed
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Apotheosis X (2020–2023)
- Wrote most of the scenario’s Lua (and all in version 1.1) – as far as I can tell, it was the first major Marathon scenario to use any form of dynamic music
- My remastered Marathon Infinity sounds formed the backbone of Apotheosis X’s sound design
- Worked with project director hypersleep on remastering weapon sounds for the current 1.1 release. The new sounds have been widely regarded as a significant improvement
- Featured in PC Gamer (pcgamer.com/marathon-mod-apotheosis-x)
- Further updates have not been ruled out but are not currently under active development
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Dungeons Presents Hellpak: Vol. 1 – Not Recommended by Doctors (2020–2024)
Gameplay & music videos: YouTube playlist (including soundtrack video & complete playthrough by thechunks)
- Mastered soundtrack: fixed audio flaws, edited tracks for pacing, helped with sequencing, made OST video
- Wrote all the project’s Lua
- Maintained the master scenario directory for the latter part of its development cycle
- Partly or solely responsible for five levels, several terminals, the scenario documentation, & AI art prompts
- Also did the vast majority of bug fixes
- Due to the project’s difficulty, we had trouble finding testers, so we missed a lot of bugs (necessitating several bug fix releases)
- (Hopefully) final bug fix release, v42069.4, was released on 2024-06-24
- This is an iteration of creator tbcr’s long-running Dungeons show, hence its full title
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Major Credits (Unpublished/Incomplete)
Tempus Irae Redux (2020–)
- Reimagining of one of Marathon Infinity’s first & best major scenarios, with which I’m assisting one of its original creators, James Hastings-Trew (the winner of Bungie’s mapmaking contest)
- Contributed remastered/remixed sounds, level design (including a new secret level, “Il grande silenzio”), some two hours of (mostly) original music, soundtrack mastering, Lua, writing, & fixes to innumerable problems ranging from game-breaking bugs to misaligned textures
- Nardo website may not have been updated to mention Redux yet
- Not a straight remaster but more of a modern update; as it significantly changes several levels, players may find it interesting to play both
- Redux isn’t planned to supersede the original Tempus Irae, whose original Aleph One release will continue to be available on Nardo’s website after we release Redux; however, we recommend Redux for anyone playing Tempus for the first time
- Estimated completion date: late 2024 (warning: my estimates are notoriously optimistic; nonetheless, we opened a limited beta test in mid-October 2023, although we haven’t yet reached feature completion)
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Where Monsters Are in Dreams (2019–)
- Codirector alongside Blayne Scott, thedoc, CryoS, & hypersleep
- Other credits include Lua, sound, music, level design, & story
- Initially an Eternal sequel & Rubicon prequel (those connections have somewhat lessened over time)
- Development began ca. 2001; has been completely overhauled several times
- YouTube videos are already years old – many graphics & levels seen in them have since been replaced (we’ve embargoed new footage until we’re almost ready to release the game)
- In late 2023, hypersleep, CryoS, & I recommitted to finally finishing this monster (pun intended) & have a detailed, step-by-step roadmap to do so
- Estimated completion date: 2025. However, we’ve overshot so many estimates that it’s become a running gag, so take that with not just a grain or even a boulder of salt but in fact an entire salt mine
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Return to Marathon Chapter 2 (2023–)
- To be clear, I didn’t work on chapter 1, but chapter 2 & onward will continue in the same style
- No new assets to show yet: development only recently resumed after a hiatus of over 20 years
- Big House site may not yet be updated to mention project’s revival
- Too early to estimate completion date yet
- Planned roles include audio, soundtrack, Lua, story, & level design
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Marathon Chronicles (1997–)
- Scenario I’ve been developing off & on since eighth grade (currently “off” until I complete other projects)
- I’m the project director & have worked on maps, sounds, music, graphics, writing, scripting, & more
- Love letter to the trilogy & several major fan scenarios, including hopefully dead-on Tempus Irae pastiches
- Chronicles is planned to be a sort of grand finale to a loose arc between the fan games Rubicon, Eternal, Phoenix, & Where Monsters Are in Dreams (listed in original release order rather than in-universe chronology), & to wrap up several unresolved plot elements of Eternal & Rubicon. Some of its goals include:
- Resolving Hathor’s story
- Addressing some ramifications of Rubicon’s story
- Resolving the conflict revealed towards the end of Eternal
- Despite its having technically been in development for nearly two-thirds of my life, Chronicles may still well be less than half complete
- I plan for its second half to be fairly atypical Marathon gameplay: dozens of interconnected levels with nonlinear objectives & items that players will be able to obtain in nearly order & will allow them several different ways to progress, enabling several possible solutions to its objectives. None of this is implemented yet, though, & Chronicles is currently on the backburner at least until Tempus Irae Redux is complete
- Much of the 2020 build is far below my current capabilities (some of it is over two decades old) & likely to be entirely remade as time permits
- I’ve linked an older build because more recent ones incorporate Tempus Irae Redux assets that I have no desire to release ahead of Redux itself, out of respect for James’ phenomenal efforts on them
- Estimated completion date: late 2020s at the earliest
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Dungeons Presents Hellpak: Vol. 2 – An Exercise in Questionable Taste (2023–)
Soundtrack (WIP): FLAC (download or stream) ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/hellpakvol2ost.html⟩
- Again doing level design, Lua, soundtrack mastering/video, writing, & scenario documentation
- Have also composed original tracks for the OST & remixed tracks by other musicians
- Level submissions for Vol. 2 are closed, but it’s not too early to begin work on levels or ideas for Vol. 3
- We’ll welcome most sorts of contributions from anyone, but we don’t need more people to send us music: more than seven hours of music have been submitted for Vol. 2 – i.e., more than enough for both Vol. 2 & Vol. 3, while giving us a pretty good head start on Vol. 4
- Estimated completion date: late 2024 or 2025
- Gameplay & music preview: youtu.be/lebTkbIkt5I
- I created this video’s first music track, (“7:6:5:4”, named for its polyrhythms), its first five levels (“Sega Genesis featuring Peter Gabriel”, “Spinning Wheel”, “StairWAVE to Aaron”, “Gateway to Aaron”, “GateWAVE to Aaron”), & the ridiculous Lua scripts most of them use
- Includes music tracks from each composer; the others, in order, are by Matrix_XV, tbcr, CKT1138, & NEFX
- Levels & music seen here may not necessarily appear in this form in the final release, as neither the level order nor the music to accompany each level have been finalized yet
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Other Credits (Published)
Trojan Standalone Edition (2021–2022)
- Standalone re-release of one of Marathon 1’s biggest total conversions with some added/revised content
- Remastered all the game’s sounds & music
- Several sounds remain quite rough, which was likely unavoidable unless I outright replaced them (which was outside the scope of what we aimed to do), but they’re noticeable improvements over the originals
- The music doesn’t sound noticeably different than it originally did, as it was already very dynamic
- The only formal credit I received for this was a “thanks”, for reasons I still don’t understand
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Marathon Phoenix SE (2020)
Soundtrack: FLAC (download or stream) ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/music/phoenix1.4ost.html⟩ • YouTube (stream) ⟨youtu.be/KczNQR_K5Qc⟩
- Remastered the soundtrack in iZotope RX ⟨izotope.com/en/products/rx.html⟩ to improve its dynamic range
- Increased overall DR by three decibels from DR9 to DR12, per foobar2000’s ⟨foobar2000.org⟩ TT Dynamic Range Meter ⟨foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_dr_meter⟩ plugin. These tracks recovered the most DR:
- Seven decibels: “Chronological” (DR4 to DR11)
- Six decibels: “Animosity” (DR4 to DR10), “Misuse” (DR6 to DR12), “Ice Flow” (DR6 to DR12)
- Five decibels: “Temptation” (DR5 to DR10), “Cataklyst” (DR7 to DR12), “TGIBX Theme” (DR9 to DR14)
- I’ve formatted the DR logs as tables ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/phoenixdrlogs.html⟩ to improve their legibility
- My remaster of the title theme isn’t included with the game (it already had relatively decent dynamic range to begin with, but my remaster does have an additional five decibels of range)
- The FLAC soundtrack may differ in minute ways from the in-game versions
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Marathon Rubicon X (2022)
- Since 2024-04-25, Rubicon X has integrated scripts from a plugin I made in 2022 ⟨simplici7y.com/rubicon-x-bloom-monster-fix⟩ to make its bloom (which was added to Aleph One after Rubicon X was released) less extreme
- I wasn’t credited for this, but I don’t really mind, since it’s a pretty minor change; I doubt it even took me a half hour to implement
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Selected Discography
A General Overview
Selected Works, 2014–2023
“1-CD” version: FLAC (download or stream) ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/music/selectedworks1disc.html⟩
2-CD version: FLAC (download or stream) ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/music/selectedworks2discs.html⟩
- Having released (by some measures) over five hours of music in 2023 alone, I compiled some of my favorite tracks from the past decade
- “1-CD” version runs for 86 minutes and features eight tracks
- Originally did fit on an audio CD until I expanded “Flippant” & “Fat Man” & updated this collection
- I considered yeeting a track to fit it onto one CD again, but I grew attached to its present state
- With the collection clearly no longer fitting onto one CD, I got cheeky enough to compile a proper 2-CD version with fifteen tracks (a few pieced together from multiple sources) that run for nearly 155 minutes
- Both versions include:
- Original compositions
- Covers
- Remixes of others’ music
- Solo tracks
- Collaborations with other artists
- “1-CD” release includes liner notes with detailed credits & track-by-track commentary (which remain works in progress for the 2-CD release)
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Selected Solo Works
Compositions 2023-2024
Listen: FLAC (download or stream) ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/music/compositions2023-2024.html⟩
- My recent game compositions. As of 2024-10-09, it features just over two and a half hours of (mostly) original compositions tentatively slated for hellpak Vol. 2 (1-2), Tempus Irae Redux (3-13, 15), and ¯\(°_o)/¯ (14):
- “Not Actually FFIV”
- “7:6:5:4 – A Study in Musical Proprotions”
- “Ludo mortale” (Italian for “Deadly Game”)
- “Ambiēns aquātica” (Latin for “Aquatic Ambience”)
- “Disco Apocalypse in 5/4 (co-starring the delicious talents of Logic Pro)”
- “Singulāris persōnificātiō mālōrum” (Latin for “The Singular Personification of Evils”)
- «Λοκρῶν θρῆνος» (ancient Greek for “Locrian Lament”; romanized: “Lokrôn thrênos”)
- “Ritratto in grigio” (Italian for “Portrait in Gray”)
- “Tempus tempestātum” Latin for “Time of Storms”
- “You Wanted To”
- «Καταιβᾰτή ἕλῐξ» ancient Greek for “Downward Spiral”; romanized: “Kataibaté hélix”)
written by Chris Christodoulou & Aaron Freed, partly based on several of Chris’ tracks from the Risk of Rain series & made with his encouragement
- “Tempestās īrae” (Latin for “A Storm of Wrath”)
- “Pende siccāre” (Latin for “Hang to Dry”)
- «La fille qui volait les astres» (French for “The Girl Who Stole the Stars”)
- “Īra temporis” (Latin for “Wrath of Time”)
- Also features detailed track-by-track commentary ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/compositions2023-2024notes.html⟩
- I regard this as both a compilation & a proper album – Schrödinger’s compilation, if you will
- This compilation is itself bound to be subjected to revisions & additions
- Besides the exception noted above, I wrote everything except for brief interpolations of works by:
- King Crimson (“Not Actually FFIV”)
- Alexander Seropian & Nobuo Uematsu (“7:6:5:4”)
- Thomas of Celano (conjectured) (“Disco Apocalypse in 5/4”, «Καταιβᾰτή ἕλῐξ»)
- Genesis (“Disco Apocalypse in 5/4”)
- Kōji Kondō & Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (“Singulāris persōnificātiō mālōrum”)
- Rush & Johann Sebastian Bach («Λοκρῶν θρῆνος»)
- Edvard Grieg (“Ludo mortale”)
- Nine Inch Nails («Καταιβᾰτή ἕλῐξ»)
- Alexander Seropian (“Īra temporis”)
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See You Starside: The Marathon Soundtrack Reimagined (released February 4, 2023)
- Completely new arrangements that nearly double the OST’s length from 40:16 to 78:17
- Several melodies & riffs now reappear in several other tracks
- Nearly every song contains new original melodies, most of which I wrote for See You Starside
- Deliberately retro arrangement/production, with intricate, densely layered mixes that retain their dynamic range (album Dynamic Range Meter score of DR13, with track scores from DR11 to DR16)
- Main influences: ’70s progressive rock, ’80s pop, ’90s VGM
- Secondary influences: blues, jazz, metal, classical, Baroque, choral music, ambient, post-rock, kosmische musik, electronica, disco
- Download includes 16-page liner notes with album & track commentary, track metadata, artwork, & credits
- I made See You Starside entirely in GarageBand & almost exclusively used GarageBand instruments; one of my goals was to show that it isn’t necessary to spend a fortune to make music that sounds good
- I’ve since made several variants, including the following two that I’m no longer editing:
These mostly employ GarageBand & Logic instruments, though “Aliens Again” & “Chomber” make limited use of EastWest ComposerCloud+ instruments
- I’m now making new versions of all three of these (i.e., See You Starside, Violins Again, & …And Beyond) in Logic Pro, using both Logic & ComposerCloud+ instruments. Relatively current revisions of some of these may be heard here ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/music/seeyoustarsidemk2.html⟩; however, note that many have major instrument balance flaws that I haven’t yet fixed. Part of why I exported them was to identify changes I need to make, since many of my projects have gotten so complex that even my M2 MacBook Air can’t play them in real time. I plan to do draft mixes of all sixteen tracks before I fix the instrument balance – repeated listening will reveal flaws I otherwise might not notice
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Demos 2014 (released November 24, 2014)
Listen: FLAC (download or stream) ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/music/demos2014.html⟩
- Competent piano demos of original material & Genesis, Nobuo Uematsu, & Johann Pachelbel covers
- All songs, including the covers, feature at least some improvisation
- Last two tracks were somewhat successful attempts to learn jazz scales
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Compositions 1993–1997 (released 2008)
Listen: FLAC (download or stream) ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/music/compositions1993-1997.html⟩
- These are juvenilia, but I remain fond of them (I omitted the exceptions, hence the missing Untitled tracks)
- I rearranged some segments in 2008, but most are as I arranged them in 1993–1997
- The most conspicuous influences I can identify are Johann Sebastian Bach & Pink Floyd, though I don’t think I consciously modeled most of its compositions after any particular artist’s style
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Marathon Remixes (1997)
- Much less sophisticated than See You Starside: imported into MIDI editor, added reverb & panning, doubled up some tracks, reassigned voices, re-exported, saved as AIFF in QuickTime 2.5
- Still interesting at times – “Splash (Marathon)”’s main riff sounds especially cool due to how it alternates between stereo channels
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Selected Collaborations
Eternal X 1.3 Original Soundtrack (WIP)
by Trey J. Anderson, Aaron Freed, Dr Craig Hardgrove, Thomas Livingston, Cory King Tucker, Matrix_XV, Nicholas Singer, Solar-Tron, Eike Steffen, Dan Storm, Talashar, & wowbobwow
based on compositions by Alexander Seropian, Martin O’Donnell, Michael Salvatori, & Chris Christodoulou
- Soundtrack for Eternal X 1.3, listed above
- Expands soundtrack from around 75 minutes to over 7 hours of in-game music (with another half-hour of bonus tracks)
- Every level now contains unique music
- Over 80 minutes of the OST are entirely or largely my work; around two hours more are my collaborations with other artists
- “Ecce homō corpulentus” (“Behold the Fat Man”) & “Dona eis pietātem” (“Grant Them Mercy”) contain four-part harmonies with Latin lyrics that I wrote myself (apart from eight words from “Dies Īrae” in the former)
- I arranged the songs into suites, selected each level’s music, mastered the OST, & wrote up the liner notes
- Remains a work in progress, but it contains many of the works I’m proudest of
- Standalone mixes of my collaborations with other artists ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/music/collaborationsandcovers.html⟩ are also available for those who want them (a few of these aren’t yet worked into the soundtrack)
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Tempus Irae Redux OST (WIP)
by Aaron Freed, Alexander Nakarada, Rafael Krux, Kevin MacLeod, Bryan Teoh, Nine Inch Nails, Brian Boyko, CKT1138, Sean Magee, Rich Wilcox, & Fungus Amongus
Listen: FLAC (download or stream) ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/music/tempusiraereduxost.html⟩
- Soundtrack for upcoming remake of classic Marathon Infinity scenario Tempus Irae
- Original game director James Hastings-Trew & I initially selected music for every level; I then remastered it
- I made several edits to the soundtrack as needed to fit our desired moods for the levels
- I also made a metal version of Brian Boyko’s “Ambush in Rattlesnake Gulch”, which I actually sequenced from scratch, by ear
- In June 2024, I took leave of my senses and decided to write new songs for it. The following tracks, which run for over two hours, are thus far tentatively intended for Tempus Irae Redux:
- “Īra temporis” (“Wrath of Time”): A vaguely Radiohead-inspired track in 5/4 written to bookend the Earth campaign levels; the first version (“Ex tempore, ex locō”, or “Out of Time, Out of Place”) mixes classical, jazz, and electronica, while the second (“Nōn omnia in sua locō corrēctō erant”, or “Not Everything Was in Its Right Place”) takes an atmospheric black metal-inspired approach.
- «Καταιβᾰτή ἕλῐξ» (“Kataibaté hélix”, “Downward Spiral”): A nearly twenty-minute epic rewrite of four of Chris Christodoulou’s Risk of Rain tracks made with his encouragement; one of the most sublime pieces I’ve ever worked on. Mostly in 5/8; the second movement ends in 4/4. The third movement’s lyrics are from Diēs Īrae (Tempus Irae’s namesake – and the third movement’s, for that matter)
- «Λοκρῶν θρῆνος» (“Lokrôn thrênos”, “Locrian Lament”): A track in the Locrian mode (whose diminished root chord makes it sound rather dissonant) that switches time signatures every measure (with its first measure in 1/8, its second in 2/8, its third in 3/8, its fourth in 4/8, and so on up to 21/8; it resets to 1/8 in measure twenty-two). Divided into a chaotic first half and a substantially more subdued and mysterious second half, which will each play in different contexts
- “You Wanted To”: I doubt anyone except me will hear it, but this one is vaguely influenced by System of a Down’s “Chop Suey!” (which inspired its title) and Radiohead’s “In Limbo”. This is also in 5/4
- “Tempus tempestātum” (“Time of Storms”): An attempt to mix tonalities – melodic in places, more dissonant than Locrian in others. Written during a hurricane, hence the name. There are two versions: “Tempo tempestoso (elettrico)” (Italian for “Stormy Weather (electric)”) and “Tiempo tempestuoso (acústico)” (Spanish for “Stormy Weather (acoustic)”).
- “Ambiēns aquātica”: A tribute to David Wise’s Donkey Kong Country classic “Aquatic Ambiance”
- “Ritratto in grigio” (“Portrait in Gray”): A stylistic cross between the Allman Brothers Band’s “Whipping Post”, Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused”, Tears for Fears’ “Sowing the Seeds of Love”, and late ’90s/early ’00s Final Fantasy boss themes. Written in (3+3+3+2)/8 (or 11/8), like the “Whipping Post” intro
- “Pende siccāre”” (“Hang to Dry”): A Massive Attack pastiche inexplicably written at 7 am. Would it surprise you to learn that this is in 5/4? There are two versions: “Tūtēla” (“Protection”, giving a hint as to its inspiration) and “Impetus” (which in addition to its English meaning also means “Attack”).
- “Ludo mortale” (“Deadly Game”): What happens when you take a mathematical pattern, give it a dance beat (“Danza frattale”, or “Fractal Dance”), then turn that into a jazz song (｢フラクタル・ジャズ｣, or “Fractal Jazz” in Japanese – it reminds me of Japanese role-playing game music). Each version starts in 4/4 but switches to 5/4 about halfway through, but you’d have to be paying attention to notice
- “Singulāris persōnificātiō mālōrum” (“The Singular Personification of Evils”): This chaotic track in 7/4, 5/4, & 4/4 lifts some chords from Mozart’s Requiem & quotes Kōji Kondō’s “Lost Woods” in passing. It has two versions: “Dōnā eī requiem” (“Grant Him Rest”, acoustic) & (“Pfhor [Is] a Wolf to Pfhor”, electric)
- “Tempestās īrae” (“A Storm of Wrath”): A track in (4+4+3)/8 and (3+3+5)/8 (or 13/8) that proved unreasonably catchy for how many diminished chords it used
- “Disco Apocalypse in 5/4 (co-starring the delicious talents of Logic Pro)”: An attempt to answer a question nobody asked: “Would disco still sound like disco if it weren’t in 4/4?” (Answer: Yes.) The name is a take-off on a movement of a Genesis song ⟨en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supper%27s_Ready⟩
- I haven’t ruled out composing further tracks, but I’d like to have this out relatively soon, and I’m growing increasingly satisfied with this list; the only other track I might add to this list is «La fille qui volait les astres» (see Compositions 2023-2024 above).
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Dungeons Presents Hellpak: Vol. 2 – An Exercise in Questionable Taste OST (WIP)
by Aaron Freed, Matrix_XV, NEFX, tbcr, & Cory King Tucker
Listen: FLAC (download or stream) ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/music/hellpakvol2ost.html⟩
- Soundtrack for hellpak vol. 2, listed above
- I’ve contributed original compositions, including:
- an eleven-minute pastiche of several different Nobuo Uematsu tracks (“Not Actually FFIV”)
- an unapologetic knockoff of Hiroki Kikuta’s “Pure Night” (Sānctum sānctōrum”)
- a ten-minute experiment in head-spinning polyrhythms (“7:6:5:4”, named after said polyrhythms)
- I’ve also contributed an arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach & remixed several other composers’ tracks
- I’ve done what might be considered “pre-mastering” & compiled several suites (“Impshanuh”, “Digitality”, “It’s All Been Said and Done”)
- This doesn’t yet contain any semblance of a coherent running order, but it contains some of the strongest work several of these composers have made, in my admittedly biased opinion
- Our composers have been ridiculously prolific: there are 130 tracks & over seven hours of music here
- Thus, much of it undoubtedly won’t actually appear on Vol. 2’s OST; some may not even appear on Vol. 3’s
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Other Marathon Projects
VAF (2023–)
- Lua texturing utility for Aleph One, based on @Hopper262 ⟨github.com/Hopper262⟩ and Ares Ex Machina’s Vasara ⟨simplici7y.com/items/vasara⟩ (which in turn is based on @treellama ⟨github.com/treellama⟩ and @jonirons’ ⟨github.com/jonirons⟩ Visual Mode.lua ⟨github.com/treellama/visualmode⟩)
- At the time I began work on this project, neither Vasara nor Visual Mode.lua had been substantially updated since 2016 (though Visual Mode.lua is now being updated again)
- Aleph One 1.7’s new texture transfer modes incited me to undertake a serious effort to improve texturing, with a little help from @SolraBizna ⟨github.com/SolraBizna⟩ and @murbruksprodukt ⟨github.com/murbruksprodukt⟩
- Several new features and bug fixes, documented in detail in the project repository. Highlights include, but are certainly not limited to:
- Much more versatile and finely honed grid settings that provide mapmakers much greater control over texture alignment, including:
- Separate X and Y alignment
- Align textures to the center, left, right, bottom, north, south, east, or west
- Over a dozen new grid sizes
- Overlays that identify the player’s target, which mapmakers can use to speed up their own scripting or to identify problems
- Aleph One 1.7’s six new transfer modes
- Option to edit transparent sides of the same line independently, allowing them to be lit, aligned, or textured differently, or even for a transparent texture to be applied to only one side of a line
- Fixes a persistent & highly annoying Lua error that could occur when lights 56 or greater were selected
- Preserves “Must Be Explored” polygons while active (so you won’t have to restore them after texturing)
- Fixes alignment for most textures placed on previously empty lines (transparent sides still, in certain cases, don’t align correctly, but no other texturing utilities align them correctly either)
- Still a work in progress; several other planned features are not yet fully (or at all) implemented, and several persistent bugs remain in the code
@MarathonVidmaster YouTube channel (2018–)
- Planned to encode the entire contents of Hamish Sinclair & Jim Mitchell’s Marathon Vidmasters’ Page
- Never finished – plan to re-encode old films in 60 frames per second at 16:9 aspect ratio with treellama’s Basic HUD
- I also post films of third-party scenarios, new Vidmaster films, scenario previews, & game soundtracks
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Aleph One Mapmaking Guide (2023–)
- No one had made a mapmaking guide in roughly a decade, so I wrote an admittedly opinionated guide detailing many mapmaking pitfalls & providing some solutions
- Features include, but are by no means limited to:
- Weland setup guide
- Weland, Visual Mode.lua, Vasara, VAF, and ShapeFusion tips
- List of known sound sources
- Annotated Anvil help balloons
- Detailed notes on map complexity
- How to simplify maps without negative repercussions on sound or appearance
- Links to other Marathon content, both mapmaking-related & otherwise
- Still a work in progress; is in the process of being split off into multiple pages, & I’m working on several additional sections
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Marathon Remixes & Fan Soundtracks (2023–)
- A supplement to Dr Craig Hardgrove’s page (themarathonmusic.com), which he hadn’t updated in years
- Ultimately, he wound up also linking to my page to avoid having two pages that largely duplicated each other’s content
- I may eventually add incomplete sets of remixes that I find especially noteworthy, but these are currently limited to complete projects, with exceptions for Eternal 1.3 (owing to its massive length), my Logic Pro WIPs (since they’re updates of released albums), & Tobacco & Cannibal Whore Feast’s remixes (since together they make a complete set, & it’s unlikely either artist will make any new ones)
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Remastered Pathways into Darkness & Marathon Trilogy Sounds (2020)
- Remastered to correct, as well as I could in 2020, flaws like digital clipping, hum, crackle, 8-bit dither noise, & low sample rates
- Most of these flaws cannot be corrected perfectly, but can be mitigated
- I left audio flaws with obvious artistic purposes (e.g., the VacBob sounds’ distortion & thin presence, which make them sound like they’ve been transmitted over a cheap radio) largely or entirely intact
- Aleph One: Pathways into Darkness’ sounds improved the most dramatically, having begun in the roughest shape: they had 11 kHz sample rates, tons of 8-bit noise, & (in some cases) terrible hum
- Marathon 1’s sounds, which had 22 kHz sample rates & plenty of 8-bit noise, also improved dramatically
- I took a certain amount of artistic license in “upmastering” sounds to compensate for low sample rates, which may take some getting used to (several sounds have vastly more treble as a result)
- My ideal solution would be to keep the 44.1 kHz sample rate & provide a low pass option for those who dislike the upmastering, but this currently isn’t an option in Aleph One
- The Marathon Infinity sounds’ readme describes my upmastering process; I’ve also written a guide to remastering music and sounds⟨aaronfreed.github.io/⟩remastering.html describing my process in detail
- I intend to upload remixed Marathon Infinity sounds once I locate all the sources
- I’m using remix & remaster much as they’re used in music production:
- Remastering is modifying a finished master
- Remixing is returning to unmixed instrument tracks to make a completely new mix
- Remixes, no matter how faithful (e.g., Steven Wilson’s), are distinct from remasters
- Thus, applying this principle to game sounds means that:
- My remasters modify sounds that shipped with the games
- My remixes return to the source samples & recreate Bungie’s changes from scratch, except:
- Stereo being converted to mono
- 44.1 kHz sample rates being downsampled
- 16-bit depth being reduced to 8-bit
- Digital clipping
- Aleph One doesn’t handle stereo samples very elegantly because it doesn’t rotate sound sources; 3D sound and HRTF (the latter of which should only be used with headphones) convert all samples to mono. I still left my remixes in stereo in case sound rotation is ever added to Aleph One or any fork thereof
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Aleph Bet
- Fork of Aleph One with added features (but without Steam achievements, which depend on a license from Bungie that, at present, is exclusively granted to Aleph One’s developers)
- Solra Bizna, Nemo, Prism019, & I have done the bulk of the work on this, with occasional help from others
- Still in early development stages; plans for initial 0.9 release include:
- A simplified build system based on Meson, with benefits including:
- unifying the build process across Linux, MacOS, & Windows
- removing untold amounts of clutter (good riddance, Boost) & vastly speeding up the build process
- making error checking in applications such as Visual Studio Code work correctly (or at all)
This is already largely done (although as of 2024-08-03, it is not yet in the “main” branch); Prism & Solra handled most of it
- In-game editing of some settings, saving players the tedium of switching between the preferences & the game to get the mouse settings exactly right
- Ideally, this will ultimately also include sound & possibly certain graphics settings
- Certain settings (e.g., environment settings) will never be editable in-game – what would switching map files mid-game even look like?
- Yeet film exports into an external ffmpeg binary, vastly reducing the amount of time needed to build the app & allowing for hardware acceleration of encoding, YUV444 output, & more
- Second Music System, a vastly more sophisticated music scripting extension by Solra & Nemo that allows for conditional scripting based on what position of a music track is currently playing, down to the exact frame
- We also have a detailed roadmap for the addition of numerous other features, including but not limited to:
- Hierarchical/unified preferences, saving players the need to customize input settings for every scenario they play
- Scenario-specific preferences, saving scenarios the need to use cumbersome in-game menus for optional features (e.g., “auto-save at level transition”, “show secrets collected”), & saving players the need to customize them every time they start a new game
- Ability to run multiple solo Lua scripts or netscripts at once
- Non-number-based indexing, allowing, e.g., multiple shapes patches to affect the same collection
- Arbitrary texture scaling & rotation (note: arbitrary rotation will only be possible for floors & ceilings, although flipping walls or rotating them by multiples of 90° may be possible)
- Support for Lua versions other than 5.2
- Rotation of stereo sound samples to match their in-world positions
- Support for Unicode & modern localization
- Major asset loading improvements:
- Preserve assets in memory that are reused on the next level
- Vastly more efficient loading (& memory management)
- As an example, currently, if several walls use the same parallax map, the game reloads the asset for every wall that calls it and stores it in a different place in memory each time
- Instead, the game should only load it once (if it isn’t already in memory from the previous level) and should use a pointer for all subsequent occurrences
- Create a list of assets to be loaded & employ multithreaded asset loading to do so
- Modern desync detection & recovery for network games
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Other Long-Form Writing
Music Writing
Musical Modes and the Circle of Fifths
- A lengthy and highly technical examination of how the major scale’s seven modes (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian) relate to each other and the circle of fifths (a musical concept inextricably linked to chords and key signatures), with dozens of tables illustrating the principle
- Also goes into great detail about the ancient Greek scales that gave several of our modes their names (spoiler alert: the ancient “Mixolydian”, “Phrygian”, “Dorian”, and “Lydian” scales are not the ones bearing those names today)
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Music Reviews
- Lengthy reviews (over a thousand words word each) of some of my favorite albums or anthologies that I originally wrote for websites like Rate Your Music; I’ve collected them here as the beginning of an effort to collect all my best long-form writing in one place. Currently hosted here:
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