Sorta story

Prisoner: Prison life, depression.
A Breeze from Hell: Jailbreak.
Tunnels and Open Skies: Being chased, escape.
Close Them and Never Open: Hiding.
As Time Flows: Wandering into a town, integrating with society.
Falling Down: Guilt and fears.
Sane Again: Deciding what you have to do.
Help Me Cry: It's not a definite end - what the protagonist decides and what is his/her fate are up to your thoughts.

Sorta diary

• As Time Flows
  Went through a multitude of names before finally being named "Save the World Button" until the realization that that name was stupid. All is drum samples (one from MIDI), two synths and a white noise sample, made with ModPlug Tracker before the actual discovery of VST.
  2007-05-06
• Tunnels and Open Skies
  Pretty speedy. Reminded me of some crazy sci-fi chase on hoverbikes with lots of bullets and slow motion or something, hence the name. Uses two VSTi plug-ins and a VST effect applied to the whole mess. My first track with VST on OpenMPT.
  2007-06-16
• Sane Again
  This one uses three different VSTi plug-ins. I consider it my masterpiece so far.
  2007-06-21
• Close Them and Never Open
  Assembling this from different module files (because stupid OpenMPT doesn't apply VST effects to channels so far, even though it's supposed to) took plenty of time, but it was totally worth it. At least in my opinion... Weird glitch in the end, assembled in Audacity. Two different VSTi plug-ins and two VST effects.
  2007-07-05
• Falling Down
  Dancey club tune in the beginning, glitchy drum samples I had no use for before plus a sine wave with varying pitch envelopes afterwards, everything mashed up together in the end, and a cool pure tone groove in the end. It used to be in the trash can.
  2007-07-08
• A Breeze from Hell
  Finally loaded String Theory, took a preset and modified it a little to my liking. Then did this. Added a menacing sample of the lead instrument in the next track ("Tunnels and Open Skies") that fades in slowly and then kicks it off. It's going to be the first track.
  2007-07-09
• Help Me Cry
  Starts the same as "Breeze from Hell", only with distortion. The distortion wears off and there's three more chords without it. This will definitely be the last track, lasting 47 seconds.
  2007-07-09
• Prisoner
  Dark. A very dark tune. I thought that "Breeze from Hell" will be the first track, but now this is. "Breeze from Hell" is at the second place.
  2007-07-10

Notes

Well, technically I've been working on this even earlier than the 6th of May '07, since I intended to do an album with MadTracker 2 once that was going to be called "A Mild Breeze from Hell", and that was a long time ago. MadTracker is the program thanks to which I've discovered VST (although I've started using this extensively only, indeed, in this project). Some of the plug-ins I've used here are included with MadTracker 2 as well - Drumatic 3 and Superwave P8. I actually know these from there and I tried really hard not to overuse them. Yes, that's why I use another two seemingly identical drum plug-ins.

Wait, so why didn't I use MadTracker and used OpenMPT instead? Because OpenMPT is open-source, and I've became a snob that attempts to use only open-source programs on Windows. And I'm also strangely used to the crappy graphics and UI of ModPlug Tracker rather than MadTracker's. And MadTracker doesn't export to WAV, unless you buy it - that sucks.

Some of the tracks went through a lot of titles. "As Time Flows" was originally named "He Died Saving His Planet" to go with the tiny story I crafted after it, then "Save the World Button", and when I realized this track should be on this EP, it was renamed to "Failed".

I tried to record something on a real guitar once - I can play at an intelligible speed on my mother's acoustic guitar, barely knowing any technique. But my shitty microphone (it's not even a microphone but a one-ear headset I managed to squeeze into that guitar), combined with my 1997 sound card, produced distorted sounds instead of normal guitar sounds whenever I played too loudly (normally, that is). Try to do something with that when you don't know what will come out!

Speaking of real instruments, there's no vocals on this EP. Also, I never tried my hand at writing songs, but I'm sure I suck at doing that too.

Well, I did think of recording something and then doing the singing itself with a vocoder, but there came the most-likely-bad-at-song-writing part.

Yes, it is this short. I didn't feel like forcing myself to try and do some other interesting tracks after finishing "Prisoner".

Stuff used

Plug-ins

Instruments

• Superwave's Superwave P8 ("Prisoner", "Falling Down", "Sane Again")
• E-Phonic's Drumatic 3 ("Tunnels and Open Skies", "Falling Down", "Sane Again")
• Ugo's String Theory ("Prisoner", "A Breeze from Hell", "Help Me Cry")
• Audiosonic's DigiDrum Pro ("Prisoner", "Close Them and Never Open")
• Andreas Ersson's ErsDrums ("A Breeze from Hell")
• Odo Synths's A-Bass ("Tunnels and Open Skies")
• Askywhale's Osc321 ("Close Them and Never Open")
• E-Phonic's SoloString ("Sane Again")

Effects

• SimulAnalog's Guitar Suite:
  • Tube Screamer ("Tunnels and Open Skies", "Close Them and Never Open", "Help Me Cry")
  • JCM900 ("Close Them and Never Open")
• mda's RingMod ("Close Them and Never Open")
  It's only used at the end of the glitch sound. Barely notable.

Software

• ModPlug TrackerOpenMPT
• Audacity
  Used for normalizing, cropping stuff, generating the original sine sample and the random percussion for "Falling Down", and making the glitchy cacophony at the end of "Close Them and Never Open".