Hello to the people reading this! If you are, then you probably are a fan of my music or Funkin'-related stuff. I wanted to make a news post as some dev log/ asset review thing to let it be known that one of the levels from the mod had to be canned recently...

SONIC.RAW WAS SUPPOSED TO BE WEEK 8

(Initial Raw design passes by Me and Meatku)

Ever since I began planning out the kind of levels I wanted in my mod, I knew for a fact I needed something related to Sonic.exe. The creepypasta has been synonymous with the Funkin' community for years! It would seem like a disservice from my point of view NOT to have one as a level.

This mod is about taking the trends and ideas from the base game (or mod culture) and switching it up to either A: to make it cooler, or B: to make it feel more like me. I've had loads of "If I did that, I would..." and they culminated as ideas, lore, and other secret things I can't talk about yet. A lot of the mod is gonna be references to the base game, will tweaks to make it my own.

Because of that, I focused on looking for characters related to Sonic.exe, but they were different enough to be their own thing. That's when I landed on Sonic.RAW...

(Raw's idle dance)

I'm not going to explain his story since there's a wiki for that, but just know that it resonated with me. I'm a sucker for underdog stories and the way RAW dealt with his lack of strength with intellect stuck out to me. He wasn't scary like Lord X or Xenophanes, and I don't think he was supposed to be. He was a character who was able to make the best out of a shitty situation with his skills alone, but sometimes he failed. We (mainly I lol) sympathized with his pain and always wanted him to succeed within the video game hellhole known as Sonic Jam.

There was something so powerful about this one guy going against basically satan and his legions and somehow making it out alright (not without scars tho). His entire storyline was something that fit perfectly into the mod and flipped back to the internal hardships Kid had and would eventually face, AND NO ONE MADE A MOD OF HIM YET, WHICH WAS INSANE TO ME.

I knew I had to do this character justice, so after a back-and-forth convo with Randidesu (the creator) on Twitter, I had the go-ahead to give this character justice through my mod...

(Raw's idle again but with an additional Right pose)

The music for the level has been completed for a couple of months now, excluding the final song, as that was going to be a remix of my initial Sonic.RAW song. They were all very fun to work on, since they allowed me to combine my love for hip-hop and pop music with Sonic the Hedgehog and the beautiful sounds of the Sega Genesis to make something that's pretty cool! The order would've been "Jam", "Blast!", and "Power (initially Savage before I began production)". They all have their inspirations, but I'll get into that in each song I post from it. I'll probably release them soon, but I'm not really gonna focus on it for now...

(Initial level bg inspired by the Mystic Cave Zone of Sonic 2)

It's kinda a bit of a Cassette-Girl situation if that makes sense. Randidesu was caught drawing some pretty nasty shit that I couldn't rock with, so sadly it the level had to be canned. It's a shame, really. There were so so so many things I had planned for this character, and it hurts my heart to know that even if I did release it, it would be tainted by the actions of another person.

I'm always thinking about level stuff and cool shit that would be fun to see in an FNF mod and anytime I had a cool mechanic or idea for a mid-game thing to happen, it was usually happening to RAW. A lot of the themes in his story flow near PERFECTLY with the themes I have in the lore of the mod, so I kept a lot of my focus on him. It's not like the world has come crashing down or anything, I'm just crying over spilled milk, is all. The levels will still be as cool as I want them to be, and thankfully, there are enough level ideas to where it doesn't completely ruin everything lol.

If not for the fans, I'm kinda just typing this out for my own sake. I'm still trying to wrap my head around what I've been feeling these last few hours as it fully hit me what was going on. I'm glad I was at least able to have fun creating ideas and making songs for this lil dude. I'll probably have a video showcasing everything I had planned but this is where I'm gonna shut my ass up and get back to work...

Aight, I'm out✌️

A FNF musician on Twitter was asking what people exactly liked about Spookeez from Week 2. With it being one of my favorite songs in the game, I wanted to answer. I took some time to think about it and spewed word vomit from my keyboard. This is the following text...

The song's initial objective (and that of all beginning songs for the week) is to characterize and create its theming through its use of popular music genres from the early 90s and mid-2000s. Spookeez, as a song, is all about the child-like whimsy the Spooky Kids experience on a day-to-day basis. In every Pelo cartoon with them, the comedy and a lot of the humor came from the innate contrast of these children being so woefully unaware of the macabre evils that lurk among the two. Their childish innocence blinds them to the true evils of the world, and that combination is perfectly executed in the song. In an interview, Isaac. G did on the Newgrounds Podcast (NGP #31: Friday Night Funkin' at around 32:58), he said his main issue was finding a balance between the elements of groove and horror. 

Week 1 had an impact on people because of its use of "old-skool" genres like hip-hop, house, and funk. What made it interesting was Isaac's stylization of these genres to fit the "Y2K Flash game aesthetic," as he would combine old and new to make this weird love letter to music. I say that to say that the late 90's/ early 2000s vibe of Funkin' is present in every song, so any genres that are put in it sort of fit that mold up to about week 7. So the real question was "What early 90s genres of music can be transformed to make the Spooky Kids fit the Y2K vision?".

In terms of vocals, they feel so weird and experimental because it was Isaac's first time tuning samples that weren't his voice singing. The formant knob was not enabled in Reason when he was making the vocals, so in tandem with the already high voice of Pelo, it left the Spooky kids sounding charmingly unnatural and cartoony (my best example of that is the voices of the singers in the Tem Village). When combined with Boyfriend's voice, which might be high, but has a formant shifted to accommodate, it gives the impression of a child singing along with an older figure of sorts.

The instrumentation of Spookeez can be broken into two parts, A and B, for the sake of explanation. The song is led by a lot of oldskool jungle breaks and DnB drums of the 90s, with plenty of both goofy and eerie sounds to suit the spooky groove the kids would have been around the Boyfriend. The use of a synthetic string gives an eerie feeling while also signifying the period the music is based on (the Solina was a popular synth back in the day to make strings). Contrasted with that is the organ playing Bach's "Toccata and Fugue" to subconsciously tell the listener that the song isn't as scary as it may seem. However, elements like the bells and the distorted groan make the vibe uneasy again, balancing the Funk and Horror like I keep saying. I think one of my favorite instruments in the entire track is the Prophet bass that continually plays that wub-wub-wub sound during the verse sections. It gives a sense of silliness but also rhythm with its constant notes. All those elements together in part A combine to form a mish-mash of cheesy horror sounds formed around a breakbeat skeleton.

Now that would be okay on its own, but Isaac has a way of making different parts of the song sound totally different without changing a lot about the instrumentation of it all. Part B, after following the "Break it down!", explodes into this all-out jungle track by merely removing and adding different sounds used throughout the track. There is an unnerving drone that can be heard throughout the track as short chopped slices that carefully foreshadow the hidden darkness of the track. Once part B begins, the drone becomes the lead for the track, pushing the chords down and up to give an uneasy feel to the already spooky song. 

All and all, I love Spookeez for the same reason I love Senpai, Pico and Ugh. They all do a great job at implementing the charm of Funkin' in their music within the confines of characters and their identities.

Thats pretty much the post, I hope it was a good read! (art by Maya Wiley)

We're still cookin'

Thanks for your patience guys

I haven't done a Mahdi Mix in awhile. Drop some suggestions in the replies. I'm mainly looking for FNF shit, but I'm not afraid of doing normal songs too...

IM MAKING A LEVEL CHARACTER AND I NEED YOUR HELP!!!

ALL YOUR SUGGESTIONS ARE VALID (maybe)

GO GO GO

MAKING A WEEK CHARACTER!!! - YouTube

That's a big number...

I'll make a longer speech when I reach 1k, but I can't thank all of you enough for allowing me to flourish and grow exponentially since I started art n music!!

I'm back to work. Cya ✌️

It seems that Goku has met another formidable foe. But this time, he won't need his fists?

Find out next time on Dragon Ball Z...

Releasing on Newgrounds and YouTube @ 4:30 EST and 1:30 PST

Making a news post because I'm pretty proud of this one and want y'all to know. I even looked up old dbz airing dates for the release times. I really tried combining the hard rock vibes of the Bruce Falcner tracks (which he actually only made a few of in reality compared to his uncredited coworkers) with a sort of old-school funk. I love Dragon Ball and I only now understand how important Akira Toriyama's work is...

See you dweebs in 2025...

I just finished Evangelion. This shit was fucking crazy. I understand the hype and why people love it so much. Even if people will argue and say it wasn't as deep as it seems, I still am in LOVE with every artistic choice in this thing. This is one of my favorites from Gainax now and I think I'm addicted to watching their old animes. I can't thank Crockett enough for telling me to watch this yesterday. FLCL is next...

WE FINALLY DID IT!!! WE FINALLY ARE AT 1K YT SUBS!!!!

You know what that means...

So, because I can't really work on the mod right now, I wanted to kinda make it up to the very patient fans of it all with some music. It's not anything crazy, but working on all these was really fun.