Bach with the Beat… the Void War Soundtrack

A year and a half ago, I wrote the soundtrack for a video game called Void War. It was a small production, but seems to live forever in some ways. Didn’t pay much, but as part of my contract, I asked for and received permission to post the full soundtrack to the Internet for public use a year after the release of the game.

A year and a half ago, I wrote the soundtrack for a video game called Void War. It was a small production, but seems to live forever in some ways. Didn’t pay much, but as part of my contract, I asked for and received permission to post the full soundtrack to the Internet for public use a year after the release of the game.

Proving yet again that good music is never finished, just abandoned…

So here are the songs. All of them are designed for release with a game that had a very limited size, so they’re between 2-3 minutes long. I’m also listing them in the order they were (mostly) written, so you can hear the theme develop from beginning to end. I consider Bereft to be the best tune on this collection.

All tunes were originally Ogg Vorbis format; Ogg provides smaller file sizes and higher quality than MP3. Unfortunately, due to previous complaints on this board about the goofy format (unreadable in Windows Media Player), I’ve gone to MP3. Enjoy the lower quality 🙂

Each song in this collection has an inspiration from “Das Wohltempierte Klavier” (The Evenly-Tuned, or Well-Tempered, keyboard), Vol 1 by Johann Sebastian Bach. I managed to include a little Tocatta, too… The inspiration is often buried, and if you’re not familiar with the collection it will be very difficult to pick out in some cases.

I apologize that, even at high-quality, the songs have kind of a tinny midrange. This is due to the target format I was shooting for in the distribution: a 16KHz, 16kbps .ogg file. It had very limited range, so I emphasized frequencies which sounded good in that range. They made the “high-quality” recordings sound a bit off, though, and I don’t want to spend hours re-mixing and re-mastering these from the start again.

Stream the soundtrack here.

  • Falling Over (stream): This is the title tune of the game. Written last, but, well, played first 🙂 No classical tune embedded.
  • War Chant (stream): I made a MIDI ringtone for my phone from this one!
  • Cut Scene 1 (stream): A short, loopable bit to play during cutscenes. I really want to make a full-length bit out of this tune one day.
  • On The Level (stream): Never made it into the game. The feel was just wrong. This tune is really, uhh, unfinished. I may re-use the theme at some point, though. No classical tune buried in this one… I figured out that hook later.
  • Death Music (stream): The original death music for the game. Threw it out, but I still think it sounds nifty (and short), so I wanted to stick it somewhere.
  • Haunting Me (stream): I seemed to have mixing problems with most of my tunes; this is one of the few that seemed to presence across the full spectrum. Klavier inspiration: Prelude #3 in C# minor. Of course, I adjusted the key…
  • Blood Bash (stream): This is “Haunting Me”, umm, as a rap tune. I threw it over the wall to Justin to see if he could do some lyrics, and this is what he came up with. Included mostly for comedic purpose 🙂 And yet, I feel compelled to expand on this tune at some point… kind of Enders-Game-ish lyrics. The parts that are missing lyrics need a woman’s croon in there as a counterpoint I think…
  • Cut Scene 2 (stream): Another short, loopable bit to play during cutscenes. It’s a theme I had running through my brain for years, and it never went anywhere, so there it is.
  • Gutteral (stream): Like War Chant, it started life as a MIDI before we went to OGG for in-game music. This is what happens when you combine Tocatta in D Minor with electronica. It ain’t pretty, but it gets the job done.
  • Dogchild (stream): Bet ya can hear Bach’s Prelude #2 in C Minor, can’t you? I knew you could! Initially started as “Child of Dog”, because I was pretty ticked off about the whole theism thing when I wrote it. Gosh, I thought I was clever.
  • Bereft (stream): My fave!

Hope you enjoy. Not exactly music everybody’s gonna want to listen to in their cars, but I felt like I needed to archive it somewhere!

Rights regarding these pieces: All songs but “Blood Bash” Copyright© 2004 Matthew P. Barnson. All rights reserved. Duplication in whole or in part for any purpose is allowed, but attribution of authorship in ID3 tags or other prominent method must be retained. “Blood Bash” is jointly Copyright© 2005 Matthew P. Barnson and Justin Timpane. All rights reserved. For the love of everything holy, don’t reproduce Blood Bash willy-nilly, you could put an eye out.

A Few Jokes

A blind man enters a lesbian bar by mistake. He find his way to a barstool and orders a drink. After sitting there for a while, he yells to the bartender in a loud voice,

“Hey bartender, you wanna hear the best dumb blonde joke ever?”

The bar immediately falls deathly quiet. In a deep, husky voice, the woman next to him says,

“Before you tell that joke, sir, I think it is fair, given that you are blind, that you should know five things . . .

A blind man enters a lesbian bar by mistake. He find his way to a barstool and orders a drink. After sitting there for a while, he yells to the bartender in a loud voice,

“Hey bartender, you wanna hear the best dumb blonde joke ever?”

The bar immediately falls deathly quiet. In a deep, husky voice, the woman next to him says,

“Before you tell that joke, sir, I think it is fair, given that you are blind, that you should know five things . . .

“One: The bartender is a blonde woman.

“Two: The bouncer is a blonde woman.

“Three: The woman sitting next to me is blonde and is a professional boxer.

“Four: The lady to your right is a blonde and is a professional wrestler.

“Five: I’m a 6-foot, 200 pound blonde woman with a black belt in karate and a very bad attitude!

“Now, think about it seriously, mister. Do you still want to tell that joke?”

The blind man thinks for a second, shakes his head and says:

“Nah, not if I’m gonna have to explain it five times!”


While proudly showing off his new apartment to friends late one night, the man led the way to his bedroom where there was a big brass gong. “What’s that big brass gong for?” one of the guests asked. “Why, that’s my talking clock,” the man replied. “How does it work?” asked one of his friends. “Watch this,” the man said, giving it an ear-shattering pound with a hammer. Suddenly, someone on the other side of the wall screamed, “Hey jerk! It’s 2 in the freaking morning!”


Three guys died and when they got to the pearly gates, St. Peter met them there. St. Peter said, “I know that you guys are forgiven because you’re here. Before I let you into Heaven, I have to ask you something. You have to have a car in Heaven because Heaven is so big, what kind of car you get will depend on your answer.” The first guy walks up and Peter asks the first guy, “How long were you married?” The first guy says, “24 years.” “Did you ever cheat on your wife?” Peter asked. The guy says, “Yeah, 7 times… but you said I was forgiven!” Peter says, “yeah, but that’s not too good. Here’s a Pinto.” The second guy says, “I was married for 41 years and cheated on her once, but that was our first year and we really worked it out good.” Peter says, “I’m pleased to hear that, here’s a Lincoln.” The 3rd guy walks up and says, “Peter, I know what you’re going to ask. I was married for 63 years and didn’t even look at another woman! I treated my wife like a queen!” Peter says, “That’s what I like to hear. Here’s a Jaguar!” A few days later, the 2 guys with the Lincoln and the Pinto se the guy with the Jaguar crying on the golden sidewalk. When they ask him what’s wrong, he says, “I just saw my wife, and she was on a skateboard!”


A computer geek guy was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said: “If you kiss me, I’ll turn into a beautiful princess!” He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said: “If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week.” The computer geek took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out: “If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I’ll stay with you for a week and do ANYTHING you want!” Again the computer geek took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked: “What’s the matter? I’ve told you I’m a beautiful princess, that I’ll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won’t you kiss me?” The computer geek said: “Look, I work in I.T… I don’t have time for a girlfriend. But a talking frog… now that’s cool!”


The Queen of England was showing the Archbishop of Canterbury around the Royal Stables when one of the stallions close by farted so loudly it couldn’t be ignored. “Oh dear,” said the Queen, “How embarrassing. I’m frightfully sorry about that.” “It’s quite understandable,” said the archbishop, and after a moment added, “as a matter of fact I thought it was the horse!”


A man staggers into an emergency room with two black eyes and a five iron wrapped tightly around his throat. Naturally the doctor asks him what happened. “Well, it was like this,” he replies. “I was having a quiet round of golf with my wife when she sliced her ball into a pasture of cows. We went to look for it and while I was rooting around, I noticed one of the cows had something white at its rear end. I walked over and lifted up the tail and sure enough, there was my wife’s golf ball stuck right in the middle of the cow’s butt. That’s when I made my mistake.” “What did you do?” asks the doctor. “Well, I lifted the tail and yelled to my wife, ‘Hey, this looks like yours!'”


Buford walked into a doctor’s office and the receptionist asked him what he had. Buford said, “Shingles.” So she wrote down his name, address, medical insurance number and told him to have a seat. Fifteen minutes later a nurse’s aide came out and asked Buford what he had. Buford said, “Shingles.” So she wrote down his height, weight, a complete medical history and told Buford to wait in the examining room. A half hour later a nurse came in and asked Buford what he had. Buford said, “Shingles.” So the nurse gave Buford a blood test, a blood pressure test, an electrocardiogram, and told Buford to take off all his clothes and wait for the doctor. An hour later the doctor came in and asked Buford what he had. Buford said, “Shingles.” The doctor asked, “Where?” Buford said, “Outside on the truck. Where do you want them?”


A tired homemaker opened the front door of her home to find a young minister from the neighborhood who said, “I’m collecting donations for the new children’s home we’re building. I hope you’ll give what you can.” “To be sure,” said the beleaguered woman, “I’ll give you two boys, two girls, or one of each.”


A little boy came home from the playground with a bloody nose, black eye, and torn clothing. It was obvious he’d been in a bad fight and lost. While his father was patching him up, he asked his son what happened. “Well, Dad,” said the boy, “I challenged Larry to a duel. And, you know, I gave him his choice of weapons.” “Uh-huh,” said the father, “that seems fair.” “I know, but I never thought he’d choose his big sister!”


A store that sells new husbands has just opened in New York City, where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates. ATTENTION: You may visit the store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the attributes of the men increase as the shopper ascends the flights. There is, however, a catch: you may choose any man from a particular floor, or you may choose to go up a floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building! So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband. On the first floor the sign on the door reads: Floor 1 – These men have jobs. The second floor sign reads: Floor 2 – These men have jobs and love kids. The third floor sign reads: Floor 3 – These men have jobs, love kids, and are extremely good looking. “Wow,” She thinks, but feels compelled to keep going. She goes to the fourth floor and sign reads: Floor 4 – These men have jobs, love kids, are drop-dead good looking and help with the housework. “Oh, mercy me!” she exclaims, “I can hardly stand it!” Still, she goes to the fifth floor and sign reads: Floor 5 – These men have jobs, love kids, are drop-dead gorgeous, help with the housework, and have a strong romantic streak. She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth floor and the sign reads: Floor 6 – You are visitor 31,456,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.


There are two Quebecois hunters who have been lost in the woods for weeks and they’re at death’s door. As they stumble on, hoping for some form of salvation or something similar, they suddenly spot, through the brush, a peculiar looking tree off in the distance. As they get closer they can see that the tree is draped with rasher upon rasher of bacon. There’s smoked bacon, crispy bacon, life giving juicy nearly-raw bacon, all sorts. “Hey, Jacques” says the first hunter “Dat’s a bacon tree! We’re saved!” “You’re right, mon ami!” says Henri. So Jacques goes on ahead and runs up to the tree salivating at the prospect of food. But as he gets to within five feet of the tree, there’s the sound of machine gun fire, and he is shot down in a hail of bullets. His friend quickly drops down on the forest floor and calls across to the wounded Jacques. “Jacques!! Jacques!! Que ce qui se passe?” With his dying breath Jacques calls out… “Run, mon ami, run! Dat’s not a Bacon Tree! “Dat’s… a HAM BUSH!”


A Cajun man wants a job, but the foreman won’t hire him until he passes a little math test. “Here is your first question, the foreman said. “Without using numbers, represent the number 9.” “Without numbers?” The Cajun says, “Dat is easy.” And proceeds to draw three trees. “What’s this?” the boss asks? “Ave you got no brain? Tree and tree and tree make nine,” says the Cajun. “Fair enough,” says the boss. “Here’s your second question. Use the same rules, but this time the number is 99.” The Cajun stares into space for a while, then picks up the picture that he has just drawn and makes a smudge on each tree. “Ere you go.” The boss scratches his head and says, “How on earth do you get that to represent 99?” “Each of da trees is dirty now. So, it’s dirty tree, and dirty tree, and dirty tree. Dat is 99.” The boss is getting worried that he’s going to actually have to hire this Cajun, so he says, “All right, last question. Same rules again, but represent the number 100.” The Cajun stares into space some more, then he picks up the picture again and makes a little mark at the base of each tree and says, “Ere you go. One hundred.” The boss looks at the attempt. “You must be nuts if you think that represents a hundred!” The Cajun leans forward and points to the marks at the base of each tree and says, “A little dog come along and crap by each tree. So now you got dirty tree and a turd, dirty tree and a turd, and dirty tree and a turd, which makes one hundred. So, when I start?”


(Some jokes blatantly stolen from a thread over at www.runryder.com…)

Rare as a hen tooth

You know that old phrase? “Rare as a hen’s tooth”? Well, turns out it ain’t so rare anymore: Chickens Can Grow Teeth.

You know that old phrase? “Rare as a hen’s tooth”? Well, turns out it ain’t so rare anymore: Chickens Can Grow Teeth.

I wonder what other old sayings, maxims, and truisms will wither in light of new research? Snowballs in hell? Flying pigs? Flying butt monkeys?

Sex Offender Registry

Provo, UT is the per-capita sex-offender capital of the nation.

Provo, UT is the per-capita sex-offender capital of the nation.

I made this assertion in conversation with a co-worker the other day; I’ve read about several studies which back it up. He challenged this assertion, so I wanted a quick and easy way to be able to figure out how to validate the number of sex offenders in my area, and others. Here’s a useful site:

http://www.familywatchdog.us/Search.asp

Now, obviously, these statistics are going to be very, very rough, but they may be useful. By way of comparison:

  • Provo boasts 105,000 people, and nearly 170 registered sex offenders, or about 1 in 600.
  • Minneapolis, Minnesota, a town of roughly 380,000, has about sixty, or about 1 in 6300.
  • The Gaithersburg, MD, area has a population of around 60,000, and has about sixty, or around 1 in 10,000.
  • L.A. has a population of 3.69 million, and has around 1700 registered sex offenders, or about 1 in 2000.
  • Salt Lake City, UT has a population (in the valley) of about 1,000,000, with around 670 registered offenders, or about 1 in 1500.
  • Tooele, UT has a population of 28,000, with 56 registered offenders, or about 1 in 500.

So I stand corrected. Tooele’s worse than Provo. I’m fairly certain you’d be hard-pressed to find worse statistics outside of Utah, at least.

Maybe I should move to Minneapolis. Or buy my children mace or a tazer for their keyrings.

The most disturbing thing for me is looking at the sea of red on these maps around my home. In most states, there’s a fairly even division between adult victim, child victim, and other offenses, but around where I live it’s mostly children who have been abused.

This worries me, and I’m not sure what to do about it, other than moving to a safer area.

(To acknowledge possible opposition to my conclusion: Sure, yeah, maybe Utah’s better at publicizing the whereabouts of their offenders, or the state has better enforcement policies. I’m doubting that, but it’s a possibility.)

Of course I will.

Billy Bob was in his front porch swing, staring morosely at the ground. His buddy Bubba walked up and tried to start a conversation several times, but Billy Bob only grunted. Finally, Bubba asked, “What’s wrong?”

Billy Bob was in his front porch swing, staring morosely at the ground. His buddy Bubba walked up and tried to start a conversation several times, but Billy Bob only grunted. Finally, Bubba asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Well,” Billy Bob replied, “I ran afoul of one of them questions wives ask. Now I’m in the doghouse.”

“What question?” asked Bubba.

Billy Bob said, “She asked if I’d still love her when she was old, fat and ugly.”

“That’s easy,” Bubba said, “you say, ‘Of course I will‘”.

“Yeah,” Billy Don said, “that’s what I meant to say. But what came out was, ‘Of course I do.‘”

Impossible People

So I ran across an article detailing How to Deal With Impossible People.

So I ran across an article detailing How to Deal With Impossible People.

The more I read it, the more I went, “wow, dude, I know how X is JUST LIKE THIS”. And then, of course, towards the end, I read this:

If you think you might be an impossible person yourself (or you have become one with regard to the other person), realize just how awful you are being and try to improve yourself. Then again, if you are really an impossible person, you won’t even recognize yourself here. To you, this page will be all about “the other guy.” For the incorrigible impossible person, everything is always about “the other guy.” If you’re reading this page and thinking “Hey, that sounds just like (insert name of person you blame for everything),” you’re probably one of the people we are talking about here (although you could never admit it).

Of course, I hadn’t thought of myself through the entire piece!

Who do you know that’s impossible? OK, OK, don’t name names. A lot of family, friends, and (gulp!) employers read this blog. But seriously, are there any strategies suggested on this page which you’ve already tried? Or maybe a few that you’d suggest for dealing with a particularly impossible person that aren’t mentioned?

My basic coping strategy throughout most of my life has been “agree with everything they say, then go do my own thing my way anyway”. Not the best approach, but it works 🙂

Day Sleeper Sound Loops

I got sick of wearing earplugs when I sleep during the day. I mean, for what they are, they’re OK, but after 4-5 hours, they start to ache inside my ears, and inevitably I pull them out in my sleep.

I got sick of wearing earplugs when I sleep during the day. I mean, for what they are, they’re OK, but after 4-5 hours, they start to ache inside my ears, and inevitably I pull them out in my sleep.

Of course, I usually sleep like a rock the first 4-5 hours of my sleep. It’s during hour 5-8 that I’m easily interrupted, and if I get much less then 7 hours in a night, I’m grumpy and stuff. Closing doors doesn’t work because I’ve got noisy kids and whatnot.

I started to price out noise machines as an alternative. Oy, veh! $100-$200 for most of these things! And really all they are is a glorified cheap-o radio with a little playback chip loaded with some loop-able samples. I thought, “I can do better than that!”

So after a great deal of monkeying arouund the other day, I came up with this: a relatively short, not-too-cyclical brown, white, and rain-noise combined loop which seems to do an excellent job at masking most common household sounds. I turn on my laptop, set it beside my bed, and turn on Winamp to loop it. For those not used to Winamp, there’s a little button to the right of the “shuffle” button which turns on looping.

Oh, but one tweak to Winamp to make it loop smoothly (without this, there’s a gap as it loops):

Go to Options:Preferences Plug-ins:Output Pick “DirectSound Output” Click “Configure” button Go to “Buffering” tab Drag “Buffer-ahead on track change” to some reasonable value. I set mine to 500ms. Restart Winamp.

Then the playback is perfect on the noise loop 🙂 No glitches.

I’m thinking of doing some with thunder, louder rain noises, nature sounds, and such. I can’t stand actually having music looping going when I’m asleep, though, as I tend to concentrate on the music and have trouble sleeping.

Here’s the loop: noise_loop1

Let me know if you could use something different. A little time spent with Cakewalk Sonar goes a long way 🙂

(Keywords I was looking for in a product that would do it before I invented my little do-it-yourself solution: sound masking, noise generator, white noise, brown noise, pink noise, rainfall, etc.)

I just realized that basically what I’ve done is turn my $1600 laptop into a $140 noise box. Yay me!

Audio Blog?

So I’m thinking it might be kind of fun to do a twenty-minute Podcast with somebody else on barnson.org. Topic TBD, but be ready with some jokes 🙂

Anybody game? I could set up a Teamspeak server and probably wire a telephone to a sound system so we could interview some telephone “guest”. Could be fun. Takers?

So I’m thinking it might be kind of fun to do a twenty-minute Podcast with somebody else on barnson.org. Topic TBD, but be ready with some jokes 🙂

Anybody game? I could set up a Teamspeak server and probably wire a telephone to a sound system so we could interview some telephone “guest”. Could be fun. Takers?