ryangtanaka

Cities Skylines, YIMBY Radio was an outreach effort on part of the Yes-in-My-Backyard movement in California fighting for cheaper rents and equitable housing policies in the State. (The movement was global, but this was in CA.)

SB50, the bill that was supposed to fix the housing crisis in the state, unfortunately, did not pass. 

SB50 is dead. Long live SB50.

The project was a mod attached to a popular city building game, Cities Skylines by Colossal Order. The music would basically play as part of background music during gameplay, and was selected for its pro-"urbanist" qualities.

Infographic by Alfred Twu.

Mod link:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1656737510

Apocalypse Becoming - Cities Skylines (YIMBY Radio)

Xenoscape was a mod made for the popular indie game, Xenonauts that adds hours of extra music to the gameplay at various points of the game. Similar to XCOM, the game is about humans vs aliens, which I tried to bring out in the music itself. (The mod itself is now deprecated, so only the music itself is left.)

Air Combat 1 - Xenonauts (Xenoscape Music Mod)

A radio track made for a music mod I made for Fallout 4 some years ago. The feeling I was going for was "leisurely travel", which was the context for which this track's playback was set for. (Paced, but moving.)

I've gotten feedback that some people used this track as a sleeping-aid in their own time, outside of gameplay.

Movement [Ambient Jams Radio]

As normalcy unravels, the rhythms that kept things running all these years start to reveal themselves.

An extension of Steve Reich's "phasing" techniques, if you listen closely you can hear hidden rhythms and polyrhythmic interactions underneath. Recommended listening with headphones.

The Third Web - Chapter V (Interlude/Transition)

Why not? Part music, part radio show, part commercial. Ambient jamming and spoken word recorded in real-time on 06/26/2022.

Featuring works from typed.art by ninj4son3099 (https://typed.art/4921), carolyn (https://typed.art/4920), Jerry (https://typed.art/4919), Almond (https://typed.art/4918), ekeko (https://typed.art/4917), endpop (https://typed.art/4913), https://teia.surf

Why not?

The Third Web - Chapter IV [Why Not?]

The path is clear but the destination is far away. Do you continue?

The Third Web - Chapter III

That feeling of having embarked on a new adventure but when you run into troubles along the way.

The Third Web - Chapter II

Ambient Jams is a collection of soundtracks, ambient music, and classical minimalist pieces that were used in various projects across the web -- webpage background sounds, video game soundtracks/mods, and film/video.

Jebediah's Meditation - Kerbal Space Program (Ambient Jams)

Ambient Jams is a collection of soundtracks, ambient music, and classical minimalist pieces that were used in various projects across the web -- webpage background sounds, video game soundtracks/mods, and film/video. 

Busy Old Town - Rimworld (Ambient Jams Mod)

Minimus Mission - Kerbal Space Program (Ambient Jams)

Apoapsis - Kerbal Space Program (Ambient Jams)

Ambient Jams is a collection of soundtracks, ambient music, and classical minimalist pieces that were used in various projects across the web -- webpage background sounds, video game soundtracks/mods, and film/video. 

Most tracks were designed to last longer than the typical gameplay duration, so they tend to be very long in length.

The Temple (Ambient Jams)

Ambient Jams is a collection of soundtracks, ambient music, and classical minimalist pieces that were used in various projects across the web -- webpage background sounds, video game soundtracks/mods, and film/video.

The mod adds hours of additional ambient music to the game, all original works improvised on the spot. It's still available on Steam if you own the game.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=731638290

Combat - Rimworld (Ambient Jams Mod)

This track was inspired by "The Institute" faction in the popular post-apocalypse game, Fallout 4 by Bethesda Game Studios. The mod was a radio station embedded into the menu UI (Pip-Boy) in the game itself.

Demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8JrQNK3-DU

Institution - Fallout 4 (Fallout 4 Radio Mod)

This track is an experiment from a 2014 that overlaid gameplay footage from the popular indie game (at the time), Alice is Dead. A modern twist on a classic tale, you play a role as a detective trying to solve the case of who killed Alice in the Wonderland of surreal forests and characters.

Programming and story by Mike M of Legit Games, Copyright 2010. The game is free and programmed in flash so it may still be available to play.

Surreal Forests - Alice is Dead (Remix)

Geoscape 2 - Xenonauts (Xenoscape Music Mod)

A ambient piano piece recorded literally inside of a piano, an early pioneer of the "keyboard" interface.

Recorded in 2012 in Los Angeles, California. Entry below:

--

Entry No.5 -- April 4, 2012: Cloudy, 69°

Today's recording was a success, at least from an artistic point of view.  I placed the 2 microphones inside of the tail end of the piano, closed the lid, then recorded the sounds reverberating inside of the box of the instrument.  I pushed the music as far and as fast as I could, filling up the space.  I must've played at least 10,000 notes on that one -- man, my fingers hurt.

After adding way too much reverb (go ambient!) the notes started blurring into each other, turning it into a wash of harmonies that seems appropriate for ambient-drone styles.  But if you listen closely enough you can still vaguely hear the rhythms in the background, making you feel like you're flying in space or something.  I swear that I can hear horns and organs in there somewhere, even though it's just the piano...pretty trippy.

Cloud Computing, Pt 5

That feeling of embarking on a new adventure.

The Third Web

Performers:

Violin 1 - Meagan Mason
Violin 2 - Mishkar Nunez
Viola - Elizabeth Beilman
Cello - Stella Cho

This quartet is based on (and inspired by) the book, The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics, written by Michael Lind and Ted Halstead of the New America Foundation.  At the time when I read it (last year or so) the book stood out because it had a visionary and (cautiously) optimistic perspective toward the role of politics in American society, something that has become fairly rare in the political arena as of the late.

The book is fairly old at this point (2002) and some of the ideas are somewhat outdated, but it gives a glimpse into what the political minds in Washington might be thinking outside of the media spotlight -- it has sections where it explicitly talks about how the tech industry and entrepreneurs might shape the future of American politics in the future, and for the most part, many of these predictions have become true.

There seems to be a genuine desire to remedy the high level of partisanship that has plagued politics in recent years, though a moderated, well-reasoned approach.  This piece attempts to capture some of that inspiration into a musical form.  Each instrument functions as a representative "character" of various vantage points, and the piece describes their interactions with one another through a narrative plot.

00:00 Introduction of the Theme
03:56 Discourse and Debate
05:42 Development and Progress
08:06 Compromise and Dissolution
12:11 Consensus

String Quartet No. 8 (The Radical Center)

Ambient Jams is a collection of soundtracks, ambient music, and classical minimalist pieces that were used in various projects across the web -- webpage background sounds, video game soundtracks/mods, and film/video. Most tracks were designed to last longer than the typical gameplay duration, so they tend to be very long in duration.

Swaps

All tracks by tz1ZV...au9kS ryangtanaka