Lemma Soft Forums

Hello!

My name's Nicol. I'm a composer that's written soundtracks for a number of visual novels, including the 2012 hit Katawa Shoujo, one of the most ambitious and well known English visual novels ever made. I've also worked on a number of smaller projects, mostly from these forums, including Broken Sky, The Circular Gate, and more recently Escape from Puzzlegate, Driftwood, and several collaborations with Winterwolves, including Nicole and Always Remember Me.

I'm always interested in helping new projects come to life, so if you're interested in having an experienced VN composer write high quality original music for your game I'd be happy to help you out! You can also hire me to arrange music that's already been written, or just to mix/master your compositions for a more polished feel.

Here are some samples of my music:

Solo work
Warm Heart, Calm Mind new
Memories Forgotten by Time
What the Wind Said
The Warmth We've Been Longing For
Voices of the River
Whispers in the Rain
Sleepless Nights
Overture

Soundtrack work
The Minute Hand (When the Bells Toll) new
Love (sample) (Always Remember Me) new
Dancing Leaves (sample) (Driftwood) new
Snowfall (Driftwood)
Ending Theme (Escape from Puzzlegate)
Parity (Katawa Shoujo)
Raindrops and Puddles (Katawa Shoujo)
Fugue for a Titan (The Circular Gate)
Majesty (Aquae)
Time Flows (Aquae)

You can contact me for my rates:

E-mail: sebastienskaf@gmail.com
Skype: nicolarmarfi1
Website: http://www.sebastienskaf.com
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/nicolarmarfi4
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/nicolarmarfi

Your music is great, especially the piano stuff! *_* When we start working on our other projects after BCM is done, I might have to give you a poke. c: Best of luck in the meantime~ I'm sure you won't have too much trouble finding takers.

What payment methods are acceptable?

At the moment I only accept paypal.

I've finished with my first batch of commissions, and I've added samples of my latest work to my original post. I've also updated my rates (current commissions will still fall under my original rates). Since I've gotten several commissions out of the way now, I'm accepting some more again, so send me a shout if you're interested! Here's one of my recent completed works, the soundtrack for Escape from Puzzlegate:

I love your music, and might be willing to commission you to write some for me in the coming weeks. That said do you mind if I ask some quick questions?

Basically I love music but cannot write or plan it for the life of me. I'm a writer. It's my hobby, my employed job and my career. Are you able to create the music from pretty much nothing to finished? Would you be able to compose music based on the details of the story itself? For instance reading some of the background, the genre of the VN and the characters - and work from there? Or do you require more instruction?

Also, what kind of length would you advise for a looping track for an area, in your opinion?

Edit: If it's easier, you can reach me at Coeur@live.co.uk

Music is a very abstract art, and most people are unable to describe what they require from it in great detail because of the amount of technical knowledge needed to do so. As a result of this I tend to work off of basic descriptions and if possible visuals in order to get a feel for the music I'm asked to write; for example, if you have artwork for an area you'd like me to write music for, or a description of a character's personality to write a theme for them, I don't require much more detail than that.

As far as length goes, it really depends. The long answer is that, because the length of music varies greatly depending on speed and complexity it's difficult to write it to fit an arbitrary length requirement, but as a general rule of thumb I'd say looping music should be long enough to accommodate 2-3 distinct melodic chunks so as not to become too jarring and repetitive. The more often a piece of music is used, and the length of time for which it is used should also be a factor in determining the length of a track. If a piece is used very often, it should be longer than pieces that appear less often to help prevent it from becoming to repetitive, while pieces that appear less often should be shorter so that the entire piece can be digested in the short amount of play time it's given.

The short answer is about 1.5~4 minutes on average

Oh, you're suddenly open for commissions again? Should I PM you the details?

Thanks for the response - in that case I'll likely have to wait a few weeks. I have some commissioned background art coming in for my work - along with a few character sheets and sprites. Once I have a few of them brought together perhaps I'd be able to send you the bg's, a brief synopsis of the "atmosphere" and we can come up with something.

I'm looking for something I guess you might term "overworld" music. Which could play softly in the background for all "non-event specific" scenes. I'll get back in touch when I can provide the pieces, your rates seem more than reasonable enough.

From there I'd be keen to have some specific character pieces for a few of the major characters. But I guess it's easier for everyone if we work on a single piece at a time.

Cavalyn - No rush, whenever you have the time feel free to send me the details via PM, e-mail (sebastienskaf@gmail.com), or skype (nicolarmarfi1) and we'll see what we can do.

Lishy - I've always been open for commissions, but as I recall I had some issues with your project that were putting me off from working on it. You said you've made some changes though, so if you'd like to pitch the concept to me again feel free to do so via e-mail/skype/PM and we'll go from there.

And thanks for the interest both of you

Just to let you know I've finished my soundtrack for Winterwolves' Always Remember Me; you can grab it along with the bonus content edition of the game here.

I've updated my first post with samples of commissioned tracks I've recently completed, as well as a new solo track from my youtube account, take a look