Time flies so freaking fast: it's my first ever submission's 5th anniversary today!
On June 26th, 2016 I released my first ever submission to NG, back when those trippy 3d Flash visualizers were still a thing, and although I've been on Newgrounds since 10 days earlier I didn't remember, so I'll celebrate my first submission's 5th anniversary instead.
Some of you might be a little confused because SkuttenGamerGD is only 4 years old. Well, I had an older account before this one called "WiththeflameNate" where I published weird, low quality garbage for the 4 short months it was even active.
I'll give you a quick glance at where I was musically back then as a gift to everyone that has been sticking around these past few years throughout the rest of this post, so if you're interested in knowing how I've come so far in my musical career, feel free to keep reading on.
This is how my musical journey started.
When I was about 7 years old (about 8 years ago now) I was introduced to Skrillex during the "Dubstep" craze between 2009-2015 (I put Dubstep in quotation marks because technically Skrillex dubstep isn't actually dubstep, nor are all the subgenres.) For the 2-3 years onwards I spent big part of my time listening to Skrillex's music alongside various pop songs of the time.
Then I discovered a very popular game called "Geometry Dash" thanks to an Italian youtuber called "FavijTV", who had played the game on his channel around that period. I was immediately taken away by the music and the gameplay, which I had never seen anything like that before, but then I noticed something that would change my life completely. I had discovered that all of this music in the game was coming from one single website: Newgrounds. So I checked what was up on there and I immediately fell in love with the website. For the next year or so I would visit this website for big parts of my time, until I decided I'd make an account and try to emulate my favourite artists' music.
So on June 15th, 2016, WiththeflameNate would be born, and for the next few months afterwards I would upload every little piece I would come up with on that specific account. At one point I found out about Soundcloud as well, so I started re-uploading all of my music there too. 11 days after, I would upload my first ever submission on NG, "DubbingStepper", which is one of four songs I would ever make with my first "program", "Create Your Music Online!"
(https://createyourmusiconline.blogspot/)
With this now unusable website I would go on to make 3 other songs, "Life & Electro Life", "Din The Fucking Electro!" and "Building Meatballs" (you can likely tell that at this stage in my career my English wasn't quite the best in the dictionary). What this website basically was was a sort of 2011-style dubstep soundboard with about 20 patterns to choose from that you would click and re-click to respectively enable and disable them. This was essentially a recipe for disaster for 10yo me however, so I decided to look up some good ol' dubstep tutorials on Youtube for the first time ever. Thanks to that, I would find out about something that would change my life once again throughout the next 4-5 years: FL Studio!
It was love at first sight for me when I found FL Studio for the first time. It felt very alien to me when I first opened it, but in a couple of hours I would quote on quote "get the hang of it", and by that I mean I could drag and drop FL Studio default loops around the playlist. So my first FL Studio song ever would come out of that, being given the name "Get out of here" for no better reason than "I thought it was cool!".
You can find the song here: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/694877
As you can probably hear from the song, I still didn't really know what I was doing here. For the remaining 3 months of my early career I would simply get some weird melody loops sample packs and slap them in the playlist however I felt like placing them, and some way or another I thought I was hella cool for doing that. But then, the idiot that I used to be decided he would upload a song that was clearly not his with the excuse that "it would once again be available in Geometry Dash though!", and if I remember correctly, the song was "Warak - Reanimate". I would get a 3 month ban from submitting any future submission because of this, and as the illiterate that I was I read incorrectly and thought it was a permanent ban, so I abandoned the account altogether, which I was unfortunately unable to recover ever again.
Fun fact: before this ban I actually had made that same mistake multiple times throughout accounts that I would not be able to use again. One of these times I got banned was different, however. I had went on to post a cringy rant on an account that I would create for this one occasion and never use/recover again.
Here you can find the post I am talking about: https://skutten.newgrounds.com/
And as you can see, my English was somehow still garbage. So garbage in fact that when I visited this exact account I had no idea what the hell I was talking about. All I know is that I likely was very upset and wanted to rebel, which I of course did not do. That aside. after the ban I would abandon Newgrounds in frustration for the next 10 months, and I would only focus on my YT channel for that period of time. Then, I found out about DubstepGutter, and the idea of making music came back to me in a matter of a couple of weeks. I went on to find out Skrillex was never the only one to produce Dubstep, but other artists as well, such as Teminite, Panda Eyes and Pegboard Nerds. Thanks to that I would finally be able to get enough courage to make a new account: SkuttenGamerGD, the NG account I use to this very day and where I would upload everything since.
My first submission on the new account, "Try of remaking Flirt Flirt Oh It Hurts (Maded with my Hands)" would then be uploaded on June 25th, 2017, coincidentally 364 days after DubbingStepper's release. From then on I would stop making the mistake of uploading songs that weren't mine and was able to produce music in absolute peace. I would then keep practising my FL Studio skills until I would finally make my first ever decent song on Newgrounds: "At Your SideChain!". Since I was actually starting to develop healthy brain cells at this point in time, I was able to upload a video of the project file on November 1st, 2017 on my old official Youtube channel, a day after the official release.
If you're interested, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIvlKCEqZnM
After that song, I would make a remix of the Computer Error Song, that would become my most listened song ever, even to this day.
Another bloody link here, ugh: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/774745.
From then on I would keep making mediocre projects (except for "Race to the Creativity!", imo my best 2017 song) all the way into 2018, the year I'd be the most prolific during my 5 year career. In my point of view, the year didn't start well at all, for the simple of reason of song quality. My first 6 songs were utter garbage, which didn't deserve the hundreds of listens they ended up getting. But then, I would finally make it: I had made another decent track! This time it was a remix, and my 2nd most popular to this day too. It was my remix of the song "My Reality" from the Doki Doki Literature Club OST, made back when the game was still very relevant.
Link to the song here (getting tired of giving links ngl): https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/787383
During the next few months I would make even more mediocre songs, as well as a remake of "At Your SideChain!" that wasn't that much better than the original. After that I would make another song I would end up being very proud of for the next few months: "Dance Balance". I was absolutely obsessed with the song, even featuring the thing in one of my cringy old let's plays from 2018.
Link here, of course: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/796047
From then on I would actually make a mix between better songs and outright trash, which I would now consider a pretty noticeable improvement on my side. I would then be able to make 2 prominent works of mine from the late 2018 era: one of them being "Mochi (SkuttenGamerGD Remix)", a tropical house remix of a song made by an old friend of mine, EMBL3M, friend who disappeared from NG very suddenly some time around 2019 and who hasn't been active since, and "Minimal Invasion", my first and last minimal techno project and a very decent one as well!
Links down below as always:
Mochi (SkuttenGamerGD Remix): https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/809413
Minimal Invasion: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/820097
After Minimal Invasion, I would just kinda slow down on making full songs and remixes, and would just upload WIPs for the most part until my laptop would eventually commit suicide in front of my eyes. My only alternative would then be FL Mobile. Because of that, in 2019 a new era would start for me, a short one rather, but an interesting one to go over:
The FL Mobile Era
Ah yes, FL Mobile. It was a very weird time back then, but I will try to sum it up the best I can. It all started with the song "CDI On Crack", which was named like so because of the similarity of audio quality between the song and the CDI(?), a terrible console from the 90s (how did you guess I used to watch the Angry Video Game Nerd?) Apart from that, the song ended up being so badly mixed that I had to make another similar sounding song called "The Brightness" to realise I was doing something wrong. Too bad I actually ended up not improving much during the whole of this era. The only decent songs I would make would be "Everlasting Beauty" and "Space Journey", which where so badly structured that I would only dare to remake EB out of the two of them.
Here is a list of links to the songs I mentioned from this era:
CDI On Crack: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/855604
The Brightness: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/855789
Everlasting Beauty: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/878959
Space Journey: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/882443
Overall, most of 2019 ended up being stagnant anyway, but that would soon change at the end of November 2019, when my PC would finally come back from the technician fully repaired (and yes, that is why I was using FL Mobile in the first place haha), and also when I would release my best Dubstep song so far: "Orange Juice".
You can find the song here: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/895413
The song ended up being my most successful Dubstep song, from the 435 listens and 4.66 star rating to the quality and mixing of the track itself. An absolute banger if I do say so myself. To this very day I am infinitely proud of the work I've done there, because it taught me so much about Dubstep one way or another. Sadly, that would be my last ever official dubstep project I would make, and I would become a genre nomad.
2020: The VGM Year
I often think of 2020 as a pseudo-VGM kind of year (VGM meaning "Video Game Music", to clear it up), where I kept making either 8-bit stuff, chill EDM or some videogame-ish theme. In occasion of the pandemic I would make a song called "Crown Rampage", a dark DnB style track that is more rushed than a 12 year old's first romantic relationship.
I would also remake Everlasting Beauty, the song I was talking about earlier, into a way better quality DnB track that I'm pretty proud to have made. Other very honourable mentions from 2020 would be songs like "Dreams from a Star", a chill track for which I couldn't describe the genre properly for the first time ever in my career, "Afterbass", a work-in-progress Future House track that somehow ended up sounding professional, "Lunatic Cultist", my best loop ever made, which to this day I have no idea how I made Gross Beat work so well in it and "Melancholic Tranquility", my ultimate VGM track, a track so well produced I am left in a state of confusion every time I play it anywhere, and the reason is I still can't understand how I was able to make something so beautiful.
All songs are linked below:
Crown Rampage: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/929976
Everlasting Beauty (2020 Remake): https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/910045
Dreams from a Star: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/936806
Afterbass (W.I.P. Part 2): https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/952470
Lunatic Cultist: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/981616
Melancholic Tranquility: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/987877
2021 has so far been an amazing year musically speaking, especially thanks to the new found help from @bleenOfficial. Truly thankful for all of his help, which boosted my music producing skills up to the sky, especially this year. With the umpteenth special thanks to this guy, let's keep the post moving to its last section.
Apart from "DnB Is Dead", which just needs a little bit of mixing anyway, all of my songs have been amazing. It is also true, however, that most of my songs this year were remixes, but that aside, every single piece of music I made was splendid beginning to end, and the star ratings and reviews on them resemble exactly that. "The Start of the Journey", (contradictory title, I know) is what I believe to be the catchiest 8bit track I've made in my career. The production was pretty disorganised, but it still ended up nicely (technically the song was supposed to be included in the 2020 section, but I submitted it this year so why not). After that came the song "Denmark", a Minecraft-inspired song that I consider a pretty solid achievement. Spending 3 hours on a song to end up with such a relaxing piece of music felt very satisfying in my eyes. Then came "Phasma", another very respectable VGM loop, kind of like Lunatic Cultist without all the counter melodies and Gross Beat automations. The song that came after, "Strobe (remix prev)" was mildly disappointing because of the length and slight overcompression, but it is still holding up imo. After spending my time producing that, I came up with the idea of remixing a Minecraft song. As I said on the description of the song, I meant to remix the song "Danny", but because of technical difficulties I remixed "Moog City" instead. That is how "Moog City (SpeedoR Remix)" came to be and turned out to be my first ever Lofi Hip-Hop track ever. After this Lofi piece, I decided to keep making chill songs for a while which I am still aiming for as of recently. I submitted the remake of a song called "Memory (Starry Promenade)" from the survival horror JRPG, Mad Father with the premise that I would stay chill musically for a little bit, even when making electronic music. In fact the remake is absolutely relaxing all throughout, probably more relaxing than expected during production. And finally, after hours of typing, the last song submitted by me as of June 26th, 2021 is "A New Energy (SpeedoR Remix)", a slightly repetitive, but catchy Dance remix of the popular song "A New Energy" by F-777. I never made a Dance song like that ever during my career, so I'm very glad to have made the song as it is, repetitiveness aside.
Time to link everything (rip fingers):
DnB Is Dead (Preview): https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/998502
The Start of the Journey: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1002178
Denmark: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1002179
Phasma (loop): https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1031825
Strobe (remix prev): https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1031826
Moog City (SpeedoR Remix): https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1035442
Memory (Starry Promenade) [REMAKE]: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1041005
A New Energy (SpeedoR Remix): https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1043938
If you've come so far in this post, I give you my biggest congratulations. I didn't expect anyone would spend this long reading everything this post had to offer. I just hope that this long post I have made today has given you and everyone else that actually read it to the end a better insight on my 5 years of music production. And as always, see you in my next tracks!
Sincerely thankful,
~SpeedoR
(04/07/2021) EDIT: Grammatical errors fixed, revision of the post made.
