Here’s something a little different from the piano music I put up earlier (scroll down if you are on the main page), and from the orchestral music which is coming (I promise).

This summer, I formed a part of Team NOOP (named after the ‘no operation’ computer instruction). We are old friends from an early game programming community, and when the others wanted to participate in a ‘demo competition’ and needed music, they thought of me. A ‘demo’ is what we had before YouTube; before Flash cartoons, animated gifs or even The Internet: some frighteningly bright people worked hard to transcend the limitations of early computers and produce something that, in the absence of the technology we know today of course, made people say “wow”. Long gone from the mainstream, the culture of demo-making lives on in one of the most welcoming communities in existence.

In our demo, the story begins with a lovely young lady with clouds over her head because her ‘bento’ (Japanese boxed lunch) leaves a little to be desired. Something – I think it’s the sun – offers to pimp it for her, leading to the addition of many exciting ingredients and a burst of levity. She is disappointed, the sun ‘loses a life’, and the cycle repeats. Although we didn’t have time to synchronise the music with the visual storytelling, the cycle is there in the music.

Here is a video of the full demo. The music starts shortly after the one-minute mark.

By the way, we won in our category!