Hi Newgrounders,

Here's what I have been up to:
**Scoring "The Board", a film by Kahlil Maskati.
**Finishing a large-scale soundtrack for "Chaos Weapon", a freeware RPG by Taizen Chisou.
**A transcription of "I'm Mister Siren", an album by Naythen Wilson.

Also, two new audio tracks have been released here on Newgrounds:
**Kitchen Theatre is a short track I composed last year for a game that was never finished.
**Signs of the Inward Life is an excerpt from my ongoing collaboration with Kahlil.

Finally, I'm trying to tweet more. Follow that account if you're interested in hearing some of my thoughts on music, films, video games and other miscellany.

Sincerely,
Ben

Visit my website at www.bentibbetts.net.
Click here to follow this Newgrounds account.

Hi Newgrounders,

There are some new playlists on my YouTube channel. Creating them was an opportunity for me to geek out on some of my favorite vg music.

Playlist #1: Transcriptions of the soundtrack for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Playlist #2: Medleys of the soundtracks for Super Mario Bros. #1, #2 and #3.

Playlist #3: A collection of some of my Newgrounds submissions, presented as audio accompanied by visual artwork.

Sincerely,
Ben

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Visit my website at www.bentibbetts.net.
Click here to follow this Newgrounds account.

The original version of the image below can be found here.

Hey Newgrounders,

Recently...
...Goodbye Maru Mari was entered in the Mac13 8-Bit Audio Contest, and it won second place.
...My original soundtrack for gi-go's animation, The Muffin Man, was released.
...Pastoral Peregrination was used in nat29's animation, Teens' Adventure Ep. 1, and Goodbye Maru Mari was used in NoLanLabs' game, Pico Rally.
...The composition section on my website was updated; some of the new material included another set of commissioned video game music, music for solo piano, a tuba sonata and a somewhat personalized transcription of a Machaut chanson.

Sincerely,
Ben

PS: For your viewing pleasure, here is some beautiful pixel art by Lapse. The title is "We Disappeared".

Hi Newgrounders,

Here is a monthly update. But first: have you played Chrono Trigger lately? It has aged well. Playing through it again this past week, it struck me how rich an experience its developers created. This second time through I noticed more of the lovingly crafted details I missed the first time around. This game works hard to earn its reputation. The SNES must have worked damn hard just to support running the thing.

I just had to get that out of my system. Thank you for indulging me.

Here are some of the things I've been doing:
**Blogging. I made three new blog posts: the first two are short complaints about musical language and the third is simply a re-posting of the public conversation I had with The-Great-One a few weeks ago.
**Composing. There are four new audio submissions. 1. Boss Battle Against God and 2. Unnerved are from a collection of OGG files I recently posted to my website; 3. Score! is an unused cue which I'm happy to notice has found a place in MistyEntertainment's latest "Adrellia Village" installment; 4. and Breaking Out is music for a freeware BreakOut game (also posted on my site).
**Playlists. For fun, I've started making a few.

Sincerely,
Ben

Hi Newgrounders,

Good month, bad weather. It's been cold here in New England, but happily things are beginning to warm up.

Here are some of the things I've been doing online recently:
**Four new art pieces: 2-5-13, Into It, The Event Horizon, and Amaranthine Whirlpool.
**A public conversation with The-Great-One (under the Dohn username) about music, games and some other miscellany. This is part of his Somber Pensive series.
**A duet for oboe and bassoon, and a short piece for piano written for a lecture on binary form. Scores and computer renditions of these two tracks can be found on my website, under Composition.
**A medley of the Super Mario Bros. 3 soundtrack.

And one track composed earlier this year, Pastoral Peregrination, was featured in Let's Play Indians, an adult point-and-click adventure game by MrPinku.

For more content visit my website at www.bentibbetts.net.
To follow this Newgrounds account click here.

Sincerely,
Ben

Hi Newgrounders,

I've put together two medleys of early Super Mario Bros. music. They are short and sweet. Here you go:

Super Mario Bros. 1
Super Mario Bros. 2

There are two new images in the art gallery:
Extrusion
Organ Juice

For more content visit my website at www.bentibbetts.net.
To follow this Newgrounds account click here.

Sincerely,
Ben

Hi Newgrounders,

I've recently uploaded some new music to my site from an ongoing project called "Chaos Weapon" (as well as some smaller pieces of music):
http://bentibbetts.net/composition.html

The recent uploads to Newgrounds--Unnatural Laboratory, Going Home and The Sarah Chimera--have been culled from this collection. The soundtrack is for a freeware game being developed right now by Taisen Chisou. You can follow his progress on his blog at 64Digits.

Sincerely,
Ben

Hi Newgrounders,

For a school paper, I've recently transcribed parts of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past soundtrack. The sheet music is in lead sheet format. Anyone want PDF's of these transcriptions? Access them here:
http://bentibbetts.net/storage/lttp/sheetmusic12 -21/

This past month, I also converted from MIDI to OGG a collection of tracks for a freeware video game which is being developed. This music was recently released on my website at the following address:
http://bentibbetts.net/newcompositions/ogg12.12.
12/index.html

Happy holidays!

Sincerely,
Ben

Hello Newgrounders,

School has struck again. In case you're wondering where I've been the past month, the answer is somewhere between insomnia and desperation. (FYI, BTW and OTDL--graduate school is hard, FML, etc.)

However, I do have some new content to share. This evening I published a new, lengthy interview with Newgrounds member The-Great-One. He is a prolific, thoughtful writer with a sense of humor and a passion for learning. You can now read the new interview on my website.

Additionally, I've uploaded some of my newer compositions. Recently, they have all been academic, so I have included sheet music for those of you interested in following along.

Sincerely,
Ben

Hello Newgrounders,

This month I was briefly entered into the 2012 Newgrounds Audio Death Match (NGADM) with my track "Isis".

Unfortunately for me, "Isis" lost to RampantMusik's well-deserving submission, "Hymn to the Fallen". Great job, RampantMusik.

After uploading my NGADM submission, I decided to finally release "Mugimasik", an old track from a few months ago.

On AudioJungle (where I sell some of my royalty-free music) I uploaded two new tracks for sale: "March in Toy Land" and the rather unambitious "Funny Duddy".

What have you all been up to?

Sincerely,
Ben

P.S. Check out Artist-Lost's original logo for this year's Audio Deathmatch below. It's incredible. Go add Artist-Lost to your favorites if you want to stay informed about this amazing artist.