Featured Wynncraftian Fw - S4e1 - Xavierexe

FEATURED WYNNCRAFTIAN
Season 4, Episode 1:
XavierEXE


Hosted by @Pretzule and @Pretzule

Hello hello helloo, and welcome once more to Featured Wynncraftian! For anyone that has no idea what this is, let me give ya a little rundown. Basically we feature people from the community that have done something that I can ask questions about or are pretty cool and something to feature.
If you know someone that might be good to be interviewed feel free to suggest them here seriously please suggest some, I can't find them all on my own..

Featured Wynncraftian will also be twice a month now, with a thread every other week, this way we can spread them out and give people time to suggest good candidates.

For this first one I am going to be interviewing none other than the guy that loves music and noteblocks more than I love my dog, and needs a juice box more than anyone!

It is none other than @XavierEXE and he was originally suggested by @DCM627

Anyway, let's get riiiiiiiiight into this interview.

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What inspired you to start creating music in general, how long have you been doing it for?

There are 4 specific people who inspired me to start writing music: Salted, Needlr, and my irl friends @Rexelle2001 (Rex) and @BonesEXE (Travis).
Ever since I started watching CraftedMovie I wanted to try and write music like Salted did for his videos, and I listened to his albums on Bandcamp for hours on end. (Castles Wars and Discovering 1.5 are still the two best songs, I will fight you all on this)
Then when music was added to Wynncraft, I became a bit obsessed with trying to talk to Needlr and learn how he wrote the music because IT WAS AWESOME.
Around the same time, I had found out that Musescore existed, and Travis and I would skype for hours just playing around with it. He then proceeded to become 8745935% better at it than I was, and then when I met Rex he proceeded to also become better than me. So I strived to try and catch up to them! (and then proceeded to wait around 2.5 years to actually do that)
I've only been writing original songs for around... 8 months or so? I had a few attempts before then but that's when I really started trying to use my own ideas, around a month before I became the composer here. (Remember the 40 second long version of Crystal Falls? That was my first song.)​

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Do you plan on pursuing music as a career in the future?

YES.​

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Why did you start creating music in Minecraft, have you made music out of Minecraft?

I started writing noteblock music because I wanted to be able to listen to the Wynncraft soundtrack when I wasn't at home. I started writing ORIGINAL noteblock music because there were so many areas in Wynn that lacked a theme.
I actually just started properly writing music outside of minecraft last weekend! I'm using Sibelius and I have two original songs so far, one is unfinished, for a string quintet and I already have over four minutes for that one (as well as no title), and the other one is a kind of haunting dungeon theme called "Palace of Mirrors" which is done!
I enjoy writing music for Wynn for a few reason: I enjoy writing music in general, I've always wanted to be on the content team, and I feel like I'm actually contributing when I'm able to give an area a little sprinkle of personality that it didn't have before.
Once I get an idea for a song, it usually takes me only a couple hours of off and on work to finish it, for noteblocks. Getting an idea that doesn't fail is the tough part, but once I have inspiration for something like the percussion part, or a bassline, then I can use it as a building block and stack all the other parts on top of it.
Writing music in Sibelius on the other hand takes a looooot longer, Palace of Mirrors took around four hours to complete, and the String Quintet has eaten around 6 hours of my life so far.​

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What do you enjoy about creating music for Wynncraft, how long does it usually take to make a song?

THE PROCESS.
1. find an area that needs music
1.1. yell at people to give you an area that needs music because you already wrote too much music
2. spend 19.673 hours coming up with an idea for it
3. try it and watch it fail and have your dreams crushed
4. spend 27.478 hours coming up with a GOOD idea for it
5. write the bassline, percussion, and harmony within half an hour
6. spend the rest of the time on a melody because wtf is a melody
7. try to incorporate the first idea (that wasn't as good) into the song, because god damn it you like it and need to use it somewhere
7.1 fail
8. ???
9. profit​

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What is the process to creating music for Wynncraft, which programs do you use, how do you come up with song ideas?

I use noteblock studio to write all the music in Wynncraft.
How do I get my ideas? uhhhh.......
I came up with Ahmsord in a math class and Sand-Swept Tomb in the shower. I get inspiration at really random times I've gotten better at coming up with ideas on the fly now but before, I just sang and/or played around on a keyboard/marimba/whatever/tuba until I got an idea, or just had it come to me when I was doing random stuff. Depending on the area, I'll have a general idea for the tone I want, but the specifics just kind of show up to me, eventually.​

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What's the most unique song you've made and which are you most proud of?

I think the most UNIQUE songs I've written are Fallen Factory (thanks sage), Trippy Forest, and Weirding (thanks selvut), but those aren't the songs I'm the most proud of. I'd say I'm the most proud of Corkus Docks, it uses basically ever unique technique I've discovered in noteblocks in one song, and has an amazing adventurous tone and never gets old. I'm also extremely proud of The Coast, it sounds like a song Needlr would right in my opinion, and I think it meshes really well with that feeling of wonder I have when playing Wynncraft.​

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When did you discover Wynncraft and why did you want to start making covers of the songs?

I discovered Wynncraft on July 14th, 2013, when I saw the trailer on CraftedMovie.
I started writing covers because I WANTED WYNNCRAFT MUSIC OUTSIDE OF WYNNCRAFT. (I have every song downloaded on my phone now and listen to them alllll the time)​

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What do you hope to accomplish while creating music? Is there an emotion you want people to feel while listening to specific songs?

I hope to give whatever I'm writing music for a unique personality, and give the players something to remember about each and every place. Outside of Wynn, with music I inspire to write something that people enjoy listening to even when I'm not shoving it in their faces (sorry @PixelatedSpeck~) and invoke emotion inside of whoever is listening. Sometimes there's an exact vision I want people to think of (Palace of Mirrors, for instance), sometimes it's purely musical. I just want to create something people like to hear!
All of my songs have a tone that I try to capture with them, especially for Wynn. Sometimes they aren't perfect (Why I made Thanos a jazz theme in B minor is beyond me, but it works) but for the most part I'm happy with how my songs amplify the personality of the areas they play in. I think a good example is Trippy Forest: Hey, this area's cool and fun but also you're on drugs and what the fuck is going on, so the song is meant to be bouncy and playful, albeit slightly empty, and also feel like something is slightly wrong at all times, like you're on drugs. Hence, Trippy Forest is in the extremely weird time signature of 15/8, which makes it feel like the last beat of every bar skips.​

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What have you done outside of music? Was there anything else you wanted to do but decided against?

Uh... not much, honestly. I've always just wanted to pursue music since I started playing the Tuba, and I don't really have any other talents that I could make a career out of. (If I could make a living from playing Wynncraft, I already would have)​

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Is there any song that you can share, that hasn't been heard, as a sneak peak?

https://soundcloud.com/user-497439520/mount-wynn/s-BqiHt​

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Aaaaaaaaaaaaand that is the interview, surprisingly without much shouting.
Come back in two more weeks for the next interview of the next Featured Wynncraftian.

A huge thank you to @XavierEXE for answering all these questions in paragraph format and without doing it in caps!​

 

I FEEL IMPORTANT

It was a challenge.

 

YOU ARE IMPORTANT

 

this man feels important

 

Adventure and Forest Dance.

Come at me.

 

Good for you, but you don't have your tag yet.
Congrats.

 

Eyyy @XavierEXE I knew you deserved it! You deserved it since you became composer, and even before that! You're a fantastic friend, and you always seem to make me happy when I'm sad, and for that, I thank you for being in my life as an amazing friend! ^-^

Pssst, you're probably in my top 3 friends on Wynncraft... not gonna say the others tho... don't want a mini drama thing, lol.

 

You forgot to say "Salutations" at the beginning

 

In my first draft I did...

It's coming tomorrow.

 

Congrats @XavierEXE!! Thanks for all you have done for the server and the community!! I always enjoy seeing all of your new music, keep doing what you're doing...it really adds an extra element to Wynncraft!!

 

Of course it had to be Xavier, that dude is a cool dude

 

Thanks for all the likes Xavier, where would I be without you? jk

 

I love the subtle insult here
"I'll try not to sound like an idiot"
"Nah, don't suppress your personality"

 

yay for xavier

 

we need FW for non staff-like people :(

 

Don't worry, next one will be non-staff.

But to be fair, most of the time the people that do crazy cool things end up helping out Wynncraft.

 

But Xavier, you do realize Mt. Wynn already has it's own theme with WarriorAdventure? Ehh whatever your version sounds better anyways...

 

congrooble you potato-palm tree

 

S U B T L E H I N T A T M T W Y N N R E W O R K

C O U G H

1 . 1 7

 

Actually it had LostDungeon which is just a faster-tempo version of ZombieDungeon. That's a cheap way of making new songs, just speeding them up or slowing them down with no changes...