Start Over
by Pummelator
Created for the Pxtunes 10th Anniversary collab
...mostly on the day it was due! After the extension, of course.
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I discovered PxTone in the long ago time of 2014. In the summer, I was playing Cave Story for the first time. In the fall, I was composing my first ever crappy songs with this program made by the same guy.

By 2016, Discord was the new messaging platform the people I knew were bailing to so we wouldn't need to put up with Skype anymore. I migrated over with a group from the Cave Story Tribute Site Forums. Later in the year, another group was made for PxTone. Of course I joined that! I love PxTone! I hadn't made many tunes outside the first few months after trying it for the first time, but that wasn't going to deter me.

Not long after, the group made a collaborative album themed around winter. Of the six people to have participated in the group's very first project, I was one of them. I continued to make music on my own into 2017. This was almost entirely done in PxTone.

After this period, I stopped making music. At first, it was probably because I ran out of ideas. More time passed. I made it through high school and university, started working a job, and switched jobs a couple of time. All the while, I was slipping in and out of making videos and, later, had taken up writing. Like music, these were things I enjoyed doing. I kept thinking about trying to make music again, but I just couldn't get myself to do it. It didn't help that trying to listen to anything I had already made was psychologically painful.

In 2024, something finally woke me up. A notification from the PxTone group informing me of the next project. A celebration of Cave Story's 20th anniversary, participants would make their own renditions of Cave Story's soundtrack. I couldn't say "no" to myself or ignore it. I had to make something for it. Too much time had passed and I had never put in enough time to become "good" at making songs. Plus, I was busy with work. Of course I was. Isn't everybody, to some extent? I had no confidence in myself.

I ended up making a rendition of Game Over. Nobody else had chosen to do it and I couldn't bring myself to butcher a song I actually cared about. Just before the final product was set for release, a Discord group get-together was hosted so we could listen to everyone's songs at the same time. I joined this, putting myself in the company of people I had never met before and people I hadn't really conversed with in years. Many of them are great composers and I'd bet almost any of them are better than what I can manage.

I had a really great time listening through the album with everyone. We were in a voice channel, but everyone was muted so we could just listen to the music. We'd type messages talking about the song that was playing and complimenting each other on our work. This experience wasn't unique to this project. It was just the only one I had ever attended or been a part of. Being there with everyone made me really happy in a way I hadn't felt in a long time.

Naturally, I followed this up with zero songs. Not even an attempt to make any other music. If I knew why, I'd be dangerously close to unlocking the secrets of the universe and unraveling heavily classified government conspiracies the likes of which no common man has ever heard of. Well, I assume that's the case. I don't know why else I would follow up this incredible experience by acting like there was never going to be another one. This isn't even the first time I've done something like this.

Lately, I've been in a complete creative rut. I haven't done any writing, made any videos, or put together any songs in several months. I've been on a work project that's been taking up tons of my time and sending me to weird spots all around the country. I could use that as an excuse, but isn't everybody busy with work to some extent?

Another announcement alerted me to a new allied effort. The tenth anniversary of the Discord group was coming up and it was time for an associated project to begin. This was already another case of me needing to participate in this. Jaxcheese, the one who started the group and runs all the events, personally messaged me to make sure I got the message. Of course I would like to participate!

Months passed as I thought about what approach I would take in making a song and doubting if I'd even manage to get myself to do it. The due date was October 4th, but it was extended to the 11th. That's when I am now as I write this. I'm on the other side of the country on the fourth work trip I've been on in two months. It's five in the morning and I would probably be asleep, but I've had to work night shifts and my body would need more time to get back to a normal schedule.

I had the start of something composed going into this night, but it still needed a lot of work before it resembled a song. I looked at it, thought about what day it was, and decided to give up. "If I was going to do this, I would have had it done by now. I guess I missed it. Oh well." That lasted for maybe an hour before I took the exact opposite position. I reopened PxTone and worked non-stop until I decided it was done. Many hours later, and I had something I could actually call a song.

Making music was something I took up because I found it to be fun. I wasn't particularly good at it, but that didn't make it less fun. At some point, I tricked myself into thinking I wasn't good enough to make music and stopped doing it. Whatever skill I had built up had plenty of years to atrophy. Going into this, I couldn't imagine I'd be able to make anything much better than the songs I made before. I'd be back at square one. That's okay, though. It wasn't going to stop me. Making silly little songs is still fun. If it was going to be like starting over, then that's what I'd do.

This seems like an awful lot of strife for one song that's about a minute and a half long, doesn't it?

I made the song much like I had made my first songs. I used the same version of PxTone Collage I've had for years running on Linux using Wine. I stuck to using the samples that were included with PxTone. I wanted to keep the song shorter since that would give me a better chance of actually making something.

Thank you to Jaxcheese and the PxTone Discord group for giving me the inspiration I needed to make music again! And by "music", I mean "at least one song".