u/Agitated_Plum6217

I’m asking a variety of smaller questions with this overarching one, so feel free to drop any info.

I’m looking into what makes Toby Fox’s music so good, and something I constantly hear about is that he shifts the semitones of a song and/or instruments.

Upon watching some “tutorials” on what semitones are, all they state is that they’re the individual keys on the piano, so I’m assuming changing the semitone shifts what key the melody is in.

So how do you use this coherently?

Is this used to change a melody that was out of key into the key you wanna use? Is this how the Once Upon a Time motif fits into multiple keys?

Some of the instruments in Toby’s songs are pitched down, while others are pitched up. Why? And how do you know when the pitched-up instrument works with the pitched-down?

I could go on and on, but I won’t bore you with all that.

So after struggling for weeks with trying to get my mix right, along with fiddling the EQs and such, I’m in a sticky spot. Or I was, until I realized that for the context of my game, technically the songs I should be making should be 8-bit.

I can make a good melody, and I have some practice with chiptune, but I wanna know how people go about the actual mixing part. Do people fiddle with the EQs and panning, or do they leave everything alone due to old consoles not using them?