Hello everyone!
Fabio here — the solo developer behind Knitewings™.
Today I want to share something very special:
for the first time, I’ve composed an original soundtrack for the game myself.
No AI, no outsourcing. Just… me, my computer, and FL Studio.
This article is a behind-the-scenes look at how (and why) I decided to do it.
🎼 Why I decided to make the music myself
As many of you know, the music I’ve been using for Knitewings so far was generated with AI.
This approach has some advantages: it’s cheap, fast, and the quality is often surprisingly good.
But there are also big limitations:
• you don’t have full control over the final composition
• it’s hard to match the exact mood of a scene
• and there’s a general distrust toward AI-generated assets
On the other hand, hiring a professional composer is simply too expensive for a solo developer like me — and even then, explaining the exact musical idea in my head to someone else is a whole different challenge.
So I decided to do something that at first felt impossible — almost a bit crazy:
I would compose the soundtrack myself.
🎧 Learning everything from scratch
To make this happen, I armed myself with:
• patience
• enthusiasm
• and a lot of passion
The ideas were there.
The motivation was there.
I just needed to learn how to actually make music.
First step: understanding the tools.
I tried several DAWs, and FL Studio instantly felt like home. So I chose it.
Then I dusted off some very old memories from when I wanted to become a rock star 😄
and started studying the basics again:
• chords
• scales
• rhythm
• composition
• and how Japanese arcade / shmup soundtracks are typically built
I downloaded every free instrument and plugin I could find, experimented for days, and listened to tons of retro arcade soundtracks to understand:
• which scales they use
• which chord progressions
• which synths
• which guitar tones
• which BPM ranges
• and how everything is mixed together
Once I understood the direction, I bought the FL Studio entry version and continued my learning journey through tutorials and experiments.
🎹 The hardest part: mixing
Composing the melody was already challenging, but mixing…
Mixing was a whole different beast.
Choosing the right instruments (all free!), blending guitars with synths, finding the right balance, avoiding muddy frequencies — that was the real struggle.
It’s what makes the difference between:
• a track that sounds like it was recorded in a garage
and
• a track that sounds like it belongs in an actual game soundtrack
But after many attempts, experiments, failures, and new ideas…
I finally found the right combination:
✨ the instruments
✨ the melody
✨ the mix
✨ and the identity
And for the first time ever, I can present the first original Knitewings soundtrack, fully composed and produced by me.
🎥 Here is the track: “Wings of War”
https://youtu.be/ul12w9Jr7SQ?si=Jt5-itX6Gtnhr9sg
I truly hope you’ll enjoy it!
🎶 A personal milestone
This track isn’t perfect — I’m not a trained musician —
but for me it represents something incredibly important.
It’s proof that even as a solo developer, with limited resources and no musical background, I can still create something original and meaningful. This piece is a milestone, a small but real step on the road toward releasing Knitewings.
My long-term goal is to replace every AI placeholder track with original compositions of mine. I already have many ideas, some of them half-formed melodies sitting in my FL Studio projects, and now that I’ve found my own style, instruments, and workflow, I feel confident I can carry this through.
Your support is what makes all this possible.
Thank you, truly.
💙 Fabio — Profenix Studio