A Fond Farewell by Edan Mackenzie

This past week, a video upload site and community I've been a part of since 2008 finally went offline for good. For anyone who doesn't know, TMUnderground was a site dedicated to sharing and collaborating on machinima/animated movies made using The Movies, iClone, Moviestorm and many other tools. We were a close knit community comprised of amateur filmmakers, musicians, modders, voice actors, writers and more. I made many lifelong friends from all over the world and had some of my happiest memories during my time on TMU, and I feel that given I was only 16 when I joined, the community has undoubtedly played a fundamental role in shaping me into the person I am today.

Of course, we all knew this day was coming. Much of the activity from the old forums had shifted onto Facebook groups and Skype, and these days not as many people are making films anymore. There was also the devastating news last year that Ken White, the man who ran the site, had sadly passed away. Ken was one of the kindest and most generous people I've ever had the honour of knowing, and I know that anyone else who knew him would say the same. It makes me happy to know that there are so many people across the world who will remember what a great person he was, and as long as we continue to carry those memories then he'll never be completely gone.

With all that in mind, I decided to go a different direction with my music this time. I've always wanted to dabble with orchestral music and movie scores, but never really felt like I had the tools and expertise until now. With a year of practice with virtual instruments in my music software behind me, I finally felt confident enough to go ahead and try to capture in music my feelings from this past week.

Because you can't really separate one from the other, I guess this is my tribute and a farewell to not only the place that gave me so many joyful moments over the years, but also to Ken himself as a thank you for making it all possible.

The song itself isn't totally finished, and I will most likely go back and tweak some things, but that's the beauty of the fortnightly song challenge I've set myself this year. It's been two weeks since the last one so I just need to stop being precious and publish what I have! I hope it's enjoyable and thanks to anyone who's read the wall of text this far :)