Weekly Song #2

USK

173 Posts

July 17 2011 09:03 GMT

Well gonna post the second week song... hopefully going to show a little improvement, but I dunno, I definitely just came up with the idea and put it together today in a couple hours. Kind of defeats the purpose of having a week to work on one song when you just scrap most of your ideas and are left just winging it at the end. But I am going to hold myself to keep the weekly basis of this blog.

As for this little ditty... I learned how to use side chain compression and wanted to work something out around that technique but I don't think that it was exported correctly or might be an earlier save file because it seems to not sound the same as when I was working on it.

As always, helpful criticism and thought is always appreciated.

tube

United States1475 Posts

July 17 2011 09:48 GMT

theres a japanese chiptune producer named usk

just sayin

eodynn

Germany44 Posts

July 17 2011 12:38 GMT

I think it's better than the last one,
but your bass line made me search all my tabs to see if i don't have anything else open
(shortly: it doesn't really fit in in my opinion).

fatum

Spain83 Posts

July 17 2011 14:59 GMT

This is my humble opinion:

- The hi-hat is too loud, it makes the rythm have way too much importance.
- The melody doesn't respect the 4/4 beat pattern that you choosed and makes it feel that is played randomly without following the rythm.

Try to stick to a pattern and create everything around it respecting the pattern 100%.
Beautiful music doesn't come from random stuff that somehow sounds well. Beautiful music comes from simple patterns used to fit sweet rythms and/or catchy melodies.

I recommend you to start doing simple songs (even more than this one) and making them sound great. One nice example of simple songs is AC/DC. Their melodies and rythms are simple, but they are catchy and cool because they respect the laws of harmony.

The human brain is simpler than most people think when talking about art. We allways try to find simple rules that make us feel comfortable.

A nice example about this is the book "Art and Visual Perception" by Rudolf Arnheim. I know that the book doesn't talk about music, but it shows how perception works in terms of art.

Hope it helps somehow.
glhf

USK

173 Posts

July 17 2011 16:38 GMT

On July 17 2011 23:59 fatum wrote:
This is my humble opinion:

- The hi-hat is too loud, it makes the rythm have way too much importance.
- The melody doesn't respect the 4/4 beat pattern that you choosed and makes it feel that is played randomly without following the rythm.

Try to stick to a pattern and create everything around it respecting the pattern 100%.
Beautiful music doesn't come from random stuff that somehow sounds well. Beautiful music comes from simple patterns used to fit sweet rythms and/or catchy melodies.

I recommend you to start doing simple songs (even more than this one) and making them sound great. One nice example of simple songs is AC/DC. Their melodies and rythms are simple, but they are catchy and cool because they respect the laws of harmony.

The human brain is simpler than most people think when talking about art. We allways try to find simple rules that make us feel comfortable.

A nice example about this is the book "Art and Visual Perception" by Rudolf Arnheim. I know that the book doesn't talk about music, but it shows how perception works in terms of art.

Hope it helps somehow.
glhf

Don't worry it definitely does help a lot. Though I would like to know what part of the melody you think doesn't fit the beat? I do agree with you about the high hat though.

On July 17 2011 18:48 tube wrote:
theres a japanese chiptune producer named usk

just sayin

yeah I found out about that later after the fact, actually I just made and named the account on a whim based on an inside joke with my friends. Coming up with original names or something is really hard, I just said screw it and if I actually get good to a point then I can come back to that later.

fatum

Spain83 Posts

July 18 2011 00:29 GMT

Is really hard to speak about melodies without a pentagram with the notes on it. I'll try as best as I can, but don't follow my guides too much because they will be bad for this reason.

- The background chords are not harmonic with the main melody. This hurts the melody more than it helps having some second voice to help with the tonality and the harmony.

- You start the "break" of the melody (I know this is not the word in english, but in spanish I call it break) in one of the on-beats of the melody, specifically in the 3rd one. Usually this variation (or stress) in a melody is done in the off-beats because the mind "search" the main melody rythm in the on-beats.
Well, this explanation SUCKS, but I'm not native and is really hard to speak with words that you don't know At least I hope you can understand what I mean.

- That two problems mixed make the drop feel completely excessive and chaotic.

There are several more points that could be remarked in the song but, in my opinion, they are problems caused by the problem of not respecting the "on-beat & off-beat" concept and the four 4/4 bars "pattern".

I don't know if I explained my point at all. It's hard to explain without partitures and more without being able to sing or isolate some specific parts of the song.

Hope it helped somehow.

edit: Adding a simple house song to show the concept of "on-beat & off-beat" variations and stresses.
Take a look on how the producer keeps the melody and rythm simple on the bars 1 & 3 and how he variates them on the bars 2 & 4.

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