|
So these are a couple of the things i am working with on at the moment:
This is the most old one i made about two months ago. I don' t think i would be able to remake something like this. It was kinda of an inspiration of the moment. Took me a full 6 hours and a couple of days to make. When i found the bass line it all fell into place.
https://soundcloud.com/pebble-5/xylophone-voice-bass-trombone
This is a random tune inspired by a passage in Lord of the rings
https://soundcloud.com/pebble-5/composition-4
This one is the most recent one, inspired by a mezzo soprano girl i met (she had a beautiful voice)
https://soundcloud.com/pebble-5/composition-9
Edit: can' t seem to get the embedded TL audio player to work. Oh well, i have uploaded them to soundcloud.
I am studying music atm;
Please listen to a song if you have a couple of minutes and let me know what emotion it/they make you feel. Honestly
I made these with a program called Musescore. You can get this program for free (its opesource) and its realy amazing what you can do with it, even just for fun i encourage you to try and check it out. You can find it here
Recently i have been listening to music in a very different way. I used to just flip trough all types of genres of music. Literally i enjoy almost everything. I flippe from Reggae to classical, from rock to House, from Blues to electronic to pop, from minimal to drum n bass to rap, to psychedelic rock.It realy just depends on my mood.
However lately i listen in a different way. I listen much more to full cd' s like in the good old days. I listened to the entire Star wars soundtrack. I listened to the entire "la Traviata" of Verdi. I listen to countless reagge albums. I close my eyes and just put the volume of my headphones or speakers high and i just listen, letting the music inspire my imagination. I encourage you to try this, with any kind of music you like.
Peace and Love yall
|
I use musescore on my ubuntu netbook 
As far as rendering goes, you might be better off importing the MIDI file into some other program and setting up nicer soundfonts (FL studio, Reason, etc.). For example, in your "composition 4," how much more epic would it sound if you had a real timpani soundfont playing?
I really love your composition 9! Seems you like atonal / chromatic composition ^^
+ Show Spoiler +There are a few golden sun tracks that your work reminds me of, notably this guy:
|
Ouch. Musescore doesn't have very good virtual instruments, and thus it kinda makes almost anything you make with it sound pretty bad. I also find musescore (and other programs like it) to be a real pain putting in notes. I find piano rolls a lot easier to work with. Also your music sounds kinda atonal, and has no apparent long term structure. I would suggest sticking to more common chord structures until you get more experienced.
Let me talk about the third song. The baseline stays the exact same boring thing for a whole minute. Exactly the same minor arpeggiated root chord. Then for 20 seconds it goes diminished (just changing the top note) for twenty seconds. Don't use diminished chords unless you really know what you're doing. Then for the last bit it just does somthing similar with a different rhythm. The melodies are these wacky atonal things that sound like you just picked random notes until you had something that you didn't hate. The key signature is there for a reason. If you're going to pick a note outside of the key, make sure you have a good reason for that particular note. This is one of the things I hate about introductory music courses: They tell you about all these weird chords and different modes, but they don't say "hey, you probably don't want to use this very often." Sure, I suppose it's good to know about diminished 7th chords in the dorian mode... but not really. Here's my advice: Limit yourself to one accidental (say, Bb in C major), and other than that never stray from the key. Don't change keys, and if you do, make sure it's a simple change (CM to GM, or CM to Cm, for example). SImple is better than complex in most cases.
So yeah, my advice: different software for better sounds, make things simpler. At this step, probably the most important thing is for you to learn your tools to get great sounds, than it is for you to dabble with extremely complex melodies.
You can take it or leave it. If you really like what you're making, go ahead and keep putting random notes in the score. But if you want people to listen to you music (as in: catchy tune) then you're going to have to make drastic changes to your approach. What you might get now is the kiss of death. People might say: "Oh, you have a really unique style! I like it." But in reality, almost no one is going to actually listen to it tomorrow.
I don't mean to tell you to give up; I mean to tell you to change your path.
|
your Country52797 Posts
Everything jrkirby said, and
All your music seems incredibly rigid and mechanical.
First one is too repetitive to be taken very seriously. Bass line is the same thing the entire time.
The second one is 2 minutes of buildup and then it ends. Again, the bass line repeats over and over- who wants to play that?
The beginning of the third piece is randomly discordant, which is fine; the problem is that someone listening to the music for the first time wouldn't understand all the discordance and probably wouldn't like it at all.
|
United Kingdom1704 Posts
I think you have to re-think a few things. Like the other guys said, simplify down until you can work steadily with themes and harmonic concepts, then add colour and flavour to them with accidentals, including keychanges for effect and not gratuitously. Your music will become naturally complex and interesting in this way as long as you commit to learning and adding more complexity, for the sake of the music, not for the sake of creating something just different which nobody can listen to.
As far as software instruments go, you need to branch out there too. I mean, don't expect a fantastic orchestra library to make you sound good automatically, because oh my god will it do the opposite :D. But have a listen to these.
+ Show Spoiler +An example of scoring for small ensembles. String Quartet+piano. This was written as a theory exercise, but you can see that it's important to weave the theoretical ideas into the music effectively, rather than throwing them all on top of one-another. It will also be impossible to create something on a small scale, as opposed to just big and epic and loud, which sounds at all realistic on less advanced virtual instruments. https://soundcloud.com/motekeatinge/the-composerEpic videogame-style loop. For battle sequences. The software instruments can sound thick, and huge, with a wide variety of articulations and expression. https://soundcloud.com/motekeatinge/battle-1
They can sound very convincing, but don't underestimate the amount of work it takes.
I'm a classical/film+game composer amongst other things, and work almost entirely with software instruments at the moment. My libraries are Spitfire Audio's Iceni, Albion, and Loegria libraries, and EastWest orchestra Platinum, Gold pianos, Quantum Leap RA, StormDrum2. You have to spend out a lot for these things (or perhaps you can torrent them, I'm not sure), but you really can't compromise on the quality of the sounds you're using. + Show Spoiler +I would be open to collaboration if you can't get hold of virtual instruments like these, and want to hear your music as it is supposed to be heard, just PM me 
But really, reconsider the way you're writing. Scale it back to the basics, and work from the ground up.
|
Good instruments are very important.I suggest you switch to some professional software.
For a start, use the 1 month trial of ableton live, it has no restrictions and you will do already much better because the tools are better.
I understand how hard it's to start.
Here was my first song I made, it was with reason 4.
https://soundcloud.com/kimoo/kimo-moody-bunny
I think you get good honest feedback here but it can feel really harsh. I want to encourage you and wish you courage and confidence. I think you could get already a big boost by laying down few chord transition...
Well, I'm not a musician and never will be
|
Thank you for the replies, very insightful, thats why i posted this blog in the first place. I wanted to get some prospective. I think its a good idea to go to the basics and thats what i want to do. I also want to do some transcribing (some simple kids songs i have done one) i find it very usefull for studying to see what great musiciens have written. The more i learn the more it is fascinating.
I started getting into music about a year ago, i picked up the guitar and started playing tabs i found on the internet, was very fun and after i started feeling the limitations so then i started some music lessons, learning "solfeggio" (dunno how to say this in English) , helps a lot with the rythm . I have some ideas of what i want to do, one was for example to create songs based out of Ultra sounds for dogs.
I listened to those two songs, i hear the harmony and the melody in those rythms, and even the quality, difficult to believe its all made from pre-registrered sounds
i have uploaded the midi files of the tunes
+ Show Spoiler +
Again thanx for the replies i appreciate it
|
This music would totally fit into runescape's soundtrack.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
