Post Your Music

I already told you how good that was on SC... Love it.

But... what kind of a character IS she? Is she good or evil? What's her BG?

------

Remember my song "Carry Me Away"? Here it is as my new title screen theme:  https://soundcloud.com/dlsea/new-title-taken-from-carry-me

Enjoy! If you like it tell me why! If you DON'T.... tell me why. :)

There's a pretty long description of her in the Sound Cloud drop box.  I almost have some high quality concept art of her done as well. To put it simply, she is one my good guys! She is an Earth Mage, in fact, the only known living one and is often in the spotlight because of it. Despite her popularity she keeps to herself and has few friends. Her background is that she's a student and aid at a university for magic sciences and technology. The story starts out with her starting a research expedition but on par with most games things take interesting turns.  Essentially she must transition from an unsuspecting and sheltered lab assistant into Breslin's (my continent) unlikely heroine. As for her personality, she is a magnetic free spirit who is incredibly thoughtful of others; often noted as not even wanting to step on bugs and spiders. She is easily flustered, zealous, skittish, and affectionate.

Though she appears sweet and impressionable she is driven by free will, is led by a natural curiosity, and her "lethal" optimism registers as fearlessness; making her a perfect accessory to Irial's (her best friend) need for adventure, mishaps, and mischief. She is an impartial mediator often acting as a bridge between characters and playing monkey in the middle. Many members of the party try to use her youth and apparent innocence to "tell their side of the story" and reaffirm their attitudes but to their shock, Ameríel almost never says what they want to hear. .

I don't really like double posting but in the interest of keeping the thread active. I posted an old, old version of this awhile ago and now it's revamped and prettified. Item shop music! https://soundcloud.com/maireadgamemusic/tavik-the-item-shop-keeper-no

This one needs work! I don't know if it's the instrumentation or the mixing but something is rubbing me the wrong way. This song is meant to play during interactions where characters are arguing or lack of better terms, being an @$$ https://soundcloud.com/maireadgamemusic/cutscenes-theme-gauntlet-of

Ahahahaha. I forgot to share this! It's my new title theme!

New Title (Taken from "Carry Me Away")

And now for something a little different.  Here's my song Island Dance, a full song I had dancing around in my head when I was a small child. About four years ago I first wrote it on notation software... about a few months ago I remastered it and cleaned it up into the final version of what it is now. I love it so much!

Island Dance

New to the forums, but wanted to share. I'm an electronica musician (mainly slow melodic stuff and hip hop), but I've been working on a battle theme that's turned out pretty decent so far. Very inspired by chiptune and the old NES era of Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior music. https://soundcloud.com/ewcertain/battle1

And for fun, here's a Snoop Dogg remix I did for a contest and released as a single. http://pokket.bandcamp.com/track/that-tree-remix-of-snoop-dogg

My bandcamp is old, and I hate the Two Clicks from Hades album I did now, but my soundcloud is full of demos and experimentation. I mainly just use it to get opinions on tracks that I'm working on. Though I'm nowhere near as talented as you cool folks. Really digging the tracks I'm hearing.

I really like it! Especially when it gets going at about the 45 second mark. I'm a fan of very melodic music but this track doesn't skimp on the rhythm either. Good job! 

In honor of St. Patrick's Day (or as I like to call it, "Yes, I know my hair is red, day") I went in this direction. This piece is meant for a shipyard in my game that has seen better days. https://soundcloud.com/maireadgamemusic/the-shipyard-the-ships-are

Ah LIttlefish.... your style seems somewhat whimsical and lighthearted... even your super evil bad themes have a touch of playfulness to them!

My one beef though is that the melody stops WAY too abruptly. I know it loops but even so, it might be just a tad clunky. :)

As for you, Pokket....   whoa.    That reminds me of Adventure Time and I love that...

Thank you! Playful is what I'm going for. There are definitely serious moments in my game but even then it tends to ere on the side of macabre and strange. If I had to embody the way the dark themes of my plot are handled with one song it would be with Camille Saint Saens' "Danse Macabre." 

I'll take a deeper look into the melody of the Shipyard. It was one of the first tunes I came up for my OST so it probably needs extra love and attention. It's good to get feed back on that one because I've had that melody forever!  

Thanks for the kind feedback!

Really loved that track Littlefish. I wish I had the talent to compose more orchestral tracks, but I just can't find it in me. My talent predominantly lies with electronica, but I do have KontaktPlayer decked out with sampling of live instrumentation so it's something I want to work at.

You'll never know unless you try.  Also, taking a course in music theory helps.

Music theory definitely helps but I've only taken a level 1 class myself. I know there is a lot of theory involved (I mean, some note combinations DO sound bad unless there is the correct context) in my compositions but it seems like more of an afterthought and I just write by ear and what is tickling my fancy. If you can read music, that will go a long, long way. 

But, Pokket, you have a knack for melody and your rhythms are good. There doesn't seem to be a reason why you couldn't give it a shot to stick those elements on orchestral instruments. You can always do a "fusion" too. I'm really big into electronic meets classical, meets, rock, meets whatever the sky is.

After having gone through four courses of music theory, I can safely say that it DOES help quite a bit, but seeing as how those courses are usually taught with a certain era of music in mind (usually one that has an incredible amount of rules to constrain what composers are allowed to do), they're not as useful as you may think. Writing better, more powerful music comes from experience and experience and experience: the more you do it, the more you remain consistent with it, the better you'll become. Listening to the type of music you really wish to create on a daily basis and mimicking it to your own tastes goes a looooong way. We are musicians, yes, but we are also some of the biggest thieves ever. Nothing can help or change that.

I'm not saying the music theory courses didn't help me. But no matter how much education you receive towards it, until you actually put it into practice, you won't know all it is that you are really capable of. There's a rather interesting quote by Calvin Coolidge that I like to keep in mind...

"Nothing in the world can take the place if persistence.

Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.

Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Education will not; the world is full of uneducated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

Oh, I was a brass player in middle school and high school. Played both classical and jazz music then. So I have some understanding of music theory, though it would definitely be cool to take a class in it or maybe fine some free online classes. I know some universities release their old courses for free like MIT as I've did their classes on game theory. I really want to learn piano eventually and I think you can learn a lot of music theory through that instrument, but I also want to learn all the instruments and been saying that for years haha.

My problem isn't really with music theory though, sorry if I was misleading. For some reason I just have a harder time working with live instrumentation (or at least the multi-sampled equivalent of it) than I do with synthwork. I mean, I can do samples, that's easy, but using things like KontaktPlayer that is loaded with the multi-sampled instrumentation... I just have a hard time making it sound right but that might just be a lack of effort on my part.

@pokket -- Great work on the battle theme! I'm exploring your Soundcloud now and I'm enjoying it so far. :)

Like you, I didn't think I had the skills I needed to make more orchestral stuff, until I decided to just do it. I actually surprised myself. It wasn't easy, but when I was done I felt like I had leveled up.

Examples:

https://soundcloud.com/satellitereboot/brynhild-1

https://soundcloud.com/satellitereboot/straw-millionaire-1

http://music.satellitereboot.com/album/kings-of-summer (sounds less polished because it was an experiment in getting as much done in one day as possible)

Honestly, it's not that different from working with synthesizer sounds or layering guitars. The biggest struggle for me was finding decent-sounding virtual instruments, but once I had those it was just a matter of picking the sound that best fit and making it work.

I second what Clydous says about theory and practice. Theory is useless on its own, but it can be quite helpful when you're writing. Personally, I don't even think about theory until I get stuck: "Wow, this is boring and terrible. What am I doing? G on the piano... Bb on the guitar... D on the square wave... ok, that looks like a Gm. What if I add an Eb to the bottom. Or the top. Hm... ok, I like this. What if..." and so on.

A friend of mine recommended musictheory.net for learning. I haven't spent a ton of time there, but it seems pretty good. I can probably find some more resources if you're interested and feel like hurling yourself into it.

That's how I write. I just go at it and then step back and say, "What did I actually do? OK. How can I shake this up?" I really take a "hit my face on the keyboard till it sounds good" approach.

I listened to your tracks. I'm really liking your stuff. I like your style of layering on the theme. I enjoy that type of music very much.Like how you take that oboe melody in Straw millionaire and start adding details around it.

Thanks for the feedback, StanMan. Glad you're enjoying what you're hearing, though a lot of my soundcloud are demos and poorly mixed and what not, I mainly just use it for feedback purposes though I haven't released in anything official in some years.

Really dug your work as well. Big fan of the Kings of Summer stuff.

Don't fret man, it's good and the best thing about music is you can never get worse from practice; only better.

Now... A little somethin' I'm working on for the weekly contest, my first entry!  Work in progress, the end result won't be quite so synthesized...

https://soundcloud.com/dlsea/project-wip002

Says the track couldn't be found. Did you delete it? :(

I totally forgot. I'm so sorry D: https://soundcloud.com/dlsea/wip04 Try this one.