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I'm not that bad am I?

Started by April 16, 2003 12:56 AM
7 comments, last by Dreq 21 years, 8 months ago
Well every game I''ve tried to write music for seems to dissapear.. hrm... Tell me if these songs are good or bad, I need to know whether I should keep making them or not.. http://www.digitalneo.net/blait.mp3 http://www.digitalneo.net/farewellmarch.mp3 http://www.digitalneo.net/harpsichord.mid http://www.digitalneo.net/story.mid Well, let me know..
"Mommy, where do microprocessors come from?"
Hi there,

Farewell march reminded me of something very much from Final Fantasy. I listened to Blait too, it was nice... reminded me a little of something from Zelda from the Snes... I don''t think the music is bad, I think it''s nice... I think the major problem is the samples your using, it''s not too realistic, best thing you can do is try and increase your library but it''s not a cheap task... ask anyone.

But don''t give up on it, there''s always times you want to give up on it believe me. You just have to hang in there
David J Franco__________________________visit www.davidjfranco.com
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Well I have the money, and am willing to spend any decent sized ammounts on sample CDs (.wav or .xi) but I''ve yet to find any, and the few I do seem to be for like trance or techno..
"Mommy, where do microprocessors come from?"
That''s strange.. all the demo material I heard was orchestral... I can recommend a few... if you want trance or techno, i''d recommend some synths, whether PC based or hardware. The Korg Karma is pretty good, along with the Nova.
David J Franco__________________________visit www.davidjfranco.com
I think the reason the games you wrote music for disappeared was because you were so ambitious in your wanting to compose for games that you attached yourself to projects that were not sure things to be finished. But that’s normal. I’m sure every composer has suffered from that before. I learnt my lesson the hard way too, several times, so I decided to bide my time until something promising came along. Since then, I have composed music for things that do get finished because the project was 90% complete before I joined. I think this would be your best option, to stop composing music for other people unless their projects are sure things and to concentrate on composing for yourself so you may improve.

Now when I say improve I don’t mean by anyone’s standards but your own. I am never as satisfied with my own music as much as other people are, and if you want to improve, you shouldn’t be either.

At any rate, your pieces are neither good nor bad, they simply serve their purpose as music for games. My advice is to begin learning styles other than the RPG-esque block chords and monophonic melody lines, like what you did at the beginning of the harpsichord piece, which started to get a little drab after the style changed 14 seconds into it. Block chords can sound nice once in a while, but they’re overused and underdeveloped in your pieces.

So if you have the funds, I advise getting Gigastudio and some orchestral sample libraries of your choice. It still utilizes MIDI, but having real instruments sampled for every note and articulation does wonders for the sound.
Well I do also have a good bit of theory knowledge. I used it some in my one hour compo entry ( http://www.digitalneo.net/marshmellow.it ) but, as with my other pieces, is still kindof boring.. Do you suggest any works I could hear to learn from. VGMusic isn't the best source of creativity in the world..

[edited by - Dreq on April 16, 2003 7:26:23 PM]
"Mommy, where do microprocessors come from?"
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I'm glad you asked.

When I first started out, block chords were everything, and still are in many cases, but now I try to invent new harmonies whenever possible so as to not sound so plain. Four-eight bar melody lines were also easy to accomplish and still do sound pleasing to the ear, but I only used them because I hadn’t figured out any other way to create a nice melody line listening solely to music from RPGs (all I did until 5 years ago was play Final Fantasy). Thus entered my growing interest in film scores that bore strong thematic material starting with Braveheart (James Horner) and Star Wars (John Williams), and then finding an interest in older scores such as Alexander Nevsky (Prokofiev) and Scott of the Antarctic (Vaughan Williams) when the others got boring. Lately I’ve been listening to Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 “Lenningrad” and Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 2 “London”. Now someone might listen to Star Wars and be able to hum the theme immediately after hearing it, but something like Lenningrad takes some warming up to as the thematic material is there, its just more complex.

I owe much of my music writing abilities to being able to go out and explore new things. The music I write has to be the kind of music I want to listen to again and again, just like these works from the early 1900s that I listed. Plus, you can’t deny that there are great classical works that are very popular, yet take on a whole new meaning when listened to in their entirety (Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana).

I don’t plagiarize at all, I just figure out what makes certain pieces so great and adapt it to my ever-developing style. For example, I recently tried to write my own Shostakovich-esque Symphony, and I think it went well. It, and many others like it, is the culmination so far of all my influences from Uematsu to Mahler.


[edited by - Sil on April 16, 2003 9:45:37 PM]
(just a little note, the website wont work now since I moved to linux and am setting everything up I hope I can write music on this platform too... I kindof got pissed when I had 200 megs of ram free and couldn''t run notepad..
"Mommy, where do microprocessors come from?"
I can recommand Kontakt for a PC-based sampler. Works well with CuBase SX.

Search for Peter Siedlaczek''s Advanced Orchestra. The Giga version (works best with PC based samplers) is about $800. There are cheaper, smaller versions, starting at $45.

I usually get music stuff from www.samash.com or www.sweetwater.com; I think I''d recommend Sam Ash the most.

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