Leaderboard

So, small in text, but large in importance update! I have received a PM from the project board (is that the right term?), and well, igNoring thE craSh is now an official OCR Album Project! Well, almost. There's a few things that need to be taken care of, but within the next week or so, it'll become officially official, to quote Gario. What does this change? Not much. The final deadline is still set for August 10th. However, the album judges did give some critiques on individual tracks, which I'll be PMing out tomorrow to their respective holders. As for those who haven't turned in a final track, perhaps this will be a good motivator, no? We're past a major hurdle, guys - now let's get ITC to a release! (It's fitting too - when I write this, it's ITC's 3rd year in dev! Its almost like a present!)

For Dave to quote. "This is pretty sweet. And hot. Like a desert." YES

0:00 - Trumpet sounds nice, if a little quiet. I would bring that out more. Listening to it a little more, the music box and piano are just a tad too loud. The strings and trumpet (and maybe even the distorted guitar slightly) are pushed to the back of the mix, despite the trumpet being the melody! The writing itself is pretty good, it's got a good bounce to it and a very playful atmosphere. 0:24 - Drums and piano are a bit too loud here and the piano has no emotion to it. The rhythm here suggests an increasing intensity, but I don't feel it at all. The piano needs more velocity and less volume. Maybe boost the trumpet and strings a lot more here too? 0:48 - I really like the piano and trumpet parts here, but its using the same rhythm as the rest of the song, so the transition is kind of lost. Maybe experiment with a different beat that retains the driving train-like feel but is a noticeably different beat so that we don't get bored with it? 1:22 - The trumpets just kind of trail off here. Why? It sounds like someone bumped the mixer knob and faded them out too early Overall, I like the melodies you have! Its a very playful song and captures the train feeling perfectly! But the layers underneath are very sparse and very simple. There's a lot of repetition with no variation in the backing tracks. Try listening to each instrument individually and pretend you are playing that instrument. After playing the same phrase 4 or 8 times, it gets pretty boring. The audience may not realize it, but that means they're getting bored with it too. Try to alter the rhythm or dynamics or something to keep it interesting! The mix itself needs some adjustment. The piano, music box, and drums are all too loud in some parts. And since they're all fairly short and/or staccato notes, it only makes the piece feel more sparse. I would also investigate adding a few more layers to fill out the sound. Maybe boosting those strings would help, or adding another instrument. Maybe even something as simple as bring the bass guitar into the mix more (I didn't even notice it until the 1:05 mark!) I really like the idea you have here. I love the melodies, just the rest of the song needs more meat to support the fantastic start you've got!

Didn't submit (for shame!), but I did swing by and listen to everything and vote. Gotta give anyone who does FFL2/Saga2 music my support! Best of luck, all.

Yes. Well... yes and no. @Thomas Neil wanted this to be an official OCR release in the same way as the other albums, which are distributed for free in electronic format online. If we had wanted to actually publish and distribute this album, I would have had to look at that from the very beginning; this would have involved talking to OC Records or another private / indie label. I haven't looked into it, but I imagine there's a bunch of extra work involved and a freaking HUGE cost, which I certainly can't handle myself. That being said, I will be getting my guy to do disc covers as well and @Etzaen has told me he's doing some character art that can be used as extra leaflet material, so you can print out all the material and make your own copy on a CD-R. It's not exactly PolyGram or WB, but you will at least be able to hold it in your hands. ME TOO. Let's get some of this awesome music finished so we have something to go platinum with!

I think that, besides the great things mentioned above it's also very important to have certain arranging techniques which are difficult to acquire by yourself. This of course depends on the genre of music you're writing, but a good knowledge of things like voice leading, instrumentation, reharmonization and similar things are generally very useful and help a lot with composing. Luckily, there are a lot of books about this. I'm personally not a big fan of books, but there are a few classics out there which in my opinion are a must have for every composer. Of course, it's a totally different thing whether you're writing for a string orchestra or for a rock band, so I can't really recommend anything as I don't know what your type of music and line up is. But, what I'm trying to say is that you don't have to do anything by yourself. There's a lot of people in the world that know a lot about composition and are sharing their knowledge in great detail for a small price. Just blindly listening to other people and constantly staying in a safe zone is of course also not the way. Absorbing information about things that interest you, and meanwhile experimenting with the things you're learning is in my opinion one of the richest and most fulfilling aspects of writing music. It's about the joy of discovering. Just playing around with chords on a piano for a few hours can be a very valuable and educational experience. This, in my experience, also brings the best results. Someone can tell you that the first inversion of a major chord sounds amazing, but hearing it yourself, and most importantly, stumbling on it by yourself when you're just messing around a bit, maybe accidentally adding a 9, has a lot more impact. First of all because it highly depends on the context, but also because that way it comes from yourself. This makes your music more you, and this authenticity and personality is what makes music so beautiful.

Kinda what Jorito said about critical listening, but here's my take on a list of relevant tips/tricks in order to critically listen: For an overall perspective on structure, try turning off your screen and playing a song (or close your eyes), so that you can't physically see where you are in a song that you are listening to (especially if it's on soundcloud, which has a waveform display). I sometimes suggest this to people who may be struggling to write less repetitive structures, so that they can work on knowing when to create a shift in the dynamics or sound design. Try importing a song into your DAW, then using an EQ plugin to filter out frequencies that are distracting you from a particular instrument you want to analyze. That may help you hear the actual notes, if the instrument is hard to hear at first. Try recreating a small part of a song (or even an entire song?), in composition and the sounds themselves. That should train your ear to pick out parts, from both the compositional perspective and the sound design perspective. It'll also help you learn new techniques that should hopefully improve your compositional skills. For example, I learned how to sequence a cello by listening to this song, and recreating (and also modernizing) it as this in the process. It also made me realize how complex strings layering can be. (Besides that, I had tried that the year previous to then, and I quit trying. When I tried again a year later, that's what I made, which is how I knew my ears were seriously improved.) Mark down particular spots in a song where transitions occur, to work on transitions. Then, try to pick out each instrument and see how it helps make the transition work. More of what I said on this can be found here (which you've seen). If you don't have a MIDI keyboard, get one (for general non-virtuosic piano use, 37 - 49 semi-weighted keys with modwheel and pitchwheel is probably fine)! It's where many ideas get borne accidentally (or at least, mine). If you do, try thinking of the feel of a chord in your head, and try playing the chord just by knowing how it feels in your head. This is a way to train your ear to think of chords that work together in a progression, just by having a vague idea of how you want the harmonies to feel along the way (are they contemplative? Ominous? Silly?). Listen to new music every now and then. If you just listen to the same influences, you probably won't know what other inspiring stuff is out there. I like hearing inspiring sound demos like the stuff from http://soundcloud.com/isworks (particularly the Ventus Tin Flute, Turkish Oud, Stroh Violin, and other unusual or World instruments). For instance, this track inspired me to write this ReMix in 3 weeks or so.

Critical listening and transcription are very useful tools to learn how stuff works. There's a lot to be learned from music you already love. Pick one of your favo tracks, listen critically to it. What is the core genre? How is it structured? What different instruments do you hear? How does it flow from part to part? How are the instruments placed in the mix? Also try transcribing (by ear) the song (or parts of it) yourself to get an intimate understanding of how things are done. This is a biggie and takes time, but it's worth it. If you haven't done it before, start with just the chords or the bass of a slow song. These are just some options, you can go as deep as you want with it, and for me personally it works a lot better than analysing sheet music, learning notation or music theory, simply because I'm pretty much a hands-on kinda person.