Leaderboard

I'm studying game audio at university (3rd year). I've just come out of my final presentation for this semester, where my game team and I demonstrated our work so far on the project and our aims for the next semester. Our group was the 4th last to present and I was told that my audio presentation was stellar and the best they had seen this year. They had no complaints whatsoever. I've never felt more undeserving of anything in my life. I feel like everything I've created has been a complete fluke. All the ideas I somehow managed to fabricate couldn't be replicated if I tried my hardest. I have no recollection of how anything really happened apart from a bit of genre and instrumentation research in the first few weeks. I first started learning audio production in my spare time about 6 years ago. 6 fucking years. Yet I still feel like I can't truly write music, my mixes are substandard, and if I showed any work to an audio professional I would be laughed at. I'm objectively worse at writing music than about 80% of this community, i'm sure of it. I've felt the exact same at the end of every project. This isn't just for music composition, but also sound design. I've learned a fair bit of theory that I've been able to creep into my creation process when needed, but never actually been able to write something from theory if that makes sense. I understand that plenty of great music is written with zero theory knowledge, but I need a structure, something that will make me know that i'm learning and not just generating happy accidents. I need certainty that if i'm given a brief, I will be able to write music for it. I feel like i'm working excessive hours to come up with something a professional composer could write in minutes. I just have no idea where to begin with this. Theory and composition feels so horizontal, rather than a vertical progression. I need a foolproof process that will make me a better composer. I want to be able to feel like compliments are deserved, instead of feeling like i'm somehow drowning.

I'm gonna have to disagree about the previously made complaints about the vocals. I actually liked them because of how they add to the chillness of the track. One of my fave tracks from the album

Ooo, I really like this. I saw in the other thread (and even dropped this suggestion in there), but listening to this here, the real problematic samples are the two from Sora. Of course the Goofy/Donald samples are not good either for OCR's purposes, but you can look through some Disney material to find suitable substitutes. If those Sora samples are more popular quotes from the game or have some more meaning to the players (Not as familiar with them myself - only played through it once when it came out and once a year ago) you could perhaps speak the parts yourself. You never know, it could be a really cool effect on it's own with your voice speaking Sora's parts. Sorry we can't actually take Square samples, though - it causes so much unnecessary trouble for people. On an unrelated side note, that Halloween town remix is dope as hell - you've got some real solid vocal chops. It... just autoplayed the Soundcloud list while I was writing this, so there ya go, I'm a fan.

Not a bad question, but that's no-go, as Darkesword said If it were from one of the Disney characters, though, perhaps sampling a Disney property could be a useful workaround? It feels weird suggesting sampling the largest media company in the world rather than Square Enix, but them's the ropes 'round here. Otherwise, er, perhaps a good impersonation is in order? Ask around; you never know, someone might really pull through.

No disrespect whatsoever to @timaeus222 but the opposite is true for me - when I am not feeling "inspired" about an arrangement or a composition, I put it down. That being said, I've heard that Chuck Close is credited with saying "Inspiration is for amateurs," which I disagree with especially because I think his stuff is (on the surface) the same thing over and over again. I recently finished 10 or so tracks for an indie game, and I flat out DIDN'T meet deadlines because I wasn't feeling inspired about some of the tracks. They weren't saying what I wanted them to say! So @DarkEco to your original question, I would advise you to first master your primary instrument, and I mean strive for professional level playing. Most of the composers I have played have had a big impact on me and my arranging. We are all of us product of our influences. Cement to yourself who you want to emulate, because everyone emulates someone. Bach got his hands on some of Vivaldi's orchestral scores and came up with the Brandenburg Concerti because he took apart Vivaldi's introductory phrase structure and reconfigured it like legos into something he loved even more. He walked many many miles round trip so he could go listen to Buxtehude play organ, which impacted the rest of his fugal composition. If your influences are your contemporaries, that's perfectly fine too! Rush cites Led Zeppelin as a HUGE influence, and they were playing/touring at the same time. I think Neil Peart said in an interview that for a couple years in Rush's early performing, they sounded like a Led Zep ripoff band. They found their own voice eventually, of course. Led Zep, their biggest influence was blues form! If you aren't a formally trained musician, that's perfectly fine. Just cover the music that you love - don't play the same stuff all the time, and internalize the components that you love. Have no fear in incorporating your influences into your compositions. It creates meaning. Jazzers are advised and taught to transcribe solos from the greats on their instruments (and NOT their instruments).

This absolutely oozes old-school flavour and I feel like I just walked through a smoke-filled lounge in the 1960s. You should already be grabbing it from the server, really. What a trip. The brass parts for me are a bit of an issue, albeit maybe not as much as DJP or the judges may have thought. To my (super average) ear, it kept going from "this is near perfect" to "okay a fake but it still works wonderfully." Maybe that's why they were far in the back at times? Might bother some more than others so I think it's worth noting. Regardless it's an awesomely well-crafted piece and is worth downloading for that electric piano solo alone, not to mention the overall atmosphere. Hurry, before the Rat Pack takes the stage!

This is a very faithful orchestral remix. With your choice of source, your biggest challenge is making your orchestral remix sound realistic. The Super Mario Galaxy music was performed by a real orchestra so an orchestral remix of any of its songs should be as realistic as possible. The piano sounds okay, but the strings don't sound realistic at all. I agree with AngelCityOutlaw on the volume of the french horn: it's way too loud. It sounds great, but it's too loud. I feel like the trumpet volume is too high as well. What samples are you using by the way? Also, just so I'm clear, realism is achieved by how you program the MIDI information. Low quality samples can still result in a great-sounding remix if the arrangement was programmed well. You could have the Vienna Symphonic Library, but if you don't know how to use the instruments effectively, it doesn't matter. A good example of the low quality samples with great programming yielding an awesome remix is here: http://pisanifamily.info/will/music/Zelda Medley.mp3. I don't know who the author is, but they did an amazing job with it. This is definitely a good first remix! Changing the dynamics would improve this remix a lot. I'm looking forward to hearing your future works.

So the first thing that jumps out at me is that the piano has a number of harsh resonances that are hurting my ears. Just do a sweep with a paratmetric EQ with the Q set high and lower the offending sounds when you find them. Listening onward this is actually happening with a lot of the sounds. The horns are way too loud and if realism is what you're going for, there is no way some of those elements (I think I hear a harp?) would be very audible with brass playing at the kind of dynamic. By the way, forte or louder is actually not played that often in most orchestral pieces. Especially for this tune, I'd keep the horns/brass at a more "choral" kind of dynamic except toward the end. They also seem to crescendo way too much and too sharply. To demonstrate what I mean, here is a good example of brass writing; in a chase scene, no less. Aside from when it's just the section by itself, the brass are generally playing at a lower dynamic suitable for the other instrumentation. I'm not sure what you're using for samples, but the strings especially sound noticeably fake. Toward the end, the arrangement gets pretty cluttered and I can't clearly hear all the different lines. The harp, lower brass, celli, trumpets, high strings, etc. all sound like at least some of the time they're overlapping frequencies and it muddies the arrangement. I'm not familiar with the source, so I can't really comment on how faithful or not it is, etc. I saw you posted the link, but tbh it doesn't matter to me if it is or not; I'd rather just listen to the remix and crit but overall, I'd say it's not a bad first remix.

I'm just floating. <3

Possibly Imposter Syndrome? No one is a harsher judge than themselves.

It's a Square Enix property.