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Melodies by themselves imply chord changes by the chord tones that are present in them. Polyphonic, contrapuntal textures still imply harmonic progressions without ever actually playing a "chord". The two are not as separable as many may think. But to say that starting with the melody is dumb, is to say that composers like Bach were also dumb.

Source: Worked on a remix of the dungeon theme for a competition. Happy with how it came out, but I'm a little worried I may be stretching the melody of the original bassline a little too liberally. If it's not too far off the mark, I'll try and see if I can clean this up into something submittable for the panel. Remix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rwkuiqrx52d9uia/Shining Light into the Dungeon.mp3?dl=0

This. Even when I'm arranging a video game tune or a jazz standard or a whatever and the melody is already given from outside, I always first play the bass and the melody together to make sure they work. When I have two outer voices that convey the things that I want to say at that moment, it can be anything from atmospheric desert to adventurous battle theme, the inner voices fill in themselves. It can be done in many different ways, but when the outer voices run I know that I'll have a nice progression. That's the reason why things like counter motion works so well, and paralel fifths and octaves don't. This is of course also a stylistic thing, but in every genre of music you can have good and bad relations between the outer voices, it's just that the criteria is different. I think that when you're just thinking of chords, rhythm and melody as something separated by semantics, you'll never be able to write coherent music. It's all about the relationship to each-other and how it mixes and ends up as an organic whole that makes the music.

Well, that's true, a melodic focus isn't necessary, but I do think some sort of leading contour could still shape, say, a desert track, using your example. It doesn't have to end up being a melody, but you could hypothetically hum a melody on top a chord progression you try playing, but then not put a melody. It can just guide the chords you write (or help you visualize which chords you could write), knowing that one can write a chord progression to any given melody (in principle). And then, that wouldn't have a strong melodic focus, but it may be easier to construct by using a leading contour as a guide.

WTF is a zyk0?

As you all know, bLiNd has been a contributor to this project from near the beginning. We haven't seen an update form him in a while, so I sent him a couple of pokes asking him about this recently, but he never replied. Then I came across this... bLiNd's Jade Catacombs was THE track that led me to OCR. Before that, I was cynical and disdainful of most electronic music - I don't know exactly what it was about this track that changed my mind, but it certainly did. Since then, bLiNd has been one of my favorite remixers to listen to. I am VERY sorry to hear about this - as someone who has made such awesome music and has been such a strong contributor to this community, I want to lend my support to him and Jenn in this awful time and so, I encourage everyone to do the same. As stated in the thread, there is a GoFundMe campaign to help bLiNd out financially - you can make a donation at https://www.gofundme.com/aguirre-fire-fund. Take care of yourselves, @bLiNd and @JenZ - we're all thinking of you.

If you use the OC Remix Album, I can tell you these are often too loud, at -10LUFS but this is not too excessive (it is, but not too much, I have seen worst). The problem is the dynamics, everything have the same level in those tracks and yes, ears get use to it. I didn't measure the PLR (Peak to Loudness Ratio) but it must not be good. So, this is normal. When you're working in music, this is one of the think you need to be very, very, very careful. If in the morning, I'm working on a pop/rock song which is loud (and this is normal, the style is thought like that) and the afternoon, I got to work on a classical record, I will be very careful and rest my ears one hour before starting to work. Otherwise, the classical will seem to me too low and I will be tempted to push up the level. I play the devil's attorney, but every style have a history, a background. And if the metal is over-compressed when they play live and in CD, it's meaning something. Put everything at -23LUFS But I got to say, always listen all day to over-compressed music (and f*****g mp3) can damage ears and can cause attention disorders. If you are used too always have loud sound in your ears, when the silence comes, the brain is freaking out. And this can be reversible, ears can be educated (and need to be educated). I know how it works, I used it everyday, but even in 5 sec, everything is too low. Coldplay in five seconds, I was clearly not at -18LUFS, so Green Day... and MJ... Don't you see my previous post ? I didn't show you the momentary, but I write about the Max Short Term and the dBTP... I always read them and focus on the sound, how it sounds (have I compressed enough or too much?) and find the best balanced parameters. Oh yes you must ! Ok, in mix music this is not the same, and even if I'm not a specialist in TV mix, I have seen how it works (part of my studies was in the movies industry and I could enter in some post-prod studio) and they look at it because they can very, very easily break it. That's why gun fire in TV are always bad, because they need to have a strong voice but they can't put a very loud noise over too much. The cinema can do that, in fact, the cinema surely can have the best mix and master because they can do how they want. In music, it's the same thing but because the competitiveness, the output level of mobile phones and mp3 player and like I already said, "louder is better" (our perception work that way), producers want to over-compressed the sound. They are not engineers and this is not a good idea, this is just how it is. The AES/EBU is about television and radio, not music. This is why Spotify, Youtube, Itunes have their own Loudness Level, and it's shouldn't be that way. For me -16 LUFS is perfect, because you can do something very balance, or very quiet, or loud (-12LUFS long term at max), it will not alter too much the master. We should do several master : one for mobile uses, one for Hi-Fi uses, one for radio uses... Nice work, it's very nice. ;) I really like this one ^^