Moseph

Maybe random stuff cached from websites?

I like this. It's a very solid arrangement, except for the acknowledged lack of an ending. You use your strings way better than most people who post orchestra WIPs here. There seems to be something odd going on with the reverb and/or panning on the flute at the start. It sounds almost as if there are two flutes playing, one on the far right and a quieter one with a slower attack just left of the center. I don't know what's causing this, since I can't see the project file, but it sounds odd. I also agree with neblixsaber that the flute at the start is getting drowned by the strings' entrance. If you don't want to bring the strings' level down, you could double the flute line in another instrument to make it louder. I find the sudden harmonic shift at 1:35 jarring (it goes from F# major to E minor/G major, if I'm not mistaken). The brass melody ending on D at 1:34 sounds like it wants to go to D# rather than E. If sudden transition is what you're going for (and the simultaneous change of instruments at that point suggests that maybe it is), it's fine (and, obviously, it's also fine if it's pulled from the source, which I'm not familiar with); just be aware that it's something of a cold-water-in-the-face moment. The piano line starting at 1:57 sounds a little mechanical. I think one bit of polish you could add to this that would really make it shine would to play around with the levels of sustained notes, particularly in the strings. Depending on exactly what sequencer/plug-in configuration you're using, you should probably be able to do this by drawing curves on MIDI control channel 11 (expression) for the instrument you're working with. This will let you easily taper the loudness of sustained notes with crescendos/decrescendos and give you a more natural sound.

I see what you did there. Also, congrats, Zircon and pixie!

Great Scott!

And the aliens use a Mac OS, apparently.

There have always been more lousy games than good games. Time just makes us forget the bad ones, and in fifteen years we'll be saying, "Why don't they make good games like Portal and SSB Brawl anymore?"

You could probably reduce the impact of the chimes by EQ'ing down some of the high frequencies, and maybe decreasing the level and adding reverb. What you have now is basically what chimes sound like, though -- chimes always cut through and call attention to themselves. I think the better solution would be to change the instrument rather than try to change how the chimes sound. Pizzicato violins, maybe? It might be a good idea to swap the harp line out to some other instrument (probably strings) at some point in the music; I think it gets a little repetitive. Right at 2:00-2:05 (and in other places) the strings sound like they have a sustain pedel held on them or something, with a lot of blurring together in the melody. It makes it sound more like a synth string pad than an actual string section. There's also frequently a crescendo that happens in the strings over the course of a measure that suddenly drops back down when the notes are re-sounded in the subsequent measure; you might tweak the attack/sustain properties of your string sound so it starts louder and doesn't build as it's held. The piano and harmonic variation are nice additions from the first version.

Plus those who haven't played the game but like the movie will be inclined to check out the game. And I can totally see Blizzard adding movie-related content to the game around release time.

9/8 is three and wouldn't work. 12/8 is four beats to the measure and would work fine. No reason you can't stick with 6/8, though.

12/8. It sounds similar to 4/4 except that each beat is divided into three eighth-notes instead of two. I can't comment on how it's currently notated, though; I can't open the sheet music because my version of Finale is too old. If you're in 6/8 right now, all changing to 12/8 will do is consolidate things into fewer measures.

Where's my Warcraft Broadway musical?

Because FL developed out of consumer-grade software (notice that they've now dropped the distinctly non-pro sounding Fruity Loops name) and Pro Tools et al. have been professional-grade software from the start. At this point, the capabilities of the programs are basically the same, but I think any marginalization of FL is mostly due to its history. EDIT: And also possibly because its (and Reaper's) lower pricing may tend to get them lumped into the pro-sumer demographic. All of this is more about marketing than it is actual software capabilities.

If you have something in your head, don't go to FL right away -- see if you can sing the melodic line you're thinking of. You may (or may not, I don't know) find that it's easier to deal with pitches intuitively using your voice rather than the piano keyboard. Come up with specific pitches, then go to the keyboard or FL and figure out what the pitches are. One possible exercise to develop your melodic/harmonic thinking is to sing or hum improvised melodies along with whatever music you usually listen to and to try to make it work with the harmony.

It was officially canceled a few months ago, according to Wikipedia. Actually, Van Helsing is a bit like what I'd expect a Castlevania movie to be like, only a little sillier. I'll go with (A) Metroid. Does John Woo still have the rights to that?

The harmonic language, tone clusters, and melodic lines seem similar to me. Parts of movements and of Turangalila are what came to my mind when I head this piece (although I don't know if that would have been the case if he hadn't mentioned the Messiaen influence), and the piano writing also reminds me of some of Messiaen's piano stuff ( ).

I don't usually hang out in the WIP forums, but I'm glad I listened to this. I can hear the Messiaen influence. Reminds me of a scaled-down Turangalila. A couple comments have to do with the execution of the mix rather than the arrangement itself. The piano is pretty mechanical in places, which wouldn't be too hard to fix if you took it into a MIDI sequencer to adjust the note timings and velocities. Am I correct in thinking that this is Finale playback with the Garritan sounds? The reverb sounds a bit off to me, with sort of a stuffed-in-the-coat-room quality to it. If you're using Finale's Garritan reverb unit, I'd recommend at very least bouncing the track from Finale without reverb and applying it later with a better reverb unit; I've never been able to get that Garritan reverb to sound good. In the arrangement, I think it would be a good idea to take some of your flute lines up an octave. It's frequently in a pretty weak range, and I think moving it up would get it out of the way of the other winds so you could hear everything a little better. Actually, the clarinet and oboe can play higher than you've written, too. It would be nice to hear a little more general diversity in the winds' range. Do you have an actual score for this? I'd love to see it, if you do. Oh, also take any charges of incoherence with a grain of salt. I think it hangs together just fine. This aspect also reminds me of Turangalila.

I would take the weasel's way out and just say it's in B-flat. It's actually pretty common to have things that have elements of both major and minor. Just notate it how you prefer to read it, and call it what you want to call it; key signature doesn't even necessarily have to reflect the actual key -- it just usually makes it easiest to read when it does.

PRELIMINARY EDIT: I think really the issue is that you're using Roman numerals as a stand-in for chord names that removes the need to transpose when applying the progression to a different key (which is perfectly legit, as far as I'm concerned), whereas prophet and I are looking at them in a broader analytical context that may not be relevant to your level of music theory experience. To some extent, we're all just talking past each other. So don't take this post too seriously, I guess. You basically do what I did in my above post, although in more depth. To clarify, I meant that Roman numerals don't tell you much in the particular case of Green Hill Zone. I didn't mean that to be a blanket prescription against Roman numerals in general, although I do tend to dislike them even in classical music contexts. IMO, they're a necessary evil at best and a misrepresentation at worst, but they're useful for undergraduate-level theoretical work and for representing straightforward harmonic changes in the context of functional harmony (i.e. things that basically follow a I-V-I framework). If I call something a ii chord, this has implications for what chord it probably came from and what chord it's probably going to. Mostly this is because the type of music Roman numerals were designed for is based around the relationship between the tonic (I) and dominant (V) chords. Generally speaking, everything moves from I to V and back to I, and the other chord numerals describe the path taken between I and V. If the tonic dominant relationship isn't as important, as is the case in a lot of pop music, then calling something a ii chord begins to lose its significance, because the general structure of the relationships among harmonies that the Roman numeral system describes has begun to break down. (I remember back when I was first learning about theory I looked at a transcription of an Evanescence song and it blew my mind that it ended with iii going to i because that went against everything I'd learned was "supposed to" happen.) The main issue with Roman numerals, especially in a pop music context where harmonies may not do what is expected of them, is that the numerals tend to cause arguments about terminology and expectations within the system (e.g. is this a iii chord in the tonic key or a vi chord in the dominant key? or, this is a V chord but it doesn't resolve so something must be screwy). These arguments tend to lose sight of how the harmony or the individual voices behave in the specific instance under consideration. Sometimes things don't fit into the "correct" boxes, even in classical music, and a less rigid approach (usually involving a paragraph of prose) can frequently better explain what's going on in the music. For example, in Green Hill Zone, just putting Roman numerals on things doesn't do much to clarify the relationship between the F and C chords, because calling them IV and I implies relationships that simply are not present in the music, and implying nonexistent relationships means that you then have to justify their nonexistence, and you just end up digging yourself into a hole because your system doesn't describe what's actually happening in the music. I think tonic and dominant are still important terms for discussing popular music, but not the rigid way in which they're characterized by the Roman numeral system. /TL;DR I guess the point of all this rambling is not that you should abandon Roman numerals (because you shouldn't, especially if you're just starting out with theory); it's that you shouldn't assume that assigning Roman numerals to a chord progression is the end-all-be-all of musical thought. EDIT: Either works. Fmaj7 is more straightforward.

Off the top of my head, I'd guess that IV is used that way both because of the potential tonic-dominant relationship with I and because if you treat it as a tonal center, it puts you in the Lydian mode without altering the scale, and of the white key modes, Lydian is the closest to major and therefore the most likely tonic substitute. And Lydian's also just generally a nice place to be. A jazz professor I TA'd for last year pointed out that Lydian's used all the time in film music to evoke a sense of scale or expectancy, and since then, I've noticed it all over the place.

I just realized while looking at this thread that Green Hill Zone reminds me of Zelda's Lullaby. It has the same sort of deal where IV tends to displace the tonic by existing as the focal chord at the start of the verse and undermining what would otherwise be V-I cadences. (I'm thinking that maybe this is something of a stock technique for looping music that drives things forward by avoiding any clear resolution.) EDIT: Not to dredge up old discussions, Gario, but thinking about this reminded me that the original Link to the Past version of the lullaby doesn't feature that line that you took to be the functional bass until the repetition of the first section. There's also an interesting fanfare that introduces the piece that isn't present in the Ocarina of Time version.

The only one of these that I'm particularly familiar with is Green Hill Zone (for reference, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFHvxuuOymo). Here's what I take to be the chord progression: Pedal C at the start, then in the verse, FM7 Em7 (repeat x 2) Dm7 CM7 Then in the bridge, Bb Am Ab G Only very weak chord functions, so Roman numerals aren't really going to tell you that much about the music. F, IV if we take it to be in C, is kind of treated as an alternate (and Lydian) tonal center, since the verse is built around it, and the bridge reestablishes a strong expectation for C that's undermined by the nonresolution to FM7 when the verse comes back. It's very similar to the way I interpret Zelda's lullaby, a piece which was discussed in the music theory thread. So Brian, check out Zelda's Lullaby if you haven't heard it already.

Nice. What with this and the release of those classic LucasArts games on Steam, it's been a good week for retro gaming.

I like the version without EQ, too. The snare/claps and piano on the EQ'd version sound weak, and I think in general just too much of the midrange has been cut out of everything. Overall, I think the only real problem with the non-EQ version is that it's a bit bass-heavy, like Harmony said. EDIT: One other thing -- everything sounds very centered in the stereo image. If you pan things a bit more, you may be able to separate the individual instruments without having to do it with EQ. EDIT 2: It's really easy to overcompensate when you EQ things. Just as an experiment, you might try halving (or thirding) all the values of the boosts/cuts that you have on the EQ version and see what it sounds like.

Right now, the real innovations in guitar tech have nothing to do built-in MIDI/effects implementation and everything to do with improving the things that make a guitar a guitar. See for example the Moog guitar, which implements infinite sustain (the string literally keeps vibrating forever) without resorting to triggered samples.

I love how this ended with him apparently getting temp banned.