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evory

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Everything posted by evory

  1. Not sure if anyone here remembers me, but years ago I wrote a Ducktales remix with Doc Nano that made it onto the site (still one of my proudest achievements). Since then I've gotten busy with college and stuff, but I recently joined the Columbia Pops Orchestra, and my first order of business was to write a medley of themes from one of my favorite games of all time: Undertale. Definitely more of a medley than a remix, but look out for the motif from Memory popping up throughout. Other pieces include Megalovania, Spider Dance, Bonetrousle, Death by Glamor, Fallen Down, It's Showtime, and Oh! One True Love. I hope this fills you with determination.
  2. Hey thanks for listening Glad you enjoyed it haha.
  3. Hello there Here's a piece I've written for piano and orchestra, in sort of a late Romantic style. It's really short (only 3 minutes long), so I was hoping you guys could give it a quick listen. I'm thinking of using this as part of an arts supplement for my college applications, so while I'm quite happy with how it's turned out, any comments or suggestions for improvement would be really appreciated!
  4. Well in typical Asian fashion I started (or rather, was started) on piano around the age of 4 or 5, and didn't like it very much at all because lessons comprised 3 exam pieces every year and nothing much else. I picked up the erhu at 13, but didn't think very much of it then either. Definitely learning to play without staring at sheet music was something that fostered my love for music, because music is after all a way to express yourself, rather than what your piano teacher thinks an examiner would appreciate. That was around 4 years ago. In any case, I started to learn to play by ear, then to improvise, then to remix, and then to compose. I discovered OCR somewhere in between, but never thought of making my own remixes till a couple of years ago, and hopefully I still have a long way to go.
  5. I have to say I love the piano track The instrument that comes in at 0:53 though seems to clash a little with the piano register, although the melodic idea is nice. I felt that once the Route 1 melody came in in its entirety you could have done a little more to push the mix just that last step up, for example the B in the bass at 1:35, I was hoping for a more gratifying harmony based on the tonic, right now it just feels like there's something missing. Trying for less of a countermelody than a harmonic anchor is what I'd suggest, and maybe the strings could maybe come out a little more. The last bit (before the footsteps) sounds really nice though, I really like the chord sequence you've got there, and the instrument at 2:45 is absolutely perfect. I'm a little split on the opening/ending though, I'm fine with the beginning, but the ending is a little too disjointed from the overall mood of the piece.
  6. Wow this is pretty impressive stuff (Y) I'm looking forward to hearing more from you haha.
  7. It's great reading all the responses on this thread, and writing anything creative, be it words or music, is something that does scare me quite a bit. I love doing it of course, but a perfectionist part of me keeps thinking 'this melody is too boring' or 'this instrumentation isn't the best', and I end up with lots of ideas I can't bear to string together. In the end, I'll obsessively listen to a 8 bar passage over and over again, trying to tweak small parts here and there to match what I'm hearing in my head, though of course it hardly ever works out as planned. I suppose I'm secretly thinking 'if this isn't going to be good, then what's the point of doing it at all?', which probably isn't a very healthy mindset to have haha. And when I hear another composition I enjoy, I'm thinking in the back of mind 'will I ever be able to write something like that?'. Okay I think I'm starting to use this thread to voice my countless insecurities/inadequacies, so I'd better stop this post before it degenerates into precisely that.
  8. Mm thanks for sharing, this is quite interesting. Not sure if it's just me though, but their formula for humanisation hardly sounds very natural to me either (the first sample in http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchSingleRepresentation.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0026457.s003 if anyone's interested), but admittedly it's still better than most computerised humanisation programs. Apparently the experiment was conducted with the drummer trying to keep pace with a metronome as well , so I have my doubts on how accurate their findings are with regard to a 'natural human rhythm'.
  9. Thanks for the tip haha, I've never played in a full orchestra so admittedly I'm not the most familiar with Western percussion. I'll keep that in mind!
  10. I've got to say I'm impressed. The 'get item' sample in particular, at around the 1:00 mark, worked surprisingly well, I actually went to replay that bit a few times just to see how you did it. Kudos on the transition into trance as well, I was so caught up in listening I barely even noticed hahaha. I'd certainly like to see this on the frontpage, great job
  11. I've got to say that this was quite enjoyable, you managed to keep the arrangement interesting the whole way through. I'm far from experienced with metal but to me the balance was just right; it's primarily a guitar mix, so while the drums seem like a backing track I'm perfectly fine with that. If there's anything that could be improved on, I thought moments such as that in 1:33 and 1:44 didn't fit as well as the rest of the variations, I get what you were trying to do but it kind of lost the energy you'd built up until this point. I think there are (very) slight rhythm issues at 1:40 as well, though it's not very apparent.
  12. Hey thanks for the comments! I completely agree about the articulation haha, it does sound quite obvious now that you've pointed it out. I'll think about changing the opening to a fanfare of some sort, that should probably work better.
  13. Palace Theme: So I thought since I've had enough practice writing VGM remixes, why not try my hand at a little original VGM of my own? Anyway, if you're interested/can be bothered, this is basically an orchestral theme meant to evoke a sort of royal, regal feel, and, as is quintessential to VGM, loops ad infinitum. So if you get bored after listening to half of it, don't bother listening on because it's all going to be exactly the same. If you do like it, however, let me know! In any case, I thank you for your click.
  14. I anticipate getting quite a bit of backlash for this, but I have to say that I disagree a fair bit with this movement. I'm all for raising awareness for video game music, and I remain in constant awe of the 8-bit marvels which have grown with time into full-blown orchestral epics, but, call me conservative, I feel that classical music is a closed set which video game music, no matter how remarkable, cannot venture to explore. The term 'classical music' was coined for purpose of a canon, so it is against this canon that all subsequent works will have to be compared, and just like how it would be impossible to induct any modern poem into the canon of, say, metaphysical poetry, it remains impossible to convincingly induct video game music into the canon of classical music. I'm not trying to play up the world of classical music as some sanctified bastion of form and finesse; classical works have drawn influences from sources as eclectic as street music -- the theme of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto is an example if I'm not wrong -- and function-wise video game music can be easily compared with, say, an overture or leitmotif. What I feel is that Aerith's Theme may be outstanding music, but it cannot claim to be outstanding classical music, and there is no need for video game music to stake a desperate claim for reaches outside its own domain, a domain which has already been growing from strength to strength without compromise. I submitted my 3 votes a while back, and I regret to say they've gone to Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Elgar, as much as I admire the genius of Nobuo Uematsu and the beauty that is Aerith's Theme. tl;dr vgm =/= classical music
  15. Interesting list, I just have to nitpick a little because I'm an arrogant pedant, I apologise in advance. 12356 is the traditional Chinese pentatonic scale, not any 'Chinese Mongolian' whatever that may be. 13#457, the supposed Chinese scale, seems to be an inversion of the pentatonic Aeolian scale or something along those lines, it's not something I've actually heard in a single piece of Chinese music thus far. Also, the supposed Balinese scale is actually the 5 note mode of the gamelan pelog scale which is used in Java; the Balinese mode uses 7 notes. I'm not sure why I'm even saying all this.
  16. Haha I just happened to be listening to this on Youtube as I logged on to the forums (Y) Anyway, on to my thoughts, and a little disclaimer that I'm not entirely certain of what I'm saying. My main gripe with this is actually with the texture, because string sounds are so homogenous as it is already, so with 3 violins and 2 violas I feel it squeezes the register way too much. It doesn't seem to be much of a problem with your other arrangements be it because of a backing track or guitar or whatnot, but in this case after the opening I find the sounds blend in too much for my liking. Because of this, certain tracks seem to get exposed a little bit too much when they break from the overall texture while they aren't the melody (examples include the vibrato in the bottom left frame after 1:00 and then the top right, albeit marginally, and the tremolo later on at 1:54) I'm also not too big a fan of the repeated note dotted rhythm, starting from the viola at 0:40, because like I said earlier it stands out too distinctly because the rest of the sound is comparatively more clumped together, and the only other track of interest is the melody since the long notes may not contribute as much as a potential (even if simple) counter melody. At times I think the rhythm works quite well though, in the bit past 2:10, because I think there's enough rhythmic and melodic interest in the bottom right viola track to carry it. I don't like the octave gap at 1:20 either, because the rest of the tracks aren't playing anything harmonically significant enough to support the open interval. On to the more nitty-gritty, the rubato at 0:07 throws me off the measure ever so slightly (although it quickly gets better on repeated listenings, granted), so I'm not sure if you want to look into that a little. I can also definitely sympathise with the difficulty in synchronising 5 tracks with tempo changes and rubato, but I think you've done a pretty good job in most parts, so I can't fault you on any of that. One area that people may potentially find fault with is the supposed climax of the piece, in which the supporting tracks focus more on rhythm than on depth so it doesn't have the same sort of impact as the original, although personally I think it works very well with your choice of instruments and an almost quasi-classical feel. Anyway, bottom line of everything I've said above is don't leave certain tracks too isolated in terms of register or expression, and even the subtlest of counter melodies to spice up the rhythm can work wonders in such a confined range. Everything after 2:00 (and it gets even better after 3:00) is especially brilliant though, and here the exposed octave at 3:23 works beautifully (I think it's because of the pedal chord, but I'm starting to think the reason I didn't like the previous octave was because of marginal tuning issues ><). Anyway, please don't take any criticism to heart, I really really love your works, and I think this mix is really enjoyable to listen to if I weren't trying to pick out any flaw my ear can hear. Great job, and great playing as well!
  17. I'm absolutely blown away by what I just heard, fabulous piece of work (Y) It's times like this that make me wish I had a credit card, I'm feeling so guilty downloading this for free but I can't help myself, I just need to have this.
  18. Slang in one place is pretty routinely met with quizzical stares in another, but that's what you get in a forum that connects the corners of the world, if a sphere can be thought of as having corners. In any case, I really enjoyed the video, it's one of the rare attempts at video game comedy that doesn't rely too much on camp.
  19. Not sure if there's going to be a competition in the end, and this is terribly rough, but here goes. I was stumped as to what to write about, so I decided to write about writing, and it somehow became a poem about the magic of books, revolving around a rather lame pun on the word 'spellbound' (you know, the physical binding on the book? Bind? Bound? Nevermind). Anyway. Spellbound There’s a sort of magic in a book From that slight crease in the spine As gentle as folded linen or skip of velvet To aspirations of Japanese art Where each and every touch marks a sculpture A vehement proclamation An almost animalistic urge to mark One’s territory, the boundaries of knowledge As proof of claim to the secrets within Masked in the ridges of living ink A strip of gloss and paper that connects Imagination to reality, a dialogue between one A link that defies the stamps and clichés Almost as if it were forged from magic We lie entranced, spellbound.
  20. I think it was rather brave of you to attempt writing this in 7 4, but to my ears it sounds more than a little disorienting. Your drum beats in the front hint that the stress is going to be on 2 2 3, but the melody comes in on a strange offbeat, doesn't seem to adhere to the stress patterns, and the drums start to lose their fixity. Harmonically, it doesn't sound as gratifying as it possibly can; the chords are less common which I think gives the potential to resolve to a nice major chord as you did with the E Major chord at 3:10, to create a neat shift in mood I think you could exploit a bit more often. Around the 1:11 mark, I also hear an F standing out a little too dissonantly, and the G# bass at 1:08 when you try to progress in semitones is a tad jarring as well. At the same time, some minor dissonances like the A B D F in major thirds, and the fourths (I think) at 1:37 work really well. Personally, I think the low synth around 2 minutes in goes a little bit too low for its timbre, and sounds more forced and muffled than it should be, but that could be more subjective than anything. That being said, there's quite a bit of nice soloistic writing going on like at 1:30+ and near the end, although it may be a little too frantic at times. Try to balance some simpler parts that fit more tangibly into the odd meter, to make it easier for the listener to follow, and to let the running notes stand out more rather than fading into the general texture of the mix like they seem to do. Still, it's a really nice take on an interesting source, so good work all the same! Hope I haven't been too harsh with anything I've said above, if some parts need clarification do let me know.
  21. Yeap no problem, take your time :) I've just subbed something else so I won't be able to resub this yet in any case haha.

  22. I'm still as blown away by this as I was the first time. And I stand by what I said, that I like this more than a lot of "actual" impressionistic music I've heard. Amazing work, doc, congrats on making it onto the site! (though it was a "when" more so than an "if" haha)
  23. (Smoothened things out a little bit, the arrangement should be pretty much done!)
  24. For some strange reason (unknown to even me D: ), I decided to combine Setting Off on a Journey from Lufia 2 ( ) with Kimi Ga Iru Kara, the theme song from FF13 ( ) There's also a bit of Aerith's Theme which pops in for the fun of it.So yeap, any comments on the arrangement and whether the songs actually flow together decently would be great! And I was wondering if this piano sound is good enough or if it's too thin ><
  25. Link: Yes it's another Disney medley amongst the already-too-many that's going to end up floundering in the bottomless depths of the Internet (in other words, under the sea). Well, almost bottomless, until Youtube eventually runs out of storage space or something, however that works. And then I can proudly say I contributed to that with videos that probably garner half their views from me refreshing the page. The instruments the piece is scored for are: Piano, Violin, Cello, Oboe, Guitar, Tenor Sax, Erhu, and Yangqin, which I shall term "eclectic ensemble" because it sounds nice. Whatever the case, it's such an odd combination that this is probably one of the first/only pieces arranged for such a mismatched mix-and-match. And in that sense I'm a pioneer. Although the term 'pioneer' connotes something rather more groundbreaking and influential than a messy mediocre melange. - Introduction based on Reflections. A... reflection of Reflections if I may. Fine I hear you, I may not. - When You Wish Upon a Star - Back to Reflections. Note the modulation, which I think blends in pretty subtly. - Colours of the Wind, which ends with the Beauty and the Beast theme slowly fading in. - Beauty and the Beast with John Lennon's Imagine. A random combination I know, which can be tautologically explained by the fact that yes, it is entirely random. - Go the Distance meshed with Beauty and the Beast somewhat. - Hakuna Matata. However you spell it. Nevertheless, it's a wonderful phrase. - Under the SeaIt's far from well produced because it comprises mostly soundfonts (in addition to my nonexistent mixing skills), but comments on the arrangement would be appreciated, especially with regard to any symptoms of medley-itis or the like!
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