timaeus222

That's true, but to like something even more so than you did before is to also know why you like it, otherwise it's superficial musical pleasure. If you like something for an unknown reason, and then you get asked why you like it, you start shrugging. It took me... let's see... almost 2 years of VGM remixing before I started appreciating harmonies. 2 years. Until February 2013. I'm not the defining case, obviously, but I'm one example. Also, a lot of people like music that they can relate to; that sure is prevalent, especially when looking at how people sing back pop music as if they heard it all day. The "nostalgia" factor is something that is relate-able. If you feel like a game "made your childhood", then you like playing it, but you may not even be paying attention to the music, and instead just playing the game for the enjoyment. I played Pokemon Yellow and liked it without even knowing what the music sounded like. Then, when people ask you "how did the music sound?", you just say "nostalgic", or "IT HAD MUSIC?! OMGWTF" because you don't remember how it sounded. I believe, then, that nostalgia is a strong (but not the sole), on-the-surface reason for liking video game music, much like the apparent catchiness of modern pop.

I know. 1) it's advertising 2) The word "games", specifically, accounts for, well, all games. Honestly though, whether or not a game's soundtrack depends on its sound design doesn't guarantee that its music will not be great. It's all coincidental. Who gets the job? Whoever the project leader picks. Whoever they pick will decide whether or not their music will be well-focused on arrangement or simply atmosphere, while if it focuses on atmosphere, the arrangement comes and naturally accommodates that.

I can't agree with either of these. Many (I won't say "most". "Many" is more appropriate to a small audience, and I'm not about to make a hasty generalization) people don't actually know how to explain why they like a song, or why it's catchy, etc. I've asked this myself in my 24-people speech class last year during my speech on music appreciation, and not one person disagreed with these questions I asked: "Who here likes music because: - It's catchy - It's cool - I don't know why" Notice how all of those questions required little to no thinking. They're all superficial "like" factors, or they aren't even proper reasons ("I don't know" is not a reason. Catchiness and coolness are both vague). Hence, how can As for game music not sounding great these days... here are 20 (okay, fine, 10. I won't waste your time) easy counterexamples. These sound both harmonically great and are bolstered even more by their sound design:http://zirconstudios.bandcamp.com/track/dawn-oblique http://zirconstudios.bandcamp.com/track/oasis-epsilon http://zirconstudios.bandcamp.com/track/thicket-prism http://zirconstudios.bandcamp.com/track/fusion-master http://zirconstudios.bandcamp.com/track/photosynthesis https://soundcloud.com/overclocked-records/joe-griffith-space-disorder-1 http://zirconstudios.bandcamp.com/track/training-montage-extended http://omnipsyence.bandcamp.com/track/the-looking-glass https://soundcloud.com/zircon-1/academy-theme-dungeonmans-ost https://soundcloud.com/overclocked-records/jeff-ball-tiny-barbarian-dx-10

So you wouldn't buy an OST of this?

Fluid is great, I love using it for its percussion and harp. I really love the vibraslap, chimes, and especially its sleigh bells. So smooth with the right reverb.

You have good points, but I'm not kidding---I really do find my new music a huge improvement over my old, in both production and arrangement. There are certainly people who say production can be subjective, that's not out of the question, but in some ways it is certainly also objective. If you can put aside your opinion when evaluating production, it's entirely objective. For example, ridiculous production overboosts, really lofi production, extremely painful harsh resonances, and completely incompatible instruments (say, a fake electric guitar with double basses, heavily distorted drums and a didgeridoo) may just sound objectively bad, but some people can look past that and see the good in other aspects of the same songs. =)

Yep. Catchiness is NOT limited to melodic contour. Rhythmic interest is easily another example of catchiness. And I think it's a coincidence that the examples the writer picked were not memorable to him. Indie games these days have quite creative soundtracks. Globulous and Dungeonmans come to mind.

Super birthday mode activate! =D

It sounds like any synth with oscillator sync, keyfollow, and has filters that have resonance and drive/overload knobs, as well as assignable envelopes and (optionally) velocity sensitivity can do this. Here's a screenshot of what I did, and an example: What's happening in the above pic is that a low cutoff saw wave with oscillator sync and a lot of resonance is being distorted. There's probably another way to do it, but this is what I did.

That's fine. I just didn't want people to get their ears damaged. It can be jarring for effect, but if it hurts, it gets to be more painfully jarring than purposefully jarring. Okay, aesthetic choice, then. They are in fact clearer than before. I just figured since the source had actual vocals, it might have been your intention to have those clear, though mechanized. The timing's good to go to me. Since strings have an initial bowed attack, whether the notes themselves were shifted or not, the timings now are within a "timing tolerance" for human vs. sloppy. The muddiness from earlier is better than before. With regards to the loudness there, while it isn't as muddy as before, it feels like there's either a lot going on there or what's there is pretty loud. It could be perceived as personal taste there, but I think it's a bit too loud. That was an overall statement, so any elaboration came before. In this context, it works IMO. It's just a little playful joke on my part, no offense intended.

Sounding really cool! Maybe narrow the piano stereo field, if you can, by a very small amount to make room for the guitar; I'm talkin' maybe 2~5%, so not much. I thought the piano wasn't too wide earlier, but I guess it was almost as wide as the guitar is now. That's about it! Looking forward to more!

Am I mistaken, or does the initial bass have a long release? It kinda makes the notes bleed together. Anyway, I need to point out some resonances in this mix for you to look into: - 0:54, 0:58, 4:04, 4:07, etc. from bitcrushing (a lot) - 2:09 and 4:33 from the sound with an envelope speeding up its LFO (slight) - 2:47 from the wobble sound (a little) - 4:15 from the arp (slight) 1:49 gets pretty muddy. It's hard to hear the piano over the bass. Scooping the mids will help bring out the piano a little bit more. 2:11 and other spots with vocals could have clearer vocals. I think the vocals are saying *something* Latin plus "Sephiroth" somewhere. I can't tell what, and I don't think I can, even with lyrics. I think the lead at 3:20 and 3:34 has some slightly late notes. 4:43 and 4:53 are really muddy, especially in the bass. Overall, it does have recognizable source usage. The production has room for improvement in the low bass and upper treble mixing. The arrangement, while an interesting concept, seems like it sticks to each mood for a long time in certain spots. For example, 1:49 - 4:13 has essentially the same atmosphere throughout, which can get grating. The lead sounds are pretty basic waveforms (square wave, for example), which could work against you. I can see how this started a joke remix. It'll take more polish, but this could be cool.

Just wanna check if I understand this. So if we're talking C Lydian, which is Lydian mode in G Major, the #11 is F#, which is basically forming a tritone and thus giving the Lydian mode since all modes of major scales are in intervals from within the original scale, and the #5, which overall creates 1-3-#5-7-9-#11, makes it augmented because 1-3 is a major third which forms an augmented major triad with #5, so it's Lydian-Augmented.

It's okay, I wasn't offended! =) "Trapped" still holds up pretty well today! You've definitely improved a bunch too, since then.

I get where you're coming from, but I'm referring entirely to an objective view of how "bad" something is (of mine, specifically). These days, when I look back at my old stuff, I really do just think "wow, I made THIS production decision? Holy cow, I'm glad I don't do THAT anymore! :lol:".

Knew the first part, didn't know the second part in the technical sense. Thanks.

It's real advice, believe it or not. Strange as it sounds, it makes sense to me. In the past I made some pretty bad stuff, and when I look back at it, I love some of the arrangements, but the sounds I chose only worked for the specific stereo field, particular velocities, EQ decisions, reverb design, the arrangement itself, etc. There are so many factors that go into writing a song that stuff back then is really hard to go back and fix, especially if "back then" is like 1+ years ago and your apparent learning speed is, say, "1.5-fold" in a year or so.

What? No, that's totally depressing. Don't just give up on a track outright. Save it for later, and if you go back to it later (like a month or more later) and you like where it was, might as well recycle it and flesh it out. You don't want a bunch of unfinished tracks lying around that you aren't even planning on doing anything with.

So you're saying whenever people say "Oh, I played the [insert letter here] [insert mode here] scale," they're really saying "I sharped the note in the [insert letter here] scale that corresponds to [insert mode here] mode"?

I really like that BW/colored comparison pic. The colored pic has some nice color contrast.

Thanks. Yeah, these days I have an idea of what sounds good, but not the intuition to do what sounds good from an analytical standpoint; rather, I straight-up improvise sometimes, and I either get something good from trial-and-error or I get a happy accident. Ecto's post helped a bit in that regard. I'd have to actually go through and create examples to internalize it, but yeah, it makes sense.

So, like ? Or something else?

Yeah, that was my assumption too; if II-V-I is referring to an actual chord progression, then I can more clearly see why it's a common chord progression.

1) If it starts on the 1, it could resolve towards a basic triad. Sure, that's fine. I think that a II-V-I chord is just a) more harshly dissonant for a particular feel (I-II-V sounds more pleasantly dissonant IMO, and I believe it works well in intimate songs with ethereal textures), or the timbre of the sound used to write chords typically sound less clashing, even on pleasantly clashing harmonies, on open chords. Overall, I think it's somewhat of a famous "base" chord that ends some jazz songs. 2) A II-V-I chord does actually resolve, but without actually trying this at home I couldn't tell you what it can resolve to. It may need one more note, then, to give a clearer direction. I think if it were to resolve, it could "resolve" into another dissonant chord of a similar nature, which could go on until you reach a chord that actually can resolve more cleanly.