Bowlerhat
-
Posts
175 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
2
Content Type
Articles
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by Bowlerhat
-
-
Hi, hello! I'm apparently a big dumb dumb as I can't for the life of me find my userid anywhere. I need it for a new remix submission. The site says it's on my profile in the forums, but I can't find it anywhere. I don't remember having/needing it for my previous remix submissions also, is it a new thing or am I just stupid? Thank you for the help!
-
-
On 11/15/2021 at 12:41 PM, BloomingLate said:
I see! I hadn't considered that this could be the case for the modes. I'm learning from the book "Harmony in Context" by Miguel A. Roig-Francoli, which does mention the modes, but doesn't go in depth on them. So I'll have to find another source to get into the specifics on those.
I don't have too much experience with 7th chords yet either so I'll take a closer look into those as well.The theory I used in the above is the one taught at berkeley, although it's definitely more jazz oriented. That's why it included the 7th chords as well. They're negligible for the specific question so don't think too much about it.
On 11/15/2021 at 12:41 PM, BloomingLate said:By the way: Since B-Dorian can be considered a mode of A-Major, does the song get the A-Major signature (with three sharps) or the B-Minor signature (two sharps) and the final sharp marked as an accidental wherever it occurs? Do you have to somehow tell the performer (on the sheet music) that the song is in this or that mode?
Definitely 3 sharps! You don't have to write down that it's in B dorian though. The moment the musician sees that it has a tonal center of B and 3 sharps they'll know it's dorian.
-
Writing in Dorian is a completely valid thing to do and nothing to be afraid off. Great job on figuring these things out and jumping into advanced music theory! Definitely don't overthink it too much, if the Dorian scale fits the whole tune and the tonal center is B Dorian then that's probably just what it is.
To get a bit into dominant tonic resolutions in Dorian:
In modal music, such as Dorian, cadences have different functions. If we for example take your B dorian tune, the different degrees look like this:
Im7 B-D-F#-A
IIm7 C#-E-G#-B
IIImaj7 D-F#-A-C#
IVDom7 E-G#-B-D
Vm7 F#-A-C#-E
VIhalfdim7 G#-B-D-F#
VIImaj7 A-C#-E-G#
Which makes the V, which normally has a dominant sound in Western tonal music, as you've correctly observed indeed minor. You don't have to go to the I with a dominant chord, like the IV though, if you don't want to. You can approach it in minor from the V or from anywhere else you want. Something I personally really like is approaching it from the IIm7, since that's a uniquely Dorian sound. In the end, in modal music it's more about staying in the tonal center of B Dorian rather than having sub dominants and dominant structures. So the worst thing you can do in a tune that's in B Dorian is take a IV-V-I to A major for example, because you then lose the Dorian sound, despite keeping the same amount of sharps and flats. It's of course still something you can do though, musically speaking, if that's something that you want to do. But for writing Dorian it's a no-go. Play around with these degrees and see how they relate to the I tonic, modes are really interesting and bring many beautiful chordal structures that you lose by thinking too much in old fashioned neo-classical music theory.
-
Reading along for a while made me think that it's maybe worthwhile to start a "how to keep OCR hip" threat in order to generally discuss what it is that the community wants and what they're hoping to see on this platform. I'm personally not much of a forum gal, but I do still love the whole video game remix exchange/discussion/whatever thingy that people have going on here on multiple different levels and in many different ways. However, I do also feel that it might be worthwhile to up the game on social media and such and get more involved with whatever the youngsters are doing these days. It actually took me a few days to find out that my own remix got posted a few days ago, since I'm not on the forum so much, and it simply didn't show up on my Facebook feed or on Instagram and such, even though I follow OCR on all these platforms. These are the places people are on nowadays, and I think that that's the place to hook people into the OCR life and keep them coming back.
On the other hand, this might not be what OCR is going for in general, as this would also imply a shift in focus from traditional "foruming" to a more involved and generally bigger and different kind of OCR medium. I remember the discussion on the decline of reviews on remixes from a few years ago where people were already discussing the influence from Youtube and such and how this was influencing the decline of people making reviews on the forum. This might be a bit unrelated to the disabling of signatures, but reading all the suggestions and discussions above gave me the feeling that different people have a different idea of what OCR is and what it's going to be and what it's supposed to be and how to get there and why to get there and all that, and discussing this very important (and in my opinion also urgent) question among the community could be a good idea, seeing how this topic and issue keeps popping up in varying specific threads. I think it's time to start looking at the bigger picture.
-
This is soooooo good
. I love it!!
-
oooh, so nice! There's a lot of great ideas in here, I liked it a lot
-
I loved the singing. It really cracked me up and fitted the source and remix really well!
-
As another Dutch person i thought it would be interesting to shed my light on the scene as well. Not particularly because I'm Dutch, but I find the subject to be engaging and worth talking about and also found it a nice coincidence.
Like you said, there's an abundance of music at the moment and sticking out among the crowd is difficult. I agree with this. However, what I find interesting about your post are your reasons to make music. You name "the desire to express yourself" and looking for a "connection" with people. Personally, I'm a jazz artist. I used to study music composition in the Netherlands but I'm currently located in Germany. Of course, "expressing myself" and connecting with people has been a big reason to continue making music but I wouldn't call it the driving force. At all. This is naturally a subjective thing, but I do want to share my personal thoughts on this since I feel like it might open up some possibilities for other people as well. I make music to create music. For me the reason is very intrinsic. I love music, and I love writing music even more than that. For me the art of discovery and the excitement of finishing pieces, playing in ensembles, organizing concerts, making promo photos, the whole gizmo, it's amazing. Of course, when I make music I express myself, I also connect with other people, but I think that to realize that the fact that you're making music is fun and thrilling and emotional and generally just very wholesome is vital to keep doing this thing. Generally, want I want to say is that I'm simply not dealing at all with the things you're stating above. I'm getting a lot of satisfaction from making music.
With that in mind I want to immediately stress that there's different ways of producing music. Personally, I write music in Sibelius and then I get the musicians together and we rehearse. Then, there's a concert and people pay to see that concert and I use that money to pay the musicians. That's like, the basic version haha. With this method I personally have a great way of "expressing myself', connecting with people (both the musicians I work with and the people who consume my music) and I'm also just having an awesome time with the whole thing of writing the music and organizing everything. Besides that, as an arranger I also make arrangements for big bands and such and sell those, and I also play gigs as a flute player in orchestra's, jazz ensembles or just random other gigs. Now, I'm going to quote something I found kind of funny about your post:
5 hours ago, BloomingLate said:Granted, the value we assign to items based on rarity is somewhat arbitrary, but it does show that we appreciate the amount of labor, care and craftsmanship that was poured into the making of a masterpiece. Speaking more to my own field of creativity, I find a classical work of Mozart to be of much greater value than I do the latest dance track that was produced in a couple of hours by some dude with a computer. In fact, having personally discovered how easy it is to make the kind of music that was popular on the radio back when I was a teenager has made me value that kind of music less. It also made me think less highly of the people we practically idolized for making that music.
The thing is that "the latest dance track" isn't so different from Mozart, or Bach or whomever else at all. That is, in principal. These people, especially Mozart were pouring out arrangements by the hour as well. The difference is that you cherry picked some of the finest musicians of their century against "a random guy on the internet". But honestly, they didn't spend that much more time on their music at all. In the end it all comes down to talent and creativity. And this thoughtlessly producing music is something I personally do as well. For example when I have to arrange something I don't really like for some kind of ensemble but I also do have to pay my rent so i do it anyway. It's like how Mozart did it, how Bach did it, how Thad Jones did it and how most arrangers and composers did it and still do it today. As you mentioned in your post, time filters things. But not just obscure artists, but also obscure pieces from famous artists. Mozart wrote a lot of music. Like a lot lot. And some of it is brilliant, and honestly some of it is sh*t. The point I'm trying to make here is that quantity isn't just a necessary thing for being a serious musician, it's even a good thing. Doing things more gives you experience and makes you better at it, it's as simple as that.
Then, going back to my first point about producing music. I don't know what kind of art or music you make but assuming from your post I assume that it's something that you create by yourself and then release upon the internet. This is an entirely different approach than mine, and it isn't any better or worse, just different. And this is important to keep in mind. Because, what you're basically doing is that you're using this media, the internet, which you have many opinions about that directly contrast the way you want your way of making music to be, as your only way of releasing your music. It's counterproductive. I personally would never want to make a living from just uploading songs to the internet and having them be consumed by people I don't know. For the exact same reasons as you. But, I personally chose to just not do that. Of course, I still have to maintain a social media account for my band, book gigs, schedule rehearsals, write music for annoying people that you really don't want to work with but have to because they're paying you for making that arrangement, and other such things that proper adults do. But that's life, it's the way professional musicians in my field deal with things. And that's a completely different way other professional musicians in their respective field deal with things. My way might not be your way. But if the way that you're doing music currently isn't satisfying for you, then realize that there's other ways to do it as well.
And here's why it's funny again that we're all Dutch here, because we're basically all growing up in the same environment. And yet we can all have different experiences, different perspectives and different working tools even though we're all just trying to make music. Which I think is also a nice proof that it isn't too late to change your way of looking at music, and the way you make music and produce music and find something that suits you and gives you the satisfaction that you want to get out of music. Because it's all possible, and in the end it's also the most important thing. To somehow have making music be intrinsically satisfying for you.
-
22 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:
This is something that was always a big topic around here back when I joined, but I actually think a lot of music is made worse by having these little 1 bar phrases and such between two different sections because it creates an odd (or even, depending on song) # of bars in a phrase and feels like it "resets" the tune to my ears rather than creates a flow into the next section.
While all the other points are really good, in my opinion this is the most important thing to consider when making transitions. I would personally stretch the point even further and say: "Why transition at all?" I think that there's a merit to having a transition between two (or more) songs if there's a justifiable reason to have multiple source material in the first place. And I'd assume that if there is a good reason to have multiple source materials, then it'll probably be because of a good link between the songs which makes the question kind of obsolete. I think that rather than searching for a "transition" it makes more sense to look for a "cohesion".
Of course there are some scenarios where you might be assigned to, or could even get paid to combine "contextually preferably uncombinable" things, and in that case I would definitely read the points made above a few times and really think about them because they're all very expertly made and elaborated on. This summer I got a job to write a big band arrangement for someone and she had some very specific form structure in mind that I personally would never use. But since I got paid to do the job, and she didn't really listen to my suggestions to change it to something more effective I just had to roll with it. It happens, and in such cases it's good to be able to do it. But these situations are outside of the point that I'm trying to make at the moment.
To be honest, when remixing I think it's better to ask yourself: "How do I get more out of my source material so that I don't need to transition to a different song halfway". And when you really want to add another source tune, think to yourself: "What does this add to the music?: "How is this related to the rest?" "Where do I want to go?" "What do I want to say?" And when you're able to answer those questions with justifiable reasons, then the proper way to transition between songs will naturally come out of that. It's a very context specific thing, and the answer can be many things. In my experience, shifting too many times in one song between different genre's, source material, writing styles and all that good stuff takes away more than that it adds, and it's often a better idea to just write multiple tunes.
It might not be the answer you're looking for, but i did want to add my two cents, since I feel that many remixers and writers often overlook these kind of things and tend to jump into quantity rather than quality. Not saying that that's necessarily what you're doing since, as many have already pointed out, you didn't give any examples of your music, but it's something to always keep in mind when writing. And asking some of the questions in the previous alinea might also solve other problems you could be dealing with, such as problems with flow, dynamics, instrumentation, motivic development, style, diversity and musical coherence among many things.
-
Hi, I play flute! The link you posted isn't working however
Could you maybe hit me up with a pm with some more specifics and details about what it is you're looking for exactly?
You can find a mix I submitted to OCR here: https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03675
I'm not playing flute on that mix though, so it might not be very helpful haha. But I can send you some flute mixes of mine as well of course
-
Thanks! I was thinking a lot about breathing and pulse and I guess indeed also the meandering of a feather as it falls down. Which sounds kinda vague and artsy now that I think about it but it was mostly meant to be relaxing and light as you said haha.
-
Hiii,
I wrote a short piano piece called "A Song About A Feather". What do you guys think?
-
This is really beautiful, I love it! I especially appreciate the small effects such as what I assume is some kind of rolling ball effect applied in the beginning and the ending. And the seamless mix of several electronic genres, and the intricate sounddesign and the overall atmosphere and the harmonic progressions and instrumentation and everything is basically just great.
-
-
Great! Then I will do that without any further ado. I would be interested in hearing those minor mastering tweaks/permutations, but I guess that I can read them in the evaluation after it goes through the jury's
Thank you all for the kind words! I'll pass it all on to the musicians as well since they deserve most of the praise.
-
Thank you so much! I indeed wrote the lyrics myself.
-
Thank you!
I didn't play anything, it'd be impossible to play this many instruments this well haha.. I arranged everything and I organized and conducted the ensemble.
-
Hiiii, I did an arrangement of Zelda's Lullaby from the legend of Zelda. I'm thinking of submitting it. Any thoughts on this before I send it in? I'm not so sure about all the mixing, and there's also some minor timing issues that were difficult to solve. But generally I think it sounds cool.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpfYSyiyf2U&t=62s&frags=pl%2Cwn
-
30 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:
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.
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.
-
Here's a little duet I did with myself. Most of it is improvised on the spot, everything besides the harmony and theme of course. I'm not so sure about the audio quality. It sounds decent, but also not spectacular. Same with the mixing. Any opinions on this?
Original tune:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dhzm7HJiMA&t=92s
Thank yooouuuu!
-
Cool stuff, it reminds me of something in Super Mario Galaxy, don't know what track specifically. If you want I could record some actual flute for this, maybe add a little solo if desired. :)
-
To move on, something else I found interesting was point 7. Because, as a composer I've found myself to be very dependent on other people since I'm mostly unable to perform and play my music myself. Not just because I don't know how to play the trombone and the violin and the vibraphone and the clarinet and the contra-bassbasoon and the whatever but also because I'm literally physically unable to play all those instruments at the same time. I know how they work, and I do play quite some instruments, but some music is just written to be played life. I mean, I'm a jazz composer, which means that I always deal with living, breathing people, and I can imagine that being a completely different thing from writing music completely on a laptop. I definitely know the mess of having to organize rehearsals for 10+ people with completely different schedules, and I wish I would be able to do it all by myself, but would that imply that writing music that is to be performed live and that also includes more then 2 or 3 musicians is an invalid business tactic? That would contradict about 300 years of music composition, including the crazy late romantic era where composers would write for giant 200+ musician seated symphony orchestras with two choirs and their neighbors.
So while I understand your notion of advising composers to stay as self-sufficient as possible, I also think that it's very much centered around a way of making music that is designed for self-sufficient composers that are able to do everything by themselves, and that it doesn't mean that all ways of composing are like that. That's kind of an awkward sentence, but I hope my point is clear haha. Of course I'm not saying that you don't have a point. I usually write my music for ensembles that I know I can make myself and I'm always connecting and making friends in order to make my netwerk as big as possible. And, more importantly, I write simple and effective and I prepare everything as perfect as I can. So rather than saying that you should rely on as few people as possible, I would say that you should be smart with the people you work with, that you should always have 3 back up plans and that you have to be very very realistic in the way you write. Which nicely connects to point 12, because that statement is just soooo true. Being a decent human being should be everyone's priority because no one likes people that aren't likable.
-
Where to find userid?
in General Discussion
Posted
I see! I still can't find it, but thank you! This also solved the issue