SLyGeN

Tension can be created in a variety of ways, including omitting a beat, or even leaving the beat alone and using certain notes. There's an elegance to it. I didn't feel any tension, though. I stick with my comparison of my ears feeling choked. Perhaps your ears feel differently? Tension should still be, for the most part, pleasant to hear.

I'm not too fond of the new synth that was added, as well as something else that has always bugged me. The very beginning is out of the time signature. It feels like it's in 5/4 or 6/4 or something. Those little statements are too far apart, although if you feel that it's better that way, leave it. My ear just kinda feels choked when it expects to hear the next statement, and it comes a few bars late. HOWEVER, you mixed up the main theme quite a bit. It's much better. It changes key in places I don't expect, and it fits well. The ending definitely needs work, but I think we ought to add some more material at the end of those 2 minutes and 33 seconds. Don't be afraid to throw extra notes in where you feel it's appropriate. 0:57 - 1:10 in particular is a vast improvement upon your previous work. 1:09 - 1:10 is particularly colorful, and I like it. I think you should throw some of your own work in before you try to end the piece. Immerse yourself in the original material or in your own piece, and see what your head throws at you. Chuck some notes in, and see if it works. Have your hand crawl up and down those white keys, and come back to E, B, and A a lot. E is your tonic- very strong and you want to accent it (you'll notice Norfair does a lot of coming back to E, right?). B and A are your Dominant and Subdominant, respectively. Also strong. Not as strong as the tonic, but good for variety. The other notes in the middle are like a road to get to E, A, and B (for this piece, in this section. When it moves to C, then C is your tonic, and your dominant and subdominant will be different. I'll let you figure those out!) When I say stuff like accent E, B, and A, I mean do stuff like sustain the note. Or just come back to it a lot. E, F, E, D, E, B, F, E. Go ahead and plunk some of those out. All white keys. It should sound okay. Try your own combinations. Ideas will start to flow in.

The guitars are just fine, I like the addition. At 0:35 and 0:37 I'm hearing what sounds like record scratching (but it reminds me of a dog barking. Personally, I don't care for it.) Looking back, I can tell that it was in the original, but never bothered me. Listening yet again, I think it's more pronounced in the second one you posted. So, meh. Do with it whatever you like. I think it's cool that you made a move to add the latter portion of Black Tower's main theme, but I don't think it quite fits where you put it. It seems to clash to me (and I can tell you are a great musician, you must have felt the same way). I'm guessing that if it were to be included, you'd have to add an extra motive or two somewhere. Guitars are good though. Keep 'em! edit: oh, one last thing. The snares never bothered me, although I do agree with your decision to tone them down.

I think I have a better solution to your percussion problem. It's always better to overcome the obstacle yourself, although it's fine to ask others for help in doing so. Listen to some good trance/electro, and pay close attention to not only their percussion methods, but their melodies too. I can get you started. I don't listen to a whole lot of his stuff, but critically listening to bLiNd's work would probably also be beneficial. So ask yourself. What do they do that makes it work? Notice, also, their percussion doesn't sound tinny at all. another thing.. when you begin to add your own material to the music, it's going to be really, really difficult to add stuff that works if you haven't studied music. I actually download midis of my favorite songs from VGMusic, run them through Guitar Pro, and clean them up/add stuff/generally mess around. It's really helpful, and it's a good way to familiarize yourself with music. Even if you don't know theory, you'll notice note patterns whenever you like a song.

The percussion gets a bit repetative. Try adding a few eighth notes in there to change it up a little bit, among anything else that comes to mind when you're working on it. Something like tsh, tsh, tsh, tsh-ba-tsh, tsh, tsh, tsh-ba-tsh. You kinda get what I mean. Also, go for adding some original material. Screw around in that key (I think it's A minor.. I'd have to look at it again) and see what sounds good to you. A personal gripe, I really don't like that generic, weak-sounding percussive synth you're using. That's not really your fault as a composer, I'd just recommend using something more powerful. I like a powerful techno beat. Thing is, the harpsichord isn't really a loud instrument. I think most people would just tell you not to use it; fuck them. Make it work. If you can make those two things work, more power to you and I'll be impressed. If you're not going for a powerful, loud techno bit, then disregard those paragraphs.

I began working on a piano piece this evening. Instead of sleeping on it, I figured I'd share it here and see where the community thought I ought to go with this piece. I also felt bad for giving critique on others' music without actually showing anything I've personally made. Although, this could very well make my word worth even less, eh? ;p I'd like to stick to the minor (or closely related; this one is C Phrygian) modes. I'm thinking I want to have some repose about where the mp3 ends. I like conceptual stuff, and I envision people moshing to this sucker, so I'd like to give them an opportunity to rest without killing off the overall energy. Link. edit: hahaha. nevermind. It's pretty much done. I put it here. It's called "Slaughtering the Followers of the Corrupt Scripture".

I'm not sure how I missed this one. I love dark tracks. I love the industrial sounds used. Doors slamming, creaking, etc. I can tell that you went with a dissonant approach to making it creepy. I personally like a little more well-defined melody (which would only increase the contrast between dissonant parts, and the Aeolian key can still create a strong feeling of darkness.) Personally, I didn't think the vocals fit with the rest of the piece. That is not, in any way, to say DA has poor vocals; I'd actually say her voice ought to be more pronounced when she's vocalizing. Also, something about how it was recorded or post-processed is really accenting the frequencies that sound when she produces the sound of an "s", and those same frequencies are also enhanced with the rest of her vocals. (Pardon the layman terms..) Not so much my thing, but I can understand how that might actually have been something you were going for. Here's the thing, it reminds me of Silent Hill music. I have gripes with the atmosphere of Silent Hill music too (the actual music), so maybe I'm just weird. I also spent too much time on the cons; I apologize. I'm nitpicking. This really is a great piece, and I'd like to leave that as the bottom line.

As I recall, Malevolent Mansion had a pretty well-defined beat. It's not four-on-the-floor though.

Imagine what would happen if everybody bought every Sega collection when their nostalgia organs got excited. You can count the number of port/compilation games they've done using two hands. They even did this when the Genesis was out. Remember Sonic Compilation? Then there was a couple of GBA titles.. since I'm always late to the game, I was lucky enough to run across Sonic Advance+Sonic Pinball Party (that counts) before buying them seperately. (I can understand how if anybody bought those two seperately they would be very, very upset.. .... and I still want a Sonic Spinball sequel ) Mega collection, Mega collection+, Gems collection.. .. half of them are also on SA:DX anyway.. There must be more.

Mince words if you want, but he shouldn't be getting his panties in a bunch. I have done in the tech help thread. Cubase and Sonar were the responses I got with no indication of which was easier to use. I picked one. It certainly implies what I said it does, which is why a response like analoq's is all that was really necessary. Thank you for re-directing me to Sonar and confirming the demo. I'll look into it. I hesitate to ask for assistance should I run into any roadblocks. Cheers.

That's why I didn't bring it up. I didn't feel like justifying my intentions. I'm not bullshitting when I say I'm trying the software with the intent of buying a copy of whatever DAW I decide works for me, but that should not even be the concern of anybody here. I almost resent the fact that I was brushed off as if it's my first post on the forum. JFGI and RTFM are not foreign to me; it should be a given that I've spent some time perusing. Snappleman, your presumptions are becoming tiring. I made it clear in my first post that I spent some time trying to add and work with a new VST, and I know it's a simple task, and therefore I knowingly asked a simple question because I still couldn't figure it out. It should have taken just a couple minutes to answer. Anybody can get a tutorial on just about anything online, so tell me where you draw the line between an acceptable and an unacceptable query so that I can avoid your arrogance and useless chaff, and perhaps instead, I can learn something.

I listened to V6. I heard that bit I liked again at 1:09. I'm not sure if it was always there or not. Part of me wants to hear that in the beginning break, too. Another part of me likes that they're a little different. Still, I want more volume dynamics. Add more instruments, add some chords, throw some variation in there. I'd like to hear some more bass while the melody is going. Draw those notes out, emphasize some of them or something. Force my subs to do some work. The ending feels a bit anticlimactic. You might work your way back down to a quiet ending, but I still think the middle should become louder and fuller. The ending doesn't have to die off, either. You can end with a leading tone or dominant chord moving back to the tonic, and make it loud. I don't hear a lot of powerful endings these days. That one lead you're using, that staccato wave.. it feels weak to me. (You can tell I'm craving energy here, right? Have some Jager bombs and see what you come up with. )

This makes you a hypocrite. Get off of my nuts, and quit flaming. If there were a demo version, I would jump on it. I couldn't find one on the website, and I called their tech support. To my disappointment, they told me there was no demo software. Terrible marketing. If I've overlooked a demo, please point me in the right direction. I'm trying to learn Cubase because I need sheet music interface, and I'm not going to throw down hundreds of dollars for something I haven't had the opportunity to test. I'm still interested to see that intricate tutorial you had. If you aren't going to swallow your arrogance, feel free to take your deserved portion of the aforementioned bag. My searches didn't yield anything as useful as your second link. Thanks. It's interesting, however, that on that forum they reacted in a very similar manner as you, Snappleman. What's up with this demographic? I feel like I'm on a totally different website. Some of you need to chill. I digress. Mods can lock this; it was not quite as helpful as I had expected.

Common battles need to end quickly, and occur less often than they generally do. Boss fights need to be epic, and push the envelope. I would love it if random battles were just two-framed sprite movements with effects, and boss battles were beautifully rendered, cinematic experiences. And do shit in those boss fights that one doesn't expect. Unbridled violence and bloodshed on the female/young character or something. An RPG/FPS would be neat. Running around, and instead of fading to a battle scene, you zoom into first person view. The main thing that irks me about RPGs, though, is you can't pick it up and instantly be good at it. I can pick up Zelda and kick some ass in the beginning no matter what. But you can't pick up Final Fantasy and immediately kick ass because your skill is saved to flash memory, not muscle memory. (Granted I won't have the Master Sword in the beginning of a zelda game, but at least I don't have to grind for it.) I don't know anything about RPG maker by the way. I don't know if you can do anything like that. also, good music is extremely important. If Final Fantasy didn't play classics at me throughout most of the game, I wouldn't have gotten through it. Random battles were an opportunity to rock out, because just holding the action button isn't my idea of fun.

I've looked at the help option, and it doesn't go into the fine details that someone who hasn't seen a DAW before needs. I couldn't find instructions on how to install a new VST either. The ones that come with it sound like post-processed square waves. Considering the software price, that sounds like utter crap to me. So I downloaded a piano demo. It's clearly not as simple as running a plugin installer, and it's not clearly stated which directory to put the DLL in. Grand Staff just means there's a treble clef and a bass clef shown at once, and they scroll together. Yes, I'm sure I can stumble around and run through the beginning of the manual and all of the tedious adjustment procedures so that I learn all of the jargon along the way, but I'm just in this for the good samples. I was hoping I could save myself 20 minutes by asking here.

I've got Cubase SX3 on my computer right now. Usually I have no trouble picking up a new piece of software and learning it by fooling around, but the way this sucker works is totally unintuitive to me. I've found the sheet music editor, and would prefer if there were a way for me to see a full Grand Staff. Is that possible? I also need help as far as adding VSTs or whatever they call their samples. If I've overlooked a tutorial, please point me in the right direction.

Just to clarify a couple of things.. Accidentals (#'s and b's) do not necessarily mean you are leaving the key (however, in your case, it may be confusing; will explain why in a bit). C Major just happens to have no accidentals, so if you use one, you will be using a note that is not within the key. But C# major, obviously, has at least one accidental (it has seven). The title screen (at least at the beginning) is in A minor. A minor also has no accidentals in the key signature, so it can lead you to believe that simply adding a sharp or a flat always means you are using a note outside of the key. The fact that it is in A minor makes it easy for you to add new material. All you have to do is add more white keys here and there, and chances are it will sound good (let your ear be the judge..) Notice how C and Am both use the white keys only?(no accidentals) Am is the relative minor to C Major. The mode your song is in is based not only on the intervals, but also on where the tonic is. Notice that the MP Title theme seems to come back to A a lot? That's a hint that it's in some form of A. Then you look at the notes used among A, and you can tell it's in minor. Another way of differentiating is understanding how certain keys make you feel. Minor key sounds sad to me. Maybe it sounds sad to you. But if you start adding your own material and coming back to the note C often, you'll find that the music starts to sound happier. God, I despise it. However, from a compositional point of view, moving to the relative major is not a bad thing. (But from a SlyGen point of view, ... ick. There was a lesson on Picardy thirds.. blood was shed on that day.) If you like music, then you will find that your music theory class is revolutionary. If you have questions (music theory can be fucking daunting at first), please do ask me so that I can retain that 90% or whatever of what we teach others. edit: one final note. You know the lead sounds harsh; you don't need us to tell you that. If your ear can tell that there's a problem, fix it. However if you are inquiring about how to fix something, by all means let us listen. But really, I would not have chosen that lead at all. (I think it's about time for me to learn a DAW and get an actual remix posted. I feel like a hypocrite..)

I don't mean shit-face drunk; I mean just enough to let your subconcious ride shot-gun and start chucking out ideas. The scale stuff is easiest to learn with a keyboard in front of you. You should have one in your software. The simplest Spanish-Phrygian scale would be built on E, where you can play all of the white keys with the exception of G, which you need to augment to the black key above it. Those are the intervals. If you want to mess with it, use those same intervals in whatever key I said Norfair was in (it's just raising the third, that's it). Most of the stuff I've written has been written with the help of The Green Faerie. Sprout Procession was, for sure. Again, I really need to get live players/better samples on that one. Like I said, knowledge of the key will allow you to pick out the correct note on paper. For example, when you're working with the beginning in C Phrygian, I can tell you that if you select Gb in your melody, it's probably not going to be what you want. It'll sound weird. (There are always exceptions.)

By removing sides of the parallel fifths, generally you'll end up staying within the key signature, so you are going to end up adding original material that stays in the key. I personally think there should be a more organized method to adding the notes (I actually hear the notes in my head before even thinking about where they are on the keyboard. Knowing the key helps to pinpoint the correct value for the tone I'm hearing.) But anyway, it sounds like you've found a way to change it up. What you won't achieve using this method is counterpoint. I'm serious, just chuck some notes in with the melody that remain in the key, and see how it sounds. Compose while you're intoxicated if you find that you can't think of anything good. Ideas will flow in faster than you can test them. Try to get your head into whatever feel you're going for. One of my pieces is a waltz (I want to record it live before I show anyone), and I wanted a sexy, erotic sound. So I was constantly imagining myself dancing with a partner. Most of the people I've shown the midi to agree that I was successful.

I've never been to a meetup and am interested. I'm not quite following what the actual date is, but I think later is better than sooner. I hate it when parties have a lame turnout because there wasn't much advance notice.

Shimmering Scales ends beautifully. Well done; this track is great in my opinion. I'm listening to Endless Eclipse now. I love the eastern sound in the beginning. At 2:07, part of me really wants to hear that portion swell. But at the same time, I can tell there is a really chill aura to this whole project. With that in mind, this track is great. I might suggest incorporating more of the Black Tower's source material into this one (the end of it, with those crazy fast descending arpeggios). I'm ecstatic to see that it ends using Black Tower's source material. The ending is absolutely perfect. I'm very happy that one of my favorite tracks from the game was interpreted so well. This one is staying on my desktop until the project is completed.

Listening now. Before I begin, I want you to disregard anything anybody ever says against making Saria sound creepy; it's a great idea, and a great way to vary the song. Now, I also stopped the track about fifteen seconds in. You need to understand music theory before you go doing this. It's not just fuzziness that makes something creepy, and you MUST know this from listening to it yourself. You need to make this track full of minor-key intervals, and diminished sounds. It's the notes used that makes Saria sound so happy, not the ocarina instrument. (Yes, you need to change some of the ACTUAL NOTES of this song) there are other modes you can use to make this sound dark, minor isn't the only one. But I think you should look into all of them on your own. I will tell you one mode that... might work with this one. Locrian. I give this one away because most of the people who will teach you about music theory are arrogant assholes who think Locrian is a terrible, terrible key. It's not. Happy learning.

I haven't actually critiqued this piece yet; I've just been throwing theory around. I'm listening to V6, here. I think you need to bring more energy into the whole thing. I'm not sure what sort of feel you're going for this track, but there's something you really do not make use of in this piece: chords. The melody is all single notes. Play around with different voices going at once. I noticed that cool little spanish-phrygian sounding bit is gone. I think that, while it could have been cleaned up, it's a nice touch. Around 0:36 is where I think I heard it last time. At 0:34, that last note there is an A, right? Then at 0:36, we hear a Bb. I think it would be a cool touch if that bar right there had Bb, C, Db, Bb (those are quarter notes). And then the next bar resolves to A. It'll sound cool. If you want to variety, play with that sound in your piece.

I listened to the beginning of this one, until it moved out of the minor mode. I notice the difference; it sounds very gothic to me (in the modern sense of the word gothic). I can't say I've ever seen this style exclusively attributed to Aeolian or exclusively to minor though. Yes we should continue this discussion here because it's a Norfair WIP, and Norfair kicks ass. Keep it at the top of the list so it gets attention. edit: The video you posted sounds like it moves in and out of the minor mode.

I'm sure you're correct with regard to the time frame, but I'd be interested to see exactly what differences you mean as far as usage of the mode is concerned. The reason I don't want to ask someone else to help me is because all of the original material and variations are done by me. All I need is the better samples and to tweak some mixer settings and I should be golden to post a WIP. It's such a small step.