A friend of mine told me to sign up here and I have a few original pieces you guys might like.

[DaveBlack]

Just wanted to formally instroduce myself to the forum. My name is Dave Black and I produce (for the most part) instrumental music. I'm no stranger to forums and I've read most of the intros and rules so hopefully I dont do something wrong here.

A buddy of mine seems to think I can break into this scene and refered me to this site as a way of making contacts. I'm not 100% sure how you guys like to be linked to music but I have a music player through soundclick with a bunch of material on there. The first half is all VGish music (the first one is completely 8 bit) and the second half of the player is random instrumentals.

You can check them out at http://www.myspace.com/daveblackproductions

Note - it says myspace, but i dont use their music player

Thanks everyone

[Gario]

Your new here, so I'm glad to meet you.

The things that you've put up seem like demos of things that you want to sell to us; if that's true, then please tell us in your thread that your selling music. I personally have no need for it, so thanks for the offer...

I don't know what to say about the 'looking for contacts' thing. If your looking for contacts you should try to get to know the people here. What your thread currently looks like at the moment is that your trying to sell us a product that we have in abundance here already. Try breaking in here by getting involved with the projects, contests, WIP forums, etc.; that'll allow people to get to know you & your music better, thus adding to your list of 'contacts'.

As to how I personally like to be linked to music - I would rather listen to one at a time than listen to a whole bunch. It allows me to give helpful, specific commentary rather than a 'blanket critique' on everything... which doesn't do you any good. By the look of the pricetag on them, I'd say you aren't willing to allow any of us to download or stream using one of these sites, which is a shame... It's how OCR people prefer their links to the music, in general.

I sound harsh, here, but I'm trying to help. If you want contacts, be willing to give some things to the community. In return we'll give our support. Cheers!

[DaveBlack]

Hey Gario,

Your response is mild compared to some of the forums I've visited and I appreciate that. You should know that I do intend on taking part in some of the projects, contests, etc. If anyone knows that laws of give and take apply everywhere, it's me.

Sorry if the set up of my post was misconstrued but I've been producing and selling music long enough to know that you can't sell milk to a cow so coming to this forum in particular to make money never crossed my mind. Anything that I take part of here will ultimately be free, obviously, but I do have original pieces that I believe are quality and can be sold. So this wasn't an advertisement, it was merely to give people an idea of my style and get some constructive criticism.

I'll def take your advice and thanks again.

[Gario]

Alright, glad we cleared things up, so onto the music

Like I said earlier, I dislike 'blanket critiques' so I'll only look at a few songs here and give you my thought in more detail.

Listening to Powerglove, now... First thing I notice is that it's far to quiet. It's clean but quiet. I don't know if that's the doing of the player or not, but as I hear it the music has no power at all. The drums are very bland; you need a lot of variety in there. The bouncy beat is nice, but it cannot hold up the music for four straight minutes.

The samples used are quite terrible. By the sound of your other things, there, you do have better samples, you just aren't using them. Why not? Isn't VG music worth it ?

The volumes of what you do have there are too similar and static. It is difficult to pull the melody out of the harmonies and bass. I like the textures that you use, though, so it's nice to be able to hear them... just give the melody & bass some more dynamic prominence. On the topic of dynamics, they don't change enough throughout the music, either.

Harmonically speaking, it isn't bad nor wrong, but it gets a little stale towards the end. I'd vary some of the harmonic material every so often to keep the listeners on their toes. Melodically speaking it's fine (it goes well with the bouncy nature of the rest of the music), but again it gets old by the second time around. At 3:03 it sounds like the music is getting a good breath of fresh air. I like that part, it just needs to come in earlier .

Now, I understand that this is supposed to be video game music to that can account for some of the problems (like the stale repetitive nature of many aspects); if that's true then I'd suggest you end the music with a fadeout at the beginning of an intended loop. That way, people will see that the repetitive nature is due to the construct of VG music and not the music itself.

Now on the song 'Pump You Up' there is an issue on balance. As my brother would say, it sounds like 'the drummer did the mixing', as the drums really dominate over everything else. If you want us to get into it we need more bass! On a song like this the bass and drum are crucial... you've only got one part! Don't forget the other parts, either; the bass and drums are important, but the other parts need to be heard, too.

The samples are better than the Powerglove song, for sure, but they still seem lacking. They're very dry for such a song. I'd suggest some more reverb on this.

Again, as I said before for the other song, the harmonies, melodies, dynamics, etc. are quite static. It eventually tires me to listen to because very little changes throughout the song. In the beginning of the song the ideas you present are interesting and could go to interesting places, but you repeat a lot of material without variation. This will make the music boring.

Now you see why I prefer single song posts, as writing for every song you wrote would take me days . However, I am noticing some trends in your music from listening to some of your others.

-They are too quiet.

-The soundscape isn't filled out very well, meaning your music doesn't have enough lows, mids or highs, thus making it sound 'empty' (For some genres that's not a problem, but this is for the music in general on the site).

-There isn't enough use of dynamics.

-The sample quality is somewhat low, and the use of tools like reverb, delay, etc. is minimal and therefore unable to make up for it.

-The music is often too repetitive.

By the way, if you look at any of my WIPs or contest posts (except for early ones - don't use those for reference ) you'll notice that the music is louder and the samples sound better. This isn't because I have better samples, it's simply because I use tools to mask the quality of the samples (such as reverb and delay) or I simply limit the use of the samples to cases where that particular quality is desired. I haven't downloaded/bought a single sample patch for anything as of yet (not suggesting you go that route, BTW), but I manage to make my music sound acceptable.

Darkesword does an even better job making simple samples sound great than I do, by the way, so check out some of his posts to get a clear view of what I'm talking about.

I'm giving some constructive criticism, here, so don't take this the wrong way. Take it from me, it's very difficult to compose music, especially from so many different genres like your doing there. On the brighter side of things, you've made some money on your music, so you've certainly got a better sense of business than I do...

Hope this helps.

BTW - just needed to point out that the 'Progressive Hip Hop' sounds a lot like Zangeif's theme from SF2 at some points... sorry, this is a VG remixing site, after all

[DaveBlack]

Wow, very insightful and detailed post. Thats probably some of the best constructive criticism I've gotten in a long time and for the most part I agree. I'm a musician first and a business man second so I'm always looking for ways to step up my game. I'm really happy you took the time to listen and review it.

I stuck to the 8 bit samples for Powerglove for the enthusiasts (like a few of my friends) but when I start to do remixes I am going to use better samples for sure. In response to dynamics...ya know, when I program drums, I can do great things with velocities but it was never an issue with other instruments and to tell ya the truth I dont know why because, if anything, they deserve it more. So thank you, I think that will add a different dimension to the melodic side of my new material.

The only defense I will take is about the repetition. A few of the instrumentals you listed were intended to be hip hop/rap beats where there are multiple verses, repetition in vocals, etc. Its not that melodic variation wouldn't make it better but it's not necessarily something that the "buyer" picks up on 90% of the time. I have to unfortunately agree that that very notion has a tendency to spill over into my other projects as well, so I'll watch that in the future.

Like I said, I appreciate taking the time to do that so I wanted to come back and write a coherent response instead of "thanks for listening" lol.

[Gario]

I stuck to the 8 bit samples for Powerglove for the enthusiasts...

If your going for that effect then use 8-bit samples! Here's an example of going for the 8-bit era style...

http://remix.thasauce.net/song/RTS0152/

He actually uses a program that writes NES chiptune music (as you can tell by the NSF file), but you don't need to take it that far, if your just going for the effect (although you can, as there are programs that do this for free).

Let me rephrase what I said about the Powerglove song before - It's not that the samples were bad, it's that the samples were wrong. Power to oldskool

I can see what you meant by making the stuff repetitive for a reason, but does it have to be? Look at this song - it's in a pop style, yet when he 'repeats' anything, it isn't really a repeat - it has variations to some of the elements. The variations don't need to be that great, they just need to shake it up a little.

http://www.box.net/shared/dlbz52kfvh

(By the way, this is floating in the WIP forums right now, credit goes to AkumajoBelmont)

I can understand the repeats for the sake of having someone sing over them, as making the adjustments like he did may step on the toes of the buyer a little (although I personally would do it for the sake of the music ).

Oh, and I just heard the Knights of 2021 song, and I liked it. It was fun. it had similar problems as before, but I liked it, nonetheless

[OverCoat]

I would reconsider using FruityLoop's pre-packaged drum loops and Slayer as well

I mean at least you're using Slayer more sensibly than most but man does that sound bad, especially when you're using a somewhat more believable guitar in "Guitar Driven"

Seriously though at this point I would recommend getting some nicer samples, especially for anything you have labeled "VGM." Stuff like "Flo BLACKa" starts out promising but then you bring in these awful weak synths. Is that SimSynth? I would suggest expanding your VSTi catalogue, take a trip around kvraudio.com and get some good free synths.

Selling stuff for a fixed price like that is also very odd for a composer to do. Are there no negotiable fees?

[DaveBlack]

Hey I appreciate ya taking the time to check it out. A few things I'd like to point out to ya though.

I only use a prepackaged loop in one song and that's the one at the very bottom of the player. Same with slayer. It appears in a song called "The plot thickens" and I used it to get a clean guitar sound. Any of the aforementioned ones were recorded live. I have an Ibanez, peavey amp, blue 8 ball condenser mic and primarily guitar rig 3.0. If my guitar production isn't up to par, then that's another issue ya know?

Here's my bottom line when it comes to choice of samples/synths. I dont discriminate and here's why...I only think about two things, 1. Do I get the desired results? and 2. Can artist write a successful song with it? There have been countless times that I've heard even stock FL samples in hit radio songs. The only difference between me and the average listener is that I pick up on it because I use FL. There were probably a million Korg Tritons sold last year and I'm sure people who use them relegiously will know when one is being used. So one could argue that maybe I didnt flip the sample "right" or tweak the synth "enough" but even that is in the ear of the listener. When I present new material to the audience here, I'll keep my choice of synths in mind.

And last but not least, please take the price out of the equation. I'm not here to sell music like I said before and I price my music in weird ways that Im sure wouldnt make sense even if I tried to explain it lol.