World of Warcraft - Les Gnomes Exotiques (Gnomeregan, Tinker Town) WIP

[Uboichi2]

Tried to make a concept of a heavily Messiaen-inspired rearrangement of the Gnomeregan and Tinker Town themes.

Warning: Modern classical music ahead with no scales or modes you know, so you're probably not used to it. =P

Now with Cadenza!

OLDER VERSIONS:

[Rozovian]

I first thought you forgot to add the link since there were no replies and I didn't see one. Only when I was gonna point it out to you did I notice the picture missing icon under the message field.

I'm not familiar with source and not really gonna look it up. To many wips I want to comment on.

It's nice, starts of like something of an old fairy tale. It's kind'a messy dunno how much of it makes sense to someone used to classical music, but I'm having trouble just listening without focusing on following the melodies. Dunno if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Without that focus, it just sounds messy.

That being said, the sound is great.

[Uboichi2]

It's nice, starts of like something of an old fairy tale. It's kind'a messy dunno how much of it makes sense to someone used to classical music, but I'm having trouble just listening without focusing on following the melodies. Dunno if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Without that focus, it just sounds messy.

It's supposed to sound messy =). Messiaen wrote his Les Oiseaux Exotiques (The exotic birds) with just the sounds of the jungle in mind. It isn't very clear music, cause all the birds sing a different song while ignoring all the songs sung by other species.

While I don't use any type of birdsong like Messiaen did, I did use a couple of themes which are associated with gnomes in WoW, and tried to emulate that same thing: Everyone trying to play their song without paying attention to the songs of other players.

If you want to hear what I mean, try listening here at 3:10.

[Uboichi2]

First update =)

[Uboichi2]

v1.0 =D

[Uboichi2]

Now finished with cadenza!

[MrSneak]

Very interesting. The ways in which it's lacking melody certainly give tribute to the original. The original made excellent background music that didn't get repetitive, even after listening to it on a slow Gnomeregan run for a few hours.

I can't say that this is what I'd call "listenin' music". It's so all over the place, there's no humming or whistling along.

I salute the non-traditional effort though.

I suppose if you were to invent a melody that could play over what you already have, it could have potential in my personal playlist, but you'd basically have to do it all from scratch as there's not much to work with in the source.

[Uboichi2]

I think the original has a lot of melody to it tbh. Well, the gnomeragon02-zone version has a very strong melody played on the clarinet. It's just not your everyday classical/romantical idea of a melody people are so used to. More like a 20th century modern classical style melody, which is a bit hard to follow as it doesn't use conventional tonal scales. It's not that easy getting used to and it's not something that happens overnight, so I don't expect a lot of people to actually like this one

[Rozovian]

The piano parts are pretty cool, somehow they make more sense to me than the rest of the mess. Maybe it's just because they're mixed clear, while the rest of the instruments aren't. The oboe is especially messy, might just be that it's sound makes every other note sound like it's from a different instrument. With so much piano I don't think that'd be a problem anyway. I can hear a few repeated themes, and they're probably source. I get a little lost in the dynamics, it just turns into a soundscape of different notes. Again, dunno what idea you had behind that or if you simply haven't given the dynamic structure that much attention yet, but somewhere I fell off the wagon and had no idea if I was in the beginning or the end of the track.

[Uboichi2]

somewhere I fell off the wagon and had no idea if I was in the beginning or the end of the track.

And that, sir, is exactly what most people should feel after listening this . The more original you become, the less people will appreciate your work on a short term

[MrSneak]

Not that I would want to stifle any artists aspirations, but I might suggest that it is possible to be original and accessible simultaneously. I only respond because your last response suggests that there is an inverse relationship between enjoyability and originality.

I don't think I agree with that.

Yes, I acknowledge that people will usually flock toward the familiar. Hell, we're on OCRemix, a site dedicated to making new versions of things you're already familiar with. But there's also been many wonderful original human inventions that also draw the crowds simultaneously. Certainly you don't -need- to sacrifice accessibility for originality.

I guess my point is this: It would be pretty easy for me to smear paint on a canvas, resulting in what is widely regarded as a meaningless image, and then tell people "That's how it's supposed to be." Unfortunately, when you create something that is essentially un-judgable due to its very nature, you lock out any notion of outsider critique, and then, self-improvement. Rosovian was clearly attempting to point out why your track was cacophonous to his ear, to which you basiclaly responded, 'I know isn't it great? If only more people were deep enough to understand it.'

I don't intend to sound hostile. As I said in my first post in this topic, I appreciate what you're going for.

[Uboichi2]

Well then, let me put it like this:

It's not my intention to make something accessible, it's only my intention to make something good. When I listen to this kind of music by other composers, all I can hear is the beauty in the music, in how well it is written. But most people just can't listen to this kind of music and I can understand why. It took me a long time to learn to appreciate this kind of music as well.

What I was trying to accomplish, was creating an arrangement with the complexity and sound of contemporary classical music. And inevitably that kind of music just sounds like a cacophony to most people. So when I say most people should feel like it's just a cacophony, I just mean to say that it's written in a style which just isn't listenable for most people. By no means I'm trying to say "It sounds like a cacophony, therefore it's great". More like the other way around.

And like Schoenberg once said, the songs that can be written in C major are still limitless, but that doesn't mean that keeping on writing new stuff in C major makes you original. Sure, something new may sound new and original to most people, but the world of popular music develops at a way slower rate than the classical world. Popular music just takes very small steps at a time, only changing existing sounds by a small margin. Classical music however has the tendency to take giant leaps at a time. Most people simply can't appreciate that.

Also, you state that my piece is like randomly smearing paint on a canvas. On the contrary, everything I did was very well thought out and not just randomly placed. I used dissonants and conflicting rythms knowingly. All the harmonies were intended like that. I don't use dissonants just because they're dissonant, I use them because they give a kind of feeling to the music you just can't achieve with more conventional harmonies. Same goes for the choice of atonality instead of tonality.

This brings me to the point of the inverse relationship between enjoyability and originality. It's there. But I said on a short term. Great composers like Stravinsky and Schoenberg weren't very much appreciated in their own time, but especially Stravinsky is now considered the most influential composer of all time. So being really original may be rewarding in the long run, but on the short term it usually just isn't. Being original means breaking conventions, and there are always people who dislike that.

[Gario]

When you say 'Original' I'm assuming you mean 'Something no one has ever done before'. Of course, no one will appreciate it at the time, but that doesn't mean people will appreciate the music later, either. That is a scholastic misconception that I have heard in my years in music theory - it simply isn't true for the majority of cases (I'm sure you haven't heard of 99.9% of the composers that have tried to 'revolutionize' music in the past 60 years ).

Besides, you music isn't 'original' - it's heavily based on a musical style that's been around for over 100 years . It's actually rather conservative, all things considered .

Classical music however has the tendency to take giant leaps at a time. Most people simply can't appreciate that.

Read Webern's 'A Path to New Music' on that subject - you'll find that the road to modern music was, in fact, a very slow one that took quite a bit of time to develop (taking baby steps, each time). The only reason contemporary music of today seems to be going so fast is because people are now trying to make new music rather than let it flow naturally from point to point. The giant leaps of today actually hurt the process of appreciation, overall - if people didn't appreciate the steps from before yet how can they appreciate the steps building off of those? I think we're starting to get to a point today where very late-romantic music is now generally accepted by the public, so soon they may be able to listen to Schoenberg/Bartok/Stravinsky without too much trouble (they are the inevitable next step from that). Unfortunately, contemporary music of today isn't even being written to be listened to by most people, anymore - so those that write music today don't take any of that into consideration; rather, they're often happy writing it off as people simply not 'understanding' the music and move on, which is rather sad. New composers should try to listen to what the mst radical point people can listen to is, then build off of that, allowing people to have a chance to follow the music and appreciate it's changes (that's why music could evolve in the fashion that it did, before - now, evolution in that fashion is impossible, so no one will ever appreciate contemporary music of today, unless they train their ear specifically to do so).

Your music isn't that radical, though - I encourage people to listen to it a few times through and try to listen to the themes you have in there. It's clean enough for that - they'll catch on to it, given the time .

Onto the music...

I don't know the source at all (I've played wow, but I don't listen to Tinkertown's music very ofter ). Actually, it's well connected, from a thematic point of view, but I find it to be a bit repetitive, towards the end ('harmonically', anyway). The arch form you use connects the piece well enough, but I think you could play around with the sets you use a little more at the end (I hear a lot of class 1 dyads and class 4 dyads (and class 3 & 5, as a biproduct) - very nice, but if you can find clever ways to introduce more of the other dyads in there it may help make the music a little less repetitive).

Then again, unity in music like this is quite difficult to achieve, so I can understand what your doing with this - I appreciate your work, and you've done a fine job putting this together. I guess putting in more variety may hurt your chances with people here, considering they say it's not coherent enough, lol. I will say, though - expand the '4-7-4-0' motif you have going there (using pitch classes to identify it - I can't think of another way to put it) rather than repeat it like you do - it beats me in the head a little bit . Try inversion, retrograding, augmentation, etc. (although there is a good chance you do that already - I only listened to it like three times so I don't have the full scape of sound down yet) - there's just too much unaltered use of that theme in the song.

It sounds more like regular atonal music based off of Forte's theories rather than Messiaen (you hear music like this a lot in composition recitals and such - people form themes and variations around small set classes). Shame on you, lol.

It would be interesting to see if something like this could ever be accepted on OC - seeing how an all percussion piece was recently accepted, I could see it as a possibility, sometime soon (and that's saying something for OC).

By the way, I have no clue how I could miss an atonal post in the WIP forums - I've been looking for one forever .

[Uboichi2]

Haha, I got bested by someone who knows more about it than I do. Kudos Gario! And I must admit that when it comes to instrument usage, that classical music is a lot more conservative than popular music. But nowadays it is popular music taking the baby steps.

And I agree, this is far from experimental. Studying composition at the conservatory got me used to much more difficult music. My point here really is that it's very new for the majority of the OCR public. Afaik no one here has ever done something like this before and I'm just really curious to how it will be received if it does get accepted. On top of that I actually prefer writing/arranging like this over a more romantical approach. Most orchestral Remixes here start to bore me as everyone seems to be using the exact same structures for their arrangements. I guess I'm just hoping that I'll open up some people, if only a few, to kinds of music they've never listened to before. And who knows, maybe I'll inspire more people to try the same thing. As said before, I don't mind if the majority of the people here doesn't like it and immediately discards it. If there's only 1 or 2 guys out there who think like "hey, there's a whole new world out there!", Then I'll be happy.

And it originally was inspired by Messiaen, but I kinda lost that while I was working on it. I should edit my first post really. But I probably won't .

EDIT: Read your post again, and wanted to say that even though I would've loved to stray from that main theme more, I just didn't do it, because I was afraid of the judges saying it wasn't close enough to the original anymore. Taking babysteps here .

[Rozovian]

Rosovian was clearly attempting to point out why your track was cacophonous to his ear, to which you basiclaly responded, 'I know isn't it great? If only more people were deep enough to understand it.'

Rozzzzzovian is _so_ gonna figure this track out one day, if it gets past the judges. Keep pushing the limits, Uub-dude.

[Moseph]

I don't usually hang out in the WIP forums, but I'm glad I listened to this. I can hear the Messiaen influence. Reminds me of a scaled-down Turangalila.

A couple comments have to do with the execution of the mix rather than the arrangement itself. The piano is pretty mechanical in places, which wouldn't be too hard to fix if you took it into a MIDI sequencer to adjust the note timings and velocities.

Am I correct in thinking that this is Finale playback with the Garritan sounds? The reverb sounds a bit off to me, with sort of a stuffed-in-the-coat-room quality to it. If you're using Finale's Garritan reverb unit, I'd recommend at very least bouncing the track from Finale without reverb and applying it later with a better reverb unit; I've never been able to get that Garritan reverb to sound good.

In the arrangement, I think it would be a good idea to take some of your flute lines up an octave. It's frequently in a pretty weak range, and I think moving it up would get it out of the way of the other winds so you could hear everything a little better. Actually, the clarinet and oboe can play higher than you've written, too. It would be nice to hear a little more general diversity in the winds' range.

Do you have an actual score for this? I'd love to see it, if you do.

Oh, also take any charges of incoherence with a grain of salt. I think it hangs together just fine.

expand the '4-7-4-0' motif you have going there (using pitch classes to identify it - I can't think of another way to put it) rather than repeat it like you do - it beats me in the head a little bit

This aspect also reminds me of Turangalila.

[Gario]

By the way, if it does sound like some Messiaen, I probably am not the best judge for it, as I've only really listened to his 'Requiem' piece... So, Moseph, does this sound like Messiaen?

[Moseph]

By the way, if it does sound like some Messiaen, I probably am not the best judge for it, as I've only really listened to his 'Requiem' piece... So, Moseph, does this sound like Messiaen?

The harmonic language, tone clusters, and melodic lines seem similar to me.

Parts of movements

and

of Turangalila are what came to my mind when I head this piece (although I don't know if that would have been the case if he hadn't mentioned the Messiaen influence), and the piano writing also reminds me of some of Messiaen's piano stuff (

).

[Uboichi2]

Actually, I was mostly inspired by Les Oiseaux Exotiques. Especially the piano parts like here at 1:10.

But I won't deny Turangalila might have influenced me as well subconsiencely. Or other works by Messiaen for that matter. I'm just a great fan of his works .

And no, this wasn't done with Finale and only the percussion and piano are Garritan. As a 'sequencer' Finale just is too awful. Same goes for the Finale GPO set, I'm using the original . And I'm using Sonar as sequencer... I'm just not that good with sequencers. I prefer using real people . And also no, there's no score of this yet. Might come in the future if I ever can get people to actually play this for me live .

And for most parts I don't agree on the flute part. It doesn't have a major role, it's just there for colouring effects. I already use the Celesta for playing high notes and I didn't want the flute to interfere with that too much . Though I do admit that the part at 3:22 might sound a lot better if the flute were an octave higher. I already submitted a slightly updated version from this one, but in case it won't be accepted, I'll consider changing it. Thanks .