my "portfolio" of drafts (go easy on me! >_<)

[mickomoo]

About six months ago I eagerly started on a remix for OC, but as I learned... rushing leads no where. I'm kind of biding my time now, working on original projects with a pretty simplistic plug and play sequencer until I gain enough experience to move on. Also trying to gather more info on better virtual instruments and sequencing software... if anyone could lead me in a direction on that I'd be very grateful.

The music I've been producing pretty much falls in the genre of an audio soundtrack for a movie or video game, I'm having difficulty writing anything else. I used mixcraft and various virtual instruments to make these songs. I'm no musical genius but I played a few instruments in my 18 years... just a bit. These songs are just drafts, I'm looking for feedback. I know they're not too particularly good, but I need people with musical ears to critique them. Here are my 4 major songs plus one random recording.

Anyways, without further ado:

warming up: This song was literately me warming up and testing this prelayered virtual instrument that imitates a full orchestra. I just decided to record, I think it sounds decent, nothing special.

first song: This is the first song I wrote, I added the bass, brass, strings, and choir over time. I know it says melodichaos, but I'm trying to think of a better name. I layered some guitars with an orchestra together by accident and got the effect that is the melody of song. I know a real guitar would make this song so much better, but I thought the effect was kinda cool at the time... anyways, my sense of rhythm is off and the virtual instruments aren't too great... uh any other feedback would be great. It was heavily inspired by err songs like "hell march to the apocalypse" in terms of the instrument choice, road to bowser's... ect. It's basically a villains theme, I suppose. I'm pretty much editing it everyday so the link literally changes every time I update this post!

second song: tried to play a melody I made while sitting at my piano and record it with this orchestral vst, didn't work out to well... =/

third song: the sole instrument playing is the orchestral virtual instrument, it has a deep tone but is painfully simplistic, as a lot of my works are. I'm trying to currently trying to access the melody and add to it as I grow.

fourth song: If you've been following a long, you can kinda tell that I've grown somewhat in my er, music making. This song is probably my best in terms of a coherent rhythm and bassline, and it's maybe a little catchy. It was my attempt at jazz, but ended up being kinda like a mystery score...

I have others, but that's probably all that's stomachable, the rest were experiments in techno and pop >_<

I do admittedly have a problem with bass rhythm and drums... more so drums though. I just added drums to my first song but I'm still working on the percussion. All songs have been edited and posted on tindeck

[Skyline Drop]

Okay, so, right from the get-go, the biggest issue I see with a lot of these isn't even the sounds. They're pretty workable as is - honestly, I'm kind of curious as to what specific virtual instruments you're using, because they sound fairly solid for beginner work.

The real issue is the timing. A lot of these sound like they're played in by hand. Do you make sure to use a metronome when you do that? It may be in your best interests. Also, if Mixcraft has a quantize setting, you should probably put that on, too, so the parts fall together as you play them in.

A slightly less technical suggestion: it might help to work out your basic sketch of the song before you even start recording. A big detractor with the songs you've put up is that they just sort of meander about. They stick to general 'riffs' for a certain amount of time, and then transition to something else, and it's like the previous part never happened. The easiest way to make a song sound more professional is to keep some sense of unity throughout - I like to base my songs around one or two main melodies and a handful of little motives or riffs, and just flesh out the rest as ideas come. If you have a good idea when you start, it's a lot easier to finish, you know?

Drums weren't horrible, but could use work. If you're going to be doing work in mostly these dramatic, quasi-orchestral things, an acoustic rock kit isn't really your best bet. I'm sure if you scour the net, better samples for orchestral percussion are bound to be around somewhere. As for actually writing percussion parts, for something like this, I'd use the snare to keep a steady rhythmic pattern going - probably something that repeats every two bars for the most part. Add a few accents with the bass drum, but generally, make sure they line up with the orchestral accents. Use crashes to emphasize the starts or ends of phrases. If you don't know what I mean by phrasing, I mean musical 'thoughts' or 'sentences.' If that still doesn't make sense, just add crashes every four bars and look up phrasing later. I'm pretty crummy at explaining it; it's really something that just clicks one day.

Don't know much about writing jazz, so I can't really help you there.

And I use Tindeck to host songs that I post here, as do many others.

Hope some of this helps

[mickomoo]

Okay, so, right from the get-go, the biggest issue I see with a lot of these isn't even the sounds. They're pretty workable as is - honestly, I'm kind of curious as to what specific virtual instruments you're using, because they sound fairly solid for beginner work.

The real issue is the timing. A lot of these sound like they're played in by hand. Do you make sure to use a metronome when you do that? It may be in your best interests. Also, if Mixcraft has a quantize setting, you should probably put that on, too, so the parts fall together as you play them in.

A slightly less technical suggestion: it might help to work out your basic sketch of the song before you even start recording. A big detractor with the songs you've put up is that they just sort of meander about. They stick to general 'riffs' for a certain amount of time, and then transition to something else, and it's like the previous part never happened. The easiest way to make a song sound more professional is to keep some sense of unity throughout - I like to base my songs around one or two main melodies and a handful of little motives or riffs, and just flesh out the rest as ideas come. If you have a good idea when you start, it's a lot easier to finish, you know?

Drums weren't horrible, but could use work. If you're going to be doing work in mostly these dramatic, quasi-orchestral things, an acoustic rock kit isn't really your best bet. I'm sure if you scour the net, better samples for orchestral percussion are bound to be around somewhere. As for actually writing percussion parts, for something like this, I'd use the snare to keep a steady rhythmic pattern going - probably something that repeats every two bars for the most part. Add a few accents with the bass drum, but generally, make sure they line up with the orchestral accents. Use crashes to emphasize the starts or ends of phrases. If you don't know what I mean by phrasing, I mean musical 'thoughts' or 'sentences.' If that still doesn't make sense, just add crashes every four bars and look up phrasing later. I'm pretty crummy at explaining it; it's really something that just clicks one day.

Don't know much about writing jazz, so I can't really help you there.

And I use Tindeck to host songs that I post here, as do many others.

Hope some of this helps

Thanks for the feedback, seriously appreciate it. They're all played by hand, yeah it's kinda easy to tell I try to record in segments or sometimes even just straight through I almost always loose track of the rhythm... somehow, it's something I've always been bad at, lol. Aside from recording from hand, what other options are there? I'm aware of quantization, mixcrafts quantize mode pretty much appears everytime I record, it's seriously hard though to find every single mistiming or where the note should be dragged without forcing me to rerecord completely. I recently started playing the melodies with a metronome, which helped, but I figured with the melody in place I'd not need the metronome for the rest... next time (esp for the first song) I'll record the entire thing with the 'nome... though I hate it, lol

I found out I really don't have the background in theory that I should, though I've been exposed to music for pretty much... all of my life. I'm going to go back so that way before hand I can have an idea of melodies and transitions. As you can tell, my first song really is this cool sounding rift that really shouldn't be a melody being played as the melody, lol. But by my 4th song I'm kinda get a concept of working out a melody.

drums are completely new to me... the first song which I'm editing constantly is my first attempt at any sort of working percussion line and my second attempt at writing a bassline, which I still feel I'm not too good at, lol. Thanks for the tip, I kinda figured the kit I got wouldn't really suit my style. I'm actually looking for concert drums, but the ones I just used might prove to be useful in some later pure jazz or rock piece, we'll see where this takes me.

I actually don't know much about jazz either... lol, I played tenor sax in concert band, but... never touched jazz I just like the genre. After hearin nintendo doing a jazz mix of a mario song I kinda wanna work on a jazz mario medley, lol. I just got a tindeck account too, I'm just kinda afraid to use it cus the limit is like 10 mb... that's pretty much like 1 1/2 songs for me... lol. I was using esnips originally, but that's a virus harbor, I'm looking for a legit file hosting site, with at least like idk 50 mgs free or more. I'm not asking for unlimited or anything, lol.

Btw, do you have feedback for each specific song? Aside from the second one, for obvious reasons, lol

[Skyline Drop]

I've never worked in Mixcraft, so I honestly don't know how it does quantization. In Reason and Renoise, the two sequencers I have worked in, there's just a button you click to turn quantize on, and it does it automatically as you record. Ideally, there's something similar in Mixcraft. If not, it may be better to just use the "pencil tool" or whatever they call it to draw the notes in by hand on the piano roll. It will be slow as dirt at first - especially if you don't know the notes that well - but you pretty much eliminate a lot of chance for error. Until your timing improves, I actually recommend this, if you really loathe playing with a metronome so much. Ever since I moved into Renoise, I don't do much of anything via live playing, since it's a pain to clean up all the extra data afterwards

Theory isn't all that necessary for writing music - not for here, anyway. A lot of these guys have only the most rudimentary theory background: rhythms, finding notes on the piano keyboard, maybe a few scales and chords. That's really all you need to have to work - that, and a good ear for what you're trying to make.

You could actually get pretty far with just an acoustic kit if you mix it right. A concert bass and some timpani are really the only things that I think you absolutely need.

I was under the impression Tindeck's 10 Mb limit was per file, but I may be mistaken.

I would break each song down, but the problems are more or less the same in each one. Awkward timing, lack of direction, a couple of flubby notes... Actually, the third song tends to avoid the timing issue the best, but it's still mostly just one riff climbing higher and higher, so it's got the meandering issue doubly hard

[mickomoo]

hm... yeah composing real melodies has been a chore for me, the closest thing I've come to is what's shown in song 4, in fact that's the closest thing to a song I've had, lol.

[Calum]

Hi, I have to agree with SiriusBeatz on most of what he's said, particularly timing. In places where there's repetition, which there does seem to be a lot, you could copy and paste if you have a "snap-to-grid" kind of function in mixcraft, I don't know, I use cubase.

The main thing with most of these is that it seems to be a melody with slow moving chords underneath. Something to think about would be making the chords underneath more interesting, rhythmically, instead of just holding them on for the whole bar (ALTHOUGH YOU DO HAVE A COOL MOTIF GOING ON IN THE ACCOMPANIMENT OF SECOND SONG. Do more of that kind of thing). That said, that kind of thing does seem to suit the whole villain theme thing you've got going on here, which I dig. Also, similarly, you could think about adding counter-melodies - something that may respond to the melody or answer it in some way. This may create more interest as things do seem to be chords + melody. And perhaps thinking about using more individual instruments. Correct me if i'm wrong, but it sounds like, in the orchestral songs, you are using, for example, a brass ensemble sound or string ensemble sound to play chords. This is absolutely fine but I guess in real orchestras each person would have their own "track" so to speak. It may just make it sound fuller if you have violin, viola, cello and double basses tracks instead of one string ensemble. That way, also, you might think about different accompanying phrases or counter-melodies!

I know it kind of sounds like a chore but, with orchestral writing, I think it will make it sound far more realistic and will open up the songs for you!

In terms of the last song, I think you've got a particularly tough job trying to make jazz sound good on VSTs. I mean it's definitely possibly if you're using synths etc. But sequencing real instruments in a jazz set up is never particularly convincing, at least to me. The drums in particular as jazz drumming is so "feely" for lack of a better word, programming generally does it justice. I'd say for your last song, you could have kept the hi-hat/ride cymbal going like in the intro at 0:23 where it seems to stop and just do cymbal crashes etc. That said, definitely don't give up on jazz at all when using technology, but maybe use more synthetic instruments or try to record your own authentic instruments in addition to VSTs.

OK, I'm rambling on. Basically I'd say, echoing SiriusBeatz, that timing/clarity in writing is key but also to think about separate lines

[mickomoo]

Hi, I have to agree with SiriusBeatz on most of what he's said, particularly timing. In places where there's repetition, which there does seem to be a lot, you could copy and paste if you have a "snap-to-grid" kind of function in mixcraft, I don't know, I use cubase.

The main thing with most of these is that it seems to be a melody with slow moving chords underneath. Something to think about would be making the chords underneath more interesting, rhythmically, instead of just holding them on for the whole bar (ALTHOUGH YOU DO HAVE A COOL MOTIF GOING ON IN THE ACCOMPANIMENT OF SECOND SONG. Do more of that kind of thing). That said, that kind of thing does seem to suit the whole villain theme thing you've got going on here, which I dig. Also, similarly, you could think about adding counter-melodies - something that may respond to the melody or answer it in some way. This may create more interest as things do seem to be chords + melody. And perhaps thinking about using more individual instruments. Correct me if i'm wrong, but it sounds like, in the orchestral songs, you are using, for example, a brass ensemble sound or string ensemble sound to play chords. This is absolutely fine but I guess in real orchestras each person would have their own "track" so to speak. It may just make it sound fuller if you have violin, viola, cello and double basses tracks instead of one string ensemble. That way, also, you might think about different accompanying phrases or counter-melodies!

I know it kind of sounds like a chore but, with orchestral writing, I think it will make it sound far more realistic and will open up the songs for you!

In terms of the last song, I think you've got a particularly tough job trying to make jazz sound good on VSTs. I mean it's definitely possibly if you're using synths etc. But sequencing real instruments in a jazz set up is never particularly convincing, at least to me. The drums in particular as jazz drumming is so "feely" for lack of a better word, programming generally does it justice. I'd say for your last song, you could have kept the hi-hat/ride cymbal going like in the intro at 0:23 where it seems to stop and just do cymbal crashes etc. That said, definitely don't give up on jazz at all when using technology, but maybe use more synthetic instruments or try to record your own authentic instruments in addition to VSTs.

OK, I'm rambling on. Basically I'd say, echoing SiriusBeatz, that timing/clarity in writing is key but also to think about separate lines

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah a lot of my songs are repetitive, the first song, the villian theme was actually only suppose to be a minute long, but I made it longer because I loved the orchestra I added to it in the middle. That lengthened guitar/melody was the arrangement I committed to memory, I don't even remember how to play the shorter version anymore, lol. The third song was an experiment and a mistake at the same time, it's more so a beta than any of my other "completed" songs, it's the first recording I did, I was going to get back to it when I finished the first song.

For the first song, I kinda tried working on counter-points, or at least that was my intent, I don't know if I did a good job on that. The strings and the french horn were playing two variations of a melody, and they kinda alternated going up and down the scale. I originally thought of having more than one string and each playing it's own sort of arrangement, but mixcraft's other strings, alone at least sound kinda wacky. I tried using DSK strings, but they crashed the program. I'll try again later. As for the "brass section" it's a lone french horn that's been mixed to sound more full, a trumpet is coming in every so often playing along with the choir.

For the fourth song... I can't really even call that jazz, lol. I'm hoping to get better VSTs and experience in the future as I wanna work on a jazz mario medley for oc. Anyways any percussion displayed in the song was a mistake,,, well initially at least. Some of mixcraft's vsts are like pre-layered selections, in this case the bass when played was accompanied with that soft hi-hat. When the velocity changes it's replaced with a clash. I kinda played the bass notes harder in the middle for some reason, I can't remember why. I think I had an initial recording where the hi-hats stayed and the clashes never occurred.

In all I'm trying to go back to the drawing board with my writing of songs and melodies. I know my timing is an issue I can/need to work on, but writing non-repetitive melodies is kinda difficult, lol. Any any case, thanks again for the feedback

[mickomoo]

finally decided to use my tindeck account, all songs are now online there