Life Among Ruin (Orchestral Video Game)

[Kylethedarkn]

This is a piece of music I wrote for a video game that will never be released. The feeling I was going for was that of ruins being overgrown by vegetation and being re-inhabited by wildlife. Think of crumbled giant pillars covered with moss and surrounded by mist.

Let me know what you think of it.

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/463577

Though I do ask that you keep in mind that production quality is minimally important to me. As long as you can listen to it and hear the music the mixing/mastering isn't much of a factor for me.

[Ryan Jobson]

I respect your opinion but I really think you should consider otherwise your thoughts on the importance of production quality. I am in no way skilled at playing drums or the cello or the harp, but I recognize the importance of understanding how those instruments work so that when I compose I know how they should be used properly. Similarly, you should understand where the string and brass sections should go, how many of each are playing in the room. What about panning? You're not going to leave everything in the middle. Sorry mate, not trying to harp on you or anything, but I think you should keep an open mind when it comes to production quality, mixing, and mastering. Sometimes, the quality sound of a single instrument or soft synth playing has more of an impact for me than 20 of them that sound like they've been dragged through the mud for a week.

Anyway back to the music - you definitely seem to have the composition part down pat, and I enjoyed the listen. To be honest I didn't really picture your ruins and overgrown vines with this music - but the feeling, thoughts and emotions will be different for everyone.

I say to you, grand work, keep it up, exercise that mind of yours and continue to create my friend.

Regards,

~Syllix

[Kylethedarkn]

To me the music is far more important. This song still invokes the same emotions to me now as it did when I wrote it in midi and played it through the Microsoft Midi Synthesizer, just like it would do the same in 8-bit.

Don't get me wrong a good mix and good production sound good and enhance composition and arrangement, but production is just the cherry on top of the delicious ice cream. Just look at pop music for example. That stuff is produced out the ass, but it's practically worthless as music in most cases because there's no focus on emotion via the composition and arrangement.

Although, I would probably at least attempt some sort of good production quality beyond what I normally do in my music if there were any way for me to learn how to do so. As of now none of the mixing/mastering tutorials I've found have been worth a damn. They all give these vague ideas about mixing and mastering without explaining how to do any of them. For example I don't know how many times I've seen you have to use EQ to cut out a space for each instrument. Well that's fine and dandy and a good concept, but how do you actually implement it without causing it to sound horrible, and what if you want multiple instruments in the same frequency range. It's all a huge pain in the ass, for such a slight difference.

That being said, if somebody was willing to mix and master my tracks professionally I'd definitely jump on that. But it's not very important to me.