evory

Not sure if anyone here remembers me, but years ago I wrote a Ducktales remix with Doc Nano that made it onto the site (still one of my proudest achievements). Since then I've gotten busy with college and stuff, but I recently joined the Columbia Pops Orchestra, and my first order of business was to write a medley of themes from one of my favorite games of all time: Undertale. Definitely more of a medley than a remix, but look out for the motif from Memory popping up throughout. Other pieces include Megalovania, Spider Dance, Bonetrousle, Death by Glamor, Fallen Down, It's Showtime, and Oh! One True Love. I hope this fills you with determination.

Hey thanks for listening Glad you enjoyed it haha.

Hello there Here's a piece I've written for piano and orchestra, in sort of a late Romantic style. It's really short (only 3 minutes long), so I was hoping you guys could give it a quick listen. I'm thinking of using this as part of an arts supplement for my college applications, so while I'm quite happy with how it's turned out, any comments or suggestions for improvement would be really appreciated!

Well in typical Asian fashion I started (or rather, was started) on piano around the age of 4 or 5, and didn't like it very much at all because lessons comprised 3 exam pieces every year and nothing much else. I picked up the erhu at 13, but didn't think very much of it then either. Definitely learning to play without staring at sheet music was something that fostered my love for music, because music is after all a way to express yourself, rather than what your piano teacher thinks an examiner would appreciate. That was around 4 years ago. In any case, I started to learn to play by ear, then to improvise, then to remix, and then to compose. I discovered OCR somewhere in between, but never thought of making my own remixes till a couple of years ago, and hopefully I still have a long way to go.

I have to say I love the piano track The instrument that comes in at 0:53 though seems to clash a little with the piano register, although the melodic idea is nice. I felt that once the Route 1 melody came in in its entirety you could have done a little more to push the mix just that last step up, for example the B in the bass at 1:35, I was hoping for a more gratifying harmony based on the tonic, right now it just feels like there's something missing. Trying for less of a countermelody than a harmonic anchor is what I'd suggest, and maybe the strings could maybe come out a little more. The last bit (before the footsteps) sounds really nice though, I really like the chord sequence you've got there, and the instrument at 2:45 is absolutely perfect. I'm a little split on the opening/ending though, I'm fine with the beginning, but the ending is a little too disjointed from the overall mood of the piece.

Wow this is pretty impressive stuff (Y) I'm looking forward to hearing more from you haha.

It's great reading all the responses on this thread, and writing anything creative, be it words or music, is something that does scare me quite a bit. I love doing it of course, but a perfectionist part of me keeps thinking 'this melody is too boring' or 'this instrumentation isn't the best', and I end up with lots of ideas I can't bear to string together. In the end, I'll obsessively listen to a 8 bar passage over and over again, trying to tweak small parts here and there to match what I'm hearing in my head, though of course it hardly ever works out as planned. I suppose I'm secretly thinking 'if this isn't going to be good, then what's the point of doing it at all?', which probably isn't a very healthy mindset to have haha. And when I hear another composition I enjoy, I'm thinking in the back of mind 'will I ever be able to write something like that?'. Okay I think I'm starting to use this thread to voice my countless insecurities/inadequacies, so I'd better stop this post before it degenerates into precisely that.

Mm thanks for sharing, this is quite interesting. Not sure if it's just me though, but their formula for humanisation hardly sounds very natural to me either (the first sample in http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchSingleRepresentation.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0026457.s003 if anyone's interested), but admittedly it's still better than most computerised humanisation programs. Apparently the experiment was conducted with the drummer trying to keep pace with a metronome as well , so I have my doubts on how accurate their findings are with regard to a 'natural human rhythm'.

Thanks for the tip haha, I've never played in a full orchestra so admittedly I'm not the most familiar with Western percussion. I'll keep that in mind!

I've got to say I'm impressed. The 'get item' sample in particular, at around the 1:00 mark, worked surprisingly well, I actually went to replay that bit a few times just to see how you did it. Kudos on the transition into trance as well, I was so caught up in listening I barely even noticed hahaha. I'd certainly like to see this on the frontpage, great job

I've got to say that this was quite enjoyable, you managed to keep the arrangement interesting the whole way through. I'm far from experienced with metal but to me the balance was just right; it's primarily a guitar mix, so while the drums seem like a backing track I'm perfectly fine with that. If there's anything that could be improved on, I thought moments such as that in 1:33 and 1:44 didn't fit as well as the rest of the variations, I get what you were trying to do but it kind of lost the energy you'd built up until this point. I think there are (very) slight rhythm issues at 1:40 as well, though it's not very apparent.

Hey thanks for the comments! I completely agree about the articulation haha, it does sound quite obvious now that you've pointed it out. I'll think about changing the opening to a fanfare of some sort, that should probably work better.

Palace Theme: So I thought since I've had enough practice writing VGM remixes, why not try my hand at a little original VGM of my own? Anyway, if you're interested/can be bothered, this is basically an orchestral theme meant to evoke a sort of royal, regal feel, and, as is quintessential to VGM, loops ad infinitum. So if you get bored after listening to half of it, don't bother listening on because it's all going to be exactly the same. If you do like it, however, let me know! In any case, I thank you for your click.

I anticipate getting quite a bit of backlash for this, but I have to say that I disagree a fair bit with this movement. I'm all for raising awareness for video game music, and I remain in constant awe of the 8-bit marvels which have grown with time into full-blown orchestral epics, but, call me conservative, I feel that classical music is a closed set which video game music, no matter how remarkable, cannot venture to explore. The term 'classical music' was coined for purpose of a canon, so it is against this canon that all subsequent works will have to be compared, and just like how it would be impossible to induct any modern poem into the canon of, say, metaphysical poetry, it remains impossible to convincingly induct video game music into the canon of classical music. I'm not trying to play up the world of classical music as some sanctified bastion of form and finesse; classical works have drawn influences from sources as eclectic as street music -- the theme of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto is an example if I'm not wrong -- and function-wise video game music can be easily compared with, say, an overture or leitmotif. What I feel is that Aerith's Theme may be outstanding music, but it cannot claim to be outstanding classical music, and there is no need for video game music to stake a desperate claim for reaches outside its own domain, a domain which has already been growing from strength to strength without compromise. I submitted my 3 votes a while back, and I regret to say they've gone to Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Elgar, as much as I admire the genius of Nobuo Uematsu and the beauty that is Aerith's Theme. tl;dr vgm =/= classical music

Interesting list, I just have to nitpick a little because I'm an arrogant pedant, I apologise in advance. 12356 is the traditional Chinese pentatonic scale, not any 'Chinese Mongolian' whatever that may be. 13#457, the supposed Chinese scale, seems to be an inversion of the pentatonic Aeolian scale or something along those lines, it's not something I've actually heard in a single piece of Chinese music thus far. Also, the supposed Balinese scale is actually the 5 note mode of the gamelan pelog scale which is used in Java; the Balinese mode uses 7 notes. I'm not sure why I'm even saying all this.