Opinion What do you think about my music?

[Byter]

Hi everyone,

I've been making Music now since a while and asked myself how do others think about it?

Could it fit in a videogame? Do you like it?

https://soundcloud.com/user-569467534/watery-deep

https://soundcloud.com/user-569467534/space-an-fun

 

[Smarty]

The compositions are quite agreeable, but the execution sounds like the tracker songs of the beginning 90s games, and unfortunately not the good ones. You need to spice up your instruments, effects and your dynamics to make it more lively and realistic.

 

[OrangeBit]

It's good game music. Not the type of quality i would think someone would purchase for their game, but for your own game it's pretty good.

 

[andev]

As @Smarty said, awesome composition, but whatever DAW you are using is butchering the execution

 

[RichHopefulComposer]

I have to disagree with what @Smarty and @andev are saying. I think the composition itself is to blame for the "early 90s tracker music" sound. When you paint and mix colors together without planning well, you end up with mucky, boring brown and greys on your canvas. This is called "making mud" in painting. I think these pieces (and a lot of amateur/early 90s "pro" game music) suffer from aural mud. If you listen to even the worst midi renditions of great pieces of music, they still sounds great. A good mix can hide some flaws and make a great piece of music shine even brighter, but it's not going to make the melodies or harmonies any better or worse.

Smarty said the music sounded "agreeable" - he's not wrong. It's just bland. It sounds like you just kept adding and adding to the piece without a strong idea or direction in mind. This is grey and brown music - nothing jumps out as overly gaudy or offensive, but nothing really jumps out at all.

There's no easy way to fix this, otherwise we'd all be writing amazing music. The only advice I can give is to buy a tape recorder and hum every inspired melody that pops into your head into it. Having a library of good material to start from will probably help you out. And keep practicing, of course.

Sorry I don't have any better advice. I'm not much of a composer yet either, haha. ):

And all that said, the music isn't bad...it just doesn't really stand out. I think you can use it for your game with no problems. Keep working on it, and good luck!

Edit: I remember a quote from the incredible Koji Kondo saying that he only wanted to write music that people could easily hum or whistle. I think that's a great, simple way of approaching music. Something to keep in mind, I think.

 

[Thunder Lion]

The compositions are quite agreeable, but the execution sounds like the tracker songs of the beginning 90s games, and unfortunately not the good ones. You need to spice up your instruments, effects and your dynamics to make it more lively and realistic.

Lies I love it, it sounds good but it does however keep calm with the right style game it works well, I imagine puzzle games, RPGs with little tiny sprites.

 

[Wayfarer]

I have to disagree with what @Smarty and @andev are saying. I think the composition itself is to blame for the "early 90s tracker music" sound. When you paint and mix colors together without planning well, you end up with mucky, boring brown and greys on your canvas. This is called "making mud" in painting. I think these pieces (and a lot of amateur/early 90s "pro" game music) suffer from aural mud. If you listen to even the worst midi renditions of great pieces of music, they still sounds great. A good mix can hide some flaws and make a great piece of music shine even brighter, but it's not going to make the melodies or harmonies any better or worse.

Before listening to the music, I thought what you'd said here would be the case... but it definitely isn't with this music. Well, not as much as you make it sound
Some of the notes in "Watery Deep" sound less intentional than they could be, however, it still has a lot of great compositional qualities.

"Space An' Fun" sounds right on. The title doesn't do it justice!!!

If I was going to say anything, I'd say, first, change your Soundcloud profile picture to something more epic. Even a stock photo from Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/, https://unsplash.com/collections/397119/mysterious-landscapes) would be more expressive than what you have.
As suggested, you could have a lot more dynamics in your music (though it sounds like you're using a Soundfont so you might be limited to how dynamic you can get). Some of the more expensive orchestral libraries are easier to make more dynamic sounding. I gotta admit, I have a huge problem with dynamics myself!

Your music sounds like it's on the right track (excuse the pun)

 

[RichHopefulComposer]

@Wayfarer: it's funny. I went back and forth a bit with myself, too. I wrote my last post after my first listen to them. Then I listened again an hour later, and thought "maybe I was a bit too hard on these pieces."

Then I realized I'd already forgotten both melodies half an hour later, and thought "huh." Gave them another listen, and thought "nah, I was right the first time."

These are serviceable songs. I just think they're both very unremarkable, which is their main problem. I don't think any amount of mixing is going to change that.

Again, these aren't bad. I think Byter is actually better than most indie composers out there. My advice to him is to think about his melodies before worrying too much about his mixing, though.

 

[Wayfarer]

Those are fair points.

Again, these aren't bad. I think Byter is actually better than most indie composers out there.

Yeah, there's something with Byter's music you don't "always" hear with indie composers - it just needs some honing in perhaps.

 

[Byter]

Thanks a lot for your constructive Feedback
Yes unfortunatly I use only soundfonts and just using lmms Studio as DAW.
But I think to invest money would be worth it. Where could I use it best? Should I buy a better DAW or better sounds?

I'm composing now half a year so actually I expected more negative Feedback =)
I'm using a real DAW for a week now. Before I used a midi sequencer for mobile to make my tracks. What I uploaded where the first things I made with it. So I didn't put too much work in those pieces (maybe 3 - 4 hours for each).

@RichHopelessComposer that Quote from Koji Kondo is awesome :3.

 

[RichHopefulComposer]

@Byter: Because Kondo is an awesome guy, heheh! You can hear it in his music, too. He never really does ambient type stuff. It's always music with memorable melodies. =D

If you're looking for a DAW, Reaper is extremely cheap, and has an infinitely long free trial. Might be worth checking out if you don't want to spend a lot of money. It's very good value for the price!

I don't really know much about where to get sounds, though. I don't have a lot of composing experience either, like I said. :x

 

[Byter]

Koji Kondo is not a guy he is the master .

I acually tried to use Reaper but that was quite some time ago and I didn't understand anything lol. But I think lmms was a good DAW for getting into working with DAWs and I think I'm now able to understand it (let's hope so)

 

[Smarty]

Thanks a lot for your constructive Feedback
Yes unfortunatly I use only soundfonts and just using lmms Studio as DAW.
But I think to invest money would be worth it. Where could I use it best? Should I buy a better DAW or better sounds?

The more expensive DAWs may have some great instruments out of the box, but they'll still make you pay for additional ones. If you can get away with a cheap or a free DAW, then don't consider upgrading. It's a mistake to think that the quality is with the DAW itself, they largely work in the same way. A search for better sound fonts or soft synths, or experimenting and making your own, can also take you were you want. But I will admit that there is so much on the market that it's frustrating to decide what you need, and you can keep plugging one instrument after another forever for sound that is just right.

In fact, personally I feel that when I need to create a song I might just go back to ModPlug. I like trackers. And this one accepts sound fonts and VSTs or just plain samples, and it's free, and it's easy to use.

 

[RichHopefulComposer]

A cheap alternative to buying a million vsts would be to buy an old 90s keyboard or rack module, and just have them play through midi. You'd have to plug them into your computer and set them all up, which is a pain in the ass, but you'd have a full general midi set of good sounding game instruments, and you can get a lot of these old romplers for less than $100. Yamaha, Roland, and Korg would all be safe bets.

Just google "good 90s rompler/keyboards" or something. Check cheap ones out on YouTube to see how they sound, and then buy one if they sound good to you. =D

Actually, I think Roland, Yamaha, and Korg probably all offer software versions of their old keyboards and stuff, too. I'm not sure how expensive they are, but I'll bet they're cheaper than buying a bunch of different instrument vsts separately, haha!

 

[HammerOn]

I agree with @Smarty. Great compositions but artificial sounding instruments are characteristics of the PSOne generation. It sounds like it because it lacks dynamics and expression, in other words, loudness contrast and unevenness. If you manually insert notes, it will sound too even and perfect thus unrealistic.
My first tracks were like this too. The sound library is a problem to care about later, you need to learn to play keyboard so you can use a MIDI controller to insert notes with expression so it sounds natural. There are a lot of techniques to make it sound more realistic and expressive even if you can't hire an orchestra to record for you but it will be hard and time-consuming if you can't play a MIDI controller.

 

[Wayfarer]

I think Reaper is great option, as suggested (though it might not be the best if you're placing notes manually).

For a long time I've used FL Studio, and the thing is now I want to try other DAWs but I can't find a Piano Roll that matches FL Studio! Every other aspect of it I could drop in favour of another DAW, but the Piano Roll is very fluent for quickly inputting notes. My tracks have all sorts of time signatures, and I've got used of lining up everything manually without being able to set time signatures in FL. Other DAWs would allow for more organisation in terms of time signatures, though this shows you can still make it work with FL.

I enter in notes manually without a musical keyboard, so something I do for realism (and to be honest, I don't know how well it works) is turn off the grid completely. Then I change the project timebase to be 384 PPQ (pulses per quarter note) - you can even go higher. The higher you go the less performant your DAW will be. Increasing this allows you to place notes at more intervals (to allow for more natural timing). For some strange reason FL starts at 96 PPQ which I believe is very low. Having said that, this "no grid" concept can also be a distraction - so maybe don't worry about this. Just thought I'd mention it regardless

Obviously variation in note volume and even in whole sections of the music help with dynamics (I have to work on this myself)

If you can get away with a cheap or a free DAW, then don't consider upgrading. It's a mistake to think that the quality is with the DAW itself, they largely work in the same way.

This is very true.

A search for better sound fonts or soft synths, or experimenting and making your own, can also take you were you want. But I will admit that there is so much on the market that it's frustrating to decide what you need, and you can keep plugging one instrument after another forever for sound that is just right.

What makes things worse is when you're composing you get so used of your own music that you feel compelled to change things - just because it begins to sound boring. And the longer you spend on a piece... the worse this gets!! At least this is the case for me.

But I think to invest money would be worth it. Where could I use it best? Should I buy a better DAW or better sounds?

lmms Studio might just work fine as a DAW as long as you have no trouble running VSTs that you'd like to use.
Hmm, maybe the sounds aren't as important at the moment as other's have said, though I'm still trying to work out what to get myself in terms of high quality Orchestral sounds.
Currently I use Garritan Personal / Instant Orchestra, and I should say this is not the best library in terms of sounds
You really have to work with it to figure how to make it sound best.

 

[Byter]

I'm already playing Keyboard for 2 years now but my Keyboard and my PC are in two different rooms. But I never played with Dynamics (so everything I Play has the same volume).

With Lmms I have the Problem that I can't Change the BPMs within a track. You can only have one tempo for the whole track. That's a big Problem for letting it sound more realistic.

 

[saltMonger]

I'm not incredibly experienced with music in general, and much less in orchestral compositions, but from owning a few hardware synths and (probably bad) habit of ogling over new ones without exploring to the absolute limit of my previous gear - buying new sounds will not make you instantly better, nor will swapping to a new DAW or tracker or whatever you want to use. That being said, this isn't to dissuade you from switching or trying new things.

Definitely a way to increase intrigue in the piece is to play with dynamics or write memorable phrases. Make the performances of the instruments rich - add portamento and bends, grace notes and trills, etc. to the piece. One thing I learned with writing chiptune that may be transferable to other forms of writing is to use instruments in ways that aren't generally considered (unless, of course, you want your music to be physically playable by a human) to give off interesting effects or atmospheres. Sure, have your leads and bass and chords and strings, but maybe you can get interesting textures from having xylophones playing arpeggios faster than human hands can move, or by distorting trumpets into noises they probably shouldn't make. There's some value to doing the unexpected, I think, and I find experimentation rather fun.