Music Making Month Marathon Megathread (of the Avatar)

You can use your work in whatever way you'd like, until you sign a license with another party like Portalarium over specific pieces. They won't want you to sell that song to another video game, basically.

I neither represent Portalarium, nor can I answer everything that would concern their lawyers.

 

Made a rough orchestrated version of the Waltz I posted a few days ago. It's by no means finished, but the idea is there.
Not sure if I prefer this more dramatic feel to the sober, more folk sound of the first version.

 

It really has an authentic "Ultima" feel to it. I like it.

 

I love it too, but is it just my earbuds today or is it mostly panned left?

 

Haha oops... it's not you. Good ears!
Friggin virtual instrument plugin seems to default all the way to the left... Need to remix it now. I didn't really notice since my speakers are too close together.
I'll upload a 'definitive' version in a few.

Edit: Maybe this is better...

 

Wow this is one of my faves so far. It is vaguely carnivalesque and could verge over into creepy with some key changes and variations (if used in different scenes). It makes me think of tinkers, clockwork automatons, factories & the Oracle. Excellent work Kailef!

 

dp_dropout for some reason I'm getting silence on your track --EDIT-- most recent embed works

and i love it!

this brings a question to mind: would it possible to key an emote to go with music, like a waltz in this instance? this would be a new form of "complex emote", but something to dream about for sure!

 

Glad you like it.
No idea why you get silence, I didn't delete or change anything on Soundcloud...

 

dp_dropout, you're doing a good job evoking that oldschool medieval RPG music vibe. I would love to hear your stuff with better quality sound samples.

I happen to own a pretty large collection of top quality samples covering all the standard orchestral instruments and a lot of exotic instruments as well. I may be willing to take some of the compositions in this thread and render them with better quality samples, but my time is limited so I'd have to be very particular about which ones--finished pieces ready for submission to Portalarium only.

Here are a couple samples of Ultima music. These were done with some of the lower-end samples I own. Note that these are just rough mockups and minimal work was put in. There's no nuance or articulation, there are stuck notes and the mixes are not tweaked.

 

I wouldn't mind collaborating. I just write music, I'm not a sound engineer, I try the best I can with the resources that I have (Sibelius 7). I'm pretty much done with the waltz piece for now (needs a decent title as well).
If some stuff comes up during a mix I will go back to it. I just need to know if this is what they are looking for, if it's good enough for submission.

 

I think you're on the right track and it's a good idea to focus on the composition vs. the technical aspects including the mix, especially if you work in the traditional way with notation.

In my opinion those pieces are good enough for submission on a compositional level, but sound quality could use a boost to be ready for submission overall.

 

Wow, thanks a lot. I really didn't think it was all that good, but a number of people have told me otherwise. I appreciate it. I'm working on modifying it to (A) be about twice it's current length, (B) use a little more of a verse-chorus sort of format, and (C) set up so that the end loops seamlessly into the beginning.

 

Okay, here's an attempt to improve my earlier contribution, "The Clockwork Storm".

It's longer, with what I think to be a slower, more intense buildup to the climax. I also had a lot of fun with drums at the end. (Can you tell I'm a percussionist?)

In addition, I tweaked the ending so that it can loop directly in to the beginning of the song for continuous play.

I haven't really gone and tried to put the song into a more traditional verse-chorus sort of arrangement, though. Partly because I think it kind of defeats the purpose of the song, I want it to feel like a slowly increasing storm.... And also partly because I probably can't do it without being a better musician. *chuckle* I can't read or write music and I don't really understand musical theory, I do everything by feel and really have no idea what I'm doing. I just think it "sounds right", or it "doesn't sound right". (But the great people in The Poets' Circle are teaching me, so with time I'll be able to do some better stuff I think!)

Anyhow, here it is. I hope you like it.

 

Here are a few ideas I've come up with. Everything is just programmed note for note so there's not a lot of dynamics or feel at this point. Just some melodic ideas.

 

Here's another piece that I'm working on. It's less grandiose than The Clockwork Storm, it's called "Tiptoe". I'm not really sure why I named it that. It's designed to be something like traveling music, or maybe the theme for a small village that has lots of little kids running around in it.

In any case, take a listen, let me know what you think.

 

There is so much great work in here guys, I really can't wait to hear this music in Shroud of the Avatar!

 

Tiptoe - nice start has some good potential and the sounds chosen are used effectively
Clockwork - good job on the layering parts but musically could use better modulation as far as the progression.

re: looping song - I would tend to not really think of that as a real concern myself, either the piece works or it doesn't. Looping it is, IMO irrelevant unless the piece ends up being less than a minute or so which I didn't get the impression it was that sort of piece.

 

*grin* I'm far too unschooled in music to even understand what it means when you say "but musically could use better modulation as far as the progression" with regard to Clockwork, but I'll look in to it. I really am just a percussionist. I like what I came up with on Tiptoe, though - With the Portalarium team looking for simpler, non "theatrical" sounding stuff, I figured it might work. Richard Garriott himself is very much against anything that sounds like a movie score.

Random: I have a great set of tubular bells on the way, a set of eight, which I'm looking forward to adding to some of these compositions. Should be fun.

 

I was just referring to how some of the chord changes progress.
Typical music changes ie 4 chord pop music is so standard that if you stick to those main chords you dont need to be concerned with harmonic problems. When you start to make music that goes off that style it becomes more difficult to avoid sounding odd.

 

Where do you get this info? Where can I see a list of what they want and specifically do not want?
That's the kind of info I would have liked last week, before transforming my piece into an orchestral version... argh.