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Castle Paradox
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Calehay
...yeah.
Class B Minstrel
Joined: 07 Jul 2004
Posts: 549
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 Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 10:54 am Post subject: |
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| J.A.R.S. wrote: | Moogle1 makes me realize how much of a frustrated musician I just sounded like  In comparison to my message, heis being very encouraging, which I seem to have forgotten to be. I had forgotten you don't know me, I'm a big critic, and if all I found to say was that your bassline was underdevelopped, I also meant that the instrumentalisation was very interesting too  Thought I'd point it out before my comments discouraged you (although I'm not sure you'd be that time, but just so i don't look like a complete asshole either haha)
It's good music |
Believe me, your comments are much better than others that I have seen on other music related forums. Though I don't particularly agree with you on the idea of a "growl from a bass," you actually explained what you think could have been better, and why it would be better. That's two up from a lot of people, and one up from most people.
Battle Against the Demon King:
At 1:03, have you considered giving the lines to different instruments? It's just like the first time, and it might add a little variety if you spice it up a little. I'm mostly thinking about the arpeggios that the piano is doing. I think it would be surprising if it was in something else, considering that, even though a trumpet is doing to the solo, it seems a bit more dolce than the previous time.
1:23-1:33:
I don't think this works too well. Particularly, the long held note in the melody. Since everything else was moving so much, just holding a long note with a hi-hat in the background sounds really awkward, and really ruins the flow right there. I think the idea of dropping lines could work there, but you shouldn't just stop the melodic idea from moving as well.
Boss Theme:
The idea from the first melody that is used is interesting. If I'm hearing it correctly, it moves:
Dotted half tied to an eighth, eighth/Dotted halft tied to an eighth, eighth/ Dotted half tied to an eighth, two sixteenths/Dotted half tied to eighth, eighth.
Have you though about added more motion on the last measure of that theme? Since you introduced the eighth notes, it seems like you could introduce a little more motion in that last measure, maybe on the half note, or even think about triplets instead of the quarter to shadow the accompaniment? It's just something to think about.
0:44, I think the ostinato works very well there.
0:55, I think the melody is scored a little weakly there. I think it might be a bit too close to the trilling strings.
1:36 to the end seems to be a bit meandering. It feels like you're not quite sure how to get back to the beginning. I suggest that you take a look at the material from before and see how you can fit it into the looping segment.
The False Angel:
Maybe instead of just repeating the previous measures, why not do a little variation. Of course, the entire idea isn't repeated, but a little variation will really perk the ear.
Eternal Silence:
I think that the counterpoint near the end could be brought out by choosing something with a different timbre than the instrument holding the melody.
I think your arrival at the final cadence is a little clumsy. I'm not quite sure what you are trying to accomplish in the end, so I'm not sure if I could suggest anything. Since I'm talking about that, I think that the key change at 0:38 isn't very prepared. Sometimes, it's a good thing, but I think that you could possibly even spend a little time in the key you're going to, and that would lead the ear better. The particular thing here is that the pivot chord is the V of the original key, which is very odd. Usually, in a figure like this, there's a V of the new key, but there's other ways to do it. Right now, it just feels like, "Here's the new key!" and while it's a surprise, I don't think it's a good surprise.
Blasphemy:
Again, I think the counterpoint in the middle section could be brought out a little. It's really interesting, and keeps this piece from falling into the monotony that it could.
At 1:37, when the melody performs the same rhythm and melody again, I think that it might be a good idea for you to look at it and see if you don't find it a little monotonous, since the earlier part of the melody was different continously, I think it might be a little late to do something that repeats exactly the same way. Others might disagree, but I think even just a little rhythmic adjustment the second time would make that part not stand out and flow better.
I think making the last reprise of the theme from before different in some way would benefit the composition a bit, even if it was something as small as changing the instruments or changing the octave.
Oppression:
At 0:09, it might a good idea to let the string line come out more. It's a little unclear what is supposed to be a melody in this section, which is generally true of music like this, but in a situation like this, change is what really attracts the ear, and its not prominent enough, at least to me.
I'm tempted to say that from 0:18-0:32, there isn't enough harmonic interest, but I think it's really because nothing is really happening in those bars. I think introducing an idea there...
And I'm just noticing there is a melodic idea that is not coming out. The register that you put the melody doesn't allow it to be distinguished from the other guitar, so its all muffled.
Fierce Beast:
There's a thing that the composition professor here pointed out, the idea of the rule of three applying to music. The idea is that if you hear the same thing for the third time in a row, it gets monotonous. I think you narrowly avoid it here since on the third time you state the melody, you raise it a step, but it's very close to touching the line of monotony. I think you could keep it, but if you weren't a smidgen satisfied with it, I think you might try to find another solution.
Hollow Theme:
This is rather a personal taste, but I think it would be interesting if you considered changing the pizz. chord into a harp chord when the texture changes. It just feels to me that the pizz. chord is a bit too heavy for the idea of lightening the texture that it seem to be trying to accomplish in those bars.
To me, it feels like the entire thing is a little fast for the mood that you are going for.
I enjoy the returning idea of the music box doing a round type idea with that theme. It works really well.
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All in all, I think these will work very well in your game. You do a lot of nice things in your work. Remember that all of the things I said are merely observations that I think you should think about. I try to listen to music as objectively as I can; trying not to put as little personal ideas behind it as I can unless I precede it with such.
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Calehay |
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J.A.R.S.
In umbram deo, ex nihilo...
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 451
Location: Under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 4:52 pm Post subject: |
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That's a bit theorical in my opinion though. And by groovy bass, I used a wrong word obviously. Something subtle that could punch with the rythm of drums and strings is obviously critical (note that i said strings but refered to any instrumentalisation, such as trumpets and electric guitars)
But ya, you seem pretty much into that theory so I'll let you do it  |
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Rimudora
Psychopath yandere
Halloween 2006 Creativity Winner
Joined: 26 May 2005
Posts: 335
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| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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I'm not dead, okay? I didn't get scared away by Calehay's wall of criticism either. (A belated 'Thank you very much' to everyone for the comments, by the way.) I'm just... unproductive. :(
So here are some new songs. "Some" as in, like, two. They're not the fast-paced action-y songs that people like either. They're boring. :(
http://www.castleparadox.com/songlist-display.php?song=280
The final battle theme. Like the description says, don't expect something upbeat. It's kind of a depressing battle, where everything's already been wrecked and it's kind of ambiguous whether or not defeating the final boss would make anything better. Everything up to where it loops sounds the way I want it to, but I'm not too pleased with where it leads up to the looping. I'll probably edit it when I think of something better. :(
http://www.castleparadox.com/songlist-display.php?song=281
The final boss's character theme. If you listen to it out of context, it sounds like he's one of those emo "bishounen with a painful past" types, but he's not, okay? For the most part, the final boss is a character that only makes an appearance when other people are in despair, when he shows up to make fun of them and stuff. Something like that. I was originally going to write a boss theme with this song's opening, but I started with a 4/4 time using triplets and didn't notice until later that (1) I'd be better off using 3/4 time because (2) triplets are a pain to use in Anvil Studio, so I decided to write something short instead. I'm not sure how well this song loops, but Anvil Studio makes it a pain to copy and paste long segments of music. So go blame them! Go! :(
By the way, I tagged all the songs with "NoES", but it's not like I'm ever going to get down to making the game anyways, so consider everything I release here to be public.. public... um, feel free to steal any of the songs if you want. :(
See you next year~
EDIT: Public domain. That's the word I was trying to think of. |
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J.A.R.S.
In umbram deo, ex nihilo...
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 451
Location: Under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 11:12 am Post subject: |
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Hey,
well the first one sounds rather depressing, gave me a headache to be honest. This *could* be a good effect to create in case what you wanted is to annoy and taunt the player in the battle (for some reason, makes the boss appear tougher if the battle was long, if the battle was short however, well, i don't see a final boss battle being short anyway).
The second one has a little drive to it, once again, lacks a little of the bass I was refering to MUCH earlier (lol) but i've seen more rythmics in it. I really liked how you kept it short, and although I did find out when the loop happened without looking, it didn't feel unnatural. Besides, will this song ever really LOOP? If the boss only makes short appearances, and his last is quickly replaced by the final battle song, i doubt you'd ever loop that song (this is something I figured about hero themes, make them decent size and then just make a finale, it doesn't matter unless someone just takes forever to read your textboxes).
On a sidenote, I'll point out that the 2nd song seemed more like a level song than a theme song for a character somehow, and would it be somehow longer, I wouldn't mind having that song for a last boss song either (it actually has more rythmic than the first).
Food for thought I assume.
Keep up the good (slow) work (don't worry, i've been highly unproductive myself the last 6 months lol, so its no insult)
EDIT: The 2nd song with a lil more bass would really cut it in my book. You're really going somewhere with that |
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Rimudora
Psychopath yandere
Halloween 2006 Creativity Winner
Joined: 26 May 2005
Posts: 335
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| Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 5:38 am Post subject: |
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I'm still not sure I get what a bassline is yet, but I'll try to bring it out a bit more like you suggested.
Here's something more uplifting, after the depressing mess that is 'Forge the New Truth'.
http://www.castleparadox.com/songlist-display.php?song=285
Played for two important boss fights. It's supposed to have a "final boss" sort of feel, but I can't really see it as anything more than a "major boss" type of song. I had some of the themes in my head for a few months now but couldn't think of how to put them together. And then I had a dream where I heard almost the entire song in its entirety, and here it is now. The version in the dream also had a really cool opening splash that I forgot when I woke up though. :(
It doesn't loop too well, sadly. I was basically just winging it and hoping the two ends would match up, but the ending ends up being a step higher than where I want it to loop to. Oh well. :( |
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J.A.R.S.
In umbram deo, ex nihilo...
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 451
Location: Under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 6:28 am Post subject: |
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starts out slow, I wasn't too sure,
the melody doesn't feel too 'mean' in itself, but some parts are definately boss-related. If you want it for major bosses, it becomes quite important to repeat the melody as little as possible and make sure its not irritating to the player because its assuming the song will loop a lot. (then again, you'd have to polish the loop for the same reason)
Also the part at 1:46 is a ripoff from Lufia 1's song for destiny calls just a pointer.
The part at 2:20 gets better imo, and that's where the song really feels more on theme.
You have a lot of different parts in that song and they might lack a little cohesion, be careful with packing too many things into one song. You always have the excuse of the genre (progressive instrumental theme) but eventually it makes the player feel out of place from my personal experience.
Otherwise, I think there is considerable emphasize on the bassline here. (never enough to my taste, but that is another story).
Overally very good once again, but there are a couple parts (the intro) I'd toss out of the song to keep it consistant AND better sounding. |
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Rimudora
Psychopath yandere
Halloween 2006 Creativity Winner
Joined: 26 May 2005
Posts: 335
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| Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2008 6:46 pm Post subject: |
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Yeeeah, I didn't do so good a job with that last song. =_= I think I was listening it on my laptop speakers, so I got the idea that I could drown out all the bad stuff by throwing in as many parts as I could. That did kind of work on the speakers, and then I listened to it through a pair of earphones and could clearly hear all the bad parts that didn't fit in. Anyways, it sounded a lot better in my head and I'll do a better job of arranging it next time. (And yeah, that slow intro's going to go)
I listen to a lot of video game soundtracks (and learned most of my stuff from them), so I wouldn't surprised if I did rip something from a game by accident. Thanks for pointing it out.
In the meantime, I tried to compose something simpler.
http://www.castleparadox.com/songlist-display.php?song=308
For the first half of the song I was just planning on giving it a somewhat slow-paced and mysterious feel, like when you're going into tomb to fight a giant mummy. Everything after the first minute is actually a sudden arrangement that popped into my head while I was on my way back from lunch, but I think it has a nice overbearing atmosphere.
It doesn't sound as Dragon Questy as I want, though that'll probably never happen with the way midi strings sound. |
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Bob the Hamster
OHRRPGCE Developer
Joined: 22 Feb 2003
Posts: 2526
Location: Hamster Republic (Southern California Enclave)
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| Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 8:31 am Post subject: |
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| I love it! |
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Rimudora
Psychopath yandere
Halloween 2006 Creativity Winner
Joined: 26 May 2005
Posts: 335
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| Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 10:08 pm Post subject: |
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Here's a normal battle song for once.
http://www.castleparadox.com/songlist-display.php?song=313
I wanted to do an optimistic song with a "Nothing can stop you!" feel to it, and I think it came out really well. It has a good deal of that Dragon Questiness I was trying to go for as well. I'm starting to really like the combination of Clarinet and String Ensemble 1. My original gripe was that String Ensemble was usually so light that it gets drowned out by the other instruments, and when I try to make it louder by adding an identical track, the interference between the tracks makes it sound even worse. Anyways, I got around that by panning the two tracks in opposite directions, and not only does doing that solve the problem, it also gives the instrument a nice "surrounding" sound.
My only peeve would be that it's a bit short, especially since it's something I want to use for a couple of important battles as well. I kind of panicked when I realized that the first phrase (the first 30 seconds or so) didn't loop into itself as well as I had thought it would, so I spent the rest of the song trying to get it to loop back to the beginning, and it turned out I only needed about thirty more seconds. :(
EDIT: ..and for some reason Quicktimes makes it sound like shit. Does the OHR make all midi sound the same between different laptops, or is this going to be BAM all over again? D: |
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Bob the Hamster
OHRRPGCE Developer
Joined: 22 Feb 2003
Posts: 2526
Location: Hamster Republic (Southern California Enclave)
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:14 am Post subject: |
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| Rimudora wrote: | | EDIT: ..and for some reason Quicktimes makes it sound like shit. Does the OHR make all midi sound the same between different laptops, or is this going to be BAM all over again? D: |
The MIDI format can absolutely NOT be trusted to sound the same everywhere. I would say that QuickTime's midi implementation is fairly crappy, and the average player will get something slightly better from their system's MIDI synth, but the specific sound will vary depending on sound card driver, operating system version, and phase of the moon.
You have two options for making your songs sound the same everywhere.
You can convert to mp3/ogg. This is probably easiest, but it means your filesize will be a lot bigger.
You can convert to any format in the MOD family (S3M, IT, XM). This will only be easy to do if your preferred composition tools have the option to export to one of these formats, but the file size increase over MIDI will not be nearly so bad as with MP3/OGG |
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Rimudora
Psychopath yandere
Halloween 2006 Creativity Winner
Joined: 26 May 2005
Posts: 335
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.castleparadox.com/songlist-display.php?song=313
Well, I managed to get 60 seconds of how the midi sounds on my laptop (download the mp3), though I need to find a program that can record more than 60 seconds of a song without charging me. :<
I'm looking into exporting my midis into a MOD format. Anvil Studio doesn't have that option, and the instruments sound bad when I tried to import it into modplug tracker. Are there any converters that can make it sound the same way it does on your system. D:
Last edited by Rimudora on Thu Sep 04, 2008 1:51 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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TwinHamster
♫ Furious souls, burn eternally! ♫
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Bob the Hamster
OHRRPGCE Developer
Joined: 22 Feb 2003
Posts: 2526
Location: Hamster Republic (Southern California Enclave)
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 2:08 pm Post subject: |
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Hmmm... I'll bet you a dollar that website is a front-end wrapper around Timidity++, which is the same MIDI backend that the Linux version of the OHR uses. Converting using "Set 3" (Freepats) will produce output identical to what a Linux user would hear if they listened to your MIDI in an OHR game. |
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Bob the Hamster
OHRRPGCE Developer
Joined: 22 Feb 2003
Posts: 2526
Location: Hamster Republic (Southern California Enclave)
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 2:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Rimudora wrote: | http://www.castleparadox.com/songlist-display.php?song=313
Well, I managed to get 60 seconds of how the midi sounds on my laptop (download the mp3), though I need to find a program that can record more than 60 seconds of a song without charging me. :<
I'm looking into exporting my midis into a MOD format. Anvil Studio doesn't have that option, and the instruments sound bad when I tried to import it into modplug tracker. Are there any converters that can make it sound the same way it does on your system. D: |
If Anvil studio can't export in any of MOD/XM/IT/S3M, then you are best off going with MP3/OGG.
What you probably want is audio loopback recording. If you're lucky, your soundcard driver will have an option to send output to the microphone or line-in automatically, but if not, you might need to buy a patch cable and connect your physical speaker output to your line-in input and then just play with Anvil Studio while you record with Audacity |
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Rimudora
Psychopath yandere
Halloween 2006 Creativity Winner
Joined: 26 May 2005
Posts: 335
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| Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 2:46 pm Post subject: |
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| James Paige wrote: | If Anvil studio can't export in any of MOD/XM/IT/S3M, then you are best off going with MP3/OGG.
What you probably want is audio loopback recording. If you're lucky, your soundcard driver will have an option to send output to the microphone or line-in automatically, but if not, you might need to buy a patch cable and connect your physical speaker output to your line-in input and then just play with Anvil Studio while you record with Audacity |
Ah, that actually works really well! I'll probably end up importing the rest of the songs as mp3s then. :D |
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