music

[kokoon]

Regarding your track, I can't say for certain. From what it sounds like to me, it seems more of an orchestration problem, then a compositional problem, meaning, you have your main ideas and harmonies, and they work... but you need to figure out how to fill out the sound. Personally I think it lacked a sustained type pad sound, in a lower register. Alot of the stuff in this piece was percussive and short decays. Give that a shot, and see what results you come up with.

that's what i felt immediately too. i guess you'd make the piece work by adding some sustained strings/pad that spectrally fit between the bassline and the lead melody - not necessarily in a lower register (well what exactly is "lower" anyway?) the two sounds just feel unattached the way they are now, you need to "connect" them somehow.

[Guest arsenlives]

"do not use "notes" such as "A" or "B#" do not try to create a "melody" they are corny and lame and for the weak. also never make beats god do they suck. music like that was invented by tyrants."

 

what the hell does this mean? there is no b#. C?

 

"but honestly, if you want to get a general clean sound out of your harmonies, use intervals of 3rds or 5ths. Personally, I hate 7 chords as they tend to make my songs sound more cluttered [or unstable], so I just use basic intervals and triads. But really the only intervals you want to avoid are 2nds and 7ths. In other words, if you're playing keyboard and hit two keys right next to each other, it's probably going to sound bad. Of course they have their place in music, but for basics you want to avoid them [until you learn about b9's and such]."

 

no, dont use trite intervals at all times. this will cause boring music. dont avoid any intervals they are all there for a reason.

 

 

who the hell wrote this, because i certainly did not post this thread.

[Guest arsenlives]

arsenlives sucks, leave watmm forever plz

 

uh your mom sucks, leave the internet forever plz/

[Celatid]

Ill go ever further, and say go take music theory lessons. on the one hand, self teaching goes a long way, but its also possible to misinterpret things, and come to wrong conclusions.

 

im not saying everyone should study music theory, but for those of you interested, I highly recommend it.

 

to me, music will always be a learning experience... I am always reading stuff, experimenting etc. My best advice to people would be to encourage them to love learning.

agreed. I've just taken a music theory class in high school and I hope to continue taking them in college. The interesting thing is that I have not applied much of what I have learned, yet I still think it was worth my time.

 

besides, you're not allowed to voice your opinion because your music sucks

logical fallacy alert

 

I'm going to have to say that its a combination of hard work and raw talent. Hard work can take you a long way, but talent takes you further. I've seen a lot of dedicated, hard working people make mediocre music, and I've seen some lazy people who hardly put any effort, make amazing stuff.

 

It's true, it does bother me when people ignore all the hard work, and say its just talent, but on the other hand, I think you are also selling a person short, if you are basically saying "anyone could have done that, if they tried hard and long enough". I really don't believe that.

I agree completely. I've been making music for about 5-6 years now, if some of you WATMMites heard my music from back then some of you might have told me to give up and stop trying (at that point in time i had already been making music for about 2-3 years). In fact, some of you DID tell me that, and I still am angry about it, I hate people that insult anyone else's music. Go fuck yourselves, you know who you are. A few nice people like Abstractology/Androne and Skytree reassured me and i stayed with it, and I am glad to still be making music.

 

"do not use "notes" such as "A" or "B#" do not try to create a "melody" they are corny and lame and for the weak. also never make beats god do they suck. music like that was invented by tyrants."

 

what the hell does this mean? there is no b#. C?

there is. learn some music theory.

 

also, learn how to identify sarcasm.

 

The need to learn and the inate talent seem to go hand in hand. I wouldn't even be able to copy "shitty manga proprtions", or draw a straight line, or even a consistantly curvey one, or really anything for that matter. Which is why I never had the drive to (at various times in my youth I wanted to draw "cool things" but when the inate talent was obviously lacking I gravitated toward music). It's not an insult at all, and its also not denying the hard work put into it. It's a bit of both.

I can't draw a straight line either, but I could learn if I wanted to. I simply don't want to.

 

if you can't write a chord sequence that fits with a melody, you're not a musician. period. you don't need lessons to do that, i'm sorry.

 

thats a very western-centric view of music.

haha

 

i'm afraid you don't know what music is all about. if you can't write a chord sequence that fits with a melody, you're not a musician. period. you don't need lessons to do that, i'm sorry. of course you can improve your skills and learn techniques but you need a little something to start with, something that is not explained in the books (nor in teh internets). your post sounds like the intro of a composing lessons book for deaf people, it has no point.

When I started out I couldn't even write a melody or a rhythm at all. AT ALL. NOTHING. I would make music and it'd come out sounding like ass. I deleted that stuff in massive quantities because I hated the fact that it was taking up my harddrive space. Earlier in this year I posted a track called "THE HAIR THAT ATE CHICAGO" on here.

wicked. a keeper. sounds like a a mix between bedroom research and audio aubergine. fresh, cool sounds. u got other stuff online?

sorry to self-spam, you asked if I had anything else online. I didn't at the time. I do now have an EP out on Komsomolet Records now (see my sig). Also, I apologize for never reviewing you back... I'll get around to it eventually.

 

ok i'm getting pretty pissed off now, cause i cant ever get a track to sound, full enough! and i believe it has to do with either my fucked up ears, or my shity programming.

 

it seems as though the bass is the only piece of melody that is laid down proper, whilst i try to scrable the other melodies from say, 3 different instruments over each other, but it never ends up sounding good, as in the notes used perhaps are not laid out so that full harmony along side melody is achieved to create a beautiful balance.

 

i thought the problem might lye in the basis that what ever note the bass is, say for example A, one melody wouyld have to be 2 keys(of the key range) below that base-bass, then perhaps the second melody which would overlay the exsisting melody would then be another 2 or more registers higher or lower, to fulfill the balace, but it doesnt seem to work.

 

suggestions?

hah, I'm always having trouble with basslines. I can't listen to your samples right now because sound is broken on my computer and I badly need a reformat because I did some massively stupid things. What I can advise is try some different ways of composing. If you use a tracker, try a piano roll, if you use a piano roll, try a tracker. If you use both, try some sheet music. Try to invent rules / limitations for your melodies, see if it helps. When I make breakcore I tend to create rules, and change the rules slowly over time. Sometimes I'll say "don't make interval jumps bigger than a third" sometimes I'll say "you MUST make interval jumps bigger than a third". Listen to a different style of music than what you normally listen to, it can give you new ideas. The way to progress is to get new ideas and merge them with the old. Recently I started listening to Ice Cube and Phillip Glass and NWA (very different from my regular helping of Venetian Snares), it really helped me get out of a case of musician's block, and has helped me to create basslines also.

[kcinsu]

agreed. I've just taken a music theory class in high school and I hope to continue taking them in college. The interesting thing is that I have not applied much of what I have learned, yet I still think it was worth my time.

 

In reality... you won't apply much of it directly. I've studied all sorts of theory, but I don't use it all. I studied jazz harmony for 4 semesters, and I barely touch that stuff... but it all sort of begins to relate. It's different perspectives on things. Maybe you wont use something, but having learned it, will make you look at other things differently.

 

Also, the more you learn, the more you know what YOU want to do. In the early stages of my theory education... I was just like "omg, follow all the rules" but then I began to realize they arent rules, they are guidelines for preexisting styles. Anything goes... theory just shows you hows its worked in the past... its up to you to use it or not.

 

You cant do something that you doesnt know exists... so you need to keep learning things... then you can decide if you like them or not. I remember when I was studying functional harmony... I just wasnt getting the type of results I wanted... and I remember the first day we started going on nonfunctional theory, it was like the clouds parted... I heard what I had been looking for.... but then you dig deeper, and you realize its still related to functional harmony in certain ways... and it was very good to understand functional harmony, before moving into nonfunctional...

 

I kind of think of it like this: the history of music progressed a certain way... I think its benificial to start from the beggining, and learn it in the order that it developed... so you can understand how and why it did. Start with baroque, move to classical, then romantic, then impressionist and atonal etc all. Often the next step in the evolution is a direct response to the previous step... it helps put things in perspective, and lets you understand whats going on more.

 

 

So yeah... dont not study theory, just because you havent applied much of it yet. I am only now at a point (a year after college) that I feel Ive really found a path that works for me... certain techniques that offer the sound im looking for. Surely this will develop more and more through out my life... but Ive narrowed down the things that I know I DONT want to use.