Category: Music Composition

On short notice today.

And at the end of the solo, the strings section and the big brass joins in for the reprise… oh right. I haven’t written that part in yet…

I threw in Adobe Audition to get the final mix because I don’t know how to pitch shift entire tracks in Renoise, and the timbre of the drums are off…

I think I’m at the stage where I should spend a month or two going over stuff I’ve already done and learn to tune the channels and add effects. As it stands, there’s a few loops that I’d actually like to finish but couldn’t within this 2-3 hour time frame I give myself each weekday.

This one is rather simplistic. I really should learn how to fine tune the instruments… the cut off sounds so unnatural.

I think I’ll likely start writing HTML5 code snippets on Tuesday. They’ll not be as as fancy as the stuff from the other days, but it’s one of the many things that I should start practicing on.

I wanted to write a piece as a background music for a Tactical RPG, so I started with a militaristic drum beat and ended with this.

I was going to congratulate myself on a not-totally-crappy bass line when I realized that I’ve just copied from the key segment of Mind Heist (better known as the Inception Trailer Music). Oh well, at least this bit is just a practice piece, so I can get away with it… but I swear, once these unforgettable melodies get stuck in your head, you just unconsciously start writing them back down.

No big revelation in terms of composing better melodies, but I’ve been playing around with a bunch of new instruments… who would have known that there’s actually free orchestral samples (from the Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra) and you don’t have to fork over a bazillion bucks to get the professional ones (I’m sure they sound a bazillion times better, but for my purpose…).

Also, who would have known that jumpy melody is played by a specific violin technique. The more you know.

Oh, also also… I’ve played around with recording a live mix of the three tracks by muting sections on and off on the fly while playing. I’m sure there’s a way to do it properly inside Renoise but I still haven’t found the time to read through the manual yet.

The original goal was to do a generic “I’m dungeon crawling” loop. It has a bit of that, but there’s a grander vibe that might make it better as an overworld music:

Being so limited in my musical knowledge means I have to actually look up a different video just to figure out what notes are actually involved, but once I’ve figured that out, it certainly is easier to write a pleasant tune based on the chord progression:

And I lifted a few bars from Ode to Joy… oh well, I had no time, so I had to lift more materials just to get a start. At the very least, I think I’ll write a few more tunes from these pre-baked chord progressions, just to get a feel of how melodic progression generally feels like.

Learning drum patterns. Always fun, though the end result isn’t necessary listenable. Oh well, here it is anyway:

I was actually looking around Renoise to see if it comes with a string synth that sounds somewhere near the ballpark of Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe, but I ended up finding a chiptune instrument that I want to play with instead:

A very simple melody. I’ve never quite figured out how to spice these basic pieces up a little though.

A bit upset today. That and listening to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xbkovCQMmc“>Circus Galop ad infinitum more or less produced this result:

Again, unfinished. I have a feeling that having some basic knowledge of note scales would save me a lot of grief, instead of fumbling around the keyboard looking for the right note…