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Showing content with the highest reputation on 11/16/2017 in all areas

  1. Here's something a bit different. I've always been a big fan of composing in as many mediums as I can get my hands on, and one medium that I've really been getting into over the last couple years is chiptunes. I've done quite a few that I really like but this one is probably my most well-liked so far on the website I participate in (battleofthebits.org). It's quite classical-leaning in many ways, as opposed to a lot of chiptunes which deliberately seek to sound videogame-y. I called it 'ceilidh' because it was inspired by two ceilidhs that I attended during my first week here in Glasgow. A ceilidh, to put it as simply as possible, is a traditional Scottish gathering with song and dance. To me, the term 'chiptune' is distinct from '8-bit' in that a chiptune is music that could actually be physically played on a specific music chip. To prove it, the .mp3 I have uploaded here is an actual recording that another user took of their own NES, playing the music file I had created. It also means there's not much use me uploading the source file, because it was created in FamiTracker which is not notation software.
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  2. Thanks for the comments! I could see your point, definitely, in that staying in the same/similar harmonic language can be beneficial (I generally work like this). I don't have any particular reason for thinking modally in one moment, and more conventionally in another -- it turned out that way and I like how it worked :P
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  3. I'm not a professional but I think that this piece requires professional players for two reasons: 1. At some places you didn't give the players enough breakes, which means they don't have time to breath. For example, try singing the oboe's role from bar 62. You'll probably run out of air somewhere in the middle. Professional players can do this cycle breathing thing, but I don't think everyone can simply do that. 2. Remember that with the basson higher notes are louder. At some places you required a very loud low note or a very soft high one. I believe it is possible, but like crec. on a downbow, it's against what happens naturaly. Don't get me wrong- I do like the piece. I just think you should fix these things.
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  4. I like it :) would like to hear more of that.
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  5. @Rabbival507 Doing it yourself through work is really the best way. And I mean doing it over and over, and over, for years. You don't necessarily need to share everything you write, it's just for your own benefit. I took part in an online weekly one-hour composition event for a few years, and it was a great opportunity to experiment because if something didn't work, you only spent an hour on it so no matter! When I first started writing music (10 years ago I think) I wrote quite pop-music kind of chord progressions. Although I improved very gradually over the years to become more and more interesting, there were two pieces of music in particular that were major influences on my style and my harmonic language, which might or might not be of help. The first of these was Janacek's opera 'The Cunning Little Vixen'. You can find the full opera here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQhLyG3_HnQ (skip to any random point and you'll find beautiful music) but you can also find a cut-down orchestral suite at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a79nSbmy69U which will give you a very good idea of the overall musical language. I played this opera while in my city's youth orchestra, so I got a lot of opportunity to hear the music in action and think about how it worked. The second was 'Loops II" by Philippe Hurel, a piece I learned for my final undergraduate recital for my bachelor's. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8WtE7uI8a8 is an ok recording. You probably need the score to fully appreciate it, but it really expanded my definition of 'consonance' and I find myself using ideas from it all the time in my music now (like in my 'Tarantella' guitar duet I posted recently). As to how I wrote these progressions, it was mostly instinctive, so I'm not sure how much I can explain. Bar 87 is a particularly good example of this - while writing I just 'knew' that it had to go to an F# chord. Probably on analysis I might be able to find a specific reason. I'm not saying that F# was the only chord it could go to or that it was even the best chord, but my mind was positively crying out for it to be an F# chord and it just couldn't be anything else at the time. It just flowed naturally in my mind as I was writing it and I didn't have to think about it at all. That's often how I write - through instinct (and also through playing around with music in my head while walking anywhere). Instinct can only come through practice. Keep writing, do silly stuff just for the sake of it and then look back on it afterwards and see if you can figure out what worked and what didn't work, and why.
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