relinquished

That's a really big question... One of the biggest problems I have is writing down the chords that I can hear in my head. I have a basic to good understanding of chords (maj, min, aug, dim, secondary dominants, and sevenths), but I would like to take my knowledge farther so I can incorporate more into my music. In classical (or modern orchestral, film music, etc.) you hear amazing chords and progressions that have some dissonance to them, but almost in a pleasant way, or sometimes they even sound horrifying. I can write great sounding melodies, and I can hear the background parts in my head but I can never get them down. I guess what I'm asking is, how do you write harmony that supports the melody, and how do you go about doing it (ie. write the chords first, then find a melody that works, vice-versa, etc.)? Hopefully that isn't too vague, let me know if you need more clarification. :)

Just so you know, I changed where that link to Satiric Dances points to. There's a better recording of it that CB's Senior Band (my high school's band) did at the Music Fest nationals. We're not perfect, but it's better than the YouTube one :P.

Yah, I'm sorry about the recording quality. I just looked for the best one I could find on YouTube. I would have uploaded a decent recording myself, but that's technically illegal :P. Lowering the strings makes sense. I'll listen to it again tomorrow (I would now, but I don't know where my headphones are and my siblings are sleeping) with that in mind and see what I think. I've always been a big fan of either atonal or, as your piece's name states: "wrong note consonance", lately I've been trying to write some stuff in that style, and it's a lot harder than it seems like it would be. Good job again!

Thank you for taking the time to look at it, and I understand about the video, I wasn't expecting everyone to watch it anyways, it was just in case people wanted to see what the music is being written for. The sudden mood shift (if I'm thinking of the right spot) is when the video game geek and the "enemy" are being introduced, for both I just needed something a bit faster paced, and something recognizable for the video game guy. That's really nice to hear (the talent and potential thing), thanks again! And I'll be sure to keep composing, I'm going to Uni. for it next year (assuming I can get in >.>). I'm glad to know it sounds original, I was a bit worried about the eerie bit in the opening sounding too cliche, I tried my best to avoid that. As for how it doesn't stay eerie, the piece really needs a better name. I've always had a hard time coming up with decent ones, "Eerie Remarks" (as I've said before) just comes from how in the opening of the video, the narrator is making "eerie remarks". I suppose I could just call the piece "Cougar League intro music", but that sounds unoriginal and rather uninteresting. You're the first person that has told me they like the use of the chimes (and by the way, the sample is just Finale 2008's "Chimes", from softsynth (that is what it's called, right?)). Most of my friends that I've shown this to think I've overused the chimes in it, and that they make the piece feel too "happy". I used them specifically because I thought they gave the piece a haunting/chaotic feel. I'm glad to know someone else likes them! And thank you to both of you for the feedback :).

Well, in the video I'm Clark (I don't even like that name, the people in my group forced me to have it though, but it was a trade-off for getting to write the music which is definitely worth it), my actual name is Jordan :P. I assumed you meant something like that when you mentioned the tempo changes, thank you for clarifying though. I'll try playing around with dynamics and entrances, maybe even very slight tuning things every now and then at the start of some notes, that might be pushing it a bit though... I'll see how it turns out. I've shown my music teacher a few things, but I don't think we'd ever get to play something I wrote, he seems really determined to play only famous stuff that everyone (or at least the majority of people) would know. Oh well though, I'm going to Uni. for music next year, maybe I'll get to hear some of my new stuff sometime during that. It definitely does help, and I'm going to get to work on that right away, thanks!

Don't worry about it, I'm just glad to get some feedback :). Thanks for the suggestion about the tempo changes, I'll try to work some little ones into it to get a more realistic feel, it might be a bit difficult though just because of the fact that the music is synced to the video, but I'll give it my best shot! About the live orchestra, I really doubt it. I'm only 17, and at my school we only have a concert band (with two string basses though, so I guess one of them could play the cello part...). Would it make for a decent live performance though? There are only 16 instruments, and each one only has 1 part. I asked my band if they wanted to record it, but of course, none of them are up to it :(, it's so hard to find people near me who are as into music as I am :P. Thanks again for the feedback though! I'll be sure to post the final version of it when I'm done. :)

Hello, There's something that's been bugging me a little bit in Finale 2008. I can't get the percussion sounds (from GPO) to sound decent, especially the timpani (for example, the rolls in Eerie Remarks in bars 21, 40, 41, and 70 - just to mention some spots). I've heard quite a few pieces that other people have written in Finale, and the percussion parts always sound amazing. Am I missing something that you have to tell the program, or possibly set up in ambiance reverb thing? Or do people normally use a different sample library for percussion instruments? This is just kind of bugging me because all of the instruments sound great except for the percussion, and I'm writing a piece with quite a few percussion parts right now, so it would be nice if they sounded at least decent. The biggest one would be GPO's timpani, whenever I give it rolls, or even just louder sections, it doesn't have anywhere near the effect that I've heard some people get from it in their pieces. It could be that I'm just not writing rolls properly, they're notated with three slashes across the stem of the note, right? Anyways, any suggestions that you could offer (different settings for the ambiance reverb perhaps, or even just a different sample library I could use?) would be really helpful, thanks!

I will have to say, this piece actually really reminds me of "Satiric Dances - for a Comedy by Aristophanes" by Norman Dello Joio, (click on gallery at the top, then satiric dances) which is one of my favourite pieces, so that's a good thing :P. I like your almost innovative ("almost" because it's not completely new) style of music, I find that it's a good thing that some people are pushing away from the norm. One thing I did find though, and it could be just because of whatever you're using for the instruments (GPO, you said), was that the strings almost sounded a little watered out, if you know what I mean. Either than that, great job, this was awesome to listen to! :)

(oh, thanks, I'll fix that) Thanks! I'm glad to know my compositions are getting somewhere. About the mood change that doesn't really fit the title, I just need to find a better name for the song. The mood change does suite the video though. The reason it's called "Eerie Remarks" is just because for the opening of the video and music, there's someone talking making eerie remarks about things, it wasn't really intended to reflect the mood of the music. It was just the first name that popped into my head :P. And thanks again!

Not to be impatient, but does anybody have any suggestions at all? I would really like to improve as a composer :)

Hello everyone, This is the first piece that I have ever written for a video, and I would like to know what you all think. The video (I'll put the link to the download at the bottom, about 60mb) is a project for one of my classes at school, and my group has put me in charge of writing a score for it. It's not entirely done yet (there's going to be another 3 minutes or so describing stuff, it's basically a really long ad for the series), so excuse some of the things that are missing (like the blue background with red text). Anyway, on to the music. It's all 100% original by me, except from 1:16 until 1:24 (ish), where I took the theme from Fire Emblem on the Nintendo GBA. If you watch the video, you'll see that I used that theme because the character being introduced at that point really needed recognizable video game music. I promise that everything else is original :P. Also, I realize the ensemble is rather small (and almost odd), and there's only one part for each instrument. I wrote it with my band's instrumentation in mind, and that's what we have on the best day, so any comments you have about instrumentation, I can't really fix/change, sorry :P. Let me know what you think about the piece, and any suggestions (besides instrumentation) you have would be greatly appreciated :). Video Link (55.64 MB): Episode 1 Draft - March 17th.avi Music (3.21 MB): Eerie Remarks - Full.mp3 (Also, if this is in the wrong forum, please move it, I didn't know if it should have been in the orchestral/large ensemble one or this) Eerie Remarks - Full.pdf

I have Quicktime, but not Quicktime pro. so I don't think that that's the problem, thanks though :). I managed to write music to the video just having it open in Windows Media Player while writing down all the important timings, it was a bit tedious, but it worked well :).

Oh, that's kind of irritating. Thanks for the info though :), I'll check the support forums now.

Hello, I'm having a problem with finale 2008's video window. Whenever I try to open it (Window -> Movie Window) it won't show up. Finale's main window gets deselected, so it seems as if it's focusing on the movie window, but it doesn't appear anywhere. Has anyone else had this problem? Could it just be that I'm running Vista? If anyone could offer any help that'd be great :).

That worked perfectly, thanks! :)