reaktr

These are 3 simple little songs for piano I composed as a part of a challenge. The goal was to make one composition per day. I chose those 3 because I haven't continued them yet and I ran out of ideas. Suggestions and comments are welcome, obviously.

I'll just share my opinion. The title theme has a lovely ambience. It makes me thing of something spiritual. The main theme isn't very strong (in the sense "easily distinguishable") but obviously I don't know the game and it's a very interesting take on the first song you hear when playing it! Going On An Adventure kind of reinforces the main theme in some passages. It's very energetic and uplifting as well. Kind of repetitive by moments but it keeps well the mood. I really like the arpeggios. The Cave makes me think of something heavy weighting above. The tenor(?) line becomes a tiny bit long after a moment. I like the change around 2:00 in the piano. I really like what happens after 1:50 in Dense Forest with the bass pedal and wind improvisations. Pentatonic arpeggios on the violins really add a lot to the general ambience. Memories takes long to develop but once it does it's really nice. 2:00 in Wonder sounds interesting, the long build up pays off. The ambiences are as always lovely. 5:15 I love how it becomes more defined, nice focal point for the entire composition. I'll stop here as I gotta go. I'll add the rest later. Overall it's a very nice soundtrack. The ambient feel goes very well with the nature of the game and each song goes well with its title. One thing I noticed is that themes or "leitmotivs" aren't very present, but it's maybe because I need to listen more closely, and of course this kind of approach is not a must for a soundtrack. Other than that, the piano has a whole lot of reverb, in solo passages it sometimes drowns the sound, but in the end it's also a matter of taste. Some orchestral passages feel small compared to the huge (as in stereo width) and full ambient sound. But it's just my opinion and tbh I struggle with that as well. Congrats on finishing a whole soundtrack. It's a shame the game won't be released!

Glad you liked it! I wasn't sure if you were using a DAW or not so sorry if it was completely misplaced. I was making electronic music for a long time, it was mainly about creating new sounds etc so I learned a few tricks like that along the way. But I don't have any idea about the topic I could make videos on, and I'm not sure if members of this forum would really be interested in that. And there's already plenty of tutorials on the internet for anything. But if there's a demand then why not. Merci, my pleasure :D

I really like the first theme and the waltz like passage. I was a bit surprised after measure 8, where the melody isn’t as lyrical as before. Anyway I’d like to hear more, I feel like it could be longer and still keep its impact.

Often I hear a sound and know what it is, to around a tone, but it's not perfect pitch. I have difficulty in following many melodic lines at the same time because I tend to always concentrate on details, but I try to develop my relative pitch a lot by playing what I hear and imagining what rapports of chords were used in a song etc.

@Gustav Johnson I recorded a video to show how I make these kinds of sounds, since it would be really hard to write about it. Sorry for my horrible accent but hopefully you can understand what I say ^^. Like I said, the result can be very similiar but you get more tools to control the sound and experiment. The process is also much easier with a DAW.

I would most likely sign up unless the subject will be writing 6 part fugues or something extremely complicated and completely out of my reach.

In the end the result is similiar to yours, it's just easier to do since you can play the stretched sounds directly. You also get more control over the volume enveloppe, filtering and such. I used it in the composition in the linked thread, mostly in the beginning. A more extreme example with nearly only stretched/sampled sounds besides the evident piano etc would be this n5 Shadowed Memory 1.mp3 https://www.youngcomposers.com/t35476/forest-rain/

I thought I was a part of a niche to know about it haha. I use a standalone version and think it’s awesome to create crazy soundscapes. One way I love to use it is by taking a sample, for example a single note marimba hit, stretching it and resampling it in a synth like iris. It can create very nice textures if you’re into electronic/electro acoustic music.

That’s really cool. The accordion is smoothly integrated and I find it great to use it a bit like a sax i.e. for melodic lines. It's very jazzy, in this way it reminds me a bit of Yuji Ohno & Friends for some reason and I love this band.

@Luis Hernández Yes I wanted for it to be more minimal but it got boring fast, hence the cinematic buildups. Even then I seriously thought about giving up and moving on but I'll give it another chance, after a while. Thanks for the comment! @Monarcheon Thanks for your input and I'm glad you enjoyed it! It started as an extremely repetitive piano composition and I constantly tried to make it more varied, but the more I worked on it the more it started to get on my nerves and I've had enough. Anyway it's really great to have an external opinion and to read that it's not annoying as I imagined it to be. I'll definitely take your tips in consideration when I get back to working on it. @ilv It is repetitive, it's true that the rhythm doesn't change at all. I think I'll add something to vary it. I still have to sort out percussion so I'll try playing with that. Or maybe other instruments etc.

These are all a 4th apart. It could be a II sus4 and VI sus4 chord. But if it's not classical harmony then I don't think that it's really useful to analyse it this way. And it's hard to identify a degree without any context but maybe other members of this forum could help you more.

So I made this a while back when I was fascinated by anything made by Glass. It's still a work in progress, possibly was. I wanted to create something based around one recurring motive, kind of SNES soundtrack meets minimalism meets Hans Zimmer and while in my head it sounded ok in reality I find it annoying. It just seems too much "in your face" and it lacks development. Anyways I'd appreciate any feedback (I don't mind negative comments) or ideas. Forest Rain.mp3

I like it overall. It's a tiny bit monotone even though the synths add a lot of movement. Some arps made me think of the portal 2 soundtrack. It isn't really close to the original but I saw that it wasn't necessary. I could picture it as a series intro for sure.

First of all, this is wonderfully engineered. The samples, mixing, everything is on point. It never feels too crowded. On the composition side I think that I can’t add a lot to what was said before. I personally would associate it more with some « dark », maybe deranging stuff (possibly because of that guitar). It wouldn’t make me think of dark matter if you hadn’t mentioned it, but it’s such an abstract and new idea that nothing would probably make me think of it. From a soundtrack point of view : depending of the what the scene conveys, if a feel of growing danger/tension matters most etc then it could be action music as well (I’m thinking about a few scenes in 28 weeks later or inception). I like it a lot, it’s a joy to listen to and there are moments after the initial buildup that really speak to me. Great work!