dannthr

Well the problem is that you're searching for an answer but are bound by the paradox of form. You want something to be "natural" but you don't want it to be "formed." The problem is that the act of composing IS in and of itself forming. That's what this art is. I don't care what choices you make as a composer, I don't need it to even sound "natural" but I do expect that the choices you make be deliberate. That is what artists do, they make deliberate choices and those choices are a manifestation of an expression. If you don't know WHY you're making those choices, that is fine, but the bottom line is that it's your composition, it's your aural sculpture, and it is only so by the fact that you made the choices. I could tell you what to do, but then I would be the one making the choices. If you're not concerned with achieving a specific expression, then it doesn't matter what choice you make and you make the question of what choice is appropriate completely impossible for us. I don't necessarily think that going into camptown races is going to be unnatural, so obviously you have a feeling, however undefined, of how it is supposed to sound if there are choices and directions that are barred or undesirable. Follow your instincts, follow your notions of what sounds "natural" and the composition will be yours, at last. As far as my other posts go, I write commercial music, but my education is in pure art and art as expressive communication (intentional or not)--in my heart, I'm a post-modernist. As far as critiques go, my job is to understand what you're trying to achieve and to guide you in the best way that I can. If you don't know what you want to achieve, then I can't guide you, and I can't make your decisions for you because that's your job. We don't listen to your music because we want to hear Dannthr's influence, we listen to your music because we want to hear YOU. So follow your instincts, don't be afraid to be bold, and trust the choices or directions you set yourself up into--if you must, keep writing through.

No, man, Logic mucked EVERYTHING up--had a buddy convert them through Logic and there is all this MIDI trash everywhere, timings are off and Logic created about 10 or 15 separate MIDI tracks for each individual MIDI track. Just stay away from that shizzy. The only "cool" thing about *.band files is that they contain ALL of your audio takes in aif format, that's great for remixing, but it's still just a giant pool of 100s of takes. You mac people are all kinds of goofy.

It doesn't sound ready to end to me, personally, but you can do whatever you want--there aren't just a "few" options, it's your world, we're just listening to it. My favorite fantasia is R V Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis--you have a lot to work with, you could expand your statement, or restate your statement, you could bring things together or pull them apart. If you want help in moulding your composition, then we're going to have to have more INSIGHT into what you're trying to express as an artist. This open ended BS is not going to help you define your composition and if you can't answer the question "what do you want" then you can't finish your composition--maybe that's the open ended answer you want?

Ministry of Rock is fantastic. It is not a notation program, it is a sampler software/plugin that has all the sounds you need to melt your neighbor's brain.

STAY THE HECK AWAY FROM GARAGEBAND. I've been trying to produce my girlfriend's tracks and it has been a nightmare converting her garageband files to something in the way of STANDARD. The fact that garageband does NOT support MIDI export makes it, in my opinion, freaking radioactive. The first question you need to ask yourself is: What does my wife want to do? Seriously, what exactly does she want to do?

Well, what do you want to say?

According to John Cage, all you need is sound---da, da, da, da, daa---all you need is sound---da, da, da, da, daa! Sing Baa, Baa, Black Sheep to yourself--how long does it have to be, really, is it the composition you're being graded on or the protools work?

Damn, an all nighter for two stereo recordings?

I think Daniel is right, it sounds like you want to have two separate stereo tracks instead of one. Convert the two mono tracks to stereo each.

Do you hear the two recordings playing simultaneously?

What is your question?

Hey Lukas, I haven't yet listened to all your tracks, but I really enjoyed Elizabeth's Pray and I thought that if you haven't had a chance yet, that you might enjoy listening to music written by H. Kikuta for the Seiken Densetsu series of video games. I think that you would enjoy drawing influence from his work, especially in his harmonic complexities/simplifications. One thing I would like you to work on is your mixing/mastering. I think that this is something a lot of us (composers) suffer with, in general, and there's always room for improvement here. For you, I find a lot of your mixes get muddied up. What you need to keep in mind is the term "pockets." You want to find a spatial pocket for all of your instruments to sit, somewhere on your virtual concert stage where all your instruments can co-exist because at the moment they're all stacked on top of one another. You'll also want to find a spectral pocket, or rather a pocket within your frequency bandwidth where each instrument can sit on its own, at least in a small way, so that you don't have too many overtones and cross frequencies muddying up the same bit of spectral space. Keep up the good work, Lukas!

It's not an insult when I say I think you would do well taking risks, on the contrary, it's a compliment to expect you to do well with riskier material. Generally, I assume someone with your skill has been around the workshop block a few times and doesn't need sugar coated critiques--so I can't really see how I've been insulting. The couple of 'slow' pieces in your demo reel ARE boring and I do not doubt they were boring to write--I'm telling you they don't have to be boring, they don't have to be sparse, and they don't have to lack instrumentation, not by a long-shot. Even if your demo reel was only meant to demonstrate a compilation of what you had worked on in the last year, I would still think that you need to work on your craft and hone your skills through exercises in writing ambient but engaging music. Why? Because when you have a better understanding about how to write subtle yet engrossing music, your high-energy work will improve through your enhanced awareness of dynamics and orchestration. But a good artist (composer) must also master the art of learning and enjoy engaging in the challenges of their medium. There's no listening example I can give you to make you want that and it's far outside the realm of a peer-to-peer critique, so I can't really do anything to help you. If I'm mistaken, then tell me I am and I'll sit down and do a full, in-depth review of your demo reel.

One thing I think you'll find really important is having your stereo modeling/placement come before your reverb in your production chain. This is because in a real hall situation, the instruments will sit inside the hall, and their stereo placement will have an effect on the reverb reflections around the hall. This means that instruments on the right side of the hall will have sound waves that travel across the hall and reflect off the left side of the hall as well. The spatial timing of these reverberations is going to make or break how convincing your track is in the virtual world. At the moment, you have, I believe, the reverb called before your stereo panning. Try reversing these on your production chain, I think you'll be pleased with the results. In general, be wary of speakers that add space or colouring to your monitoring. The writing is much more compelling in this version, keep up the good work.

I understand. Every mote of criticism here, however, has been met with resistance. If you don't want to take it, that's fine, but it makes offering advice distasteful for the critic. The softest advice I can offer you, in light of your desires and self-imposed restrictions, is this: Take a look at Nick Phoenix' and Thomas J. Bergerson's website TWO STEPS FROM HELL dot com. The two of them make a handsome living providing high-quality, high-energy licensed music tracks for motion picture advertising. If you pay very close attention to my previous post and to the tracks these two cats create, you'll realize that when I'm talking about diversity, I'm not talking about cross generic diversity. These guys specialize heavily in action/horror/high-tension/energetic music, but within each track, you'll find them expressing a larger, more diverse compositional palette without doing something as silly or over-the-top as comedy. You'll have a hard time, with your narrowness, finding work on soundtracks. However, advertising is meant to be monotone, and so you will hopefully find your niche there. It's competitive, however, but it pays VERY, VERY WELL.