normantran

Like someone else suggested, a good gauge of progress could be the difference in quality between your current works and older works. For example, I started teaching myself piano 4 years ago. Back then when I first dabbled with composing, I could only come up with overused pop chords and my songs were terribly unoriginal. Since then, however, I have gotten more exposure to different genres (notably film and game music) and now I write music that has much more interesting chord progressions than before. I remember when I first started: I wondered how could I ever compose? How do people even hear chords? I guess it just takes time and practice!

For me it would have to be listening to my favorite songs and understanding why I like them. I try to analyze all the orchestration / harmony / melody and add those elements into my "toolbox" so to speak. Whenever I want to recreate a similar atmosphere, I would borrow these things. Of course, people will wonder what originality will I have. For me, that is not important yet because I first want to imitate those I look up to. As I get better at orchestrating and coming up with my own ideas, that's when I'll start developing my own musical identity.

I listen to mostly Japanese composers so here's the list: Joe Hisaishi: He comes with incredibly memorable themes. Every theme sounds so different, it's hard to imagine how they could all come from the same person. Shiro Sagisu: I love his distinctly chromatic and dark style. Nobuo Uematsu: Like Hisaishi, he comes up with wonderful themes that are beloved in the Japanese video game world (Final Fantasy).

Phil, I guess our definitions of "Eastern" are different. I'm speaking in a broader but not so literal sense. I'm not talking about songs involving strictly the pentatonic and 4th harmonization. It's hard for me to describe because of my rather limited music vocabulary but a lot of the "Eastern" -- or more specifically Japanese -- songs that I listen to have have a profusion of chromatic harmony and chord progressions that employ rapid alterations between major/minor chords that I find pleasant. Of course, I do enjoy the really oriental songs that heavily employ the pentatonic scales and 4th harmonization but most of the ones I listen to do not have that.

Wow am I really the only person who listens to primarily Japanese composers? Joe Hisaishi, Nobuo Uematsu, Taku Iwasaki, Taro Iwashrio, Yoko Kanno, Shiro Sagisu... These are the big influences on my music.I grew up listening to my parents' Chinese folk songs and have been in love with the oriental ever since. I just really like the chords and chord progressions that a lot of these Japanese composers use. It's a very different sound from what's in Western music (not saying either is better -- just that they're different). I do like Western composers as well such as the usual: Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, James Horner, John Williams. I do like classical music but I usually gravitate towards modern film/video game music more. I really enjoy Ravel, Chopin, Vivaldi, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff. Overall I think it's nice to have exposure to both Eastern and Western music because you discover new ways to improve your composition that you haven't thought of before -- but that's just me.

I always have music in my head but 90% of the time it's another composer's. The 10% that the music is my own, it's almost 80% generic garbage. All of my stuff that I consider good comes through experimenting on the piano. Under the right circumstances (I have yet to discover), my voice starts playing really good stuff and I just play along. I have really good relative pitch and can figure out a lot of chords very easily. The problem is I never transcribe my pieces so I can play them all and record them all track by track, but I never even know what key/tempo/time signature I'm playing in.

I'm working on a "Schizophrenic" song but this is just a quick piano sketch of the main melody. Of course it won't sound very "schizophrenic" right now but later on I will add all the ambiance for it to work. Comments and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated! Btw, if any of you hear a ping sound every once in a while, it's because I'm using a demo reverb plugin. SchizophreniaPianoSketch.mp3

I just had a quite an ab workout from laughing. Brilliant.

Very nice and tranquil. Thanks for sharing!

I definitely like the build up to the faster part in the middle. Towards the end, I feel like the chromatic descents really add some color to the piece, giving it a sense of slipping, spiraling away into sorrow. Thanks for sharing!

Your song does invoke the triumphant mood but there doesn't seem to be a lot of energy within the piece (the instruments sound kind of stale and the volume is on the low side). I imaged if someone became king, you'd want all the pomp and circumstance blasting triumphant. I think maybe if you bumped up the volume a bit then it would be more "glorious." Thanks for sharing!

My aim for the piece was to create a bittersweet nostalgic feeling where I remember both the good times we had but ultimately the painful and tainting knowledge that I'm no longer with a loved one. I was also trying to convey a sense of "moving-on" by having the pleasant moments overshadow the bitter ones, as if the bad memories no longer pull on my heart strings with great force. The beginning 2 chords is meant to invoke a reminiscent mood only to get defiled by the knowledge of loss (I added the dissonant 7th here to emphasize it).

Thanks! Yeah I really hope to extend it too but the song is associated with a lot of negativity for me so when I wrote it, it was to purge those emotions. It's hard going back :P When I'm comfortable, I'll definitely go back and lengthen the piece.

I like the thought of distorting the 1812 Overture but I do not have access to the proper resources to modify such a monumental work to do it any (in)justice. The fact that it is such a monumental victory theme can give me the opportunity to distort the message -- that it was a Pyrrhic victory, or perhaps there was no victory at all and was simply all just bogus propaganda, which is a prominent theme in Dystopian literature. But since I probably won't be working with the 1812 Overture, I was thinking of doing perhaps an "Amazing (Dis)grace." It's easy to go atonal and just literally mess up the harmony altogether but Peter_W made some great points about subtlety because of its association with "brainwashing." I also like Audiosprite's list of instrumentation/effects that might be helpful in making the song. Since Amazing Grace delivers "a message that forgiveness and redemption are possible regardless of the sins people commit and that the soul can be delivered from despair through the mercy of God" (Wikipedia), and since it is one of most widely-recognized songs in the English-speaking world, I think it's a great song to distort. It's so ingrained in my own head that I don't know how to alter the harmonies to make it more dark. I'll see what I can come up with. Thanks guys for all the suggestions!