ambient Ancient Pyusisk Mineshaft

Hi forum! I'm back, or am I? Had I ever left?

This post made by @Zimr Music reminded me of an old piece that I made for a story inside a Minecraft server that I will likely never finish because of the enormous amount of workforce needed, studying, planning, blah, blah, blah. The title says enough about it, I'd say, and I don't want my words to distract you.

♫ Here's the piece ♫

And here's the pdf in case someone wants to check it out: 29 - Ancient Pyusisk's mineshaft.pdf

This ambient piece was composed at the end of 2019 if I recall correctly, and that'd be all the info. As always, hope you find it decent!

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón.

1 minute ago, Omicronrg9 said:

Hi forum! I'm back, or am I? Had I ever left?

Hey my buddy Daniel, welcome back! Oh had you left before??😏

What are the synthesizers of the last four staves? I really don't know Spanish😆!

For me it's really cool. It is still in your voice and style since I can feel how cool and chic it is in it. I absolutely love this combination. A high pitched, piercing piano, pizz. violin (no doubt you know pizzicato), a double bass which reminds me of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and those synthesizers.

I love how minimalistic the music is, those tritones and minor seconds are great. I love how you grow from it to build up that excellent climax in b.25, I am not going to lie. The tension building to it is great with the accelarando, crescendo, quicker harmonic rhythm, thicker texture and C minor is finally fulfilled there. That very satisfying for me!

You can add a "fine" at the end though!

Thanks so much for your sharing, and thanks for @Zimr Music for pushing you to share this one!! How come you compose this cool!!

Henry

Wow, I was not expecting this from you

This is actually one of the cooler works I've heard from you. The range of the piano is used really well, very idiomatic to what you're portraying. Very eerie vibes, and the tempo changes really lead to some exciting moments. There were a few spots where I felt like you could have developed the music further, but maybe that wasn't your intent? (mainly after the accelerando ends, that whole chunk). The music sounds like it could be in a video game, being endlessly looped with great effect. I know it was inspired by Minecraft, so excellent job. I've never played the game, but once I watched a girl-I-was-dating's-roommate play this for like 4 hours building some epic castle. I don't remember much, except that I was playing with her ferret most of the time as the game seemed boring to watch him endlessly search for materials to make his haphazard construction. 

Some of it could have been done better in my opinion, namely the shaker and bass drum. But eh, who am I kidding, this was very cool. I'd love to hear this with better sound samples, but the "notes" themselves were placed in the perfect places. You have a talent for incidental music, I'd love to hear more!

Great job Daniel, and thanks for sharing!

Just now, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

What are the synthesizers of the last four staves?

The instruments are:

1. A "güiro" (I don't know the exact translation)
2. Metal bars
3. Concert bass drum
4. I don't even remind the synth name. If I ever use it again, I'll remind this and tell you

4 minutes ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

I love how minimalistic the music is

I'm not very good at writing these kind of "empty" pieces. This is probably the most "minimalistic" I can get. It might have been worth mentioning that the theme doesn't offer anything new from half of the piece on.

As always, thank you for both your great efforts as a reviewer and your compliments, feedback, and criticism 🙂.

Kind regards,
Daniel–Ømicrón. 

3 minutes ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Wow, I was not expecting this from you

All the divs and <style> code you mean? Me neither.

3 minutes ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

There were a few spots where I felt like you could have developed the music further, but maybe that wasn't your intent? (mainly after the accelerando ends, that whole chunk)

My intent consisted in desperately NOT developing a thing since this was supposed to be an "ambient" song and I did really try my best to produce something that wasn't plain but at the same time was not enough interesting to follow it too much and hence get distracted from the gameplay. From random players experiences I'd say I more or less succeeded, but the sample was small anyway.
 

7 minutes ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

I know it was inspired by Minecraft

Small correction here, it was not inspired by Minecraft nor by Minecraft music, but the whole server (buildings, mechanics, textures, etc) was built on the game. It was going to be a story-driven RPG one.
 

9 minutes ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Some of it could have been done better in my opinion, namely the shaker and bass drum.

How could you say that?! These are the BEST free SOUNDFONTS I could find at that time.

Thank you so much for the accurate and always valuable comments! 

Kind regards!




 

Wow, this is quite a seamless atmospheric piece!  For my personal taste I would have made the A natural in this figure an Ab:   but maybe it was your intent to use an A natural to contrast with the Ab in the left hand on beat 3 of the same bar?  I love the gradual accelerando and ritardando.  It creates contrast and builds and relaxes tension, respectively.  I find your piano sounds are usually your best feature of your compositions.  I think this kind of writing isn't very idiomatic for the Violin and Contrabass:  .  Pizzicato turns like that are very hard to do unless you want them to use the guitar technique of hammer-on where the left hand strikes the string a half-step higher and releases immediately without being re-articulated by the right hand plucking action.  Very creepy vibe you've created here!  I imagine this would be especially effective in a side-scrolling rpg with a gradually accelerating and deceleration auto-scroll enabled, forcing the player to traverse obstacles faster and faster and then passing a midpoint at which the tension slowly releases.  Thanks for sharing!

On 2/9/2023 at 9:45 AM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

but maybe it was your intent to use an A natural to contrast with the Ab in the left hand on beat 3 of the same bar?

I cannot tell the reason why for sure, as the piece is a bit old already, but in some recent pieces I have dared to put even harmonic augmented 8th intervals so this choice would not surprise me. The simplest and possibly most likely reason would be that I liked it at that time so I kept it.

 

On 2/9/2023 at 9:45 AM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

I think this kind of writing isn't very idiomatic for the Violin and Contrabass:  

The score itself is a bit of a mess even in the piano part. I am not sure if it's actually playable, it's one of the very few pieces which I composed without that in mind (hence I didn't publish it anywhere else), plus I was not certainly a connoisseur (nor I am now) of string instruments at all.

Thank you for your words, Peter. Despite I already have some of these engraving mistakes and non-idiomatic writing in mind, comments like yours always make me to look back at those and some new considerations I hadn't made up to now.

Kind regards!