Mysteries of the Sea

Hello all! Today I bring something longer than my usual submissions to the forum! And with a twist. I designed a poster for fun, and then decided to make a song based on it. Below is the poster, and then I'll get into some details about the song!

My goal for this song, was to capture the power and waves of the ocean, while stopping off and making some sections representing some classic seafaring mythological creatures. (2:33-3:32 for example, represents a Siren! 4:42-5:26 to me, is a theme for a Kraken.) But always returning to my central themes. Cymbals often represent the waves, as do rolling drums. The hand pan is used rather frequently and in one of the recurring themes because to me, it's sound represents water. There are many VSTs used here: BBCSO Discover, Intimate Strings, Epic Choirs, LABS, and Amadeus Symphonic. All in FL Studio.

I hope this all makes sense and you enjoy the listen! It's the first piece I've made that is this long, but I didn't want to cut it short and kept having ideas to grow it into a full suite!

I look forward to the feedback! I would love to know what this piece brings to mind when you listen.

Great job!  Kept me attentive and engaged throughout the whole thing.  I think the instrument you call a "hand pan" I'm used to being referred to as steel drums.  Kudos for including them and using them quite idiomatically as far as I can tell!

Could you provide a score for this?  It's really interesting harmonically.  There are many harmonically intriguing parts.  Thanks for sharing!

Very interesting.
I enjoyed your changes of modal colour and orchestral texture. 
Extending your harmonies into dissonant territory for the Siren was a good choice.

On 2/24/2024 at 11:56 PM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Great job!  Kept me attentive and engaged throughout the whole thing.  I think the instrument you call a "hand pan" I'm used to being referred to as steel drums.  Kudos for including them and using them quite idiomatically as far as I can tell!

Could you provide a score for this?  It's really interesting harmonically.  There are many harmonically intriguing parts.  Thanks for sharing!

 

Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it. And yes, that's true about the hand pan/ steel drum. I think there are just some differences in their construction to differentiate the two.

At the moment, I do not have a score. I don't actually know how to write sheet music! That's something I want to work on soon, and don't think it'll be too hard of an adjustment. Even if it's to export the songs from FL Studio, then annotate where needed to change articulations, change notes over from whole notes to the proper length, and such. Do you recommend any software to use for that?

4 hours ago, Alex Weidmann said:

Very interesting.
I enjoyed your changes of modal colour and orchestral texture. 
Extending your harmonies into dissonant territory for the Siren was a good choice.

 

Thank you! Happy to hear you enjoyed the listen. It was a fun experience of putting it together. Wanted it to feel like a journey with some stops at places and creatures. Thanks for listening and giving feedback!

26 minutes ago, Layne said:

Do you recommend any software to use for that?

I don't usually start in a DAW and then export into a notation program but Musescore has really worked for me thus far!  Maybe @Alex Weidmann has done that and can provide first hand experience?

1 minute ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

30 minutes ago, Layne said:

 

I don't usually start in a DAW and then export into a notation program but Musescore has really worked for me thus far!  Maybe @Alex Weidmann has done that and can provide first hand experience?

Yes, that's how I usually work.

MuseScore tends to translate the midi data very literally, and you can end up with a horrible mess of overlapping notes and multiple parts.

Lately I've started using the Notion app on my iPad to interpret the midi data from my DAW.

Notion makes a better job of interpreting the composer's intention, and tidying some of the mess automatically.

(It's also free for iPad in its most basic version.)

I then export a MusicXML file from Notion, and import that into MuseScore. (Since MS is much more versatile, and has more flexibility for revising the score.)

28 minutes ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

I don't usually start in a DAW and then export into a notation program but Musescore has really worked for me thus far!  Maybe @Alex Weidmann has done that and can provide first hand experience?

 

 

20 minutes ago, Alex Weidmann said:

Yes, that's how I usually work.

MuseScore tends to translate the midi data very literally, and you can end up with a horrible mess of overlapping notes and multiple parts.

Lately I've started using the Notion app on my iPad to interpret the midi data from my DAW.

Notion makes a better job of interpreting the composer's intention, and tidying some of the mess automatically.

(It's also free for iPad in its most basic version.)

I then export a MusicXML file from Notion, and import that into MuseScore. (Since MS is much more versatile, and has more flexibility for revising the score.)

 

Thank you to both of you! I will look into these options. Installing Musescore now and going to play around with it. I don't have an iPad, but Notion is available on Windows! So I will try this method. Thank you for the advice!

Hi @Layne,

As Peter noted the music is very intensive and attentive! I like that you are inviting more contrasts into your music like timbre change and harmonic change! The harmony around 2:40 is very interesting when you get something bitonal! There is very much variety in the music, now maybe next step would be to have variety while maintaining coherence!

Thx for sharing! I like this!

Henry

4 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Hi @Layne,

As Peter noted the music is very intensive and attentive! I like that you are inviting more contrasts into your music like timbre change and harmonic change! The harmony around 2:40 is very interesting when you get something bitonal! There is very much variety in the music, now maybe next step would be to have variety while maintaining coherence!

Thx for sharing! I like this!

Henry

 

Thank you! It's such a fun journey. Working and putting these ideas to song in better ways, figuring out things I didn't used to know how to do! And all the feedback here has helped greatly. Really enjoying the process of learning more and already "workshopping" some more ideas. Appreciate the listen and the feedback.