critique my music please!

[devildog]

Hello,
Please visit www.synthesizedsounds.com and download the music samples. This is my website and I would appreciate some advice about the quality of music before I start soliciting companies. Thanks to the community for your help.

[Justin Brimm]

It sounds like you have a few stray notes in there every once in a while.

[skyhawk]

I like gift of heaven.
I dislike the melody of power struggle... well not so much the melody as much as the sound of that annoying horn.
ecoheroes18 is pretty weak as far as techno. about halfway through I would focus on bringing out the moving part and make it louder than that annoying ripping type sound.
ecoheroes17 has an an interesting sound to it. one thing I kept wishing is that each of of the notes be more well defined. more stacato and such.. not the inital sounds, but more the overall sound. It is really begging for a beat.

[OneSadCookie]

No theme, no form, no beat, no tune, no thanks :(

[Carlos Camacho]

I think you should improve your homepage area where the links are. On my system, the test seems to be all stuck together. Also, perhaps next to each download, write the file size and a small snippet of what the music is about.

ecoheroes17.mp3 seems to get a little muddy in the middle. (Sometimes less is more)
ecoheroes18.mp3 is nice. After 25 percent into the cong, it would have been cool to put a little dramatic pause with just one instrument and then build fast into more complex
powerstruggle.mp3 is the best

Good luck with your biz.

Cheers

[Greg Gant]

May I ask what sound app your using?

I'm gonna make a few suggestions, don't take this the wrong way, this is simply constructive critism and suggestions.

You should aim to refine your reverbs since every instrument sounds like the same reverb. Also in Orchestra 1 you might wanna consider mixing the the drums to both speakers. General popular music theory places drum tracks heavily on both speakers since it sounds more natural. Also it sounds like on your symphonic tracks you're limited to too few instruments. Its a good idea to mix in woodwinds (without over emphasing) and keep the string essembles for chords and tones and use solo strings for leads. You tend to loss that heavy "Midi" sound as you start to do this more.

I'm a bad judge of techno so I won't comment on your techno tracks.

[devildog]

Thanks to all for the great advice! I appreciate the help from this community... rock on.
I am using a standard midi notation program to send signals to 2 stand alone synths. I feed that signal into a computer and record it live, then mix and convert it if necessary. I am experimenting with how I can get the best natural sound from my synths, and I am still working on that:) Thanks again guys, and I do appreciate it!

[Greg Gant]

Ah, you might wanna invest in some form of a sample bank or soft sampler or otherwise if you'd like to persue non-electronica forms of music, hence classic inspired. Reason is a great app really for most people and features a pretty nice base soundbank, great to expand on. I've pulled instrument samples of AKAI CDs and patched them myself so I have more diversity.

With a soft sampler, you'd be able to load samples at free will and you'd have soundbank at your finger tips you could combine with your two synths you have as of now.

[applekid]

First off, my criticism is not here to insult or hurt you. I'm trying give advice on what you could improve on. If you don't like my advice, don't take it. I don't mind.

Orchestral 1 sounds okay. It seems like the instruments are fighting to be heard. You might want to change the notes one of the instruments are playing or lose an instrument completely. Do keep the drums.

Orchestral 2 was okay. It was the switching from drums to no drums that annoyed me. It wasn't gradual and way too noticeable.

Your regular Techno isn't the kind of techno I look for. Keep those beats though. Spend less time doing the beats for the intro. Add some less repetive sounds that keeps people pumped up. The non beat repetition that enters near 1/3 of the way isn't working. It dies off and comes back. Keep it alive and energetic. And as you go through the song, change some of the background sounds with some other sounds. Now, if it was more of a deeper and darker mood, I'd keep those sounds but change the beat and background noise. Basically the beat and mood being created contradicts each other. Check out Reanimation (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000069CWE/qid=1050673342/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-3981635-4955041?v=glance&s=music&n=507846) by Linkin Park. It's a remix of Hybrid Theory, so it'll be music you might be familiar with, but it has lots of techno and synthesized sounds thrown into the old songs, and it sounds great. A nice example to look at.

The Ambient Techno reminded me of a SimCity 3000 song. Nice and subtle. Enjoyable. Work with more ambient techno and let's see more demos of that.

My final verdict is you need to work on how to put use beats and drums for techno. Set the mood right and use the proper instruments for those moods in most of these songs. But nice work. Really. You've gotten farther than me. I have yet to finish one complete song! :cool:

[Himiona]

Great to hear you are going to start marketing your self to game companies.

First up I would research other game composers' work and play their stuff next to your own. This will help you get a sense of where your music is stronger or weaker sounding in comparison.
Use these comparisons to work on your own music and get a handle on important aspects like melody , dynamics, and mixing(production) as used by the sucessful game composers.

With regards to the music demos on your site I have this to say:
1. Gift of Heaven : Nice overall - drums sound a little wierd. Timp rolls are not quite right sometimes. Crashes need to be better - they're a bit obviously sampled. A dash of reverb to make them sit further back would be nice. Don't use reverb on the whole track, use diffeent reverbs for certain elements (Drums, strings, horns) if you can. The ending seems to fall apart to my ears because of a certain downward motion you start just before the end. There is a little gap in the melody that seems out of place. Personally I think you should raise that sucker up and give a big crescendo at the end.

2. Powerstruggle : Great drum intro, the horns/woodwind sound weak or is it that the samples aren't defined enough? The intro cluster of instruments sounds a little 'off' to me. The biggest thing is that the track doesn't seem to say anything - is it happy, sad, action, tension? Is it for a FPS game or an RTS game? Hard to tell. I think this track needs more work. Perhaps set yourself a project like -"Create a 30 second orchestral piece for an imaginary Soldier of Fortune-style FPS game, for the battle sequence."

3. Ecoheroes18 : Good intro again, but this tune lacks a certain punch - are you using compression on anything? You should really get compression on that kick to help move the track along. Limiting or compression of the overall mix would also help. As Greg mentioned, add more instruments.

4. Ecoheroes17 : I think this intro could be more ambient - try to use panning effects, autopanning, filter panning are all good ways to get movement in the sound. Also instead of (or as well as) fading out try using filter sweeps to create a sense of movement. More reverb on some elements can help create a more ambient feel as well.

It's a good start - but I think the tracks could all do with more work.

Cheers

Himiona

[Carlos Camacho]

devildog, I would recommend "Dance Music" for Cubase. It used an ancient version of Cubase but I think you can pick up the ideas and suit them to any apps. Look in Amazon. I also have another book on MIDI, but can't recall the name. It gives VERY good advice on making MIDI music "more" alive. Perhaps it is called the "MIDI Files"???

Another book is Home Recording. It teaches about mixing, compressing, etc.

I'm VERY glad to see more music talk here. I just may post some "music" I made if my arm is twisted enough. :)

If I knew we had enough music people here, I would love to run a contest. Something like, create any number of songs for the following categories, but they must be under XX minutes. Winners get goodies and allow iDG to offer the finished songs to the community (of course the artist gets credit if any devs use their music.) A nice win-win.

[Himiona]

Ok, so now I've given you some criticism. Please do the same for me.

Check out:
http://www.castlesmusic.co.nz/Music/Hip_RocK_Master_05.mp3

An idea for a sportsgame - it's the menu screen music. It's supposed to be quite melody-less and just convey a sense of mood.

Check it out - I'd love the feedback.

Oh BTW, it's supposed to loop that's why it ends funny.

Cheers

H.

[OneSadCookie]

That link doesn't work, try this one:

http://www.castlesmusic.co.nz/Music/Hip%20Rock%20Master%2005.mp3

[Himiona]

Thanks! OSC - my mistake.

H.

[devildog]

Himiona,
I've listened to your track and I find it to be technically flawless. You use several effects and the balances are right on the two different speaker setups I heard it through. Your methods in that area are clearly refined and polished. The music itself is fitting in many situations.... and you say it is for a sports game menu. In that case I found your music to be relaxing, especially the piano voice about halfway through. I could envision a slowly paced part of the game using this music. So if it somehow relates to that, then it fits. I can't picture a sport to it.... and if there is one voice that is out of place I would say the piano voice. Most menu's don't sit for more than a minute and I would put the hard guitar closer to the beginning. But these are nitpicks for the sake of criticism...and I had to dig to come up with them.

Camacho :ninja: ,
I would enjoy that and I think its a good idea. I would certainly partake in such a contest for the sole sake of the community. If no one else can tell, I haven't polished my techniques to the level Himiniona has... hence the purpose of my initial topic. A contest would be beneficial to musicians in my opinion. Your many responses have given me good insight into areas I can improve. I appreciate it fellas.

[Greg Gant]

Camacho, I'd love to see a contest.

Himiona, overall well mastered and obviously a lot of plenty of time put into mastering but the second half of the track significantly louder than the rest of the cut. It understandable that the heavy rock segment would be louder but I found myself running to turn the volume down. A mild increase is fine but I found it to be a bit heavy for a videogame title screen.

I guess its only fair to put my stuff up for scrutiny. Keep in mind my works aren't videogame music but rather rap/hip hop instrumentals

http://www.ps2cheats.com/reason/gowest1-3.mp3 <-- West coast hip hop, one of my older works
http://www.ps2cheats.com/reason/harsh1-9-4.mp3 <--One of my latest works, Classical hip hop (although outta date version, theres a few "off" that aren't on beat, see if you can spot them)
http://www.ps2cheats.com/reason/hiphopismsforeveryone2.mp3 <-- semi-recent, upfront and modern.
http://www.ps2cheats.com/reason/battlebeat2-1.mp3 <-- One of my OLD works (also not even the final version), closest I have to videogame music. I really need to remix/remaster it. Sounds very "reason like" to me.

[Carlos Camacho]

Since I have the "ear" of the music people here. I am looking for some MODs to include with our PlayerPro download. I just uploaded a new version, and it seems to be working fine now under OS 9 and X. I'd rather not include the example music files with the formerly commercial product as I am unsure of their status. So, if anyone can create some short and pleasant MODs, please send (email) them to me.

[Himiona]

Originally posted by Greg Gant

Himiona, overall well mastered and obviously a lot of plenty of time put into mastering but the second half of the track significantly louder than the rest of the cut. It understandable that the heavy rock segment would be louder but I found myself running to turn the volume down. A mild increase is fine but I found it to be a bit heavy for a videogame title screen.


Thanks for the feedback Greg and DDog. I'll look at the volume thing to see what I can do.
The whole track is so heavily compressed I might just pull the guitars down a bit and see how that works.

Interstingly I did a bit of research into menu screens, and boy there are some big old tracks being used. I'm trying to go for a more laidback, calm before the storm approach.

the HipHop stuff is cool - I always want to hear more bass, but that's just me. How did you make them - what's your setup?

Cheers

H.

[Greg Gant]

Hey Hitomia, I just use Reason with some samples off some AKIA CDs I have. I did take a class where we used Digital Performer but I couldn't afford the necessary hardware (or software depending on if I wanted to go the softsynth, softsampler route) to have a worthwhile setup. I've sorta pushed Reason to the logical limits using its sampler to master vocals and record guitar samples. Here's an example of a piece with guitars I did. The funny thing is I can barely play the guitar.

www.ps2cheats.com/randomstuff/Dapunk1-3-1.mp3

Do you have any more pieces? I'm always interested to hear other musicians work.

[Himiona]

Hi Greg - it's Himiona

the link doesn't seem to work, are you uploading it now?

You can hear quite a few of my tracks at:
http://www.castlesmusic.co.nz/Music/

Cheers

Simon

[Greg Gant]

www.ps2cheats.com/reasonDapunk1-3-1.mp3

I'll check out your stuff, sorry about mistyping your name

[Himiona]

No problem with the name Greg - my 'real' name is Simon, take your pick!

I'll check out your music tonight - gotta get some sleep! :zzz:

Regards

H.

[GoodDoug]

Himiona-
I really lie your track, hard to find flaws with it! But, since you asked for criticism, I'll do my best (as a music noob) to give constructive critique.

1) It seems a little "overt" for a menu track. I think as a menu track, it sounds good, but may be a bit too foreground.

2) Again, for a menu track, the "interesting" part comes a little too far into the piece. Many people won't get to hear the whole thing given that they can spend at most 30 seconds on the menu screen before making a choice. (Unless of course, you spend more time in the menus, particularly in hierarchical menus where you have to choose lots of things before moving into the game)

3) For a sports title, is the beat too slow? Or were you going for that specifically?

Again, I really like your music. And these issues are just my opinions, and could be totally off base. Nice job

[visaudi]

I'd say coming from the perspective of another composer, that your technique in composition is fine, except it lacks innovation, and idea. It all depends on what your trying to do givin the game, but there are probably all sorts of other games that have the exact same sort of music. This isn't meant to discourage you, but to remind you that unless your only trying to imitate art music, and not actually write it you need to start thinking about meaning and what people have done before you.

Good Luck!

[Himiona]

Originally posted by visaudi
I'd say coming from the perspective of another composer, that your technique in composition is fine, except it lacks innovation, and idea. It all depends on what your trying to do givin the game, but there are probably all sorts of other games that have the exact same sort of music. This isn't meant to discourage you, but to remind you that unless your only trying to imitate art music, and not actually write it you need to start thinking about meaning and what people have done before you.

Good Luck!

Thanks for your feedback. What would be your suggestion then to expand ones awareness of innovation? Also, I'm not sure I follow you when you say I need to start thinking about meaning... Can you expand on that?

H.

[visaudi]

Do you listen to much Schˆnberg, Berg or Webern? Hows abouts George Crumb, or Ligeti, or John Cage? Listen to what other people are doing in video game music, and try not to have any repeat. Meaning is harder to explain, I could say that you have to have a credo, or something to stand by, it could be anything, "music should have lots of symetry" or "music should come from within" or "composers shouldn't have any specific ideology, but should just write music," the former of the three being one of my favourites. Art can be anything you want it to be really, just so long as there is innovation.

[Greg Gant]

Hey Himiona, been meaning to comment back on your other stuff, your tribal/ethnic stuff was pretty interesting and man I can't remember the rest. I'll have to check back later.