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xzzy posted:If you noodle and fish and get stuck in the four bar loop, try this: i like the focus on entering and exiting transitions! that's something i've been working on a little lately but hadn't heard it articulated so i've mostly been trying to feel it out. i also enjoyed this (longer, less edited) video on some similar ideas. it's from more of a film/tv composer mindset, but it got me thinking about how to mix loops in with things that don't loop as much: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ldNpcX8WGo i think i first started thinking about composing with loops when i read about it in david byrne's book "how music works" where he wrote about how after a while that became the way talking heads wrote pretty much everything. i should go back and read that again, it's been years and i bet there's a bunch of stuff i missed at the time.
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Dec 12, 2023 20:38
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| # ? May 4, 2024 02:20 |
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Ooooooooo I’m adding that to my reading list for sure.
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Dec 12, 2023 20:56
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Pollyanna posted:2. Using your decisions in step 1, write a one-to-two-bar long motif that drives and represents the piece. You can touch your keys now, but you still can’t open your DAW. So now I’m stuck on this step, otherwise known as the main motive or main driving melodic element. My issue is twofold. First, I have no idea what makes for a good bar or two of music.  I know good music when I hear it, but I don’t know how to make “good” happen. It’s clearly not as simple as just going up and down a scale, or something. The other is that four to eight beats worth of music is far too short to make an interesting or memorable melody, even just part of one. I can think of a few examples, yeah, but that’s only with the benefit of hindsight and those examples all sound extremely weird and lame as a contextless one-or-two-bar phrase anyway.Sure, I could ignore all this and just write any random two bar bullshit. Especially cuz it’s not like I’m selling it. But I want to understand what I’m making and why I’m doing what I’m doing, cause that’s where I get my confidence. Maybe I’ll watch some videos on motifs, melodies, and what makes something catchy or memorable despite being really short. Or bug the music theory thread, I’m sure they know how this poo poo works.
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Dec 27, 2023 23:45
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Something thats interesting to me about loop based music is the use of bridges/pre choruses (for clarification some people use 'bridge' to mean the section towards the end of the song and some people use it as synonymous with pre chorus and Im using the latter). You tend to get them in music where the chorus isnt that different from the verse In terms of riff, chords, baseline or vocal melody, but the presence of a contrasting section before it means that when it arrives theres still a sense of the song going somewhere.
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Dec 28, 2023 21:15
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Hey I just started getting into composing about a month ago and im feeling very energized but also very overwhelmed, what should my focus be as someone who knows sheet music pretty well (learned trombone in school in addition to taking choir classes) but was taught very little about theory beyond what was needed to play the music in front of me. I have made about a dozen songs in the vein of video game music, I have watched enough videos to have a solid grasp on modes, triads, dominant/major/minor 7ths, augmented chords, sus chords, the circle of 5ths, some basic cadences, etc. I feel like where I struggle is adding to a song once I have a melody and chord progression locked in, like adding a counter-melody or just in general filling out a piece once I have my basic idea in place is a struggle.
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Mar 2, 2024 22:16
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Ash Rose posted:Hey I just started getting into composing about a month ago and im feeling very energized but also very overwhelmed, what should my focus be as someone who knows sheet music pretty well (learned trombone in school in addition to taking choir classes) but was taught very little about theory beyond what was needed to play the music in front of me. I have made about a dozen songs in the vein of video game music, I have watched enough videos to have a solid grasp on modes, triads, dominant/major/minor 7ths, augmented chords, sus chords, the circle of 5ths, some basic cadences, etc. If you want to focus on countermelodies and such, counterpoint is a really good place to start.
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Mar 7, 2024 09:27
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yeah counterpoint is great, especially with a choral background. you'll finally understand why the alto lines are always so fuckin boring!
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Mar 12, 2024 20:10
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I finally did it. I wrote my first bars in Babby's Very First Song Transcription Full Score.  It's taken about 3 or 4 hours, but with the help of a pretty good track-splitting app I've managed to transcribe 8 bars for sousaphone, 4 bars for baritone that are just one long sustained note, and about 4 bars for trumpet. Oddly the trumpet is giving me the most trouble despite being the only instrument I've ever transcribed before, mostly because of some high note chords that I'm having a bitch of a time identifying the lower notes on. If anyone has any suggestions on how to make that easier, please tell me, because the tuning app I'm using can only pick out the highest note in the chord and it's pretty 50/50 at getting that right. I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Mar 12, 2024 |
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Mar 12, 2024 22:38
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Lemme know if I missed a rule somewhere and this isn't kosher, but I've been working on this piece recently in the style of Megaman X and I'm feeling pretty good about it. Verse is in E Phrygian and chorus is in A Minor, with a bridge in D Dorian, so its a bunch of relative modes. I know I could make the chorus slightly more exciting than having the guitar just play the chord under the organ but I think I got the vibe down pretty good. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wgpTS86oTEGOq299X5u-Byg7pUc5J5ah/view?usp=drive_link
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Apr 17, 2024 11:54
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| # ? May 4, 2024 02:20 |
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very nice! this purely my own taste, but I think it could use some sort of lead-in before the intro melody starts- like a quick drum fill and/or bass for 0.5 - 2 bars and then you get hit with the main synth voice
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Apr 17, 2024 12:05
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