https://soundcloud.com/strawzzboy64/bonus-theme
Got a new song today. This time it's an arrangement.
1 Aug 22, 2015 2:35 am
Re: Trying to make catchy songs (18 replies, posted in Constructive Criticism)
2 Aug 22, 2015 2:28 am
Re: Trying to make catchy songs (18 replies, posted in Constructive Criticism)
@marcb0t thanks for the comments! Yeah I love melodies and motif themes. A lot of these songs I imagine as being from "seperate games" but if I had other songs from one of those games, I would probably make arrangements of the melodies. I did do that actually for the "Jason Valor theme", remixing it in "Poisoned Heart." I imagined it as a version where you fight Jason Valor himself, but probably towards the end of the game or something.
Anyway, I still plan on getting into famitracker. I have the program downloaded, I just haven't really gotten around to it yet. At least right now it looks a little complicated, but I think I know how it generally works, I once used a similar program that ran on a gameboy emulator, anyway. Mostly I just have a pretty comfortable set up for making songs, so I would have to transition to famitracker slowly. It does seem a little bit daunting, but I'm also excited because I'm pretty sure I can get more variety of sounds from it, and do tricks like portamentos and whatnot. It looks like there's a good amount of control over them.
3 Aug 16, 2015 3:01 am
Re: Trying to make catchy songs (18 replies, posted in Constructive Criticism)
Thanks for the feedback, glad you guys are liking the tunes. I don't have any formal composition training, I basically fell in love with music from a young age, (mostly thanks to video game tunes from the NES era and on).
However, I did develop my musical ear thanks to NES/SNES emulators. It turned out I could disable channels, so I would sit there listening to each voice individually and tried to play each on a small, cheap keyboard, or transcribe the songs onto a program. Eventually, I just started making my own. I have also taken both music performance and music theory classes in community college, just not an "actual" composition class, yet.
4 Aug 14, 2015 4:21 pm
Re: Trying to make catchy songs (18 replies, posted in Constructive Criticism)
https://soundcloud.com/strawzzboy64/gentle-spirit
Got a new song today. It's meant to have a "mystical" sound to it, and is inspired by a song in the Oracle of Ages/Seasons games. I'm still posting a song every Friday, although I missed a couple of dates.
I think I'll start uploading songs to this site as well. Do I need to link to this thread when I post a song here? I would like to keep this thread for general feedback.
5 Jun 5, 2015 6:24 pm
Re: Trying to make catchy songs (18 replies, posted in Constructive Criticism)
Thanks for the kind words guys! Got a new song today.
https://soundcloud.com/strawzzboy64/misty-forest
This song has a "repeating build" form to it, where each time the initial line is repeated, a new instrument is added, until the loop.
@Sketchman3 yeah I'm composing the midis myself. I specifically make them to be converted too, meaning the actual midis end up sounding weird by themselves. I've even got a whole set up file with the instruments already set in place.
@error didn't really mean to undersell them, I was more just trying to say they're seperate from my current project. Yeah Rise of the Ravebots was definitely an experiment with phrases. I imagined the song "as if it was made by robots" I wanted it to sound "technically made" and "somewhat off." I repeated the phrases so instead of 8 measures, they're 12 measures long. It's basically padding, for better or worse, hahah.
By the way, do you guys think it's fine to post new songs like this? Posting from the soundcloud every friday, I mean. I think at this stage I would really just be sharing the songs here. I'm still looking for any feedback, but I guess I'm not sure what to really ask for regarding criticism (besides whether the songs/instruments sound repetitive/annoying or not).
6 May 29, 2015 8:03 pm
Re: Trying to make catchy songs (18 replies, posted in Constructive Criticism)
Thanks, I meant to mention too that I was also going for having the songs vary from each other, as part of the challenge of song writing, so I'm glad to hear that came across.
7 May 29, 2015 7:28 pm
Topic: Trying to make catchy songs (18 replies, posted in Constructive Criticism)
Hey guys, new member here. I am creating one song per week and releasing each on soundcloud every Friday, with a pixel art image along side each. I'm doing this for practice, to get myself used to creating songs on a regular basis. (I started doing this not too long ago)
Anyway, these songs are very "gamey" meaning most of them are meant to loop. I'm trying to make the songs catchy (but not annoyingly so) by having a melodic focus, or some kind of rhythmic "hook". To avoid being annoying, I decided to give each song at least an A and B section, if not more, although there are exceptions.
I recommend listening from the Poisoned Heart set upwards, as these are my most recent songs that I have been creating once per week. The ones before that were made pretty long ago anyway.
Lastly, these songs are made through the program GXSCC, which converts midis into chiptune, although I would like to pick up Famitracker sometime.