AwesomeYears tries to compose music for his 2020 New Year's Resolution

[AwesomeYears]

Old Stuff

So far, I have two compositions that I've made.
The Cave of Fortunes is a fantasy(?) song with a xylophone, flute, strings orchestra and a electrical piano.

This song tells a tale of an wannabe adventurer dreaming of finding a cave full of gems and treasure but lots of obstacles occur! The adventurer goes and goes through the "maze" and excitedly finds the jackpot. Suddenly, the jackpot is a trap and he ends up in another level. This becomes endless until he wakes up because it was all a dream...

I'm gonna fix some stuff up with the measures and the dynamics of the instruments e.g. the piano to start a bit louder, but you can still hear the xylophone. The music was recorded with Finale 2014's MIDI playback so it sound pretty swell. Other than that, your opinions?

Angel of the Future

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Ace Attorney Fan/Custom Music

Investigation Opening 2020

https://youtu.be/o2wL2Y04bew

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Courtroom Lobby ~ A Dynamic Prelude

https://youtu.be/FYdAMpz56tQ

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Jolting Logic

https://youtu.be/fDk4IuhcC8M

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[FierceDeity]

Wow, our community sucks, lol

I like it! It really conveys the feeling you're going for, and the dips in volume where the strings drop out really work in your favor. I can also easily hear this looping into a cave theme for a game, even though you didn't specify that it was intended for that.

Some suggestions:
-Try to expand beyond using strings just like synths! They do sound pretty on unison-rhythm held long notes, but they're capable of so much more. It's not only good exercise to try to use more techniques on strings, but it could also suit this piece very well. Pizzicato, in particular, could work pretty well for this type of theme, and sounds pretty decent no matter what program you're writing in, imo.
-If you're ever trying to do this or something similar in an actual DAW (digital audio workshop, i.e. Logic, Ableton, ProTools, etc.), you might actually want to try some real synths; they can establish some beautiful textures for a setting like this.
-The brief major section right before the end seems kind of out of place the way it is now; you seem to have a pretty clear idea of the story you're trying to tell, and I don't quite see how it fits in. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on why you put it the way you did; i.e. where that fits into the story. I can't tell whether you're trying to have that hit be him finding the treasure, waking up, or something else, but either way it seems strange going directly back to a minor tonality so quickly.

All in all, nice work. Keep it up; practice makes perfect!

[InsigTurtle]

Really, all that I'm slightly iffy about here is the dynamics/instrument balance.

Maybe you could add some sort of "echo" to the flute to add to that cave feel? You could do that quickly by just copy-pasting the flute into another staff with a eighth rest delay and lowering the volume of the second track by maybe 50-70%?

[FierceDeity]

I think that while it's important to consider how you'd like it to sound in terms of effects and dynamics, getting into playback on finale is in itself kind of iffy

Finale really isn't and shouldn't be the last stage of production for any piece of music that isn't just meant as a formative/educational experience for the composer (as in, something that won't be performed or fleshed out in a DAW). In the professional world, it's only ever used as a means to convey information to live performers, and even then, so much of the dynamic and stylistic decision-making is done in rehearsal, performance, recording, etc. (I guess it's possible that people might also use it to visualize a piece before working it out in a DAW, but even the few who would use notation software for that would likely be using sibelius to do so)

I do agree that, in a good recording, it would be ideal to have some sort of effect to signify the cavernous space, but I think that'd be much better represented by an ensemble-wide reverb than a single echo. An identical part at a lower volume an eighth note later would end up sounding pretty mechanical and arbitrary imo

[InsigTurtle]

I agree that Finale is pretty much not suited for anything beyond sheet music. I've been looking for a good DAW to use, but in the meantime, I'm stuck with Finale.

The echo thing is actually pretty commonly used, and its effect is slightly different reverb. Reverb would be easier to implement, though- I'm not sure if Finale would handle the echos too well. I guess the tempo here would be too slow for an eighth note delay, and it would sound rather clunky.

[FierceDeity]

No yeah, trust me I write with actual echo as opposed to reverb a decent amount. But echo puts much more emphasis on the attack of a note's envelope than reverb does, and flute, especially in this setting, isn't a very attack-centric instrument. You're also right that the tempo is much of what would hinder an eighth note delay here; it'd just sound way too mechanical.

As for DAWs, as much as I despise apple, I'd recommend logic. It seemed daunting to me at first, but ended up being much easier to learn and use than I'd imagined. Pro tools is really just for post-logic or post-recording sessions, and ableton/reason are more for electronic music.

[AwesomeYears]

(Revive)

I bought myself the Korg iM1 App off the App Store for my Casio keyboard, and the sounds that are included on it are amazing! Then I realised that with the help of GarageBand, I can record the iM1 sounds on GarageBand so it's perfect quality instead of fzzzzzzzzzzzzzz in the background. I recorded my first song right away for reddit's /r/songaweek (compose a song fitting the theme every week). This week's theme is Simplicity, so here you go, a simple song! https://soundcloud.com/awesomeyears/angel-of-the-future

(I know the sounds aren't exactly in sync, but time will help me improve that.)

[AwesomeYears]

(I'm good at reviving my threads, now hiring.)

Two new songs eh? Check 'em out!

https://soundcloud.com/awesomeyears/gee-thats-rude (Song based on Dorian)

https://soundcloud.com/awesomeyears/ballerina (Song based on Phyrigan)

[AmpharosAndy]

They're a bit old but it won't hurt.


Gee that's rude - Really smooth, I love it! Some nice funky chords in there. The second section with the bass solo is incredible - I wouldn't change a thing. The one thing I would change however is the length of the first section as it seems to repeat just a few too many times. If it moved to the second section a tad earlier it would really help as I thought it was going to just be the first part for the whole thing. Other than that it's fab, bud

Ballerina - Genius use of odd rhythms with no context and then throwing the drums in later! Really smooth string writing too. Good job making followable and nice-sounding given the phyrigian mode. Make a twenty minute loop of this and I'll listen to it every day

[AwesomeYears]

Turns out I made this a few years ago back when I was 13 huh. Well now that I'm a mature adult with much more free time now, I can make more damn music that doesn't suck as bad.

Anyway, my new years resolution for 2020 is to start composing music regularly, and I thought I'd start by creating my own soundtrack for a DS-era Ace Attorney game. Each song I compose will be faithful to the DS style by using only DS soundfonts (primarily the Ace Attorney Trilogy soundfonts and Investigation soundfonts) with the exception of a couple of 8bit VSTs. I aim to replicate the Ace Attorney Trilogy music style the best I can while adding my own flair.

I've also almost finished composing a couple of non-gaming pop music that I'll showcase here within a few days with way more production than my other pieces.

Investigation Opening 2020

https://youtu.be/o2wL2Y04bew

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[mikey]

neat! remember to have fun or I will find you

the song I could see being a PMD dungeon lol

[AwesomeYears]

neat! remember to have fun or I will find you

Don't worry, I'm having a lot of fun creating these tracks.

Anyway, got a new track for you guys, and I'm probably going to follow the OST route when composing my next songs, so next song will be the court music.

Courtroom Lobby ~ A Dynamic Prelude

https://youtu.be/cFEhZVVQ3MY

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I'm most likely going to fix this particular song a bit because some of the instrumentation and sections doesn't feel right to me so I've gotta figure it out in the meantime.

[AwesomeYears]

Jolting Logic

https://youtu.be/fDk4IuhcC8M

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I lied, I had a really good logic theme stuck in me and had to get it out there first. I went a bit overboard with the length of the piece, it's twice as long as the Logic theme from AA1! I had to put a[nother] funky ass time signature in there so figure it out will you :^)?

Courtroom Lobby ~ A Dynamic Prelude v2

https://youtu.be/FYdAMpz56tQ

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And I've fixed up the previous piece by making it not as boring and plain and empty, and added a few more ideas and swapped the bass with something punchier. So listen to that one instead of the old theme please.

[SlowPokemon]

This is such a fun idea. What do you use for composition??? How did you get the soundfonts and how do you use them in composition/sound playback? What software do you use?

[AwesomeYears]

This is such a fun idea. What do you use for composition??? How did you get the soundfonts and how do you use them in composition/sound playback? What software do you use?

How I write these songs usually goes like this;

1.) Muck around on the piano until I get a melody and chord progression that I really like, takes 5 mins maximum for me to get something good.

2.) Record on the phone for future use in case I forget it.

3.) Go on Reaper (DAW) and create song while referring to recording and listening to official AA music to gain inspiration. Flick through different instrument sounds on soundfont until I find one that sounds just right.

I get my soundfonts from https://musical-artifacts.com/ and use the tag, "nintendo ds" to get the DS soundfonts. I use Plogue's "Sforzando" to select and import soundfonts for MIDI usage. I do rip the MIDIs off the AA DS Roms as well via VGMTrans to see the MIDI techniques used, mainly echos, volume and drum patterns.

This is what a typical song looks like on Reaper

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I could do a tutorial if people want it, it's a lot of fun to replicate Ace Attorney music.