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Forums > C64 Composing > Composing music in general, techniques, hints and tips

2011-02-10 11:46

Hermit

Registered: May 2008
Posts: 208

Composing music in general, techniques, hints and tips

What I really miss is a topic about music composing in general. If I haven't found an existing topic regarding this, but if we have any, let me know about it.
(There are many topics in Composing section, thanks god there's a good seraching engine. However it would be great to have more categories inside 'Composing' for easier browsing.)

I want to start this topic about the music composition itself, which is always a mystic topic and there's no real perfect method of teaching it in schools even nowadays.
On one hand this is the beauty of composing, that it cannot be described consciously in its entire form, and one can never say he learned everything.

I want to write a book/article in the future about the logic and lexical knowledge behind music composition, as there aren't a lot of comprehensive books or webpages that give us a complete picture and directions to improve.
One good (and possibly a standard) is Arnold Schoenberg's 'Fundamentals of Musical Composition', which gives a lot of understanding to composition itself (not music theory!).

If you have knowledge and experiences which you want to share with composers all around, feel free post your replies into this topic... and at the end we will have something at CSDB which will be a guide to refresh the spirit and knowledge of musical composition.

What this topic would exclude:
-The music theory (literature about chords, staff, etc..) - many books and videos can be found all around on the net.
-The use of trackers and analog synthesis techniques of SID, which is another topic, bit related of course...and has been discussed already afaik.

I'm looking forward your contributions with tips as well as questions/replies - discussions :)

Hermit Software Hungary

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2011-02-15 20:58

Hermit

Registered: May 2008
Posts: 208

Right, peace is important in music composition.
Hey, Rambones, I like your brief explanation very much, learned a lot from it. That thought around instinct seems to be a realistic exploration.

Hi Guys. I made an example how I imagine the music disassembly practices by creating a 'C64 composers' group at soundcloud webpage:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/c64-composers

If you sign up to soundcloud.com and create an own account, you can possibly join the group. If not, inform me, and I'll give join-acceptance or rights if it's needed....
(Anyway, this idea seems to be similar to the SID page's idea which Stainless Steel is constructing. Hopefully we gave some tips to him..)

There's only one thing that holds me back putting masterpieces from HVSC: I'm a bit afraid of Copyright issues, as I'm not an expert in that topic. Therefore I shared some of my own tunes in a 'Creative Common' license to try out whether we can use soundcloud's interface for our aim....leave comment if you'd like to, I like feedbacks :) You can put/assign comments to time-points on the blue bar. See my example comments at Funck...
If someone is aware about copyright things, and know what can be uploaded, I can give a tip: You can download the SID mp3 music from SOASC easily, and upload to soundcloud into your own profile, then you can possibly share it on the 'C64 composers' group for investigation....

(I wanted to place Rob Hubbard's Star Paws theme first, which is a great composition. Then I changed my mind, first I have to know if we are allowed by law to share these music.. At HVSC/SOASC I've read in copyriht notes that there are some SIDs which are copyrighted to disposal... Maybe we can still play around Drax's and Shogoon's tunes and demotunes without law infringement.)

Let me know if you find this a good idea or we should forget about it. At the moment I have no other tip for music investigation.
Meanwhile I'll start to learn SDI, and collecting ideas for practice types we could do together or in contest...

Hermit Software Hungary

2011-02-16 01:17

NecroPolo

Registered: Jun 2009
Posts: 231

Quoting Groepaz

word :) most guitarists actually use something like guitarrig atleast in the studio. no more shitty amps to deal with, crystal clear sound with much less effort than before.

Fail. Epic :)

Mates, don't even try to approach the wired geetar topic, right? Everything has its place and guitarrig and the like are just comfortable substitutes, not replacements of what they emulate. On the field we use these plug-ins and tools in the studio as layers for expanding the sonic spectrum and yes there are folks who use them exclusively with great results but everything fails when you start to compare emulation vs real stuff side-by-side, eg any industry standard like JCM800. The most faithful 'emulation' of rigs are discrete element units like Randall RM modular system or SansAmp tools, both with no digi feed. Still, they're words apart. Clients decide: they never wanted to return to a plugin after trying one of the real rigs piled up the next room here, and there is not élitism in that: we record a short part of their music, compare the real rig with everything else, they pick what sounds right. In the practice they choose emulation only when a fast or cost-effective solution is needed.

I could post 1000s of in-house samples from the last 20 years about what is what and what is not: line-recorded, re-amped, bi-amped, VSTi, mic'ed, DI, close dynamic, distant large diaphragm, amp-sim, what-and-what-not-soever recorded guitar tracks. Or, post endless dataflow about response, saturation, moving air, pressure, mass, speaker load, cab construction, headroom, space, reflections, natural compression, clarity, upper harmonics, nuances, articulation, character, feedback, mic placement, important angles and different mics, etc etc etc - and all the methods that try to emulate these with more or less precision, and all their pros/cons.

Well, I won't. Instead just believe that there is still no substitute for shitty old geetar amps with the right and carefully placed microphone, okay? Besides, recording real rigs are much less pain (and more fun) than you would think at first ;)

2011-02-16 01:33

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11116

hihi. i see where you come from :)

2011-02-16 01:36

NecroPolo

Registered: Jun 2009
Posts: 231

Indeed, mate ;)

Wasted way too much time/energy on the subject ;)

2011-02-16 02:04

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11116

i do, btw, also prefer my amp, an old shitty peavey deuce :)

2011-02-16 02:23

NecroPolo

Registered: Jun 2009
Posts: 231

2x12" combo, right? Good stuff, a friend has one :)

I liked the cleans (a lot better than many big name amps) but it's a chainsaw when driven hard on its own. I suppose, you use some warm-sounding overdrive pedal for dirty sounds, right? :)

2011-02-16 02:41

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11116

2 x 12 plus and extra 2 x 14 box :) and yeah, great clean sounds. and i like the chainsaw =D

2011-02-16 03:00

NecroPolo

Registered: Jun 2009
Posts: 231

2x14 expansion box? Hombre... :D

Must be heavy and rough!

2011-02-16 15:48

Hermit

Registered: May 2008
Posts: 208

Hello again

Look what I found. This reading about Haydn's and Mozart's approaches to composition holds many information which we were talking about. I especially like the 'sea' metaphor, similar to the 'ocean' principle of Necropolo :)

http://www.integralworld.net/dallman2.html

I didn't see a great interest in soundcloud....meanwhile I was thinking about other solution.
Either on C64 or based on a special Homepage I would construct a system similar to soundcloud, but with 2 differences/workarounds:
-Materials won't be uploaded, just linked. That way we might be able to avoid infringements of copyrights, as the links are just pointers to other webpages' contents which take the responsibility for sharing particular songs. (The possibility for different formats (SID,XM,WAV,MP3) is in plan too..)
-There will be possibility to leave timed comments on a tune (just as in soundcloud), but I would go even further: Why not including a piano-roll, so we could demonstrate the different parts not just by text, but by audible extracts too. (The webpage based piano roll could be used to type in notes, and to play them even with hovering over the mouse.)

I won't be so active for a while in this thread, but I'll follow your comments regurarly. I need some time to gather new information on composition, and work out the system that we can use for sharing our musical thoughts and experiments...

Hermit Software Hungary

2011-02-16 17:21

Hermit

Registered: May 2008
Posts: 208

Anyway, I have a conclusion after the many posts and after reading from Schoenberg's book, and after thinking a lot about melodies of great tunes inside.
I would like to outline a musical theme construction recipe step-by-step, which must have been used similarly many times a good composition was born:

1. Inventing/Defining a very basic phrase (e.g. 1-2 measures/bars). Good thing if this is a short melody coming from soul, but has definistic/characteristic still playful melody and rhythm too.

2. Construct a chord progression (e.g. 4..8..16.. bars) for the theme, which is in (or related to) the tonic key what was defined by the melodic phrase at the 1st step. While choosing chord-progression directions (cadences), you might need to keep the mood in mind what the phrase in 1st step would express, and extend or push forward the musical thought.

3. Now, as you have a chord progression, you can play with the melody chunk created in 1st step in a more confident way than without chords. Play with it by copying/repeating it, and when needed, adjust it to the given (degree of) chords in given bars. (The easiest change might be transposition here). You can do many changes to the melody-chunk modifying some or all pitches or playing with it's rhythm and note-lengths. However be careful, sometimes too much modification/variation of the melody-chunks troubles/overcomplicates the melody.

4. You have a whole theme with chords and melody. You can add the counterpoint melodies or/and basses, etc., or you may select going forward with the tune, when you have new ideas for the continuation. The latter way will anticipate in the sequential structure of the song, you can make new themes for chorus and other parts. It's up to you in what order you arrange them in the end.

I'll try to compose a tune following this way, and we'll see whether I was right in the order the thing should look like...I'll share the phases with you, when I upload it...

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