[Music] Forever

Haven't posted music here in ages. This is my newest thing, I literally made it all (as in put the music into a computer and made the computer do things) this morning, though I wrote the lyrics and chord progression and had a general idea of a melody since August. WHAT? LYRICS?! Yes, lyrics. It's a song. With words. A word song. The vocal part is the the main guitar part, the lyrical one. But that comes later, as this is a work in progress. The vocals, sax, and possibly the piano and drums will be recorded at... a point in time. I don't know. I want to do it, but I'm not sure when I can.

So, you know, listen, enjoy, feedback, etc. I can't decide on a genre to call this, let alone tags to give this, so if you can help me out there it would be greatly appreciated.

I like the chord progression, and the melody is pretty nice.

But dude. Say no to those drums. They're too upbeat. Bass snare bass snare makes it sound like elevator music. Try bass rest snare rest instead. Slow jam, you know.

Also, I'm not sold on the sax, but I can't listen to anything with a sax anymore, Kenny G ruined it all for me. If you choose something else, make it less staccato, too.

Also, check your mix. Make sure everything's the same volume. Some things are clearly louder than others, and some parts are clearly louder than other. You can see it in the waveform, too. Things building in volume to a climax is fine, but you haven't quite gotten the effect yet (but keep trying!).

Once it gets to 2:30, and the guitar thing comes in, THEN I agree with the drums. More upbeat drums work on that section.
Also, as the guitar solo gets more intense, the bass should get more intense. Just have it hit the same note more often. So instead of bummmmmm bum bummmm, it's, BUMbumbumbumBUMbumBUMbuhBUBUMbumbumbumb.


All in all, it's a good concept. Keep at it!

Thanks for all those comments. It's basically reinforcing thoughts I've had myself and things my comp teacher pointed out. I decided to change the sax to another guitar (no distortion) because the sax didn't really fit with the feel I was going for. I changed some other things too, lengthened out the guitar solo at the end, dropped at automatic filter over the guitar solo and made it pan from left to right because I'm an artsy-fartsy twat.

I've never been good with drums. I was gonna get one of my drummer friends to suggest some things, but I'll try out some things myself to see if I can get it right.

Thanks about the chord progression. IV-iv-I is my favourite cadence, because there's an awesome chromatic descending movement in the middle, they all have the same note in common (so there's a sweet foundation you can use), and the false relation from the minor chord to the major just moves so smoothly and... I just like it.

So I'll definitely work on the drums. I'll update this when I think I'm ready for recording, in case you have any more thoughts to offer before I embarrass myself by singing.

It's very pretty~

I'm no music expert, but I like it! Great job on this!

Update time.

Dropbox because I'm being precious with my SoundCloud minutes. Apologies for the less convenient delivery of sound from my brain to your ears.

Anyway, I've changed (fixed) the drums. The very first thing the drum plays, a fill before it gets into the beat, is very sloppy. I'm aware of this, so don't feel the need to point it out. Aside from that, I've basically done everything I wanted to so it's just about ready for recording. woo 

Just updated my thread, but I'm bumping yours so people see it. I can't listen now, but I will as soon as I get home from work!

Alright, first of all, you gotta compress those files. .aif is raw, uncompressed audio. Basically the same as .wav files. Compress it (i.e. turn it in to an mp3, or mp4, or whatever). 42MB is way too big. But that's a small gripe.


I like the intro a lot, but it needs a little more movement. If it were me, I'd add some kind of sweeping sound to what's already there, or maybe a light cymbal (but not all quarter or eight notes, syncopated ... be subtle ... blend).

Verse 1 Part 1: I like the lack of drums, but it still needs a beat, I think. Maybe just the cymbal, no kick/snare.
Verse 1 Part 2: Drums in -> Good.
When the drums pick up, it's really good, but the phasing on the guitar gets just a little snarky. Maybe lower the speed of the phase, to reduce some of the "seasick" effect it gives. Especially in the solo, later. And I'm not 100% sold on the drums getting even faster over the solo, but maybe that's just me.

Let's talk about intensity.

The volume is better, but it really jumps up at the solo. A lot. I read something a few months back, and learned that volume changes in songs, like builds and things like that, aren't actually all that drastic. They SOUND drastic, yeah, but decibel-wise the change really isn't that great. What's REALLY changing is the intensity/velocity. How fast or HARD the instruments are playing, not necessarily how loud they are. Think of it like a piano. Yeah, the harder you play it, the louder it is, but that's live music. In professional recorded and mixed music, a piano playing at forte will be pretty much just as loud as a piano playing triple forte. It only sounds louder because a piano sounds harsher when it's played at triple forte, it has that scratchy slamming sound to it. In actuality, they turn the volume UP when it's forte, and bring it DOWN when it's triple forte. This keeps the instrument audible at all times, and maintains balance, but you still get the impression that it's louder.

The same can be said of drums. You hear a snare build in your favorite song, the drummer banging on the snare louder and LOUDER AND LOUDER. But if you took that mp3 file and opened it up in some sound recording software, you'd see that the snare it's actually GETTING much louder, it's just being played HARDER. If anything, the volume is being lowered as it's being played harder, but it's so subtle you can't (and shouldn't) notice.

So my suggestion to you is to experiment with some of the other instruments, adding intensity by making them play more notes (especially the bass), or by increasing the velocity of the notes to make them "harder." Do this, and try to make the overall track a little more equal in volume. It doesn't have to be uniform, but I think you have just a little too much disparity.

k

Sorry for the big download, yeah, I forgot to, you know, not do that.
Thanks for taking the time to do that, I'll definitely look at doing all those things, except I'm going to leave the drums speeding up at the solo. Really good suggestions, it's a great help.

Filesize reduced muchly.

How's this?

I'm aware of some weird notes in the solo (and again in the outro), but as of yet haven't decided if that's because of the changes I made to the velocity of the notes or not. I think it is though.

... but wait, there's more. Updates. More updates. Attached.

Do not worry about the volume of the melody line, I am aware that at times it is a little... confronting, but that will be dealt with in the recording stage, because it won't be a guitar, it'll be voice, and it turns out that some people are more intuitive about dynamics than a synthesizer is. In fact, if I can, I'll record all of the non-synth parts, that being the voice, the possible guitar parts, the piano, the drums and the strings if I can bribe some string players I know.

6-month necro because screw ya. Screw the lot of ya.

Having finally decided to cough up the $4.60 per month (an arm and several toes, if you ask me) to get a Soundcloud pro account, I've updated this track's file (and several others) on Soundcloud. There's quite a bit of difference.
I would post / spam my other tracks, but anyone who would care is following me anyway.