[Music] Weekly Beats 2014! Get yo challenge on!

*ROLLS AROUND IN THE TALENT*


YOU'RE ALL SO GOOD I CAN'T STAND IT.

Makes me wanna play piano or something.

@Halo: yeah, well, all I know is everyone here is astounding, but your performances are the only ones that have ever moved me to tears.

Please continue, everyone.

Time's up! Post your tunes!

http://weeklybeats.com/#/ryan+leber/music/i-dont-even-know

http://weeklybeats.com/#/haloofthesun/music/beneath-the-great-oak-tree-is-the-treasure-of-an-elf-2

I don't think mine is going to go over very well... lol. I guess my almost non-existent production values aren't really a very good fit, but oh well.

Pacman! How's your choral piece?

As for this week, I'll be starting on my entry tomorrow. Writing it with volume on mute! Should be interesting.

It went so well guys! Not sure when I'll be able to get a recording up, because none of that's in my hands, but it'll be soon. Can't wait to show everyone :*

I might do a muted one this week too, that'll be... interesting.

That's great! Having your music performed is an incredibly valuable experience because there's so much to learn from it I look forward to hearing it.

I myself suck at making music, but I love this thread. I have been following it pretty much since it was started, but I decided to stop stalking and tell you, you're all great!! 

I heard one of Pac's choral pieces before. It was beautiful, so not to put him on the spot, but I have  no reason to think this one won't be. Waiting patiently.

And Ryan, your piece was... well, fun! I enjoyed it quite a bit!

Gahhh, screw you people and your mad talent... :jelly:

This is really scary. I don't know how Beethoven did it. I made it up to what is I guess you could call the first chorus, and now I'm choosing the notes for the melody very carefully.

I heard one of Pac's choral pieces before. It was beautiful, so not to put him on the spot, but I have  no reason to think this one won't be. Waiting patiently.

I think this one's even better than last year's. It's so incredible to have your own piece workshopped and performed by a (kinda?) professional group in front of you. I don't think I've personally received so much applause before that concert.
Sorry to keep you all waiting, I'm still unsure who has the recordings and when we'll be getting them.

Turns out today. I've included the pre-performance interview because I'm impressed by how much applause the last funny funny joke I said got, and I'd like you all to laugh at how stupid my voice sounds. It's called Dark, performed by the Gondwana Women's Choir, with only 3 half-hour rehearsals.

You may notice some silly silly noises in the background towards the end of the recording. This is because there were children in the audience from a piece earlier in the concert, and children often grow restless and start playing with shit. Also someone sneezed. What a dick.

The interviewer / mocker of my bowing abilities is Australian composer Paul Stanhope (that is the name I referred to him by the whole week he was mentoring me), who is, like, such a genius. In the audience was also the head of composition at the university I'm going to, so that's cool, I guess.

Damn dude, that sounds phenomenal.


Sorry Halo, but I'm not participating in the whole blind music thing. :\
I did start recording some acoustic guitar today, and that's the first time I've done that, so that's pretty exciting. I got myself a Shure SM57 and SM58 last week as a late Christmas gift. It's actually turning out really good. All I really have to do is ... finish writing the song... which I guess I'm kind of doing as I record, LOL.

Very nice, Pac. And that's really all I can say about it, which is a good thing. I've tried writing for choir before, but never had any success with it.

No big deal about not joining in, arlen. Just a little experiment for this week. And if I had gotten new recording equipment I know I'd want to use it right away, too.

As for me, I think I've gotten to the end of this piece. I still haven't listened to it. Tomorrow I'm going to go in and add some shaping and decide if I want to keep going with it or change anything. It's a hard thing to gauge, though, since I don't really know what it sounds like lol. I mean, I still have a couple days to write, but I only vaguely know what I'm writing anyway, so does it really need that extra polish? Fiddling with it more may just make it worse. And once I listen to it I'm not going to change anything, so I may just trust my instincts and call it done. You can keep writing and refining for ages but at some point you just have to close it and move on - a lesson my professor taught me that I'm still trying to learn lol

Aaaaand Pac delivers again. Well done. My lady was listening and she says, "In the mood for classical, huh?"
 I say "nah, it's my friend (Pac) from RMRK. He wrote this."

"Woah... no shit? That's awesome! Nononono, keep playing it!"

Okay, so this turned out way better than I had hoped. However, I think this may be a bit off-putting for some of you. I figured there were two ways to go about it: keep things simple and safe, or embrace the inevitable dissonance and I chose the latter. Not that this is atonal or anything, but there are harsh chords, mostly because I decided to make the violin play only 4ths the whole way through, which complicated things because I was keeping fingerings in mind, which limited which notes the violin could play dramatically. But every other instrument (other than the guitar which often doubles it) basically ignores the notes the violin is playing, so I started thinking of it as a battle between the instruments. Or something. Anyway, enough rambling:


I think the end sounds more like a transition than an ending, but oh well, that's what happens when you can't hear what you're doing. Surprisingly everything flows pretty well. Anyway, sorry if this hurt your ears.

I made it, with 8 minutes to spare. It's my first time even recording anything, so the quality is bound to be awful, but hey! Practice makes perfect, right?

https://soundcloud.com/ryanleber/yours

Very good! I was starting to think I'd be the only one to make it this week (where is Arrow anyway?) Nice melody, and excellent progression as always. Makes me feel ashamed of the guitar parts I write lol.

I'm already almost done with this week's. I decided to do a solo piano piece because I haven't written an original one in a very long time.

And done. I'm really proud of this one, hope you like it! Now time to sleep.

Around 02:58 is where I fall in love with it.

I might have to do a quick piano piece, too. Friends are visiting this weekend and I haven't even started. I had an idea, I was going to record some electric guitar and bass and basically write an Eagles of Death Metal type song (maybe even sing...? poorly...?) but I just don't have time. :\

Man, I keep meaning to record that electric guitar stuff, and I never do, lol. For the third week in a row I'm starting at about 2:00 pm, with only 5 hours to work.


...seems to be working out for me, though...

I did some spoken word.

http://weeklybeats.com/#/ryan+leber/music/wasted

lol that's a pretty neat idea. Very interesting concept there.

I'm starting to get very busy but I managed to do a percussion ensemble piece. I haven't done one of those in like... years or something. I forgot to make some of the rolls sound nicer but that's alright.

http://weeklybeats.com/#/haloofthesun/music/passing-time

Woof...fell behind on this. Won't go into my personal baggage, but I'm gonna try to get back to writing. I was on a roll for a while there, let's see if I can get the momentum back starting this week.


EDIT:

Got a new tool for writing called Kontakt. This and the SNESology project's sample sets have allowed me to work with sounds I didn't have in my arsenal. Here's something I put together to test SCIV's samples.