makin music thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > makin music thread

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

yesterday i had 'and we got older' from jim guthrie stuck in my head, decided to put down the guitar part for fun. then put a single cello note down at the beginning, removed all the guitar part but a couple of measures and changed it as i built more and it morphed in to this. really wanted to keep the rhythm going throughout the entire song which i think really helps drive it

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/long-cold-nights-are-coming

super happy with how it came out

# ¿ Jun 22, 2022 00:27

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 11:26

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Pollyanna posted:

lol I was gonna say you should add some piano to go full florian cristl and not 10 seconds later,

it�s good!!!!

hahaha thanks. yeah i can't resist piano, although i didn't open with it this time!

# ¿ Jun 22, 2022 01:15

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Pollyanna posted:

c music s: current wip is this

https://soundcloud.com/retrocombine/tesseract-wip/s-ebsEFEluZww

decided to take a different tack with my music and explicitly separate the type-poo poo-in and reflect-on-track phases. i loop a track on my phone while im at work, write down on a paper pad what changes i want to make, then do them when i get home. im usually wiped as gently caress after work and cant music brain good so the less thinking i need to do, the better.

so far the changes i wanna make are:

- add plucky pitch envelope to the kick
- add ramp-up/�warning� before sd/clhh come in around 0:34
- add drum fill before piano comes in
- add west coast/modular style arp line, starting around 1:34
- write B patterns for each voice/track

�and i will take any and all critique lol. and advice for self-critiquing

that's cool as hell. I suck at making stuff like that but love listening to it.

this popped in to my head this morning so this is where I'm at with it now, though there's still a lot of work to be done on it:

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/slow-dance-song-wip/s-bUzKdhwx6qa

idk I guess it's like a slow dance song or something? whatever

# ¿ Jun 24, 2022 02:32

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

killhamster posted:

this is also really cool

i feel like a guitar playing little stabs with the snares would fit right in, or something like that. idk, sometimes when i listen to other folks' WIP i get ideas. it's how i used to work with a buddy when we'd team up for music, just trading control back and forth as we heard stuff the other hadn't

i played around with some guitar thanks to this suggestion and found something i really like. comes in around the 35 s mark. also drastically upped the fullness of it and did some other stuff here and there

still not close to done tho

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/slow-dance-song-wip2/s-ieGoWGatl4O

killhamster posted:

in the past couple of weeks i knocked out some remixes of a track i did with a buddy and an old track i was never going to properly finish to make a little single, including the one i posted here earlier

https://open.spotify.com/album/0DdV4eHPZB8A6arLkm7x0A?si=g4eQdf3xTnW4_ETyzOYSUw

i'm also fiddlign with my default setup to incorporate this shadow hills compressor plugin in got and i like it. still tweaking it but it does as well or better than the multiband comp i had in place before

this is cool and good

# ¿ Jun 25, 2022 02:43

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

killhamster posted:

ah you went in a diff direction than i was thinking, i heard something kinda like in this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGHLTuDe1GA

but what are you using for guitar there?

It was acoustic samples 'sunbird' with just a clean amp setup in overloud, but i switched it out now to the telematic (telecaster obv) with just clean amp

also i see what you mean now, and yeah it works super great

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/slow-dance-song-wip3/s-6vMP4TroI0Q

the to build out the rest of the song woo

# ¿ Jun 25, 2022 17:31

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

welp, was going to do some stuff today, but instead worked on music all day

already another WIP version of that song

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/slow-dance-song-wip4/s-912jyZe1gyg

it's nearing completion now

# ¿ Jun 26, 2022 01:40

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Pollyanna posted:

I wish I had the energy and brain cells to do more music stuff after work :/ im mentally wiped by the time I get home. don�t have the spoons

I do my best stuff early in the morning and late at night usually.

anyway, this popped in to my head yesterday morning so i put it down

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/the-way-home

now I guess I'll finish the other one i started

# ¿ Jun 29, 2022 02:31

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

in a shocking development, i made more music

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/as-the-days-go-by

this was the WIP from before. i think it's done now, and one of my favs

# ¿ Jun 30, 2022 02:32

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

this was stuck in my head today for some reason, so I put this together in like an hour

may expand on it more, may not, who knows

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/simple-wip-thing/s-h7NLR1LM5h4

# ¿ Jul 11, 2022 02:55

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

i made some more music, hope that's ok for this thread :v:

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/might-as-well-enjoy-it

just something somewhat chillish I guess?

# ¿ Jul 19, 2022 02:15

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Pollyanna posted:

oooo nice n chill

I like that higher pitched plucky sound for what appears to be the main melody, what is that exactly? yes it�s a guitar but how

it's acoustic samples telematic (so telecaster) with TH-U overloud preset "TremWorld"

overloud has a zillion presets so I usually just listen to random ones until I find something I like

# ¿ Jul 20, 2022 02:23

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Pollyanna posted:

actually the more im listening to it the more i hate it gently caress THIS IS USELESS ah well imma go eat dinner

make random stuff, don't ever destroy things, come back to it days, weeks, or months later and you might be like whoa actually that's pretty cool i think i'll add this on to it now

i make shitloads of 30s to 2 m things that i never post but will go back to occasionally and add stuff to on relisten. like literally hundreds of them. i don't even remember how half of them sound, and just give them super lazy names until they're complete or whatever (names like 'near guitar sounds' or 'slow chillish thing')

# ¿ Jul 20, 2022 02:28

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Pollyanna posted:

https://youtu.be/rOMcxTK7-0w

ughhh I should really practice piano. it�s so pretty. and I feel this track hard right now. just dunno how to work it into my workflow

innnteresting

a lot of the music I listen to actually has bass/rhythm/treble guitar and piano, so I�ve been considering my options for using them. I shall look up these vsts.

I wonder how well it works in a tracker as opposed to like a piano roll or DAW timeline. actually yeah, how was this sequenced? piano roll in ableton? live quantized recording? just jam out with the software keys and record it in audacity?

I use reaper for just about everything these days with piano roll, although sometimes I'll use dorico to put down music notation. a lot of VIs use keyswitches and I can't imagine doing them in a more tracker like environment, although I have a custom dorico setup so that if i write a part and put pizzacato for it, it uses the keyswitch at that point

for electronic stuff i tend to write 8-16 bars of everything stacked, then move them around to come in/out as needed

# ¿ Jul 20, 2022 18:47

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Pollyanna posted:

I assume by keyswitches you mean velocity and note-on-note-off? that�s pretty simple in renoise at least, though a bit more manual. it accepts midi input when recording too, so those params can be just as brainless. in fact it even supports non-quantized notes

keyswitches usually are keys that you press to have an instrument do different things, and tend to be very low keys that are outside the instruments play range. for example, you have a guitar and want to go from chord mode to legato mode, you might momentarily hit C0 to switch modes, then can switch back with D1 or something. it's more of a pain in things that take musical notation since they're usually far below the range that the instrument is intended to be played. some times control channels can be used in their stead which makes it easier for some stuff.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2022 18:29

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

piano is fun but yeah it's a lot of work, and good that you're taking lessons

i've been working on this track some

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/emo-symph-wip1/s-t46fcjxOTss

trying to get better at building, balancing instruments as a whole, and some dynamics stuff as well

pretty happy with the build after the intro beginning and the swell at the end

# ¿ Jul 24, 2022 01:36

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Kernel Sanders posted:

now watch this

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZYLp5uX9Yw

was posted last page but yeah it's good

i remember watching the one for smack my bitch up like 10 years ago and it's insane

# ¿ Jul 24, 2022 02:05

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Jonny 290 posted:

ok constructive criticism

the strings and kick are good

cut a SHITLOAD of low end out of the snare, make it real cracky and sharp. its invading the kick's freq range

you could even add a triplet delay on the snare kind of rattling up for more space

a bit more reverb or chorus on the strings and pull them down by 3db

thanks, this was super helpful

i ended up splitting the big drum and sticks in to separate tracks, cutting the freq on the sticks in the low range, and adding deep reverb for the drum and bright for the other and it's much better now i think

took the spiccato strings and got rid of the ensemble of strings i was using before and split it to violin 2 and cello and added reverb as well

also added more to the end and filled out the middle part a lot more

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/emo-symph-wip2/s-ffAMf4TbcKK

also that drum loop def isn't too complicated

# ¿ Jul 24, 2022 17:57

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

killhamster posted:

been doing a project mixing an album for a buddy and decided i wanted to tear apart one of his tracks for his first single so this came out of me over the course of about 3 days. i think it's done and ready to send to him in high quality

https://soundcloud.com/killhamster/mozaic-dnb-remix/s-mcLWz7pkQKM

this used to be lo-fi hip hop

that's clean as hell and sounds great on my good headphones, great work!

# ¿ Jul 25, 2022 14:08

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

4lokos basilisk posted:

yeah you need a full 123989tb nas to just fit the tiniest violin in that orchestra

but it will be the most lifelike tiniest violin in the world

hey now! it's only a few tb for them. and the song I'm working on right now is only using 38 gb of ram :v:

# ¿ Jul 27, 2022 18:17

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Pollyanna posted:

well!!!! we shall then agree that it�s good

personal stuff: I think part of the reason im self conscious about my work is that I have a hard time backing it up. decisions were made but justifying them to myself and others is difficult, it�s hard to explain why I do what I do (if at all possible). I can�t pick up a track and go �this part of this song is really good because XYZ�, the best I can do is say �I like how XYZ sounds�. I actually live in fear of being asked �why is this track good?� because I absolutely cannot answer that question.

I worry that if I�m called to defend what I make, I�ll be outed as an impostor and amateur. and I want to have confidence in everything I make. but it�s hard when I can�t prove it.

its art, you don't need to have a reason to do anything or ever defend it

if you ask me why i did whatever i did the answer is 'because i like the way it sounds'

# ¿ Jul 31, 2022 12:34

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

aw frig aw dang it posted:

This was posted a little while ago but I really enjoy what you've made here!

missed this before but thanks!

NonzeroCircle posted:

I did a metal, testing out amp sims.

It's... Very Bolt Thrower.

https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/EdkJ2

neat. what amp sim did you use? pretty amazing what they can do now

Pollyanna posted:

then the problem isn�t the art itself (surprise surprise), but how one views it - both others� and their own

I tell myself I try to keep an open mind and find enjoyment in every song/track/etc I hear, but maybe I don�t do that well enough for myself. and if I don�t do that well enough for myself, can I still prove I do that well enough for others?

food for thought I spose

it's ok to not like things, and it's ok for others to not like your things. it's not a personal attack against the creator. hell, the majority of stuff i make is not what i'd normally listen to. sit down, make stuff, goof around, enjoy the process, :justpost:

. you're never going to please everyone all the time, including yourself.

you're way over thinking it

and the only way to get better at something is to do it a LOT, so get to it

# ¿ Jul 31, 2022 22:32

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

speaking of :justpost:

, finally done with the one that I posted a couple of WIP of

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/cinematic-feels

more improvements could be made and I can hear new things each time I listed but eh, good enough

# ¿ Aug 1, 2022 02:51

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Dukes Mayo Clinic posted:

Here's the four I made so far: https://voca.ro/1fKm86FqksC5

And the KNOH ID honks, if anyone wants to take a swing at making your own https://voca.ro/185VmLvYSrOd

lol

i made some simple synth thing. sounds to me like music you'd hear in a space exploration game or something?

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/space-out-chill-out

# ¿ Aug 7, 2022 20:15

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

been working on this off and on for that last week or so. started putting it together while doing some world building with some friends for a new game campaign with lots of space stuff in it.

the back half of synth stuff is still super rough but it's fun to work on

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/space-lol-wip1/s-KzyQM9tfPXk?si=51db9ff4086640cda84304ce6e79b717

also completed this last week but have been too lazy to upload it. chill type electronic type stuff

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/go-to-sleep-already

it's been about a year since i started making music stuff. looks like i did 33 tracks last year. not bad at all.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2022 03:20

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Achmed Jones posted:

i spent a lot of time yesterday trying to figure out why my new (from goodwill) mixer was suddenly making everything lovely and crackly

then i realized it wasn't the mixer, it was my td3. so i spent a lot more time troubleshooting it

it turns out that when the td3 is behind the mixer (probably bc it's close to the power supply), it gets some RFI that makes it sound bad. if I put it in front of the mixer, it sounds fine. if i have it to the front of the mixer _and also to the right_, it sounds bad again. so it just lives in front of the mixer, and it's slightly harder to get to my little keyboard (but not so hard that i wont be able to continue messing with it during meetings)

noise is such a pain to get rid of

i finally figured out a couple of weeks ago that the reason i was getting sound issues (slowing down/stuttering) with anything that wasn't reaper was because the ASIO buffer was set to 1024. setting it to 512 fixed it. it's been annoying me for almost a year now

# ¿ Sep 18, 2022 22:26

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

4lokos basilisk posted:

made some music https://soundcloud.com/trent-hawkins/telecharger-3217

this is a tuned up extract of what we do in the livestream. sometimes it sounds nice like this

this is really good, great vibe

I've been feeling bleh today, so I loaded up reaper and threw this down in 15 min or so. feel like I make the nicest sounding stuff when it's just stream of conscience type stuff. I think I'll be coming back to this later.

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/15-min-piano/s-43lmTucHOzW

# ¿ Oct 1, 2022 03:38

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

4lokos basilisk posted:

thanks, glad you liked the track. i wish we could pull off this kind of stuff more often in the livestreams but it happens more and more

i listened to your track too, it's a nice piano sound - reminds me of some movie or game soundtrack for some reason. might be shrek, might be lotr, might be icewind dale. do you use pianoteq?

yeah not surprised on the movie/game thing, since that's definitely a lot of my influence. it's from eastwest, their steinway D piano. I'll have to look in to the pianoteq ones.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2022 18:36

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

im_sorry posted:

I've been not feeling the music making lately, but I somehow managed to finish this today. I actually played live keyboard for one of the instruments.

https://soundcloud.com/the_door_is_scary/the-bdelloid-rotifer-will-outlive-us-all

this uhh, makes me feel anxious haha

i finished my piano song by adding on a bunch of stuff that makes me think of pirates or something.

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/memories-of-the-sea

the trumpet solo is audio modeling and sounds better than like, all plugins for them i've found (https://audiomodeling.com/swam-engine/solo-brass/trumpets/)

# ¿ Oct 10, 2022 03:26

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

video game music is cool and good. and also encompasses a huge amount of styles. just make stuff you like, and try to get better with each one. that�s really all you can do

# ¿ Nov 9, 2022 20:10

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Pollyanna posted:

y�all tell me what you think of this short piano idea

https://on.soundcloud.com/fwokbyr4AxDNJUgZ9

i like it, one thing i would recommend is turning down the velocity of the piano so that it doesn't sound so harsh, and using more reverb/pedal to smooth it out a bit

here's a random thing i've been working on for the last week

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/some-more-wip-stuff/s-jDxyoQ8OKu4?si=e82cb2f4990f476db75f9cc31f06a30f

# ¿ Jan 18, 2023 00:41

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

4lokos basilisk posted:

this sounds good. maybe it sounds *too* good on account of all your high quality string sounds. but i think i would not find this out of place in a computer game soundtrack

do you sequence everything nicely quantized on the grid, or do you also try some more humanized crescendos-diminuendos which happen in "real" classifal music?

the strings i use for solo violin/cello are very good and natural sounding depending on the play style selected. i use virharmonics pretty much exclusively now for those solo instruments, although their price reflects their quality.

they simulate bow stroke and i use key switches when needed to switch between up and down stroke.

a lot of work for them goes in to setting an appropriate velocity for the note, the length of note (some are quantized, but a lot are not to get a more natural ending to a phrase) and when to use vibrato/ non vibrato. at lower velocities they tend to have a natural crescendo / diminuendo based on the progression of the bow across the strings. they also have different selectable play styles which are more/less aggressive or have more/less vibrato.

they're releasing a viola this year which i'm looking forward to, and hopefully a bass after that.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2023 16:46

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

4lokos basilisk posted:

you don't have to have goals or something to accomplish with music or any creative art, it's completely enough if you are enjoying yourself while you are doing it! david lynch said this as well

the guy has a point with repetitions, but on the other hand there is the concept of ostinato, which is a musical thing where you repeat something and it psychologically becomes something different (i don't know how to explain this well)

i agree with this. i don't usually have a goal when i start something except maybe 'this would sound neat/i want this kind of tone for this.' other times i just start noodling around on a keyboard or throwing down semi-random notes, listening to them, then refining them to make them sound better to me, then doing that again.

yeah repetitions aren't bad. in a lot of music there's a constant repeat throughout it, but the perception of it changes based on whatever else is going on. i've certainly listened to stuff and thought dang that was a cool key change in the repetition only to go back and listen again and realize it never actually changed.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2023 16:50

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

im_sorry posted:

I've been meaning to do this forever, but I finally actually recorded a song with hardware and without using my DAW (beyond taking the file from the DP-006 and adding reverb and tape effects).

https://soundcloud.com/the_door_is_...=social_sharing

sounds like the theme for a mad scientist or something

i've been playing too much cyberpunk so i wanted to do something with synths again

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/the-streets

# ¿ Feb 13, 2023 23:16

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

killhamster posted:

dig the synth that it starts and ends with, and the chill beat, good imo

i melted a deftones song https://soundcloud.com/killhamster/deftones-minerva-rbms-all-numb-remix

i liked this a lot more than i thought i was going to before clicking on it. that's really cool!

# ¿ Feb 14, 2023 02:38

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

finally finished this off. probably my favorite thing i've made to date

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/more-symphonic

# ¿ Feb 17, 2023 00:49

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

was going through some random sounds and really like castanets so put this together over the last few hours

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/just-not-sure/s-cloJr4B6GK1?si=77c3f05687724f62a096b94132533b0d

might add on to it more v0v

# ¿ Mar 6, 2023 01:12

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Silver Alicorn posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiQhhLJCQ6g

Aight I finished this up. Hope you like it.

edit: sondglond https://soundcloud.com/silver-alico...=social_sharing

awesome. makes me want to play a sonic game or something?

i had a tiny part of the system shock 2 song medsci stuck in my head for like a week so I made this https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/ss2-thing

# ¿ May 8, 2023 01:27

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

the music that i write is usually a reflection of my mood which is fun

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/just-another-song

# ¿ May 23, 2023 23:48

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

Pollyanna posted:

^^^ when i get some time i�ll have a listen!

made some hosed up medieval/dramatic sounding poo poo with some fm patches and a random electric organ vst

https://on.soundcloud.com/2ccMt

got sick of not making music so i just sorta let a random-rear end sketch happen, this isn't even actually a track it's just some ideas thrown together. but i like some things it does so i might as well show that i haven't been COMPLETELY lazy

i think this is neat, like some castlevania type music, and that you're consistently way too hard on yourself. this isn't for a grade, it's not to be judged. just have fun with it and make cool sounds. everyone's style is different and that's what makes music cool and good

anyway, here's something i finally finished, after sitting untouched for something like 3 months. i've been too lazy to post other stuff but have been making here and there

https://soundcloud.com/poltzart/symphonic-castanets

# ¿ Aug 8, 2023 02:46

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 11:26

Woolwich Bagnet: Apr 27, 2003

i spend a bunch of time just recreating music i like to get a feel for how they've layered instruments to get a particular sound. i do it by ear and add/take away stuff sometimes to play with it. it's good a way for me to learn

Pollyanna posted:

remind me again what sound libraries you use? i really need a good set, and even if these are expensive i might yank �em for myself anyway.

it's a mix of eastwest's hollywood/symphonic orchestra/pianos/percussion, spitfire symphony orchestra professional, virharmonics solo violin/cello, and SWAM modeling for solo trumpet

i use reaper as my DAW, but also mess with sibelius and dorico sometimes if i want to write in sheet music notation. i find it being less abstract than say piano roll makes it easier for some things

# ¿ Aug 8, 2023 18:24

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