Music Making Month Marathon Megathread (of the Avatar)

Oddly enough, yes. I started playing a few years ago, but my ability to practice frequently was somewhat limited by the subsequent arrival of my firstborn

All the same, I can get a good sound as long as I don't have to play anything super complex. And I can manage some more complex pieces if I have a bit of time to practice and slow it down a little (thank god for modern recording software and the ability to fix tempo).

I'm not terribly good at composition outside of simple melodies, but as I said before I'm glad to record tracks for others. I have a fairly good mic, and a quiet place in the basement that suffices for a studio.

 

dp_dropout,

This is really great stuff. Especially so, since you present it as sub-par since you aren't playing the instrument personally. Makes me excited to hear some of it done acoustically.

j15r,

Speaking of acoustic, do you have any samples of things you've recorded before? I'd love to hear something you've played, even if it's not related to SotA, and I'm sure I echo Holt's desire as well.

 

I just got a decent mic and got it setup for recording yesterday, so I don't have much yet. But I'll go record a few bars tonight and upload a sample. After a couple of hours of fiddling yesterday, I think I finally got the recording quality to a level I'm happy with.

 

Great work so far, guys, and it's only day 2!

I was messing around with a very simple melody and bass idea today. It's on the Renaissance Lute and Bass Viola da Gamba from the ERA Medieval Legends instrument library.



I EQ'd the highs off the Viola and the lows off the lute, then panned one mostly right, and the other mostly left. If you added some really bassy drums, you wouldn't pan them as they like to sit dead center. Anyway, this makes it so that the instruments stand on their own and don't interfere with eachother's sound and frequencies, which is called 'mud'. A very simple technique (I didn't spend too much time on it) that you will use a lot while compositing/mixing in your DAW.

I've made the idea into a loop and enabled downloads, so if you feel like throwing it into your DAW and playing around with it, even deriving a completely different work, that's the whole point! Go for it and let me know what you come up with

 

A little out of order, but I fixed up sketch #1 which was some experiments with East West Symphonic Choirs. If you happen to find it useful, it should be loopable and if you're so inspired, download it and play around!

 

Hi, thanks for your most eloquent words Kailef.

It is a wide variety of roughs I look forward to anyone showing interest in developing some of my ideas. Pretty much the whole point of me posting way back with the very first music thread was to try and get somebody to co-write with but I have ran into so many dead ends with that.

Coping with copyrights and egos, I find, very frustrating... Been doing this stuff for 20 odd years now on my own and with band mates and friends and honestly after all of my hardships I've found really the only thing you get to keep afterwards is what you've put in personally - "if you want something done right, you'll have to do it yourself" so very true. I find it hard to rely on others when you seem like the only person contributing. But I digress..

For doing it myself, I would really love to but I find that I am not that skilled to be able to orchestrate full songs that well - sure I can write and write but some people just have a better knack for that, you know? I don't think most of my stuff is that worthy of actually being side-by-side with some of the other professional game orchestrators/producers unless some serious lifting is done!

Some of my goal is not to make necessarily medieval based folk music but rather guitar based rock/pop suitable for jRPG or similar. I really have a deep love for that kind of genre, to me it's a step cousin to the 'period' music but if someone with experience feels inspired to convert any of my ideas into romantic or medieval tunes I would be very happy.. It's not easy to find those who come here truly to help others out.

Once again, I would love to do some back-and-forth, I have my skills pluses and minuses - I know what I can and can't do. I won't try to say that I can high jump if I cannot.

On a side note, I plan to release my main track as a DAW audio+midi package for anyone who is noble enough to PM me. It is some 100 or so tracks (give or take) which is VERY medieval but also still in need of some more instrumentation. That one is a little more special to me, but I have tired of it somewhat, for the moment, I have turned my mind to other things for the present. Perhaps a hero will yet emerge to help with my merry project.

 

An impressive figure! Why not show off a few of them to the general community, in this thread?

 

I really like the feel of this. What key is it?
(My ear for such things is embarrassingly bad.)

 

These are valid concerns the muscian has about someone else taking credit for their work. Especially what happens to the music when it is uploaded to sound cloud. Voice over are one thing but please ensure the original muscian gets credit for their music. Then to say it cant be professional unless it is edited There are many musicians who submit professional work not just high quality and they should be recognized without any editing or someone taking credit for their work. Holt the licensing your referring to has a disclaimer that states it holds no legal value and is not a licencse so how can this be used for licensing and to say that all licensing is done through portalarium is false when you want muscians to rely on CC BY 4.0 Here is the link you requested.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Muscians should not have to worry about others taking credit for their work Please be upfront with your intentions .

 

You may read the human readable version of the license, or go into detail about what precisely it means at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. Copyright law is very simple, in north america. If you produce an original work, you are the copyright holder. It is much more basic than many people understand, but protects intellectual rights very well.

Copyright allows you to decide how your work is used. The default copyright is that familiar "All Rights Reserved". When someone uploads a tune to soundcloud, that counts as a recording and is instantly copyright. SoundCloud also has information about the date and time recordings were uploaded. This thread also provides a written record of sharing and interaction that could be used to claim ownership of original works. You do not have to do more than this to have copyright and be owed attribution and have a say in the commercial license of a co-written song.

What the Creative Commons licenses allow a copyright holder to do is specifically adjust the 'All Rights Reserved' portion of a copyright and extend some rights to others. It does have a legal value and is a license. The Creative Commons site merely states that its organization is not a law firm. All licenses carry legal weight when they are agreed to by the parties involved.

Licenses come in all shapes and sizes. I believe we have been upfront with our intentions. The final license of songs produced through collaborations will be purchased at a flat-fee rate by Portalarium, at which point they will own certain rights to the material, and the artist will retain others (such as being able to display their work on their own soundcloud/youtube, and more).

We have been working together inside the Guild for months, and have had a positive and productive experience that we desire to share with the community through this thread. I myself intend to produce ideas and make them available for download, and anyone can have a hand at playing around with them. This is a friendly experiment, and is in the spirit of musicians jamming with one another to come up with something greater than the individual.

Any musician uncomfortable with this form of collaborative license, or worried about their copyrights being abused, should absolutely not take part. You have every right to control your own works in whatever way you desire. However, the purpose of this thread is not to display individual works, but to create an environment of freedom and playfulness.

Contributions to this thread may be used or remixed. Basic ideas may be built upon.

Poets' Circle and a number of unaffiliated artists desire to produce music for the Shroud of the Avatar soundtrack. Portalarium will finalize the licensing at that point. Correct attribution and compensation has been a very integral part of the process and will continue to be so.

I hope this answers your concerns, but if it does not, I apologize and look forward to hearing your solo-produced works in other threads in the future. Thank you for helping by raising these issues so that we can explore them fully.

*I've posted this in the reserved spot 2nd post in the thread, so that everything is clear and upfront at the beginning. I'd be happy to start a separate thread to address any further issues, or participate in a separate thread that someone else starts. Thanks!

 

A-minor, pretty simple stuff.

 

I also want to link to this thread "SotA Music Discussion": https://shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/sota-music-discussion.8182/ which was started by Mystic. If you have solo works and want to show them off, or ask Mystic questions about mixing, a topic he is well versed in, that thread is highly recommended. It may also be a relevant place to bring up the topic of copyright, licensing and Portalarium's use of music in-game.

 

Ok, here's something I was able to dash off this morning before work. The tempo is uneven, and there's a bit of string harmonics that irritate me (they're kind of tricky to eliminate on the viol), but it should give you a rough idea:

 

Bravo. I love it. (No, not Braavos. Bravo. )

 

Thanks! Definitely not Braavos -- somehow I imagine their music as more "Spanish Renaissance" than "French Baroque"

More seriously, I'm happy to record tracks. Just send anything my way -- though do keep in mind that the instrument is tempered more for common keys like C, G, D, F (it's gut-fretted, and I've no practice adjusting the frets for different temperaments). And as I mentioned earlier, I can also do tracks on hammered dulcimer if anyone would like.

 

How well do you improvise over tracks? Would you be more or less comfortable if there was no viola yet added?

 

I believe I'd be fine with that -- it's really composition at the level of progression and song structure that I don't have much experience with. Basic melodies and bass accompaniment I'm pretty comfortable with.
At the least I guess we'll only find out by trying

 

A year ago the only thing i had done was electronic music. Just push yourself every time a little out of your comfort zone and you'll learn very fast!

 

Also, clearly, I don't know how to quote properly...