Music Making Month Marathon Megathread (of the Avatar)

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For the past five months, members of the Bards of Poets' Circle Guild have produced over 30 songs for consideration in Shroud of the Avatar. An inspired and positive segment of your community has truly risen to the occasion.

But it's time to take things to the next level, and for that we need YOU!

June is the Music Making Month Marathon, and this is its Megathread!

You will be able to find your way back here using http://mmmmm.poetscircle.net.

Everyone has music within them. Lord British wants New Britannia to be filled with community contributions. The solution is simple. Whether you're humming vaguely into a recording device, strumming your guitar, messing with Garage Band or some other software, this is your chance to step into the limelight.

Here's how to take part:​

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1. Create a SoundCloud account.​

2. Follow Poets's Circle (poetscircle) on SoundCloud​

3. Subscribe to http://list.poetscircle.net for news on which tunes will be fully produced.​

4. Record your tune.​

5. Upload it to SoundCloud.​

6. Make sure 'downloadable' is enabled to provide easy access to participants.​

7. Post it in this thread.​

8. Be sure to 'watch this thread...'!​

9. Tweet the SoundCloud URL to @holtironfell & @RichardGarriott​

We'll take the melodies, chord progressions and patterns that fit best into the game and build on them with professional sounding instruments and composition techniques. The original composer(s) will be credited alongside whoever re-orchestrates and co-composes the final song.

To help things along, I too will be recording a chord progression and/or melody every day of June, for 30 days.

Our quest is to generate a huge pool of 'seed' ideas that can be shared, developed and collaborated upon by the Shroud of the Avatar community. We want to turn a selection of these ideas into incredible songs for use by Portalarium, as a permanent representation of the community's support for the game's development.

Rise to the challenge, Avatars! Whether it be 8, 16 or 32 bars, get those notes down and lets jam! Music is multiplayer, and Poets' Circle has discovered that when we play it together, incredible things can and do happen.

Tips & Guidelines:​

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1. Submissions should be short, a maximum of 32 bars. Just enough to communicate a basic musical idea.​

2. Submissions must be on SoundCloud. Once they are posted on this thread you consent to others remixing or developing your idea.​

3. If your idea becomes a song in game, you will be credited as co-composer alongside the artist who re-orchestrates it toward that 'professional' sound.​

4. If you complete a song of high enough quality on your own, please visit http://poetscircle.net/submissions for steps on how to formally submit it for consideration by Lord British.​

5. We are looking for chord progressions, patterns, melodies, harmony: the very seeds and hooks that create a memorable song. ​

6. Don't worry about the quality of instrumentation, concentrate on the idea itself. There are composers with access to incredible sounding instruments that can help you take the idea further should they volunteer to do so.​

Good luck, and above all, have fun! They call it PLAYING music for a reason -- so with that: game on!

~Sir Holt Ironfell, Grandmaster Bard of Poets' Circle,
by Royal Warrant of Lord British.
http://poetscircle.net


Note on Licensing:

Tunes contributed to this thread will form a pool of Creative Commons musical ideas for use in Shroud of the Avatar, licensed under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

[ Click here http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ to understand what this license means ].


The spirit of these contributions is important. It is open to all. You are participating with the understanding that your work may be altered by other community members, and/or commercially developed for use in Shroud of the Avatar by members of Poets' Circle, or even musicians unassociated with the Guild. You will be credited as co-composer, should your idea become a reality.

 

There is some discussion regarding rights, licensing and the creative commons terms in this thread. I'd prefer the concentration to be on producing music, by those interested in contributing musical ideas.

To address the main concerns, I am reposting this up front so that the thread may remain on topic.

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You may read the human readable version of the license, or go into detail about what precisely it mean 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.​

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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.​

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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.​

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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).​

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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.​

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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.​

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

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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. ​

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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, and thank you for respecting the intentions of this thread, whether or not you feel you can post your music here.​

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.

 

I actually composed today and yesterday. One of the things I came up with might be useful for a dungeon or the Underworld. The point here was to experiment with only a few elements to create a rich idea. There's no real 'melody or hook', but you can still create mood without.



I'm vey eager to hear everyone try out some ideas!

 

Let the music roll out and be awesome!!

 

I love the concept behind the event, and its a great thing to do to draw in additional musical talent to the game.

However, I have a concern regarding the licensing you telling people to submit there work under. You are telling people to submit work under a CC-BY licenses, but are linking to a CC-BY-SA license. These are two very different licenses.

CC-BY 4.0 enables you to redistribute the work under a different license as long as there are changes made to the work.

CC-BY-SA 4.0 requires you to share any derivative works under the exact same license, even if changes are made to the original work.

You can see the differences here: CC-BY 4.0 and CC-BY-SA 4.0


I thought I would bring this up, as I know when it comes to licensing, especially the Creative Commons ones, they can be very confusing, and i wouldn't want there to be any misunderstandings over this.

 

Holt, your dungeon piece is decent. I am curious to know your thoughts on putting effects like water drops and the like into your tracks? Is that something you stay away from and leave up to game environment sfx, I think some would sound nice when I listen. I suppose not necessary to put them into game tracks if the environment will take care of that sort of thing.

 

I don't generally write music which might fit into this game's atmosphere, but maybe this little theme might work:

 

Sfx should still be in if the music is turned off I. Options, so I'd stay away from it. But if it's going to be reorchestrated anyway and you want to experiment, go for it!

 

This is a opportunity for people (like myself for example) who have some melody ideas in their head, but don't quite have the skills to take those ideas and turn them into a fully realized song. I'm really excited to see what sort great music will emerge from this endeavor. We have such a huge community here, that there's got to be literally hundreds of ideas waiting to me made in to songs, that just need the right encouragement and assistance to grow.

 

I have a bit of a hard time deciding what to submit for these types of things because these kinds of agreements are so open ended that the artists musical idea will become so drastically changed it will be likely he never gets the credit from originating the idea, but those who re-orchestrate get all the credit AND get to choose the final mix for the placement.

Those who submit are basically required to 'trust' the Poet's Circle to give them credit back for their piece, when they are done.

It's ok, I can deal with only submitting ideas that are not quite that dear to myself. It's in my nature to create music that is only partially complete.

BTW what happened to all the great music from the other threads?

(watch the movie Black August were a over-ambitious editor tries to change a black writers piece of work to 'better suit' the work in his view)

 

Talking about the copyright terms and what becomes of the music is entirely on topic!

However, I don't think attacking my opinion as "paranoia" is, actually that is against the forums rules and I will probably report you for that.

You have to understand that someone taking someone else work and just changing a few things and calling it there own is a very real occurance in the high-paced modern world. There is no guarantee that will not happen and saying that because you are affiliated with Lord British does kind of make you sound like you are trying to make a quick cover-up.

 

I've made a compilation of some rough beats and examples of my music, not just for Holt to play with, but also for anyone else to as well. But I don't expect that much nothing amazing here that I would give away blindly not knowing what may become of them!

It's 10:00 and made of 19 individual roughs.

These are not high quality and just demonstrate general ideas but if you PM I would be happy to provide more more (eg midi tracks) if any writers out there want to co-write with me..

If anyone wishes to work with any of these they are required to use my name as the originator.



(included: many rhythms and block chord roughs with some dungeon-esque)

 

Mike,

That's pretty good stuff! A wide variety, for sure. As you said, obviously a collection of rough melody ideas, but that's exactly the sort of thing that The Poets' Circle is looking for and can be built upon. It seems clear to me, though, that you've got the level of skill to produce music yourself. More than I do, at least!

I want to take a second to make a few things a little more clear, so we can move past concerns about trust and get to the heart of the matter, which is making music for Shroud of the Avatar!

The Poets' Circle is essentially trying to relieve as much burden as possible on the Portalarium staff, at their request. We have been given a great deal of detail with regard to how they are wanting the in-game music sound. By helping to guide artists that wish to contribute music and ideas along the path that Lord British and the rest of the team are looking for, we hope to decrease frustration and rejection, and make the entire process a productive, fun, shared experience.

Allow me to assure you (and anyone else who contributes musical ideas) that the originator of the melody or chord progression here in this thread will receive credit for their work. I know exactly how you feel with regard to ideas being hijacked and we're going to make sure that doesn't happen. That's one of the reasons that we're doing this in an public forum, so that all contributions are out in the open for everyone to see, with their authors clearly shown.

We are here to collaborate and share creative ideas and so we can each make the best music we can, in a friendly, open, cooperative fashion. We want as many people in our incredible community as possible to contribute, from beginners to seasoned experts. Don't be shy! No matter how silly you may think your idea is, we want to hear it. Just because you may think that your ideas son't sound as good as Mike or Holt's contribution, it's no reason not to try. Even the best songs in the world all start out as a rough melody.

I look forward to seeing what everyone can do!

-Jarrod Kailef, Ambassador for The Poets' Circle

 

I'm fairly slow at putting music together. Here's the one song that I've been working on for SotA, for the past several months. (By fairly slow, I mean... really slow)

 

I don't have much to contribute yet, though I hope to once I find a bit more free time. But if anyone has music they'd like to hear played on a bass viola da gamba (for a nice baroque feel), I'd be happy to record it.

I'd also be happy to record anything on the hammered dulcimer as well.

 

I love bass viola da gamba it's my favourite instrument in ERA medieval legends library. Are you saying you actually own and play one??

 

I just want to say that I feel like I'm shooting blind here.
I have no idea what kind of music they want in SotA. Do they want the old-school medieval-sounding stuff like UO and the Ultima's or do they want more modern sounds? It would be nice if there was some detailed info. I'd much rather contribute finished stuff but I need a guideline. Also, do they need theme songs for cities and dungeons? Tavern music? Combat music? What's already finished? Is there a way to listen to finished and approved songs in order to write something which sounds alike? How long do the songs need to be? Does it need to be seamlessly loopable?
Don't get me wrong, I'll try to get some more stuff done in between the end of the school year exams and tutoring (I'm a guitar teacher) but some direction would be nice.

Btw, there doesn't seem to be a lot of enthusiasm for music on this forum anyway. We are posting our babies here (you know what I mean) but hardly anyone seems to care. Maybe this is normal, but it feels kind of awkward.

Just in case anyone is interested: I'm pretty old-school in a sense that I don't have or use any synths or samples. I write my music on paper and then convert it using Sibelius. The song I posted in this thread is basically Sibelius' midi converted into a wav. So if it's somehow necessary for the game or for collaborating, I have everything in music notation.

 

If it helps, I enjoy hearing what people are working on and love to listen to these little snippets. But I'm not musically-inclined, so I don't comment because I don't know what I'm talking about.

 

dp_dropout,

They are definitely looking for the "old-school medieval-sounding" feel versus the modern feel, at least as far as instrumentation goes. A while back, prior to Poets' Circle being officially formed, I send a few submissions to Richard Garriott. While he liked them, the very first thing he asked me was if I was open to re-instrumentation to give them a more period-appropriate sound.

All of the finished tracks are over at www.poetscircle.net which should give you a much more solid idea of what they're looking for. To my knowledge, nearly all of the music in the game right now came from Poets' Circle musicians. As far as specific direction for skilled people such as yourself whom can contribute finished products, Holt will be able to give you substantially better help in that arena than I can. You may even wish to consider applying to the Poets' Circle directly, if you would like to become heavily involved in creating music for the game.

(My own musical skill is planted firmly in the "idiot savant" realm. I haven't got any formal training, just a lot of time playing various percussion and singing by ear without being able to read a lick of music. The people in Poets' Circle are really doing a lot to help me, taking the raw product that I am able to contribute and making it in to something that's viable, and teaching me a lot along the way.)

 

Another one, this time a pretty simple waltz. Intro is just the guitar harmony and then the layered melodies are added.
Again, this is not me playing, it's midi in its simplest form. There's no nuances whatsoever...