thank you! I'll hopefully by posting sometime tonight I listened to the track you submitted (the one you mentioned in the first post) and the quality is phenomenal to say the least
thank you! I'll hopefully by posting sometime tonight I listened to the track you submitted (the one you mentioned in the first post) and the quality is phenomenal to say the least
Hey what game are you making music for? I love games, particularly indie ones.
Looking forward to it, and thank you! It was the limit of my mixdown skills at the time--I just spent a shitload of time to "happy-accident" my way toward my goal. I hope I could do a much better job now.
No name and no developer blog yet but it's a FF6 style indie RPG that brings some real solid innovations to the battle system and some other things while still feeling pretty oldschool. I'm impressed with the work and I'll be flying out to Boston in july for 6 weeks to work more hands on (music is a key key component in the genre, and I'm glad that the creators know that)
9) Change your mood.
I'm working on a track with a little-known Japanese metal singer. She's metal obsessed, but her voice and energy are really suited for dance music, so I talked her into working with me. We hit a tiny piano room studio and she laid out some melodies she's been working with which sounded really good. Plugged in the midi keyboard had to re do it. She wasn't ready to sing that day, but that's probably a good thing given what came next.
The recording was done at 96 bpm, but sounded good sped up... until I put drums in. The ONLY thing I could do was ballad ass drums, and turn it into a really really really really really really really really (8 reallys) cheesy happy ballad. Which is weird because it's a dissonant, dark-intended melody. I was set to go, started laying in pads and moving sounds around (see next tip, it's short) to different instruments.
I still really wanted to make it dancey and I forced some groove onto the melody and harmony with autofilters and Logic's "grooveshifter", and kind of left it at that.... Until I listened to it with very fresh, sleep deprived, different-mood ears. I was in a new area (a cool library with a great view), which also helped get my mind elsewhere. Ended up adding a bassline and hook that fit the original idea very distinctly while being totally abstracted. The original melody serves faintly in the background in the higher registers, working like a pad to excite the listener and enhance the mood without being noticeable. It's one of the elements I use that you don't notice, but if I took it out, you'd really feel it. If I hadn't listened to it outside my normal situation, I wouldn't have been able to change it up so radically while keeping the truth of the original plan.
The singer liked it, even if finding it not as immediately recognizable as I did ;p
10) Working with piano midi and separating sounds.
Piano midi. Pretty much a full song in one line. Find the right hand and left hand notes. Split them up. Figure out basslines, arpeggios, and octave transpositions that work. Make the left hand a high pitched pad and a monophonic bassline (for example). Or, make the left hand your trance-saw stabs and make the right something else and add your own bass, etc. Basically, what you are doing is taking a complex expression of one instrument and parsing it out into many. You can get chords out of multiple instruments each playing their own note if you wish. Go wild.
Last edited by Hygro; 06-21-2012 at 06:45 AM. Reason: I use wrong words and catch them later like "wtf"
some good reads man, keep it up!
Need a new Global Trance avatar, takers? :p
http://soundcloud.com/frequentflyermiles
@Hygro, do you use logic?
Thanks Iggy!
Oscar, yes I do. Some of my comments will reveal a more Logic embedded workflow, but the principles should apply anywhere. Why do you ask?
Great stuff man!
I'm asking because i also use logic and then this is super helpful for me so thanks for all these tips!
You're welcome and thank you!
11) Melody Phrase Resolution booster.
Here's a short one I just learned listening to some of my old tracks tonight: if resolving a phrase in the melody while it jumps up, play a chord with your end note, hitting an octave or two above the resolving note. Possible make the pitched higher one more prominent. Dance music has to sizzle. It can't not sear if you want it to be real techno raw. When exploding a phrase with as something as dramatic as a hook/melody resolution, you really have to give it a fair moment to shine. Reach higher, brighter, etc. on an upward bound resolution.
Last edited by Hygro; 09-13-2012 at 11:43 PM. Reason: added a number and a title.
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