Has anyone here written music?

I have absolutely zero musical talent so the process by which talented people write music has always fascinated me. I've always wondered "how does it work?". Does a certain melody just randomly enter your mind and then you go from there? Is it like a mathematical exercise where you just start fitting certain sounds to numerical values?

Why does certain music become so memorable and timeless while other music is eventually forgotten?


So many questions!

Ya, me.

Different composers have different methods, most follow construction techniques they were taught in music theory courses. I however write from my head: ideas appear, are sketched out, orchestrated, then recorded, the process is similar to sculpture or painting.

Association is the answer to your other question. the use and reuse of a piece of music to symbolise an era, forever ensures its survival.

Another approach is to take a riff or chord progression and use its inspiration to build on it until you flesh out a complete structure - sort of like a sculptor who sees a particular shape in a piece of seemingly formless granite.

This can come from a solo effort of sitting down and simply hitting some random note combinations until you think, "Hey, this sounds like the next note should be . . ." or "What if I just try this unconventional rhythm with this seemingly classical sounding chord progression?"

The serendipitous approach can work really well when used by a song-writing team. One person starts something on a guitar and another person thinks of an accompanying bass line or drum beat. The result can be a sort of snow-balling effect that seems to build on itself.

Thanks for your replies guys!

I had a go with samples and a sequencer back in the early 90s - one of the many benefits of being an Amiga owner. I spent months fiddling with Octamed and had dozens of floppy discs full of samples and loops.

A bit like letterboy1, I would sample a loop or motif I liked from a recording (from a tape player to a mic! - no direct CD recording!), then experiment with drums, bass, effects and vocals. Very much trial and error. I had a few tracks played at the college disco, but not much beyond that, besides for fun.

For those unfamiliar with such things:



One of the best examples at the time. Protracker used 4 tracks, Octamed 8 (but at the loss of some fidelity and hammering the memory limits of the Amiga).

Each note was added manually (or by a MIDI device if you were rich) and the hex next to each note controlled volume, vibrato, modulation, sustain etc.

You can see from the vid just how sophisticated this software was, and as freeware (or essentially freeware as it was pirated very widely), hugely popular on the Amiga demo scene, as well as in the making of all those classic games...

I had my share of composing music in Fast Tracker 2 in late '90 early '00. At the time I was a big fan of demoscene and I acquired a lot of music made in "mod", "s3m", "xm", "it" format and deconstructed it and that way I learned all the tricks and effects available in Fast Tracker 2 (delays, volume pans, retriggers etc.) . I'm also self learned guitar player so I connected these 2 activities and for some time when in high school I made a lot of better or worse compositions some of them even included my own samples (most of the time I would just rip the samples from other people modules). You can check out my creations here if you like:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIku_oD9y-RAV2OXr5kuAkr2gYfJK6q-s

I had a long break from module tracking when attended Technical University but from time to time I revisited the Fast Tracker 2 (thanks to DOSBox) I made some tracks that doesn't suck that much
Here's one from 2007 (I actually made that at work when was bored on a night shift while working as a maintenance engineer)
.

And here's one I made in about 3 hours for my 8 years old son, who loves the Battlefield theme:


I recorded most of my music playing in Cubic Player (for YouTube purposes) since it sounds a bit better than when it is played in Fast Tracker 2.

nice stuff damson, that first track somehow reminds me of Tangerine Dream's "Melrose" album.

BF theme is great, you should get that on the BF in game channel

I guess messing around with a Minimoog in the 1980's doesn't count.

Now I want to go listen to some Sphinx Lightning by Tangerine Dream.

Yeah I dabble in composition now and then.

Wow, that's really good Toumal. Is this sequencer running on actual PC or is it on some dedicated hardware?

Keyboard workstation (Fantom-G)

I do stuff on Cubase

Thanks! Red is right, that's my Fantom G6's built in sequencer. I also use Renoise on PC, coming from FastTracker, ImpulseTracker and Modplug tracker. The Fantom is super nice to work with however, I have yet to see a workstation synth that has a similarly capable sequencer. It also has some very lovely patches:

http://www.playspoon.com/music/FantomR6_1.mp3


Here's some more stuff:

http://www.playspoon.com/music/Quiet-A-Ruckus.mp3

http://www.playspoon.com/music/Kaossilator%20Jam%204%20-%20Switch%20to%20Blue.mp3 (this one was played live)

http://www.playspoon.com/music/TribesHymn.mp3 (Super old stuff)


But yeah if you like tracker interfaces, then Renoise is the best thing out there.

Yeah I did tried Renoise 2.x few years ago, but didn't had the time to fully get into it. I did noticed it made some things really simplified with the many plugins available. Maybe some day ...

Those are pretty nice tracks Toumal, so I reckon you are covered in the music department for your Project Stealth game