Music Experiments

This is another one of the pieces I worked on. It’s a bit older (couple months old) but I never got around to posting it. Again, it’s short and unfinished but I still like it quite a bit. I’ve been really fond of the idea of creating video-game esque music lately. Something about the composition and creation of a mood or feeling for an environment is entertaining.

But who knows, Forgetting Sarah Marshall was about a guy who was bored to death with that kind of stuff. Anywho, hope you enjoy this bit of music.

Software: Fruity Loops w/ Orchestral Plug-In

This latest snippet is an experiment as we move into the use of midi and sampling in Digital Performer. I created a two layered rhythm with a bit of equalization, a sine wave modulator, and some reverb. The initial version had a great deal of white noise in the background which I found interesting but when I threw on a limiter it get a very pleasant melody. It may be something I work with on a later project. I am particularly a fan of the symmetry, while it’s only a minute and a half on repeat with a music player, it will loop seamlessly.

Sound Engineer: Myself

Software: Digital Performer

So doing this work with Fruity Loops has gotten me in the mood to keep on going with these. It’s been brought up that I should compose music for a Final Fantasy based pen and paper RPG that’s being thought of. With that in mind I’ll be working on old school sounding rpg environments.

My hope is that by doing this more will develop my understanding of music theory. A big improvement I’m noticing already is that due to the construction of the Orchestral plug-in I’m beginning to learn about how instruments interact with one another. Being able to generate a melody and then having different instruments play those melodies shows how the mood can change drastically if played by different types of instruments. I’ll definitely be continuing to experiment.

I also may be moving this to a host website that allows for listener/reader feed-back. This would be helpful for me and in the event I can answer any questions, the reader as well.

This piece is very simple and repetitious. I may need to work with levels in the future but I’m not sure how much I want to add. It initially started out just using a Harp but adding the Marimba added a bit more depth to it without over-powering what’s supposed to be a simply background for perhaps a village.

The next project you’ll most likely see is a variant on this with a much slower pace and different instrumental line up.

As a way for me to get over being self-concious over my work and avoid my perfectionist personality, I’m going to start uploading tid-bits of music I work on. They aren’t complete pieces but it gets a mood across. I’m still working on developing transition through music but having no previous music theory background it’s proving difficult.

This particular piece is very thematic. It was suggested that it sounded very foresty so I went with that. It’s a short piece, but I hope you like it.

This was created using Fruity Loops and the Orchestral Synth plug-in.

Here’s the second project that we put together. It’s got a lot more instruments in it and sounds a bit more modern. We experimented with having some Chinese Drum mixed in which actually doesn’t sound too bad. Again since these were all done on all roughly one take shots the beginning sounds a little rough but once it gets going it sounds a lot better.

To give credit where due, there were the roles:

Sound Engineers: Myself, Trinity Sokol

Lead/Rhythm Guitar: Michael Rossi

Piano: CJ Rhone

Drum: Myself

All audio tracks were recorded onto an Otari 8-track machine and mixed with an API Recording Console. Effects were added using an M300.

Microphones: Sennheiser 421, TS2, SM58

In conclusion to my Fall Quarter at Evergreen, myself and a few of my classmates came together with this and the following piece for our final in Audio Recording I. Since I can only post one each DAY I’ll start with the one that I presented as my own mix. Though both pieces were a product of team-work, particularly with Trinity Sokol.

To give credit where due, there were the roles:

Sound Engineers: Myself, Trinity Sokol

Guitar: Michael Rossi

Piano/High-Hat: CJ Rhone

All audio tracks were recorded onto an Otari 8-track machine and mixed with an API Recording Console. Effects were added using an M300.

Microphones: Sennheiser 421, TS2, SM58

You got me. I finally made a tumblr. This is a simple sample of music I made using Fruity Loops and an Orchestral plug-in. This is my first real experimentation with sound engineering.