The Spelunker | 3 | 38% | |
Dim Lighted Cavern | 0 | 0% | |
Return of the Backpacker | 1 | 13% | |
Nightwalk | 2 | 25% | |
Finding Shelter | 2 | 25% | |
Volcanic Flow | 0 | 0% |
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The ones who were following my German blog should already know. I've finished composition, arrangement and orchestration of the first set of tracks. In terms of sound I'm still lacking, but this not my aim for now.
The 6 tracks are:
The Spelunker (underground, theme for caves and exploration)
Dim Lighted Cavern (underground, theme for caves and exploration)
Return of the Backpacker (upper world, intended for mountain turned out different, maybe as a theme "away" from base)
Nightwalk (upper world, theme for nights and sunrise)
Finding Shelter (underground, theme for snow / winter)
Volcanic Flow (underground, theme for danger / lava)
My "big idea" is to have music for different areas of the games, which could be script triggered :).
So now with the first set finished, I think you should all have an idea of what I'm aiming for. And you have the chance to influence the project with feedback :)- I'll be awaiting reactions, criticism is very welcome. Ah also I'll make a quick survey :)
*Download*
Definitely hearing the classical and jazz background combined with retro video game ambience. some of these remind me of good times playing snes games in the 90's. I'm also reminded of the music in clonk endeavour and rage, in a good way.
I do think though, and this isn't really criticism; you've said yourself that sound isn't your focus, but you could probably reach better results mixing wise by using some equalizers and other effects. an eq here and a reverb there would make those more lively,
other instruments than soundfonts could be nice also..
Remember that this isn't just composition, but production also.
something else to be aware of is dynamics, which is an important part of a composition!
for example, in return of the backpacker, the piano part's lack sensetivity (in the beginning mostly)
this comes obviously to midi editing which I don't think is your focus right now, so it doesn't matter that much. these kind of things evolve over time. a slight chage here and a slight change there..
Mostly I can see how much effort you put into composition. though I can't offer an opinion without analyzing, all I can tell you right now is I like it.
Looking forward to hearing those tracks becoming concrete and complete, good job:)
>Remember that this isn't just composition, but production also.
>this comes obviously to midi editing which I don't think is your focus right now, so it doesn't matter that much. these kind of things evolve over time. a slight chage here and a slight change there..
>Looking forward to hearing those tracks becoming concrete and complete, good job:)
I expect this phase to go a lot longer than the composition phase. I'll try to do a lot with recordings and get some people playing, I have more experience with audio editing than with midi (also no great libraries), also still having trouble playing with my hands - so we'll have to see how this goes.
Now with summer break coming I can get some people to play my music, I'll keep you updated on how this is going.
But from a first listening round without being ingame this project seems very promising, at least for settlement and adventure rounds. It seems less suited for melee and hectic gameplay though.
The distribution can take place via an external package which updates the Music.ocg file to also contain your songs, that way our project still remains open source and you can have the full rights for the music. This however makes it harder to make the music scene dependent, that is having mountain songs when you are on an icy peak and have cave songs when you are underground. Maybe someone has a solution for that? (Maybe a rule which kills the existing music and takes over control when it is present.) Btw, an adventure pack can always be developed on github under a different license and use your music. I think people will be more willing to get your music when it comes with a scenario pack, rather than a single download add-on. People are lazy after all.
Also still I prefer K-Pone's music for melee, since it is more up-tempo and fits better, also melee rounds don't really need scene dependent music in my opinion.
>The distribution can take place via an external package which updates the Music.ocg file to also contain your songs, that way our project still remains open source and you can have the full rights for the music.
How about those c4u Updaters which were used for Clonk Rage and just configured everything automatically?
>This however makes it harder to make the music scene dependent, that is having mountain songs when you are on an icy peak and have cave songs when you are underground.
Dunno if this is still relevant as the Triggering/Music Manager thread already has some discussion on this.
The problem you mention goes like this: All scenarios would have to react to the music existing, and could only play files that are present. And they don't know which files would fit where.
Solution: Icy peak tries not to select a song, but rather a category. And the category script gives a song from the song list, if this changes only the song list needs changing not the scenarios.
underwater
- if clonk swims underwatercity
- if buildings are around the clonklava
- if lava is near the clonkunderground
- if there is no sky above or at clonkmountains
- if lots of rock/granite/ore/gold is around the clonksnow
- if it's snowing around the clonknight
- if it's night timeoverground
- fallback if all other checks failThe current environment is determined top to bottom. E.g. if you're underwater and in a city, it will play as underwater.
Both tracks finished. One more is in the making - I'm now on 10 tracks, and 30 minutes total playing time. All 4 tracks from the second package are in the start post of the German blog.
I'll start doing studio work to finally get a good sound for the whole soundtrack, starting tomorrow. This step will probably take several months to finish, I'll keep you posted on how it goes.
But well, sadly my hands are still messed up. So I won't be able to play much myself. My actual plan is therefore to let other people play, and record them :)
Do you have a good recording device? - I could make a version without piano to play along with for the recording.
And yes - context generally makes it easier. On the other hand, the Spelunker part is relatively solo-y anyway, so I can probably just do it with a metronome. And hm, the MP3 sounds like there is supposed to be an arpeggio on the first chord? Careful about encouraging me there... ;)
>Yeah, that's easy enough. We have a proper external "Teufel" sound card here, which I suppose is slightly better than leaving A/D to a laptop. Will probably hook it up tomorrow.
Awesome, direct line input I assume? For our purpose this may even be better than wiht microphones, since we won't capture reverb and surroundings.
You can use Audacity for recording: You can add the Mp3 there - and probably also a click track (metronome), and record your output signal while you play :) - if it's finished I'd need a wav file (can be exported via audacity).
I made a small package with versions without piano and notation. The two pieces included are also scheduled for recording flute and bass Guitar too.
Hm, one important thing: Use no reverb for the recordings, I'll add this later in the production. Actually currently the whole Spelunker track is without reverb :)
I'm curious how it will sound :)
Files: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/34602860/Peter%20Package.zip
http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~scpmw/Spelunker-1.flac
FLAC should be okay as well, right? And yeah, reverb should be disabled (even though it keeps re-enabling it). I am using the metronome of my piano - no idea how to get a click track from that.
> Turns out that thing is less good than I thought - only has a microphone input, which (of course) is mono.
So, the external Soundcard has only one input? That's rare, they usually have two, to record stereo. Well if we only have one, than a room microphone probably is best. But than again, for the spelunker track it's probably not the right choice. But maybe for other tracks.
>I also lack the proper cable to use the line outputs.
So you mean, there are line outputs after all? They would be better suited for our purpose - they get a direct signal out of the keyboard, which will sound a bit harder than your are used to because there will be absolutely no reverb on them. But this will give me the power to do this digitally :)
You can get line cables at almost any music store. They are relatively cheap, costing only a few bugs.
>FLAC should be okay as well, right?
In principal, FLAC is a pretty good format - which has the power to reconstruct the wav without any losses. I never have done that though, will have to check how that works. Ah, I forgot you use a MAC, so of course there are no wavs, the MAC variant for uncompressed audio is aiff (.aif) - this would be my preferred choice, if it's possible :).
>I am using the metronome of my piano - no idea how to get a click track from that.
Well, a clicktrack is a metronome. You can get this out of Audacity by choosing in the top menu "Generate" and "Click Track", there you would be able to sync this with the Spelunker Audio file (if they both start at 0:0 they should be in sync automaticall) - which you can also run in Audacity, and you can also record at the same time. So you would have all 3 tracks in one window, and could easily check if you are right on track :) - I don't need the click track, it's just for you - but a metronome works as well, but it's hard to start the play along track and the metronome at the same time manually if you have to click or push buttons.
> reverb should be disabled (even though it keeps re-enabling it)
Yes, this is very important - note however that there is a lot of reverb on the recording. But this is pretty normal, if you do a recording through a room. The line-method would create no-reverb, which would be the best case (since I plan to create a own reverb setting, since it's for a cave music).
>headphone-to-Macbook-input instead
So, ok - there should be nothing wrong with the Mac Input I believe. However which microphone do you use? I'll add 3 screenshots, your recording has a more narrow frequency spectrum than I expected. Picture one is the spectrum from your recording, picture two is from a piano recording I made last year - with professional microphones. And picture 3 is a sample library which comes out of the computer. Just for comparison, so probably the Line-Recording method would also give us something from that.
>playing
Ok, so you use a lot of Pedal. Note, that it's a funky passage - so the focus should lie on rhythm, and this is I think usually done by using less pedal to get more attack on the notes (especially in the chords - the arppegio passages of course use more pedal to connect them). So try to focus on rhythm, also the second chord in a bar (the first two chords usually repeat) you usually play a tiny bit too soon.
> Ah, I forgot you use a MAC
Well, I installed Audacity, so I can produce WAV as well. Was just concerned about putting uncompressed data on my Uni account :)
> However which microphone do you use?
Hm? I just plugged the headphone output into the input of the Mac.
> Narrow spectrum
So you're missing high frequencies?
> Ok, so you use a lot of Pedal.
Unfortunately I only have a binary on/off pedal at the moment - trying to fix that. According to the manual there is a way I can reduce the depth, I'll check.
> So try to focus on rhythm, also the second chord in a bar (the first two chords usually repeat) you usually play a tiny bit too soon.
Okay - my reasoning was that it was the end of the piece, so I'd better play a bit more mellow. I'll try to liven it up a bit.
>Hm? I just plugged the headphone output into the input of the Mac.
Oh, I actually never thought of that. Dunno if there is something wrong with that.
Also interesting :) - so my impression of having heard a lot of reverb, must have been all the pedal? Seems like I have been neglecting production for a bit too long and my ear is out of training. But this means the pedal is definitely too present.
>So you're missing high frequencies?
Was my first impression. But thinking about it, not super experienced there, maybe it's the way this piano is intended to sound.
I mean normally capturing frequencies till 10k should always be captured by most devices (and this exceeds the spectrum of a piano) - I cannot believe the sound capture would cut frequencies so low.
> my impression of having heard a lot of reverb
This is probably the "depth" setting I was talking about above - it attempts to simulate a proper grand piano interior. I'll turn it down in future.
> I cannot believe the sound capture would cut frequencies so low.
Hm, it seems to be true though. Using the Teufel sound card I get lots of higher frequencies. But on the other hand quite a bit of noise as well. Hm. Might all be less suitable than I had hoped :)
Also: Oh crap, G#. Let me re-record that.
>Hm, do you want that second track with "electrical" piano samples? I think it sounds best just with normal piano.
In principal the composition is for underwater, where artificial sound is wanted to add to the alien expression. Yet, I don't know your sound-bank - so not 100% clear if I should insist on that.
>Also: Oh crap, G#. Let me re-record that.
Yes I noticed, but it had a interesting color too it :) - but this also shows you have not played along the instrument track - if you would hear the flute and the drums play along, I think it would probably have a better feel to it.
> Yet, I don't know your sound-bank - so not 100% clear if I should insist on that.
Well, and I don't know quite what you have in mind :)
In my opinion all organ-like samples do not work (note-off too noticeable), and it probably shouldn't be too "brilliant" either. Here's using the most "mellow" setting I can find:
http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~scpmw/Pearl%20Diving.flac
The tempo is a bit wonky here - according to Audacity it is more 45.3 than 45? Had quite a bit of trouble starting the whole thing in sync. Second chord is still off (got distracted). Also I'll need to practice the end a bit. To be fair, that riterdando is evil :)
>Here's using the most "mellow" setting I can find:
Hm the patch sounds not too great (clearly hearing the synth-basis), but the direction is right: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEgnPDwulM8#t=3m - always liked a sound like this, kind of a mix between a bell, jazz guitar and a piano :)
>The tempo is a bit wonky here - according to Audacity it is more 45.3 than 45?
Maybe has something to do with the dotted-note tempo? Since the 6/8 pulse is conducted in 2 sets (123 456). So for 4/4.. hm what would it be.
I think Tempo 60?
Like
6/8 = 45 -> 12/8 -> 90
/3 *2 for 8/8 -> 60.
Dunno, I hate math, I create a session in the production program tomorrow. There it should show accurate.
Or maybe Sven can do that and add some details about the system.
P.S. Sorry to hear about your hands, that must be very frustrating.
The plan is to still add 4 more tracks to reach the original aim of 18 tracks (haven't worked on them the past two months, had a different project - put I'll pick it up again in december), and also I wanted to polish / update every track at the end.
With the current approach sound quality is of course a problem, if everything is set maybe I can get a producer to join the project at that state.
>I'll keep it updated and add stuff from time to time
Added two "non-clonk" tracks today. Hope you'll check them out :)
I know your music is not freely licensed, but Sven, Newton and I made a video of the lights branch and by chance (12/15 songs in my OC version are yours) your song played. Yesterday when uploading the video I forgot about the rights of your song. I hope it is okay for you that your song appears this way on youtube.
I have added a link to your soundcloud page.
>I hope it is okay for you that your song appears this way on youtube.
Sure, no problem. You can use all tracks from the project on youtube. There would have been a lava track, that maybe was more suiting. Well, guess the atmosphere script is not working that well right now - but the light looked impressive.
>I have added a link to your soundcloud page.
Thanks :)
I saw that not all songs are yet on Soundcloud, are you planning to add all of them?
>I saw that not all songs are yet on Soundcloud, are you planning to add all of them?
No but I'll add a few more once in a while, don't have much listeners anyway, and all tracks after the first 7 should receive major overhaul anyway once I find the time (currently I'm rather busy).
I plan to finish end of Juli at the latest, also a couple of small guitar pieces I wrote will be added to the soundtrack soon. The total track amount is: 20 tracks (18 finished), and around 1 hour of music.
---
Implementation:
I simplified the categorization and divide the whole soundtrack in: Day time music, night time music, underground/exploration music and underwater music. The engine implementation should be simpler with this, and the transition smoother. If someone picks up working on this with me (Sven2?), the whole project can be released in OC 7 already.
But hey, if you are interested in playing some of the tunes just for fun I'm more than happy to hand out some sheets and listen to your interpretation, although for solo piano I probably have to rearrange stuff first, but that's usually quick work :)
Still have the Spelunker sheet flying around, playing it from time to time. Rearrangements could also be fun - if it's not too much work.
>that professional musicians just sit down and do it quasi-perfectly on command :)
In most styles, mistakes are part of the deal and can be corrected while playing. Especially in jazz or metal, you can just move up chromatically if you hit a wrong note. In classical music however you cannot do that, also the pieces are super famous so everybody and his brother knows.. probably those pieces require the most discipline.
But man do I miss practicing guitar, it was a hell of a lot of fun improving all those movements and adding new scales and such to your repertoire - but I can relate to you, as I'm now playing trombone, and I hate practicing it, probably the first 2 years are the hardest :D
For the production process I used two libraries from Garritan: Garritan Jazz and Big Band 3 and Garritan Personal Orchestra 4.
I have to buy both in order to publish work with their sounds, they cost about 120 Dollar each. We will need some funding for this and I'm happy that during the planning some community members already promised support :). I have a paypal account, email there: david.oerther@directbox.com - thanks in advance.
Download:
Open Clonk Soundtrack
In case we don't get funding, I also made a version without commercial libraries.
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