Advice and Music from Real Musicians

For several days, my foray into composing music drew no reaction for the most part, which is generally not a good sign. There was one frank comment at the NWN2 boards from someone who wrote, "That is SO weird I feel like I just took drugs or something." My assessment of my own music is admittedly biased, so there's nothing like an honest comment from someone else to bring my opinion back to reality.

Also at the NWN2 boards, I was advised to remove the drum beat from the music. I did that and rearranged the composition a bit to make up for the loss of the drum beat. Two days after I first posted Peccata Mundi, I uploaded version 1.1 of the song at the Vault.

Perhaps the best outcome of my song is that it gave Henry Solberg some ideas for composing angelic battle music. Within a few days, he wrote a glorious piece called Arrows of Angels, Knives of Men. Henry was able to fuse together the renaissance church style with a warlike beat, and he designed the music so that it may be looped continuously. One can almost hear the choir singing "Amen" at the end. (Because Henry was using software to produce the music, he couldn't actually get the choir to voice out an "amen," but if the song had been sung by a live choir, I'm sure that the "amen" would have been there.)

I have also received some encouragement and advice from a couple of people. One of them is Alexis Jarreau, a.k.a. Elf des coquillages at the NWN2 boards. Alexis is working on a remake of King's Quest I using the Electron Toolset. For his module, he has composed some excellent soulful music with a rock edge. His music may be downloaded at his website, Stripping the Muse.

I've also received advice from Travis A. Richards, a.k.a. Darklord Snafe at the Neverwinter Vault. Travis has released a lot of high-quality music at the Vault. I happen to be a big fan of his, so I'm happy that he has also given me some valuable feedback.

Now that I've discovered that I have some musical ability, I intend to follow the advice of Alexis and Travis to develop it some more. At present, however, my music isn't good enough for Faithless. Fortunately, Henry will continue to compose music for this module. I'll create some musical snippets for Henry as a way of conveying my ideas to him. So far, this strategy seems to be very fruitful.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I didn't exactly dislike your music. It's just that the instrumentation sounds very flat making it difficult for me to enjoy the music.

Also, area music is typically a short loop as opposed to a song. It's purpose is to form part of the background. So, without a character in an area I don't know if the music works.

NTB
August 1, 2008 at 7:18 PM
Frank Perez said…
Hi, nicethugbert, thanks for your feedback. Composing music is fun, but for my module, I'm going to leave composition to the experts. As I wrote in my more recent post, a man's gotta know his limitations. :)
August 2, 2008 at 4:15 AM
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