Friday, January 27, 2012

New Mockup: Sad Theme

This was also part of the homework assignment for that video game composition class I keep mentioning. It was (heavily) inspired by a track from Legend of Mana, which will be used in Monday's compositional breakdown of sad music.

Sad Mockup by ryanleber

There's some fun key changes in this one, too, one of which is similar to what happens in the heroic theme. If you listen carefully, you may notice that the melody is actually, well, the same melody, as the assignment asked us to create a motif between the two pieces.

So that's that. Hope I don't totally bring your weekend down with my sad music! See you Monday!

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Heroic Key Changes!

So I had a few people (technically true, it was more than one person!) asking me about the key changes and strange chords in the track I shared last Friday, so I thought I'd make a (not so) quick update on some of the ways I change keys in my music.

In case you missed the track, here it is:
Heroic Mockup by ryanleber

Now, it all starts with a very simple progression. It begins on an A minor chord, and moves to an F major chord. In the key of C major, that's vi (the A minor) and IV (the F major). This is an extremely common progression, you hear it all the time. What you don't hear all the time is where it goes next. It returns to the A minor (iv) and then there's a really bizarre chord (contextually speaking), an Eb major (right at an0va's first comment). There is no Eb major chord in the key of C major. So how did I end up here?

Well, the solution lies in the melody (the male choir), which goes like this:
So as you can see, the melody is in two halves, which more or less repeat. While over the A minor chord (labeled Am, above), the melody plays the notes A, E, D, and G. Now, all of those notes (except for D, D's a little dissonant, but whatever) fit very well over an A minor chord. When it switches to F major (labeled F, above), it sticks on that G, and then moves down to C. Again, both are notes which work very well over the F major chord. Now, on the second pass, I repeat everything verbatim over the Am chord, and again stick with the G in the melody at the next chord, but this time the chord is an Eb major chord (labeled Eb, above).

So, why does this work? Because there's a G in an Eb major chord! How is an Eb major chord spelled? With the notes Eb, G, and Bb! So G fits perfectly over the Eb major chord. Once we're on this Eb major chord, I simply treat it as the IV in the new key, which is Bb major. IV (Eb major) goes to V (F major) goes to G minor (vi), which is where all the more rapid chord changes happen. At this point, the new key is well-established, and what follows is just standard chord changes in that new key, nothing special.

If I had to give this technique some kind of name, I'd call it an "expected melody pivot," or something like that. Because after hearing the melody once, we know that G at the end is coming, That G in the melody can be applied to various chords, so I then use that G as a pivot point to work myself in to a strange out-of-key chord, and then in to a new key where the out-of-key chord makes more sense (moving out of C major, and in the Bb major, in this case).

[UNNECESSARY EXPLANATION:] If you're wondering why I chose to explain this in major keys, choosing C major instead of A minor, and Bb major instead of G minor, it's because of the progression that is used. If it was V - i in a minor key, then yeah, I'd explain it in a minor key, but it's not. It's IV V vi, which is VI VII i in minor keys, and that just looks weird. It's a personal preference, and I'm sure if anyone was wondering, they weren't confused by it. If you're confused now that you've read this paragraph, though, don't worry about it. You don't really need to understand the roman numerals to get what I did to change keys.

Well, I hope that sheds some light on what I did. Stay tuned for a new track on Friday (sad music!) and another compositional breakdown next Monday (again, sad music!). Also, be on the lookout for more serious music theory posts in the future, from basic stuff like diatonic theory (i.e. those roman numerals I was using) to more crazy stuff like other ways to switch in and out of different keys. So yeah! Tell your friends, keep up to date using the links to the right, and, uh, have a wonderful Wednesday! Thanks for reading!

Monday, January 23, 2012

Let's Write Something Heroic

So last week I shared a heroic theme I wrote and mentioned this class I was in about video game composition, and I promised I'd share some insights and discoveries I'd made on this blog. Well, here goes nothing.

DISCLAIMER: This information may be derived from the class I'm taking, but I'm not stealing from my teacher's lesson plan. He pointed us in a direction, and I was inspired to go the extra mile and do a bit of my own in-depth research, that's all.

So let's say you're working for a client, and the client wants something heroic. Like, on a scale of 1 to 10, he wants at least an 8. Well, the first thing I would always suggest is finding a solid reference track to work off of. When it comes to recent heroic video game music, I'd be a fool not to bring up Skyrim. I mean, come on, listen to this:


What makes this so ridiculously epic and heroic?

First, there's the shouting. A choir of manly men, shouting and grunting all manly like. It paints a mental picture of vikings or sailors, banded together on a ship, fighting against the elements. Or getting drunk and singing drinking songs, but that's awesome, too. What can you do to harness this? East West's Goliath VST has some pretty sweet shouts, but it is a bit pricey. Honestly, though, if you're serious about pursuing this line of work, you should probably pony up and get most of the East West samples anyway, they're killer, and they're what I use (check out the East West Composer's Collection, one of the better prices for all the sounds you get). Failing this, you could always get your buddies together and record the shouting yourself!

Second, listen to that percussion and rhythm. It just slams in to you, you feel it in your stomach. Not only is it loud, and powerful, but it's also makes you think of a march. So what? Well, it's motivating! The music is taking you in to battle! Hit those downbeats hard, and pretend you're stomping along with them towards your enemy! There isn't much syncopation, or off-beat rhythms, because that would detract from the constancy of the march-like percussion. It's all about constant momentum, which is also why the tempo is generally pretty slow, and the meter is a simple 6/8 (4/4 and 3/4 also work well).

The rest of the instrumentation is also very strong. There aren't many sustained, flowing, pretty sounds in this track, except for the drop in the middle (which is more about being dramatic and a tad introspective than being heroic). The strings are all very sharp and strong (it's called marcato), heavily attacked, and the brass is played the same way. Everything is very sudden and detached (like the shouts and percussion, it all ties in!) and you just can't help but put on your serious face when you hear the strings and brass like that.

The strings in the middle range are very important. Their steady rhythm is great for building momentum and excitement in the track. It doesn't matter that they're just playing the same note over and over, or occasionally outlining chords, it's the rhythm that creates interest and movement (notice the constant hemiola), which keeps the music going forward. It makes you think of a train, you know? Locomotion, movement, excitement. If there are any sustained notes, they're usually in the brass, and usually low, because low, droning, earth-shattering bass notes pretty much scream "serious music."

The chord progression plays a great part in all this as well. It remains relatively simple, because simple is better. Yes, that's right, keep it simple. I believe the main progression is:
i - VI - VII - iv(sus) - VI - iv - v - i
No crazy alterations, no key changes, no secondary dominants. It's very simple, and very clean. My piece from last week doesn't really follow this, though, I just couldn't help but do something weird.

What remains is the melody itself. You'll notice two things that generally make for a good melody; 1.) it's easy to sing. The notes are all close together, there's few to no leaps, everything is in step-wise motion and the highest and lowest points of the melody aren't very far from each other (i.e. it's in a range anybody can sing). 2.) There's repetition. The melody has a 3 note figure ("do-vah-kiin") that repeats, and then a longer figure. Then it does it all over again. You see, if you hear something happen more than once in rapid succession, you're more likely to remember it, you're more likely to remember it, you're more likely to remember it. There's more on this, and some examples of it, in my first blog post, so check that out if you're interested. I didn't follow this as much as I should have in my track from last week, but hey, I'm still learning myself.

Well, that was a really, really long post. Thanks for reading! Next, we'll be moving to the opposite end of the spectrum; sad music! Stay tuned! And remember, you can find my music and tons of other stuff by following the links to your right!

Friday, January 20, 2012

New Mockup: Heroic Theme!

Greeting, friends!

Today I have a new track for you! See, I'm taking this amazing, absolutely awesome class this semester on Video Game Composition, and part of the first assignment was to compose a heroic theme less than 75 seconds. He said "on a scale of 1 to 10, shoot for at least an 8."

Well, here's what I came up with:
Heroic Mockup by ryanleber

At the beginning of next week, I'm going to start putting up my notes on what makes a theme heroic, and also start making some new and interesting posts on music theory, compositional theory, music tech stuff, and maybe even analyze a few pieces. You know, really break down what makes music what it is.

I'll turn this into a real blog yet!