Something Excellent

Seeing that there aren't any topics in here yet, I figured I might as well make one for finished pieces. So now there is one!

...and now that this thread is made, I can post something. I have no idea how to best share music via a forum, though, since I've never really been on a forum before...

In any case, I figured it'd be fun to share something that has a visual component, so here's a song I had made for my high school graduation, which was during the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm not actually that good at playing the cello, so this video is a little embarrassing to me, but hopefully the music is good enough to distract from all that.

https://youtu.be/ImstfFUfXg8
(If there's a way to embed YouTube videos, please tell me.)

i honestly have no idea how to share music on a forum either... i guess just linking to hosted files? oh boy! now we can use pipe on sites other than mspfa!

anyways, jack, that song is really cool! it must've been an honour having it played at your high school graduation (i'm assuming it did)! i thought you were a pretty good cello player after listening to that! but since im a layman i have to trust your judgement; ill react with appropriate disgust when listening to you play in the future

Commander Cello wrote: ↑Wed Aug 31, 2022 6:22 am ...and now that this thread is made, I can post something. I have no idea how to best share music via a forum, though, since I've never really been on a forum before...

In any case, I figured it'd be fun to share something that has a visual component, so here's a song I had made for my high school graduation, which was during the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm not actually that good at playing the cello, so this video is a little embarrassing to me, but hopefully the music is good enough to distract from all that.

https://youtu.be/ImstfFUfXg8
(If there's a way to embed YouTube videos, please tell me.)

wow-- i guess they call you commander cello for a reason! this is crazy cool. i'm not very good at commenting on music but i really dig it.

Thanks, both of you! I know both of you are more on the drawing side of things, so I'll eagerly await to see more musicians come on here so they can give more specific comments like "the melody is nice, but the mixing is horrible."

Deacon Blues wrote: ↑Wed Aug 31, 2022 4:56 pm i honestly have no idea how to share music on a forum either... i guess just linking to hosted files? oh boy! now we can use pipe on sites other than mspfa!

Yeah, I was originally going to share just an .mp3 of a song via Pipe, but it kinda bothered me that Firefox doesn't let you just open up audio files in your browser, instead forcing a download—that doesn't seem to be an issue across all browsers, though, so maybe I'll get around to sharing some more things (though lots of my pieces are indeterminately work-in-progress so I'd need to make another topic).

Deacon Blues wrote: ↑Wed Aug 31, 2022 4:56 pm anyways, jack, that song is really cool! it must've been an honour having it played at your high school graduation (i'm assuming it did)!

It "played" at my graduation in the form of a stream that compiled all of the performances and speeches people submitted, which wasn't mandatory to attend (not that they could easily enforce that, anyways), so I don't think many people ended up seeing it.

Meatman wrote: ↑Wed Aug 31, 2022 5:16 pm wow-- i guess they call you commander cello for a reason!

Technically it's only because I needed a username for my Steam account when I turned 13 and it's stuck around, but thanks anyways! Cello was sort of one of the core parts of my identity in late elementary and middle school.

nice! and congratz, if you graduated recently. was it streamed live? those tend to always baffle me, as someone who's never passed more than one recorder lesson in school.

I'll eagerly await to see more musicians come on here so they can give more specific comments

mixing, as a science, is quite literally magic to me, as someone who does music as a hobby (though im very much a beginner, i still want to try posting some stuff here soon, though) to me just getting all of the instruments and stuff to stand out on their own is good enough to me

(If there's a way to embed YouTube videos, please tell me.)

i really wish there was. i get that the forum is new, but im sure there's some way to get video embeds and even links to videos embedded with an extension or two. same with audio embeds, and so-forth. if we can get the latter working soon, i can get to sharing my stuff ASAP! maybe i can start a forum suggestion thread or something like that. regardless i think i can try bringing it up soon.

i'll look into adding an extension for better media embeds tomorrow, since i'd hate for a lack of that to prevent anyone from sharing stuff they've made

boqol wrote: ↑Fri Sep 02, 2022 4:24 am nice! and congratz, if you graduated recently. was it streamed live? those tend to always baffle me, as someone who's never passed more than one recorder lesson in school.

Thank you—I graduated over a year ago, but that's still recent to me! I recorded the video and edited it together with the visualizers (well, my brother edited it together), and then I submitted that, which was streamed as live as collection of submitted videos can be. I can certainly say that it wasn't my first take, either!

Deacon Blues wrote: ↑Fri Sep 02, 2022 5:58 am i'll look into adding an extension for better media embeds tomorrow, since i'd hate for a lack of that to prevent anyone from sharing stuff they've made

thanks! i dont think a lack of embedding will stop me, i just think it makes things a lot more convenient for everyone else, not having to download files and all that.

i figured ill post some of my own stuff right now:
https://file.garden/XPKxPVWZiQbye5Q1/50001AD.wav
https://file.garden/XPKxPVWZiQbye5Q1/ch ... 0poles.wav
these are two songs ive made rather recently, that im still proud of. i wanted to try out making tracks that have a bit of an atmosphere to them. any criticism would be more than welcome of course

boqol wrote: ↑Fri Sep 02, 2022 10:59 pm https://file.garden/XPKxPVWZiQbye5Q1/50001AD.wav
https://file.garden/XPKxPVWZiQbye5Q1/ch ... 0poles.wav

These are both pretty sick! They're definitely way more on the atmospheric side, so I feel like there's not much to critique—kind of a cop-out, I know, but that's how it is with music that's more out there. 50001 AD reminded me of the atmospheric songs from SNES games (I really only mean Earthbound, since I'm familiar with it, but I'm sure there are other games from that sample-based chip era that have similar sounds to them), and Chirping Poles reminded me of this one song I heard on the radio: Typewriter by Nubian Mindz (https://youtu.be/Mx9gQ-T_-sU), though they had played it at the wrong speed, so it was slower and lower pitched. I think it's because the chaos of the piece, as well as that pretty nice bass that comes in part-ways through (a somewhat comparable synth riff comes into Typewriter a ways into the piece, as well). Anyways, I don't think it's that meaningful to just be told "oh hey, these songs remind me of other songs," so, in the sake of trying to give some better feedback, I'd definitely say that there's a very strong sense of a cold, tech-y atmosphere to these tracks. I don't know if it's just because of the quality of the sounds/instruments, but 50001 AD specifically sounds underwater, like it's some sort of submerged factory, somehow still operated centuries after it was lost to time.

What program did you use to make these? I personally mostly use FL Studio for my "modern" stuff, but I'm a big fan of trackers, so I've dabbled quite a bit with a lot of them, as well as other niche video game-esque DAWs.

Commander Cello wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 6:11 am Chirping Poles reminded me of this one song I heard on the radio: Typewriter by Nubian Mindz (https://youtu.be/Mx9gQ-T_-sU)

this track is dope, makes me wish that the radio stations here didnt suck so much. you bet ill be looking into this band's discography later

I don't think it's that meaningful to just be told "oh hey, these songs remind me of other songs,"

i dont mind comparisons at all, i usually take them as a compliment or at the very least some good insight. thats actually the second time the SNES music comparison came up! that, and the red alert 1/tiberian sun OST, twice. its weird, because im not really familiar with either, but also good to know how it sounds to someone elses ears if that makes sense

I'd definitely say that there's a very strong sense of a cold, tech-y atmosphere to these tracks. I don't know if it's just because of the quality of the sounds/instruments, but 50001 AD specifically sounds underwater, like it's some sort of submerged factory, somehow still operated centuries after it was lost to time.

im glad it gives that feel, its what i've been going for and i love the description you gave there, its not far off from what im using it for either!

as for the quality of the sound, that likely has to do with the software im using, which also ties into your question. i make most of my music using fasttracker2, and because of that i find it most convenient to get most of my samples from my favorite games from the 90s (system shock is one of my favorites to get sounds from, lots of good stuff there) and from module files i come across on archives, which also are from the same general era. im restricted to 16 bit samples, and the bitrate of samples in all of these old games and modules are also pretty low so i have to be careful pitching things down, unless i don't want to be! i figured that track sounds nice a little muffled. funnily enough, i tried getting into FL studio but i didn't find it as easy to use or get engaged in. trackers proved quite the opposite, it was really fun to open up music files from games i liked and play with (and remix) them before eventually getting the idea to try making my own music. its been really fun so far

boqol wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 6:56 am this track is dope, makes me wish that the radio stations here didnt suck so much. you bet ill be looking into this band's discography later

Well, I'm glad I could help you find more music! If you want an even greater resource (as well as a way to listen to a theoretically less sucky radio station), I think it might be worth checking out the radio station KFJC at https://kfjc.org/. Full disclosure, I sort of have ties to them, since I've worked there a little bit, but I'm not just saying to check it out because I've been there—their tagline is "radio that's weirder than you, but not by much," which is hopefully a good thing to you! Through that site, you can listen to their broadcast anywhere in the world, though what might be even more useful is being able to look at that "past playlists" section, which you can use to see what they've been playing all the way back to 1995. I've heard a lot of what they play these days tends to skew towards metal (I honestly don't listen much to radio), so it might just be more fun to look through the archives and find stuff that way (plus, I think it can be fun to look at all of the DJ names).
For example, I looked back at the year 2000, and stumbled across this artist Japanese Telecom (here's a song I particularly enjoyed from them: Japanese Animation https://youtu.be/HhYwSDVGhRU), and now I've listened to their two albums and it turns out that Detroit Electro is a pretty cool genre! To take it further, though, the guy behind Japanese Telecom, Gerald Donald, was also a part of a few other bands, such as the interesting-sounding duo Drexciya, and that already gives me a few more avenues to find music! In any case, I hope this is all useful to you—I know how nice it can be to discover music.

boqol wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 6:56 am i make most of my music using fasttracker2

Can't say I'm familiar with FastTracker 2, but—while I don't mean to come off like I'm trying to push you into other programs—I've used OpenMPT (https://openmpt.org/), which is a great (and free) tracker that, as far as I know, doesn't have any sample limitations (I think it can also open FastTracker 2 files, which is good). Furthermore, while I haven't ever used it, there's also Renoise (https://www.renoise.com/), which is somewhat more of a more modern DAW, but it's tracker-based, in the case that you want to go the FL route but keep in line with trackers. You do need to purchase the full version (about $75), but it seems they do offer a demo.