Working on some CC-licensed music

Destron · Post by **Destron** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 6:15 pm

Hey, I'm working on a project of my own...
I basically want to create a collection of general music that people can use in their games/films etc. It's not going to be high-quality (I kinda suck at music), that's why I'm going to release it for free.

It'll be creative commons licensed, not sure which one yet --- thinking about Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0.
Anyway, I've come to ask this...
What kind of music would you guys like to see?
Electronic? Orchestral? Hip-Hop? etc etc

Drop me a line, I'd like to know what people can use.

P.S.
Don't hold your breath, it's gonna be a while if I ever finish this project, especially with everything that's going on in my life right now.

darksmaster923 · Post by **darksmaster923** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 6:17 pm

death metal
how good can you throat sing?

Juutis · Post by **Juutis** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 6:17 pm

I'd like to hear metal. Brutal, aggressive, noisy metal!

darksmaster923 · Post by **darksmaster923** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 6:17 pm

START THROAT SINGING NAO!

Destron · Post by **Destron** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 6:24 pm

Wow, what the crap?
Three replies in less than 5 minutes...

Anyway, I was kind of straying away from vocals... since they would have to pertain what you were using it for.

Juutis: I'll see what I can do about the metal... I need to find a good heavy guitar instrument, though. They're hard to come by without paying for them.

Juutis · Post by **Juutis** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 6:36 pm

Music is one of the biggest thing I'm worrying about concerning my game. I can't seem to find any decent free music that would fit the game, and I can't compose music myself at all, seriously.

I'd be extremely grateful if you could create a short, very basic metal song and share it. Vocals aren't really needed since I'd use it as background music, or maybe more like background noise.

***EDIT***
Oh, you edited just when I posted.
Don't you worry about the instrument. If you can't get one then you can't get one.

I'm sure there's SOME place where I can get the music. There must be.

darksmaster923 · Post by **darksmaster923** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 6:40 pm

i gots a guitar. electric too. with distortion.

Post by **paradoxnj** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 7:51 pm

Music is one of the biggest thing I'm worrying about concerning my game.

I'd be willing to help out. Here is something metal that I wrote early this year. Guitar is a real guitar played by me. Drums are from BFD. All other instruments are from Digital Performer (my DAW of choice).

Destron, I'm a sucker for good orchestral music. A nice score that should be in an epic RPG.

Destron · Post by **Destron** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 8:04 pm

Destron, I'm a sucker for good orchestral music. A nice score that should be in an epic RPG.

Unfortunately, I compose bad orchestral music.

Listen to this, tell me what you think (feel free to be completely honest, I know it's not very good).

Post by **paradoxnj** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 8:07 pm

Not a bad start. Problem is that you are writing the music as you play it. You should get some kind of scoring program (PowerTab is free) and write the music first then play it. After you get the initial track down, you can add your "color" instruments and some flare if you want.

Juutis · Post by **Juutis** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 9:02 pm

paradoxnj wrote:I'd be willing to help out. Here is something metal that I wrote early this year. Guitar is a real guitar played by me. Drums are from BFD. All other instruments are from Digital Performer (my DAW of choice).

Hey, that sounds great! I would love to have something similar in my game. I really like the feel of it, that would be perfect for a bossfight or something. And yeah, if you can help me with music that would be awesome! I really appreciate your offer.

Destron · Post by **Destron** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 9:02 pm

paradoxnj wrote:Not a bad start. Problem is that you are writing the music as you play it. You should get some kind of scoring program (PowerTab is free) and write the music first then play it. After you get the initial track down, you can add your "color" instruments and some flare if you want.

Sorry, I don't follow...

Post by **paradoxnj** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 9:50 pm

Orchestral music requires a lot of composing on paper before execution. Because there are so many instruments, it helps to plan out the music through scoring than to "wing" it.

darksmaster923 · Post by **darksmaster923** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 1:53 am

Destron wrote:
Destron, I'm a sucker for good orchestral music. A nice score that should be in an epic RPG.
Unfortunately, I compose bad orchestral music.

Listen to this, tell me what you think (feel free to be completely honest, I know it's not very good).

http://ryan.gowen.googlepages.com/orchestral2.mp3

HOW U DU THAT?
and ur name is ryan gowen??

Destron · Post by **Destron** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 3:43 am

darksmaster923 wrote:
Destron wrote:
Destron, I'm a sucker for good orchestral music. A nice score that should be in an epic RPG.
Unfortunately, I compose bad orchestral music.

Listen to this, tell me what you think (feel free to be completely honest, I know it's not very good).

HOW U DU THAT?

Well... I use a free program called Psycle, which is a music tracker. It's not exactly Acid Pro, but it works as a VST host... basically I can load plugins (generators, effects etc) and write music with them. Lately I've learned about Soundfonts, which are basically music sample files. To load them into Psycle I use a VST plugin called Take1, which is really simple to use. There may be better soundfont players out there, but that's the one I use and I'm used to it.
Seriously, though, I'm not that good... I took piano lessons a long time ago and forgot most of it. I compose mostly by ear, although I still retain some basic knowledge - scales, patterns, arppegios, chords, etc.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

I recently abandoned "destron" as a username... I wish I could change my name here. (mods, can you do that for me? my profile editor doesn't have that option).

Some more stuff -----

If you are looking for free soundfonts, look no further:

http://members.shaw.ca/glitch/sffiles.html

Seriously, I have a TON of soundfonts that I downloaded from that site... most of which I haven't gone through yet.
Most soundfont players use the SF2 format. You may come across soundfonts in "sfpack" or "sfark" formats, which are just compressors (think zip file). Use SFPack and SFArk, respectively.

If, for some reason, you get an error uncompressing the sfpacks and sfarks from the above site, it's most likely because of the "(<filesize>)" thing. I have no idea why... when I have problems uncompressing, the first thing I do is remove that part of the filename. Works every time.

Tip: Sometimes you may come across inferior-quality soundfonts. If you can hear obviously bad audio quality, don't use it. ("What goes in is what comes out").

Some other nice sites for soundfonts:

http://www.bestvst.de/
http://soundfonts.homemusician.net/
http://www.personalcopy.com/sfonts.htm
http://hammersound.com/cgi-bin/soundlink.pl <--- some links on this site might be dead
http://www.jensensamples.com/
http://www.ntonyx.com/sf_f.htm
http://www.soundfonts.it/?a=soundfonts
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28724
http://www.soundfont.esmartmusic.com/

Also, if some of you would like, I can even zip up some of my "choice" soundfonts and put it online.