My swing at game music: critique encouraged

Makkon · Nov 2007

I found a decent site to upload music to. I have some experience in music, I just want to know what you guys think. Give them all a listen if you can; if you don't like the first one, give the next one a try. They're all decently different. Most of them were designed to loop. My best song is blah19, in my opinion. Made in FLstudio 4, with some custom soundfonts.

blah16 (favorites)
http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/svdf/blah16.mp3

blah17 (decent, pretty catchy)
http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/ktte/blah17.mp3

blah18 (favorites)
http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/rusj/blah18.mp3

blah19 (best song to date)
http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/ofqh/blah19.mp3

blah20 (a fun little ditty, loops seamlessly)
http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/ydru/blah20.mp3

EDIT:
Extra song
blah15 (not my best work, also poor sound compression)
http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/ixlg/blah15.mp3

pliang · Nov 2007

Less techno more beats...

Honestly I can't say much to that but what game would it be for?

I like the third song with the more piano touch to it than the other ones (I hear too much tunes with techno beats in it) it's more immersive overall.

I'll show this to my bro...he studies music on the side as a hobby...

Not bad for talking the first swing though.

Slum · Nov 2007

Some of the melodies are cool, but the mixing and eq have a bit to be desired. blah19 was really cool, could use some percussion, but really nice otherwise.

i've been writing electronic music for a long time. I'd suggest ditching FL and moving on to something more mature like ableton Live or Cubase. There's a lot you can do with flstudio, but IMO the workflow is pretty counterproductive. One thing to note is that when I heard these tracks, I knew they were made in FLstudio without even reading your text first.

I highly suggest Live. It's interface and funtionality is really really strange at first, but once you get it figured out, it's amazing.

Rated Rrr · Nov 2007

Hey thanks for sharing, I really enjoyed your tracks. Not much to crit on, most of them seemed to flow together. Made me think of that mysterious forest game.

WipEout · Nov 2007

good stuff-- makes me think if Half Life 2 were a fantasy RPG, this'd be the music for it

.

I would have to agree with pliang-- a little more bass and you'd be set. The techno sound is fine IMO, but the songs don't sound deep enough. Right now the music sounds great for PSOne games, but now that we have all the hi-def goodness of PS3 and 360 and 7.1 Dolby Surround with awesome subs hooked up to our TVs (nobody I know, but they're out there, I bet), we want a more... for lack of a better word... "modern" sound.

Keep it up though, it's pretty good stuff.

Slainean · Nov 2007

Nice, an original pimp.

Like Slum said, these do have the Fruit Loops sound to them since you used some a number of unedited samples. I'm no musician, but I'll give you my thoughts.

blah15 - This one sounds a bit like a remix of the tetris theme song about a minute in. The piano set against the heavy guitar (or whatever they are) kinda makes me think of cheesy horror movies. It's like a creepy lullaby.

blah16 - The triangles are too distracting for me. The second half is good; sounds somehow familiar. Was this one inspired by anything?

blah17 - The hand clap sample is the one of the sure signatures of FL Studio, so you're better off replacing it. I like the melody that comes in around the 50 second mark.

blah18 - Nice moody opening, but then the track then goes into a totally different direction. I would have preferred the slower, haunting opening to continue. It sounds like two different tracks mashed together. I really dig the melody that comes in around 1:10.

blah19 - Definitely your best track. I felt the sound was the most cohesive, and it has a nice mood to it. For that reason, I think this song would fit best into a game. If I had to nitpick, I think it cuts out a little abruptly, but still loops ok. This one's a keeper.

blah20 - The previous two tracks strayed a bit, but you're quite fond of the music box/xylophone sound. It seems strange paired with a techno beat. This one is pretty similar to blah17.

Overall I thought they were pretty good. Not my thing, but you seem technically capable. You have some kinda kitchen sink techno going on. I'd suggest pursuing a consistent mood for each track, since disparate elements can hurt a song.

Music is so subjective that it's hard to do a proper critique, but that's my two cents. I'm curious about what kind of game you had in mind as well. I was envisioning something like a puzzle-based adventure game, maybe.

Zephir62 · Nov 2007

Blah19 hits the sweet spot for me. The rest don't catch. Figure out what you did differently from all the rest of the tracks and focus on that point. Expand from there.

BeatKitano · Nov 2007

Pretty nice tracks, especially blah19, some of these songs could easily be used in an alice mcgee's 2 game, with a little more work on the creepy mood

Anyway it's nice to hear something different from the average electro/metal/hip hop stuff.

Steve Schulze · Nov 2007

When I saw the thread and read everyone elses crits, I expected the usual inept noodling tracks that new Fruityloopers make (lord knows I did a few back in the day). Needless to say I was very pleasantly surprised. You've got some nice stuff going on here Makkon. I'll agree that Blah 19 is the best of the bunch (and will be even better once you give it an ending), but they're all worthy of a listen. You do need to work on your endings though. Give them time to cool off a bit rather than just grinding to a sudden halt.

pliang · Nov 2007

Same of that part...make sure a nice end is tied in so it will fade consistently.

You should also start naming those tracks too.

Ged · Nov 2007

Blah 19 is really great for fruity loops wow! nice work. I use fruity loops just to generate drum loops and occasional synth and then record my guitar into cubase over it :P. good fun

Makkon · Nov 2007

pliang: Yeah, I agree that the techno is a little trodden down. It's just so easy to do, though .

I have a general idea of what sort of game they would be for, I wouldn't imagine the to be for all the same game though; some of them are just too different. I always imagined a platformer like Mario, but with a more sarcastic tone, and a retro tech theme.

Slum: I'll take your advice, FLstudio is just a little too clunky for me. I'll give ableton Live shot, do you know of any tutorials by chance?

Slainean: Thank you for the thorough critique! I appreciate you taking the time to help.
On blah16, the second theme is actually derived from an old children's Primary song, called 'follow the prophet.' You might be familiar with it.
on blah18 I ended up changing my mind on what I wanted after I started it, but I didn't want to delete what I already had. I think that choice may have really hurt the song, and would only be appropriate for a short cutscene containing these elements. I think my greatest weakness is portraying a mood consistently, and making that emotion clear (but not obvious). I'm beginning to realize that music is about balance, and there are all kinds of things I have going on that is contrary to it. Thank you again for your input

Oh, and I was always thinking of an eccentric, sarcastic platformer with a neo-retro tech theme.

Zephir62: I think I know what I did differently. This is a theme I wrote when I was 14, probably one of the only themes I remembered. The fact that it was a fine tuned, well defined and consistent theme helps immensely. If only I could remember all the themes I had written back in the day, if I could read music I would have written them down. I feel bad just thinking about it.
Secondly, I used a keyboard on blah19, that probably helps.

BeatKitano: Thank you! I happy to hear at least that my stuff isn't run of the mill. That alone makes me want to make more

Jackablade: you're totally right, I need better endings. Because of my negligence, Most of my songs' timing is thrown off. It probably makes it uncomfortable to listen to. And thank you for your feedback. I really do appreciate it

Ged: I'll admit that FL is a good sequencer, but it's not too hot at making entire songs. I'd love to work with a program made specifically for orchestral scores.

My swing at game music: critique encouraged

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