Reply With QuoteWow! That Nattflog track is so WaVy, my Daggerfall session accidentaly transformed into typical Citadel station claustropfobia.
My first proper album—with a consistent theme and all—released two weeks ago. The reason I haven't posted about it here is that this doesn't seem like the right place for it, but then I thought "what the hell, I'll post about it anyway".
Bandcamp link:The album title could be seen as a pagan prayer. Just like nature, one should never fully know what to expect.
I made more than 100 tracks over a period of four years, boiled it all down to around half and split them up into five parts. This is the first part, consisting of 10 pieces.
Everything has been built from scratch, manually, note per note. No pre-made loops, no AI, no sampling.
Genre: composed electronic orchestral / contemporary classical
https://maskinkultur.bandcamp.com/al...m-i-skogen-bor
Also, those nazi asshats trying to claim Paganism can fuck right off.
Wow! That Nattflog track is so WaVy, my Daggerfall session accidentaly transformed into typical Citadel station claustropfobia.
Interesting. Seems like good music to play during a pagan ritual.
This is truly impressive and complementary to my traditional music playlist. I keen to find out more about pagan music. I've mostly listened to Heilung, mckennitt, emerald rose , Danheim and Wardruna so far.
Thanks for listening. One day I would like to have it professionally mastered (by someone who is not me, obviously). I know that part could be a lot better. Probably won't happen in a while. Would also be cool to have it arranged/adapted/whatever for a live orchestra. That will probably never happen, but one can dream. I'm pretty happy with the arrangements, though, and in my favourite studio headphones, I think the production is tolerable.
It was 4 years of development hell to get here: lots of back and forth on everything. Good times too: it was a reason to get up in the morning and a reason to get to bed in the evening. A reason to keep going. The last few months, I got into a good, stable routine: got up at the same time every morning, worked, ate, and slept at regular hours every day, went to bed at the same time every evening. Always trying to improve, lots of learning and failing until I got what I wanted. Daring to fall and get back up again.
Nature has always been an important part of my life. I have never been much for religion in the sense of believing or worshipping anything ("I am the only god I need.")—or, heh, wearing a silly hat. There is something about getting lost in the woods, though, that can bring one closer to oneself, I think. At least for me. Someone might call it spiritual. Maybe it is. I don't know. I tend to refer to it as a personal thing, a private thing between me and some other me. Maybe "pagan" isn't the exact right word for it, but I think it's closer to that than anything else. Anyway, I ramble on so many levels...
This first part is my nature album. The next part will be something else.
There's a lot of good compositional ideas here but I don't think a remaster would help much.
The problem for me was the very limited sonic palette. There is almost no dynamics and the voicings are very flat. You pretty much use the same voicing for everything and that timber is rather artificial, not evoking nature at all (for me).
You have access to thousands of pre-set sounds and an infinite rainbow of timbers you can create yourself. I would start there.
Cool atmosphere. Music can play different roles, and I think the role these play is definitely creating a vibe or environment. So I can see how you connect it with nature or a spirituality of nature, the literal environment.
Incidentally, I was just watching a video about... well the title is the Nordic Religion of Nature. Scandinavian countries have a reputation for being particularly secular, which is true and justified in a way (my experience too). But according to that video, it wouldn't be true to say people aren't spiritual or have some kind of special connection to nature. Well I don't want to speak for it since I'm no expert and it speaks for itself. But maybe you can understand it.
Recently I've been diving into harmonic motion. Maybe it's a reaction to the loss of harmonic motion in contemporary music, especially in electronic music and pop songs, where you'll only hear 2 or 4 chords. I've been thinking about taking some tropes of electronic music but putting more complex harmonic tension and motion in. That's just to say, this isn't the direction that's been speaking to me recently; but that's not a criticism. At a certain level though, I can very much understand the challenge and flow of putting good tracks together, and getting value out of that. The tracks then kind of stand for or embody all the energy, attention & vibe you've poured into them. I can really appreciate that. Thanks for sharing. I hope I can make a good body of tracks I want to share at some point too.
Thanks for the feedback, I see what you mean (or hear it). I have to think about how to implement it in Reason. One thing I could do is vary the envelopes just a little for each note, so they don't always play exactly the same, somehow better mimicking how a human performer might do it. The orchestral instruments pack I used is based on human performers, but timing, velocities, and envelopes are still determined by Reason, so that's something I could work more on.Originally Posted by Nicker
Would you say that there is any actual potential here, though? Is it worth spending more time on it? It might be better to focus on something else in the future. That would mean abandoning this, though, which might be as bad as working in a genre I will never even get close to master. It's not the easiest genre to tackle and there is a lot I don't know, having no previous formal training. Maybe it's stupid ever thinking that I could make any difference. That's not to say I didn't learn a lot while working on this, things I can use later for other works in other genres.
By the way, I didn't spend these 4 years exclusively on this album, I rather made what in the end came to be three albums in three notably different genres, plus a lot of extra material for potential future releases.
Yes, while I can't speak for Swedes in general, the video, and its general message, speaks pretty well for me at least.
Coincidentally, I might have done something similar for my next release coming next year, being inspired by what I did for this release.
How were the pieces recorded? Is it live performance? MIDI capture or programming?
Don't worry about "making a difference" or mastering genres. Focus on the emotional effect you want to evoke and make one piece at a time.
I think if you expand your sound palette and follow the mood the sounds create, the way forward will reveal itself.
It's all programming ("composed"). That's why I would like to hear what it would sound like as a live performance. I don't have those kind of connections, so I had to make do with what I had. Not all pieces would necessarily work "as is" as live performances, since I haven't exactly taken into consideration what is humanly possible on each instrument. I didn't "write" anything with an orchestra in mind. I just made it as something to listen to.
Last edited by qolelis; 11th Oct 2023 at 14:41.
Well there you go. If it is all MIDI files then there are tons of public domain sounds you can fly into the different instrument channels. Start with the bass range, the foundation, IMHO.
You don't have me entirely convinced that switching sound packs is going to change anything. Wouldn't the problem of flat dynamics still be there!? Maybe I misunderstood your starting feedback, but this is my take of it:
When a human plays a sequence of notes—even the same exact notes—on a physical instrument, not every note will be played the exact same way: timing, velocity, envelope (dynamics for short) will vary just enough to create a nice life-like groove. When a computer is told to play the same sequence, each note will, per default, be played the exact same way, making it sound machine-like or flat. The groove is gone.
To add the groove back in, one way could to be to add the dynamics by hand for each note. The software I'm using, Reason, has a built-in groove feature that does this automatically. Another solution, not immediately available to me, could be to hire an orchestra to perform each piece. This isn't guaranteed to solve the problem, because maybe it's rooted deeper than being about the final sound, but it would add that groove back in. Maybe my arrangements aren't that interesting to begin with, although that's outside the original stating of the problem.
I suppose it could be compared to footstep sounds in games: using the exact same sound for each and every footstep would make it sound too machine-like. The solution could then be to record several footstep sounds and then pick a different one for each step taken, to add variation. While there are devices in Reason that can do something similar, the device responsible for playing the orchestral sounds does not—as far as I know, I should add; I haven't thought about it before.
Is this somewhere near what you meant in your original feedback?
★★★
I personally like listening to the album as a whole, although I am obviously biased (as an arrogant bastard, I do have a reputation to uphold
And, of course, sometimes, I think it's all utter shite. It varies with the mood. Just as often, it's more like "I MADE THIS." Some days, I prefer listening to it with earplugs in, so maybe that is the filter I need. At the same time, some days I prefer listening to the whole world with earplugs in.
There's also the question of genres. Calling it "contemporary classical" is easy, because the genre already exists and is easier for others to find, but it also comes with expectations. I like to call it "composed electronic orchestral" (with a slight emphasis on electronic), because it describes the music in more detail, but it's also a totally made-up genre that noöne will ever search for.
Thanks, it's interesting to get two opposite opinions. Do I listen to the one that aligns with my own or to the one that is maybe the one I need to hear? A little bit of both, I suppose.
This is true.
I could say that "if I could do it, you could probably too", but do I have any authority to? Not really. So long as you find value in it, keep on keepin' on.
By the way, there is also a backstory to why I released it at this particular point in time; maybe too early, but also too late.
I am talking about instrumentation. Orchestration. Not the small variants in modulation that might make it sound more "human".
I find the choice of instruments to be limited in their timbers. But if you like your results then that's what matters.
timbre
Please stop cutting down trees while we are having a discussion about music. Very distracting.
Also, blames autocorrect.
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