Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Create music and sound effects for mainline or user-made content.

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West
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Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by West »

Let's try something new. Something different. Something that might help breathe some life into this sadly inactive part of the forum. It might even be a lot of fun (gasp!).

I would like to invite all members of the Wesnoth community to post any musical ideas you might have here in this thread. Then, when a certain amount of ideas have been posted, I will choose a handful of different ones and use them as a basis for composing a new Wesnoth track.

As for musical ideas, it could be literally anything. A melody. A rhythm. A chord progression. If you can play an instrument, sit down with it for 20 minutes, come up with some idea and then record yourself playing it. Singing, whistling or humming is also perfectly fine. Drumming a rhythm with spoons and pots -- sure! Anything goes. It doesn't have to be well played or sung, it doesn't have to be musically brilliant.

And before anyone says "I don't have any recording equipment" -- use your iPhone, Android or what have you! Sound quality doesn't matter, as long as I can hear what you're playing. Of course, if you happen to know your way around some music program, doing it with midi is perfectly allowed :)

Everyone who gets their idea featured in the finished piece will of course be credited as co-composers!

So... what are you waiting for? Let's get those creative juices flowing!
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lipk
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by lipk »

Wow! Is it Christmas already? *starts downloading MuseScore*
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West
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by West »

lipk wrote:Wow! Is it Christmas already? *starts downloading MuseScore*
That's the spirit!

I might also add that if there's any UMC composers who would like to submit parts of their existing pieces, that's fine too. Though I can't promise that I will use an entire arrangement, it all depends on how all the different ideas fit together.
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Crow_T
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by Crow_T »

I'ne always wanted to hear an Orcish battle song, with low ominous horns and Big deep drums like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... mnEqk#t=64 (from Kodo's official channel) Something a bit primal and driving.
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West
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by West »

Crow_T wrote:I'ne always wanted to hear an Orcish battle song, with low ominous horns and Big deep drums like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... mnEqk#t=64 (from Kodo's official channel) Something a bit primal and driving.
Noted. Perhaps I should mention though that this is not some kind of Wesnoth music wish list. That's not what this thing is about. I'm looking for ORIGINAL musical ideas by people in the community.

Just saying so this thread doesn't turn into a barrage of "I would like to hear something like [song x] from [movie y]" or whatever. That is actually neither helpful nor relevant ;)
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iceiceice
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by iceiceice »

I'm going to repost my idea from the other thread with more elaboration.

Drake Theme: The drakes are at the same time disciplined and bestial. Part of their character is the idea that they are philosophically opposed to subterfuge. Thus the rhythm might be a stated 4-4, and the movements would be aggressive but heavily foreshadowed. I don't think any of the voices should use ornate articulation, they should all be disciplined. But perhaps the track could develop by adding voices across different octaves. Perhaps towards the end there could be some voices which inspire Saurians -- I'm not sure exactly how to do that.

It might also be interesting if you could do some call and response between the Drakes and the Saurians, or play off the day / night tension somehow. But I'm not sure how much of that can realistically be conveyed.

One way you could try to work the saurians in is to have them contrast the drakes quite directly, perhaps using very reedy woodwinds or bassoons or something, with lots of articulation to convey how shifting and squirrelly they are; you could be trying to inspire the idea of an evil lizard hiding in a dark alley muttering curses at you.

But it might be better overall if they sort of fit in and complement the drakes and the overall theme, rather than hijacking it. After all they are the slaves of the drakes.

FWIW I know very little about composing, (probably obvious :lol: ), so I don't know how much of this is helpful.
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West
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by West »

iceiceice wrote:I'm going to repost my idea from the other thread with more elaboration...
Again, this is not the type of musical ideas that I'm asking for. Maybe I wasn't clear enough :)

I'm looking for recorded sound clips of musical ideas. You want a Drake theme, great! Then here's your chance to participate in creating one. Come up with a rhythm and/or a melody that you think would be fitting. Go, do it, right now! Record it and post it here.

Textual descriptions of music is of no use to me or anyone else as they are too open to interpretation. "4-4" or "agressive" or "across different octaves" could be a million different types of music.
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iceiceice
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by iceiceice »

I see, thanks. I think I just didn't read carefully enough. I might mess around with a program like this over the holidays :)
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by aquileia »

Wow, simply wow... you can't imagine how I appreciate this, thanks West!

From time to time, I have an idea for a theme which may or may not be Wesnoth-compatible (I'm no musician) but I always refrained from writing it down... the music FAQ clearly states that midi's aren't acceptable and I never learned to use a DAW.

Thank god, one excerpt found its way unto my laptop when I procrastinated a report. The intro of the attached theme occurred to me half a year ago, the second part just materialized during the last hours. Before posting, I compared with the current music and realized it has some Knalgan influence... cough... so if it isn't distinct enough, I totally understand if you do not even consider it. It is your decision anyhow.

As the preinstalled general midi soundfonts usually are cruel, I also recorded an ogg-file for convenience.

I really hope to find another inspiration before the deadline, therefore I foreshadowed by dubbing it motif1.

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Edit: Added a rythmic snippet.

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Edit2: Can't... stop... have to write it down...

For motif3, imagine a desert scenario like the second one in UtBS: Troops (the pizzicato strings) marching and stumbling (triplet) through sand while the sun burns down on them (perhaps the reed organ isn't stingy enough). An error during notation brought me a tiny variation which I attached as well.

I'm not too pleased how number 4 and 5 turned out, but there is no harm in posting them anyhow. I first imagined motif5 in a divertimento style, but somehow it morphed to a cello / organ inventio...

_____________
former attachments moved to http://r.wesnoth.org/p565589
also available on GitHub
Last edited by aquileia on March 6th, 2014, 9:56 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by PPH »

Nice idea!
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lipk
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by lipk »

Here's my try. I've been playing the trumpet for almost 10 years now, but, although I like to think myself as someone who can come up with pretty good motives and melodies, I have no talent nor education at composing.

The archive contains two "songs". One of them is a waltzer, one of the more complete pieces I ever composed (that fact illustrates my skills pretty well). It's meant to be a "ghosts in the forest at midnight" sort of thing. The other one is a simple melody stub. It was supposed to get some lyrics about autumn, rain, death or some other depressing aspect of life. Since I'm not much better as a poet than as a composer, it's unlikely that that will happen anytime soon. It could probably work as an elvish theme, or as a calmer part of a drake theme song (because I'd love to have that, too!)
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West
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by West »

Thanks for your submissions so far guys! Keep 'em coming everyone :)
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by West »

Listening to the stuff posted so far I can say we already have a bunch of candidates that might very well end up in the final piece. Lots of good ideas, even though they're kind of different in terms of style and feel so I'm going to wait a while before attempting to put them together.

If there's any other music contributors still lurking here, please feel free to be a part of this! Throw in a suggestion or use the ideas being posted for creating a new Wesnoth tune :)
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by aquileia »

using the time before the masses find this topic to throw in two more... ;)

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Edit: Did I say two? Let's make them three.
With motif8, I tried to produce a hollow sound in continuation of the desert theme. The consecutive fifths didn't hold long until my imagination ran wild...

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Edit 2: Again, my attempt at hollowness ends in vein as I unknowingly add the third in th harp, creating broken up triads. However, I think I improved in orchestration.

By the way, I like your drake arrangement, iceiceice. In the second part however, I have the feeling that you might drive the scale too far. At least for me, the tension broke a bit early. You might try a quaver delay for the horn throughout the passage and a slight variation of the last repetition, perhaps? Just listen to the attached tweak.

_____________
former attachments moved to http://r.wesnoth.org/p565589
also available on GitHub
Last edited by aquileia on March 6th, 2014, 9:57 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Community collab! Post *any* musical ideas here!

Post by iceiceice »

Well I played around with various drake theme melody ideas until I got one that I like. Doesn't really fit my long-winded description above precisely, I suppose that is a good sign :). Right now there is only a C trumpet playing in the key of A, I have ideas to add a baritone horn but I am having some problems making that work at all so I'm going to take a break. I think also the rhythm can use some refining...

There's two other parts sort of floating around disjointedly at the end, those are placeholders to show vaguely what direction I think it might go in.

Edit: I decided I wanted to get the accompaniment to exist before leaving... I really do have to go now ><. Anyways I am rapidly getting in over my head technically, don't laugh too hard :lol:

Edit: I am considering a subtle change, please listen to this version ice_drake_2.ogg in contrast with ice_drake provided above by aquileia (ogg attached below), before reading my spoiler description, and let me know what you think.
Spoiler:
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ice_drake.ogg.tar.gz
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ice_drake_2.tar.gz
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accompaniment.tar.gz
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motif 3.tar.gz
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