I recently listened to several chiptune's musics on Youtube and I felt in love for the 8-bit's music style, so last week-end I decided to download FamiTracker and started to learn how to compose funny or nice pieces of music.
I've never played an instrument, except perhaps flute a year or two when I was younger, you know at school... I'm a total "noobie" when it's about musical score or music theory '^^
But I'll do my best to use my computer properly (-:
I won't probably improve quickly, I spent lots of time in my study, but when I'll have free time, I'll try and use FamiTracker to create or copy music I listen to =)
I'll drop what I'll do in this topic ! If you have any advise, I would be glad to hear it if it could make me improve.
I already want to thank jrlepage and TechEmporium for their precious help ! in a preview topic (in the bug section)..
I start with my first try: It's very short (less than 10 seconds), and it's certainly terribly common, but it's funny too. I tried to copy the epic sax guy theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1kApnsayeQ
I'm french, so if you speak french, I would enjoy to use french language here :p But if you don't, nevermind, let's speak english '^^
Don't worry about not knowing musical terminology - I didn't when I started either, I picked it up as I needed to learn it. (To start, I would learn about the diatonic keys (major scale and minor scale), common chords (power, major, minor, diminished and their first/second inversions) and common intervals and why they sound like they do (perfect fifth/perfect fourth, major third/minor third, octave and their inversions).
Also, I recommend doing the following:
1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la3coK5pq5w See the nes Audio video series? Watch them all. These are the 'bread and butter' techniques of nesmusic, that you need to do to sound like more than MIDI with a bad soundfont.
2) Get an instrument you can doodle on. Keyboard imo is best. Any melody with only one voice you can hum, but as soon as you want chords or harmonies a keyboard is a great tool to help figure out how things sound, as well as basic concepts like keys and intervals and chord progressions.
3) Using nsfimport to study the best nesmusic around - such as the soundtracks to Silver Surfer, Solstice, Megaman 2-4, Shatterhand... (And I'm sure other people will have better suggestions)
My best advice is to just listen to what other people do, just study ftm's and try to experience a very wide variety of music, see what kind floats your boat and try writing stuff like that.
Also don't feel bad about your first song. Mine, idea1, (which I wrote about 11 months ago) is much worse than yours. At least you are using effects! :D
Just play around with FamiTracker, Listen to a lot of music, study how it's written and then write what's in your mind and soul, Good luck and enjoy it!
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and during that time, I've done a few smaller things just to train myself & try to improve. I'm glad I have some skills, even if they're not exactly expert skills. Everyone has their style; it's just a matter of practice.
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