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FamiTracker
Hey y'all! I've been having some serious issues with composing recently, at a time when it would be very important for me to do. I just don't know how to change. Whenever I'm making a song, I come up with a nice-sounding little melody, and I always have trouble changing it around, so my compositions end up really boring, or unsuitable for anything other than menu music.
I should be making extra effort here, because I have a ton of original music to make now that I (with a great deal of help) finally managed to add a DPCM player to Megaman 3. Since I'm using bass samples I can't go ahead and just cover anything for a ROM hack, as the repitching might not allow me to recreate every single bass note.
It's also very important to conserve as much space as possible, now that there's more sequence data for each song, so whenever I'm making music, I have this weird feeling that I have to loop every little thing a lot so it saves space. I can't really find the balance between being space-efficient and using what I have effectively.
This is a song I made for example. (Yes I can also do arpeggios in Megaman music with a bit of looping magic)
It gets boring really fast in my opinion and doesn't go anywhere, and thus it does not have a similar feel to commercial NES game music. That's what I need to change somehow. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
good job. i would suggest more variation. eg melodies that involve both short and long notes.
when you use repetition, change up a few things to keep it fresh and interesting. eg frames 2 and 3 seem to be identical. also, work on the noise channel. the delay in frame 2, pulse 2, is weird because it is louder than the original.
should this be posted in the work forum?
look/listen:
I know how it feels to have writer's block &, sometimes, the contributions or works of others can help a great deal in overcoming this. I found that making a collab thread helped me quite a bit because of the different mindsets each person has. GEVEN's modification is a great improvement because of the volume control.
Also, za909, you can always use my music for anything you want; feel free to use it either in verbatim, or with whatever modifications you may be able to pull off. I know my work isn't exactly Megaman style, but I'm sure it's more than possible to "Megafy" it somehow.
And lastly, I still have tssf's Megaman 10 cover; take a look at it & study it well. That's the beauty about this place; you have endless resources to try & draw inspiration from.
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
Thanks for the advice! Although the whole point of that song would be having next to no percussion and focusing on the "bubbly" feel of a tremolo-d square wave and the echoey tri + square, I like the new volume control.
I've also been thinking that the root of my problem is having a nice chord progression. I don't know what to build on to. I usually use one of the following methods:
1. Changing chords after a certain time period (every bar, every 1/2 bars, etc.) and creating a melody and a bass line accordingly.
2. Going wild and writing a nice sounding melody, and then figuring out a progression that suits the melody, and continuing on from there.
3. Same as 2., but starting with the bass line.
None of these seem to work. Perhaps I need to study how different notes harmonize, and different patterns to apply here.
All that's needed is a slight change to something you'd otherwise find predictable, either in the pattern of notes you use, or in the beat. So long as that change is still harmonic to the rest of the song, that change can do wonders.
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
Alright, I've watched the entire series, and thus I was given a lot of new stuff to experiment with.
I don't thnk this is super good either, but it's definitely a step forward in comparison to the previous tunes.
This "crazy first beat in a bar" seems to be my kind of thing, which slows down to normal sounding things later.
very good job. i would try to reduce the amount of repetion of harmony and bassline. dont emphasize one chord too long. i noticed all of your triangle channel uses instr 04 and 05 and use s07, so i edited the instr's to reflect that and removed the s07's:
That's nice and all, but this song is going to take up huge amounts of space in the ROM hack anyway. That's why I'm reusing stuff a lot. I know exactly what the Capcom engine is capable of doing and have to take a lot of things into account. That's why I'm having such a hard time.
You could make one initial pattern, then keep reusing a second patter that's been modified slightly, if you're worried about both space & improving the sound of your music.
Basically, pretend that you have 2 patterns that sound almost the same, except for a few notes & you want to use them for the bass in your square channel 2 (we'll call them 01 & 02). Now, you could use pattern 01 just for the intro itself, leading up to the guts of the song. But, when you reach the portion you would like to loop, use patter 02 as your base instead. Since listeners will be more accustomed to pattern 01's sound, they'll find pattern 02's sound unpredictable once you leave the intro & hit the loop.
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
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