Join the Composer Contest on “Fantasy Music” (ends Dec 1)
Not epic, not action, not dramatic…but peaceful and beautiful. Such as the music of the elves in the Lord of the Rings, or the music often heard in fantasy RPGs in the more peaceful areas. I hope you are up for the challenge! =)
How to write “Fantasy Music”?
Well that is up to you as a composer to choose with your creative freedom, however you can use these keywords as guidelines:
Soft & Dreamy
Smooth & Beautiful
Enchanting & Magical
IMPORTANT: A big aspect of these music challenges is to encourage comments and feedback. The winner will be decided by a poll afterwards. Good luck, and have fun composing music!
Sincerely,
Mikael “Mike” Baggström
Founder of this Community
PS. Here are a few Music Examples of “Fantasy Music” to inspire you to write in this style:
It’s a good challenge to practice focusing way more on harmonies, voice leading, and instrumentation (coloring) + creating “sound worlds” that sounds enchanting…
So…you should all probably leave your epic percussion kits and ostinato staccato strings in the closet this time Matt!
Plus, woodwinds FINALLY get their chance to shine in this particular style of music. And I am personally a huge fan of the beautiful and intimate sound of woodwinds!
I didn’t make it in the Majestic challenge. I’ll try to make it this time. Very interesting theme. Looking forward to all the great music I know you all will deliver.
I don’t know about leaving the epic stuff behind. For me, fantasy music is everything from the folk-type Shire music of LotR to Dragonborn from Skyrim.
If I were to try to define “fantasy” music, I would point to the song “Greensleeves” as the archetype. It has a medieval feel to it. And it’s that same feel that, I think, permeates everything that we consider fantasy.
LOL! I was just playing around with a flute melody I had in my head for this. Played around with it for 15 minutes before I realized it was just “Misty Mountains” from The Hobbit. Woops.
Using a short name to describe the theme (ex: Fantasy Music, or Majestic Music) will always be ambiguous. That’s why I was very clear in the description on what type of fantasy music this music contest theme should gravitate.
@Mikael Fantasy Music looks to be a fun challenge! Looking at your examples, it looks to be quite a popular genre as well!
Some of the examples provided did not have much for going on for melody or development. As you seem to have a fairly specific concept for this style… should it be purely Incidental in nature? Or is melody and some harmonic development okay, (as long as it is
I had the same doubt. @brandowalk?
In the examples we find minimalistic backgrounds.
Then @Mikael, Should it be a song for a fantasy ambient, or an stand-alone song?
I suppose that a complete developed song could be something you can create a soft ambient version from.
I’m assuming it’s fine to have melody. As Mikael always says, it’s up to you as the artist, but I think the idea here is not to use big themes or anything, but in this style everything just kind of meanders and that’s it’s “development” It’s why i’m terrible at it, because I’m a motif/theme writer, so I’m going to challenge myself to the more ambient aspect of this style.
The main point is to get that “peaceful” and magical vibe of Fantasy Music. Not epic, dramatic and powerful. Peaceful can be melodic or atmospheric, I’ll leave that to you.
How about dreamy ambient jazz built around “magical” scales…? Didn’t really strike me as a viable option at first, but with more expressive instruments come new possibilities.
Anyway, the reason this came up is, it’s been all research and not much composing recently, so I don’t know about NaSoAlMo, or this contest - but some overlap would slightly improve the chances of some sort of outcome.
