I had to cope up with my lack of instruments so I decided to go for piano and some orchestral sounds.
I got some inspiration from “The Crysis”, from the movie 8 pounts for the repeating piano parts… and went on using choir and a solo vocal track because one of Morricone’s signature points in music was the use of vocals as instruments.
I tried to compose this piece thinking as an use inside a movie or game soundtrack, of course since the theme was “nostalgia” I tried to imagine a scene with memories, mainly sad ones, but also some better ones and that’s translated (at least I hope) in some moments of a little more “sad smile” moments.
Very good track Luca! This would have fit well in the Sad Music Contest as well. The solo female voice was very Morricone and was well placed I think, as was the harmonic voice leading. My personal taste would have been to rallentando the piano at the outro and let it ring until it decays.
Hi Luca - congrats on your first contest here! The tone and mood of the piece worked well, as did your instrument type choices.
The repeating string chord sound (note releases?) seemed artificial to me and distracted me more than it probably should. On the other hand, this sound made me feel a bit uneasy, and maybe that is what you were going after.
Some well placed (maybe even stylized) reverbs/delays on the piano, strings, and voice I think would help this track expand sonically and give some more interest to the repetition. The upfront voice works well. Another interesting upfront instrument (harmonica, trumpet, etc) somewhere in the track might have been nice as well with the growing intense repetition. Just some thoughts.
There are some really great ideas here but to me the problem with the piece is that the piano which is a central part of the song sounds entirely too midi. It also does not sound like a part that would be played by a real professional pianist. It is just kind of robotic with little feeling or emotion. Ironically enough my wife’s piano teacher wondered over here yesterday to try out my new digital piano and I had a chance to listen to him so this is fresh in my mind. He phrases, puts in a lot of feeling, play wide sweeping arpeggios and just makes the thing sound so exciting to listen to even when he is just mucking around. My advice would be to just download some orchestral samples if you need stuff, I don’t think anyone would object to using something as long as it was not the main focus of the piece but just used for support and also if you manipulated the sample yourself. Most of us are not pros. At any rate to me the song sounds like a great starter but needs a bit more refinement, especially if you are going to compete with some of the wizards on this site. Good luck and thanks for submitting that.
That is an interesting point of view considering that the piano is the only instruments in the entire composition I played myself with my midi keyboard
Of course tho I’m still a beginner composer so I’m definitly writing your suggestion down and I deeply thank you for them
Thanks. The repetitivness was on purpose cause the main source of inspiration was from “The Crysis” that is a very repetitive piece, expecially on the piano part.
O giess the dynamics on the second parts weren’t on point… I’ll check that out thanks
I like it Luka. Hypnotic. Maybe repetitive. Repetition can be a good skeleton, but to mantain the interest and manage the emotion you can keep the same chords but addind inversions, octave changes, little variations.
About the emotion in the piano performance, perhaps dequantize could help, and even changes in tempo.
Anyway I like the result and the mix with the voices.
Great chord progression and strong melody! I agree that perhaps another instrument or two could spice things up, but the two main things I notice is the string swells and the piano ostinato.
For the strings, it seems that the standard default is swelling up and then down over the duration of a chord, or in faster pieces or quicker progressions, up on one chord, down on the next. “Cutting” (or start full on) feels quite drastic, especially in a sparse, intimate piece, so should be reserved when that effect is desired. So, triangle rather than sawtooth, basically.
For the piano, the two-tone thing does has a special, “clean” feel to it, but it can get monotonous if used for more than a few bars at a time. As a rule of thumb, I make my arpeggios one or two bars (6-16 notes, typically), so that with the chord changes, it forms more of a constant motion feel.
