New track: "Masquerade of Shadows"

Your Music
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Hello all,

I’ve finally had some time to complete a track, a nice creepy, macabre one, just in time for Halloween!

My creative vision for this was the idea of an old tale in your town of an abandoned castle in the woods on the outskirts that is haunted. You and a friend work up the courage to go see if it’s true. As you hike through the woods, you come to a clearing, and indeed there is a manor house! You go in and begin exploring the different rooms until you come upon a room that seems to be glowing with a strange light. you open the door and see a scene of goblins and ghouls all dancing wildly to some strange music. It almost seems comical, until the demon lord appears and…what happens next?!

For the composition, I had so many different ideas and so I tried to create a main melodic theme that I vary each time the music changes in the A section; this is meant to be exploring the different rooms of the castle. This builds to the B section, which takes on the tempo di minuetto, 90bpm, then concludes with an epic barrage of deep strings and brass, signaling the appearance of the demon lord.

I didn’t write a key signature for this, as there are so many chromatic chords, using minor 2 intervals to create the dark, tense sound. However, the main root I always come back to is Gm ending the piece on a Gm/maj7 to give the feeling of, “what happens next?” Mostly though, the piece plays around with G harmonic minor/D Phrygian dominant for classic Baroque/evil effect.

Instrumentation:
2 flute
oboe
English horn
2 Bb clarinet
bass clarinet
2 bassoon
contra-bassoon
4 horns in F
2 tenor trombone
Bb euphonium
tuba
timpani
glockenspiel
celeste
tubular bells
triangel
strings
Composed with Dorico Pro with Noteperformer
iZotope Neoverb, Ozone 9

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This is great Matt!

Outstanding orchestration. You really explored the main theme very well with the different instruments. I also really love the movement at around 2:00! I’d love to know what you did there :smiley:

Very impressive work, keep it up!

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Thanks for taking a listen Jacob. Like I said, I had a lot of fun writing this one; I seemed to be able to let my creativity run a bit more, less constrained :smile: I think I’m going to explore doing more of this style or more mystery/thriller/horror cinematic or underscore styles.

From about 1:30 through the section you mention, I created a variation of the main melody, then added a counterpoint melody underneath. First, the melody in 2nd violins with the counterpoint in the violas and added harmony in the celli and textures in the flute/oboe. From that 2:00 mark, the melody is taken up by both 1st and 2nd violins, in octaves, with an added counterpoint melody in the horns and euphonium, and the celli and contrabass harmonizing.

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Lots of satisfying swells and rich harmonies… especially like your horn arrangements, they sound great!

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Welcome to the forum George! Thanks for taking listen. Lots of chromatic harmonies in this one😄

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Loved it! Creative melody and chord progression, beautiful harmonies and orchestration. I want to hear more!

Steven

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Thank you Steven! I’m really contemplating writing an album of dark/mystery/thriller music. Maybe a bit more cinematic and/or underscore than this, but maybe another like this that could act asa “main title theme.”