[Orig] Xeves's Magical MIDI Manifestations and Friends!

This is a thread to present some music that I have been writing. Criticism is needed!



This is something I wrote today, called "God of the Forest." I drew Influences from Princess Mononoke and Majora's Mask to whip this one up. What do you think?

Nice! Out of curiosity, what program do you use?
Warning: Spiel ahead.

I'm a big fan of FL Studio. It's an entirely visual program for making music that's so easy even I (with my thorough lack of musical knowledge) can use it well enough. They'd make your MIDIs like that sound fantastic-- I've got a plethora of free soundfonts that can actually sound pretty good if you use them right (all of the music in my art thread was made in FL Studio).

It's pretty fantastic, but the one downside is that if you don't want to pay, you have to use the demo. The demo lasts forever, and the ONLY limitation is that you can't save project files. You CAN, however, still export the music as MP3s and other things, and I've gotten around the saving issue by exporting them as MIDIs afterwards and then re-importing them later if I need to change something. The downside there is that you have to do a lot of re-touching (putting instruments back in the correct place, re-doing slides since they don't save, et cetera), but I'd say that's pretty good for getting a program for free!

Anyway, as for your actual MIDI, it's pretty well-done. It seems to fit the atmosphere you've described for it. The shamisen (or whatever Japanese instrument) seemed too loud at times, though.
Also, if I could make another suggestion, drop.io is great for hosting media that others can stream, if you'd rather not use YouTube. Just a suggestion, as it's what I like to use.

I used Guitar Pro 5 lol. Not the best out there for orchestrations. It's amazing with Guitar, Bass, and Drums though. And thanks for telling me about FL studio =D. I'll try that out and redo the MIDI. Thanks for the comments!

FL kicks ass, not just because it's a good program by itself but if used correctly can work well with parts from other programs. I might have to look up Guitar Pro 5, it sounds pretty good. The only things I don't really like are the pauses, to me they seem a little long and just a little TOO silent, but that's more my opinion that anything so it doesn't really matter. The second is more universal and it's the samisen, as tonchiki said it's a little loud at times. Besides that, awesome work, I look forward to seeing more!

I just realized how to take advatage of FL without any tedious work, thanks to Sage of Fire's mention of other programs =D. Just use Guitar Pro (Buy it) or Power Tab (free) and make your MIDI in there. Import it into FL, replace the cheap MIDI with good MIDI instruments, and now you don't need to buy it =D. Also, you can use Audacity to record via the stereo mix input to use effects on it, change pitches, and mix tracks. Using this, I am changing "God of the Forest" into a chorus + orchestra, and i will be editing and extending the music with new sections. I'll probably have it posted in a week. So far, just the instruments in FL make it sound 10x more epic. Thanks for the tip Tonchiki!

Originally Posted by Xeves

I just realized how to take advatage of FL without any tedious work =D. Just use Guitar Pro (Buy it) or Power Tab (free) and make your MIDI in there. Import it into FL, replace the cheap MIDI with good MIDI instruments, and now you don't need to buy it =D.

I highly advise against this. It means that you can't take any real advantage of FL. No matter how grand-sounding the instruments used are, it's still going to flow and sound just like a MIDI. It's going to be flat, as opposed to something that feels a little more real.

Also, you can use Audacity to record via the stereo mix input to use effects on it, change pitches, and mix tracks.

You can do this all inside FL. You can also export your whole project as an mp3 or WAV, so there's no need to record it live.

Using this, I am changing "God of the Forest" into a chorus + orchestra, and i will be editing and extending the music with new sections. I'll probably have it posted in a week. So far, just the instruments in FL make it sound 10x more epic. Thanks for the tip Tonchiki!

If you get to learn how to use patterns, it makes it incredibly easy to re-use certain measures and the like.

I really do advise you try doing things from the ground-up in FL and not just import MIDIs. You can still save them as MIDIs after you're done exporting them as MP3s (no need to record via stereomix, you can export the file), and this way you can re-import them later.

If you need any help, feel free to hit me up.

I look forward to seeing the new work! Good luck, chances are you might need it

Well, now that I've been playing around with FL Studio 9, I redid "God of the Forest" in a choir.



I'm planning on recording a snippet of a song I wrote on guitar while I experiment with FL Studio.

Edit: Also, I'm still planning on extending this song to about four minutes eventually. Schoolwork will be a hindrance, however =(.

If you want any soundfonts or where to get them, send me a wire. I have some pretty neat-sounding orchestral ones, for example.

For the most part, the standard ones that come with FL Studio are garbage.

Originally Posted by Tonchiki

If you want any soundfonts or where to get them, send me a wire. I have some pretty neat-sounding orchestral ones, for example.

For the most part, the standard ones that come with FL Studio are garbage.

And that, my friend, is exactly why I made it into a choir =). The cello in FL Studio sounded terrible. And yes, better soundfonts would be great! I'll pm you.

I really like the new one, even a little better than the first. It really seems to come out of the music, makes it, what's the word, real (if that makes any sense).

Originally Posted by sage_of_fire

I really like the new one, even a little better than the first. It really seems to come out of the music, makes it, what's the word, real (if that makes any sense).

Thank you I hope this one is better.



I am now able to make that because of Tonchiki. Thanks again for those links!

Very well done. I like that it's continuous now too, but again that's really just my personal taste than anything. It blend fantastically too, almost sound like an actual recorded orchastra. What all programs did you use for this?

This time, I took the original MIDI, tweaked it, and replaced the instruments entirely in FL Studio. Then I changed the pitch of some of the violins and added some notes here and there.

Thanks again for the comments .

If I could make another recommendation, adding some slight release to the notes and adding some reverb (if you know how to do that) makes it sound a lot more believable. (I can show you how if you want.)