New music for consideration...

[ak9900]

Hello,

I am new here, I've downloaded and played the game and I like it

I am a composer interested in exploring opportunity to have my composition considered for inclusion in the game. I am not that familiar with the game yet, so I am hoping this piece might work in at least one senario:

http://mmsolutions.e-ridan.com/music/classical.mp3

Thanks.

[ancestral]

Not bad, perhaps a tad short.

It sounds like the parts should maybe be orchestrated or played by hand as the notes seem to hit with mechanical precision in timing. The melody is also quite a bit repetitive and the instruments seem to noticeably "take turns" playing.

Otherwise, it sounds good.

[Sangel]

Conceptually, this seems quite appropriate for Wesnoth, though as Ancestral points out, it is quite short.. I have a feeling that West and Aleksi will have some thoughts on the samples and instrumentation, so I'll leave the full critique to the experts.

[West]

I knew there was a new tune that I had forgotten to comment on! Sorry ak9900.

Anyway, welcome to the Wesnoth forum and thanks for your submission. I think it's a nice piece and with some edits it stands a good chance of being included in the game. You have good samples (out of curiosity, what library is it?) and the arrangement itself has an appealing action/adventure feel. It's energetic enough to be used as combat music, but it's also quite melodic and fitting for general gameplay situations as well.

The tune is not problem-free though.

First of all it's too short and very repetitive, like ancestral pointed out. It's basically the same part repeating over and over, only with a few new phrases being introduced here and there. Those three brass stabs occur nine(!) times in less than two minutes and get predictable to the point of being annoying. You need to make the piece longer and add more variation. Aim for at least three minutes, but longer is of course fine (desirable, even).

Secondly, some parts could use a fair bit of humanization, if there is such a word. The sustained notes on the brass sound stiff and synthy and the staccato string parts are machine-like. Use Expression to create fluctuations in volume on sustained notes so they sound more natural. You can also use Expression to crossfade from soft to loud brass samples, unless the library/sampler you're using has this feature built in. This way you can create more realistic sounding swells and modulations. Generally, try making the instruments sound like they're played by humans, not robots.

Thirdly, you need to dampen the high end on the reverb you're using -- there's a very unpleasant, hissing reverb tail on the instruments with a lot of top, like the brass, snare and cymbals. The verb sounds pretty good overall, it just needs to be a little warmer and less harsh.

Fourthly -- and this is a personal reflection, it's not necessarily a problem -- I think you might be overusing the pentatonic scale a bit. Strictly pentatonic melodies end up sounding like blues riffs after a while, so try to mix it up a bit. Just because one part of a phrase is pentatonic doesn't mean you have to make the rest of it pentatonic as well. I think you should take this into consideration if you decide to keep working on the tune and add more stuff to it.

Generally speaking this is a promising little piece. Make it longer, less reptetitive, tweak the reverb, and humanize the playing, and this might end up in mainline.

[ak9900]

Thank you all for listening to the tune and for your comments and suggestions. This was a demo tune that I did a while back primarily for my website. If you guys like, I can compose an entire new tune that might meet your requirements more closely? Any specifics might be helpful; min length, mood, tempo etc.

Thanks.

[Jetrel]

Thank you all for listening to the tune and for your comments and suggestions. This was a demo tune that I did a while back primarily for my website. If you guys like, I can compose an entire new tune that might meet your requirements more closely? Any specifics might be helpful; min length, mood, tempo etc.

Thanks.

Min length is vaguely 2-3 minutes. We're shooting for a ballpark of 3-10 minutes per song. FWIW, we'd probably welcome drifting 15-30 minute pieces if we could actually get any; there isn't an upper-limit on length, because wesnoth games typically last from 15 minutes to an hour or two.

Mood is generally anything that would be appropriate for a battle. We welcome other tunes; such as you'd see in RPGs, which can reflect practically any mood from a dirge, to a tender love scene, but we primarily are (like starcraft) a game about two opposing armies butchering each other, and that's where most of the face-time for music happens. It would be nice to have different moods of battle; varying from the trimphant, to the nightmarish (we do have undead and such), to trudging marches. So there's quite a bit of room to work with there.

Tempo depends on the mood; it's pretty much up for grabs, as long as it works, musically.