Merry Christmas - new music for Wesnoth!

[Benanov]

I haven't really sat down and tried to pick it apart by its merits, but on initial listen, GamePlay02 is awesome. Simply awesome.

A lot of your touches and subtle hints do not go unnoticed. I really like the reprise of section A, and a lot of your bridge work.

I'm not too sure about your panning--my speakers are fairly close together so I'm not able to pick it all out. What I can discern is very good.

The sample quality is excellent, and there aren't any clicks or pops.

Also, my girlfriend (who is extremely picky about her music) liked this song, although she said it sounded "familiar."

I'm sorry I haven't been around much, but i did say I'd do my best with reviews. :)

[TimothyP]

Thanks for posting, Benanov, and thank you for your thoughts.

A lot of your touches and subtle hints do not go unnoticed.

This is a great compliment. I think this is often what I feel most listeners miss , probably because they just don't know how to listen for it. I have very few frequent listeners who notice the little compositional tricks and facets I use. I love listeners who search for these things. It makes the time and effort spent composing seem worth it.

although she said it sounded "familiar."

This can be a compliment or a slam. I'm taking it as compliment here, and I'm assuming we're talking about the primary melody only. When someone hears music that sounds familiar, that often means the melody is written in a solid enough manner that it doesn't come off as goofy or disturbing. This tends to mean that the listener is comfortable with the melody, which is good in this case. Since I know all of my motives were original material, I take this as a compliment.

I also can see that she would find it familiar because I composed the primary melody within the boundaries of a sort of medieval atmosphere. I wanted it to sound "fantasy". Without knowing it, your girlfriend was probably hearing the familiar pentatonic vibe as well as the subtonic chord which so well fits fantasy themes. This is present in lots of Celtic music. Most likely, the theoretic approach I took to the melody is what she found to be familiar.

Thanks for the chance to talk music. Good to hear from you again.

--Timothy

[Benanov]

Timothy: I couldn't tell you if she meant it as a compliment or a slam either--she just said it. ;)

I would assume a compliment though, most likely for the reasons you stated.

I was left a little boggled about why she said that, but it makes sense now because it sounds similar to other things she's heard before. I could tell right away that your movements are original, but...well, yes, they had that 'familliar' pentatonic vibe / subtonic chord--a Celtic sound, yes.

Your movements, they're well-thought-out and creative. You kept yourself within some tight boundaries. I still haven't gotten a chance to pick it to bits, but I could always stick it on her portable audio player (a brand-new iRiver) and give it a few listens when she's not using it. :)

That would also give me the ability to critique the panning too. :)

[TimothyP]

Critique the panning all you want! I leave it to the orchestra cards in my Korg. It sets them up automatically. I didn't do anything with panning. I'm free of any panning guilt! It wasn't me!

--Timothy

[eastpole]

Hi TobyP. Thanks for working on music for this game. Here are my opinions:

Defeat - good theme, with sadness hidden there.
Victory - should be changed to another one. I think that after all sweat and struggle in scenario the player is happy he finally made it and takes a breath. So why so dramatic sounds then? I suggest something more relaxed and joyful. Or maybe a joyful triumph tones a'la Haendel ( you know, royal trumpets, fanfares, like in "Water music")
Gameplay02 - it has nice melody motive and is simple and very nice. Calm music in game is good thing. Boring music in game is bad. This is calm, yet not boring at all. You had good melody skeleton and the rest nicely fits to it. It gives the impression of smooth, polished music made with ease. I guess you enjoyed composing it and the work went smoothly. Maybe you could add some sliding on harp strings...
Gameplay01 - Long piece, but worse than Gameplay02. This is problem with pieces with such large dramatic scale - whether the "tense" moments come in game in right places...

Now I am going to write something about Aleksi's newest work

[Jetrel]

Victory: It just seems contrived; I'd do this one over again from scratch. More drums and less music might work well here.
Defeat: Well into the decent/good enough range.
Gameplay 1: Awesome.
Gameplay 2: Awesome.


I really think you should try the victory theme again, but the good news is that when you're not so confined/limited, you clearly can do an ... extraordinary job. I'm sure if you took a completely different approach to the victory theme, that you'd do a great job with it.

[TimothyP]

Thanks for the feedback!

Victory sounded much better in my head. I think the Korg really limited me on that one. With live orch it would probably sound better. I still wish I had had marching sounds, but alas, I didn't. But, for those of you who are not pleased with this piece, we do plan to compose multiple victory themes so that each faction has one. This one would have been used for orcs, but if you don't like it, I can make up something else.

I've been so busy with music, I haven't actually played Wesnoth in a while. Please list all of the factions that need a victory theme, and the mood that each theme should contain.

Another question: should we have defeat themes for every faction or not?

Eastpole: I am not making further compositional changes to any of the Gameplay pieces. They are complete and I am very happy with both. I have had so much positive feedback from listeners on both pieces that I am satisfied they are good. My old composition teacher actually studied Gameplay 01 for a while and said he thought it was my best work to date. Then again, it sounds much better played right in my studio. I admittedly have issues when mastering my pieces as audio files, so I am not fully happy with the .ogg file you heard. However, I am still remastering both pieces to make them more dynamically functional for the game. If you have further commentary for Aleksi's or my music, please be very specific and clear on what you like and don't like. Words like "worse" are a waste of time. And keep in mind, this music doesn't go with particular actions. It just develops mood. If you have played any similar fantasy-themed games, you will know what I mean. Thanks for your feedback though!

--Timothy

[Rain]

Just listened to Gameplay 01...

Wow dude. Excellent usage of dissonance to create tension in a few areas. Nice use of dynamics also. Very expressive stuff.

Overall, this is an excellent piece. You should be quite proud.

As far as criticisms go...The mixing leaves the piece sounding a bit cold...I would raise the high ends a bit to give the piece an overall sharper tone. This will make the brass sound more explosive and help the strings to meld a little better.

Very cool though.

[TimothyP]

Thanks, man! Tips like that are very useful. I am always open to audio mastering tips. That is much more helpful than opinion reviews.

I'll keep your EQ pointer in mind as I remaster these pieces. If you hear anything else like that, pass on the tips.

Right now I'm manually doing what I haven't been able to get a compressor to do: raising the quiet and lowering the loud, but still sound good and realistic. I realized that my dynamics were too extreme in the final audio file. It just doesn't work for the game. While it sounds great coming right from the Korg, the audio file really botches the sound up.

Once I'm done redoing dynamic levels, I'm going to attempt something new. I recently acquired Cubase SL3. I'm going to bypass the Korg's effects and run the audio into Cubase. In Cubase I'll mess with EQ and reverb. Hopefully that will make the remaster sound better. Now we can only hold our breath and hope.....

--Timothy

[Rain]

Thanks, man! Tips like that are very useful. I am always open to audio mastering tips. That is much more helpful than opinion reviews.

I'll keep your EQ pointer in mind as I remaster these pieces. If you hear anything else like that, pass on the tips.

Right now I'm manually doing what I haven't been able to get a compressor to do: raising the quiet and lowering the loud, but still sound good and realistic. I realized that my dynamics were too extreme in the final audio file. It just doesn't work for the game. While it sounds great coming right from the Korg, the audio file really botches the sound up.

Once I'm done redoing dynamic levels, I'm going to attempt something new. I recently acquired Cubase SL3. I'm going to bypass the Korg's effects and run the audio into Cubase. In Cubase I'll mess with EQ and reverb. Hopefully that will make the remaster sound better. Now we can only hold our breath and hope.....

--Timothy

Glad to be of service.

Can't wait to see what else you come up with!

[TimothyP]

Greetings again, everyone!

So, for those of you who have been prompting me to commit my gameplay pieces to the music library, my Gameplay 01 and 02 are now ready to go into the game.

I have spent the last few weeks remastering them because I wasn't happy with the first versions. I've upgraded my studio a bit and so I'm hoping to improve the audio quality over time as I continue to compose.

ivanovic, you can go to http://www.timothypinkham.com/wesnoth/ to download the .ogg files of Gameplay 01 and 02.

--Timothy

[turin]

Well, on my computer, I have to turn the sound to maximum volume to hear it - and I usually need to have the volume at about 1/20th maximum volume to hear the music in Wesnoth just fine. You might want to turn up the volume a bit. Hopefully there's a way to do that without messing up the sound quality at all...

[Aleksi]

The level is lower because there are a lot of instruments. I did a little mastering on the file:



The level is almost doubled. If you want, Timothy, i can send you these files. There absolutly no quality loss.

Cheers,

Aleksi.

[ivanovic]

Hi Timothy!
The music really sounds fantastic. But I would prefer to wait until you have a version done that is a little louder. Once this is done the music is directly ingame (and I will use it in Two Brothers).
Thanks for your hard work on this.

EDIT:
And the bad techno-like music will be deleted.

EDIT2:
Man, I love this music. It stands comparision to any commercial game i played. It is better than what you get in many commercial games. You did a really great job on the music. Thanks.

[TimothyP]

Oh man. I'm hopeless. That's the loudest I could get this stuff. Once again, I confess: I suck at audio.

So, to fix things. Aleksi, if I send you the WAVs, can you make good loud versions?

Funny thing is - I'm using Cubase as well! But I must lack the mastering skillz you have.

If possible, could you just write and tell me what to do in Cubase to make it louder? This would be a great learning experience for me. I have Cubase SL 3, which has almost all the features of SX 3. So I should be able to do whatever you tell me. If this won't work, I'll post the wavs on my site for you next week.

--Timothy