Adventure music composing

[Vegeta]

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http://johngrahammusic.com/music (http://johngrahammusic.com/music)
How to learn to compose this?
I dont know notations stuff, but can someone explain this...

How one person learns and get the ideas to create track like "Captain Adventure", every few seconds you have new instruments taking up the main melody, what is amazing, and all those slide effects, multi tongue effects.

How to crash barrier between downbeat and get this.

Can someone say some words about this type of writtign and how hard is it to create it in a daw?



This is what i manage to create https://clyp.it/bqibewwn (https://clyp.it/bqibewwn)

[jancivil]

Ok, here's the thing. Read these sentences about John R Graham from Wiki:

During his youth he studied at Charterhouse School in Surrey, England, studying singing and orchestral writing. Graham began his career singing and playing in bands, while studying traditional orchestral music. After Charterhouse, Graham pursued his studies at Williams College, Stanford University, and UCLA, focusing more and more on film music over time.

So how someone gets ideas is packed inside their experience in the art. So, chances are very high this person has training centered in the usual ways, which indicates understanding of the grammar, the syntax of music and vocabulary via notation. And it's passing difficult to talk about otherwise.

If your expectation is that you will do this absent a similar experience chances are you'll be frustrated. Until you do your due diligence here.

In the meantime: "How to crash barrier between downbeat..."; why is there a barrier for you? It may be useful to explore that, in terms of an internet sort of exchange. I mean no one has enough words to show you in a comments box on a forum. We have to guess at your background. I found this question interesting as it seems to indicate it's all been 'beat' music strictly so things which do not break down that easily will be a bafflement. That alone can become a whole thing to look at.

[AstroCastro]

If your expectation is that you will do this absent a similar experience chances are you'll be frustrated. Until you do.

Dude, stop being laughable.
That piece is nothing special and similar pieces have been done millions of times so far that they became a cliche and cheesy and you surely don't need experience nor knowledge of John R Graham to be able to compose that piece.

The only thing someone needs to know is to what instruments to use (orchestration and arrangement) and to have at least basic understanding of scales in a sense of being able to decipher what scale to use to get "that sound".
Of course, this information is more than enough for people that actually posses music talent and for those who don't they think that you need 10 years of learning music theory, like:
"Look at his bio, he's been playing in bands for 15 years, he was studying music for 10 years, that's why he's creating what he's creating". It's ridiculous. Maybe for people like you who don't have music talent that stuff means something, for people that actually have music talent someone's bio means shit because music is an art form that requires music talent, in this case a talent for composing music because just being talented for music doesn't mean that you'll become a good composer and if you don't have it you can study music theory for 50 years and it still won't help you to make good music. It's that simple.

Anyways, Lydian mode has been abused by Hollywood movie composers to death, starting with John Williams.
You want to get that good old Hollywood movie sound, stuff like E.T, Indiana Jones or this piece "Captain Adventure" the only thing you need to know is to use Lydian mode. That's the only rocket science that someone with actual music talent needs to know and their talent which works like intuition will do the rest, something which people without music talent can't grasp.
Even at the very beginning at 4th second you can hear almost entire scale in that melody, notes:
D, A, G#, D, G#, A, E.
Lydian mode is highly recognizable because of #4 and 5 notes in the scale, in this case notes G# and A, so when you go from D to A and then G# you can spot it with your ears. Of course, you need to be born with at least some music talent to be able to detect pitch with your ears and that way to decipher what you are hearing. That way you are capable of deciphering scales and chords used in music which helps a lot.

Is this a rocket science? Nope.
Why Lydian mode has been abused? Because it has that wacky, mystical, adventurous mood that drives your feelings up and down, especially in a fast paced compositions and it was also abused millions of times for those epic build ups for scenes like when for example a character is climbing on top of the mountain, it reaches the top, the whole scenery shows up and composer is like:
"Yeah, time for Lydian mode...".
So, when you mix that picture with music build up, you get that feeling of epic achievement. This also can be heard in John Williams' music and then you have crap ton of people who were copying John Williams and that's how the whole thing became a cliche and a cheesy thing.
Is this a rocket science? Nope.
Why it's not? Because it's the same shit which has been used and abused millions of times so far and whoever was into creating cinematic music has became aware of it.
The same way people who are not doing music for movies but sound engineers who are doing effects are aware of Wilhelm scream.

You don't need to know names of all chords, you don't need to know every single scale that exists, but knowing at least 20-30 scales, using them, practicing them, understanding them will help you tremendously because if someone says:"Compose me something melancholic" you don't stare like a clueless buffoon but you go straight to Dorian scale. Someone says:"Create me some crazy modernism shit", you use Messiaen modes. You learn more about music along the way and expanding your knowledge.


So, what person with at least some music talent needs to do is:
1. set scale in your piano roll to Lydian mode
2. insert instruments to get a proper orchestration/arrangement (orchestral libraries like Symphobia can help you with that because it has a premade multi patches so it can orchestrate things for you).
You'll need a lot of woodwinds doing runs for this particular type of composition.
3. start slapping notes into piano roll (use staccato, spiccato, use woodwinds runs to give you that "bliss" and "jump", same thing with strings and you can use harp too, if you start composing in let's say D, at some point raise everything to F, it's the oldest trick to raise tension and then you bring everything back to D and start with some melody to calm things down a bit) and use your talent to make something good
The best way to do it is to first use piano because it's easier to recognize voicings, chords and then to dissemble what you did with piano to instruments. If you go into piano roll with strings, then you go into piano roll with woodwinds, then to brass instruments, it can become a pain in the ass. Compose by using piano first, then take those notes and apply them to whole orchestra.
4. don't listen to people on forums that have zero of music talent and trying to discourage you and everyone else by saying how you need 20 years of learning music theory and not saying a single word of help to help you by dissecting music for you in any way, but instead they just talk useless shit which is not helping you in any way
5. The most importing thing: have fun and don't worry about failing. Without making shit you can't end up making gold. It's that simple.

[ghettosynth]

[Michael L]

If you dont know notation, the simplest way to understand a composition you like is listen to a section of it, sing it, and then play it into your DAW. If you want to buy a plugin (being kvr) this one is useful to compare your DAW version with the original recording.
https://www.samplemagic.com/details/184/magic-ab
There are also threads in this Forum on figuring out chords, etc.

[AstroCastro]

-snip-

Are you saying that you finally realized you have no music talent, you sold your synths and now you are selling popcorn?

[funky lime]

-snip-

Are you saying that you finally realized you have no music talent, you sold your synths and now you are selling popcorn?

When you accused jancivil of having no talent, I suspected you were just a troll, but this comment certainly confirms it beyond any shadow of doubt. It's ironic, considering your wall of advice boiled down to the total hack approach of "Get Symphobia and just start vomiting lydian mode." But hey, if that's what works for you, I shouldn't judge.

[Jafo]

It takes experience and studying to learn the rules. It takes imagination to break the rules. It takes taste to break them in interesting ways.

Sorry, but there's no royal road (i.e., one which is straight, quick and easy) to anything worth doing. Every innovator knows this; even Mozart and Einstein had to put in the work. Still, it's worth it, and it's often lots of fun.

(Not that I'd know; I'm just a lazy, untalented hack, but I have a good time.)

[jancivil]

popcorn time

nah, there's no percentage in that shit.

[jancivil]

There are no rules, there are procedures which, taken as a whole have been observed to result in a given style.

As to a way to get to where you can viably compose for picture and develop the capacity to create a mood or support a mood in the quality that the professional cited in the OP appears to do for a living without notation and an education... Really, if one did have that capacity, to do it all by ear with no preparation as I indicated, one would not likely need to ask strangers on the internet what their next move would be, one would be doing it, yeah? I would venture to say few have that quality of gift. And pretty much everyone gets a vocabulary together analyzing extant music. I don't really have any evidence that noobs grab midis off the 'net and analyze those to get their chops, you know. The whole exercise strikes me as the same old same old at this board.

[funky lime]

There are no rules, there are procedures which, taken as a whole have been observed to result in a given style.

As to a way to get to where you can viably compose for picture and develop the capacity to create a mood or support a mood in the quality that the professional cited in the OP appears to do for a living without notation and an education... Really, if one did have that capacity, to do it all by ear with no preparation as I indicated, one would not likely need to ask strangers on the internet what their next move would be, one would be doing it, yeah? I would venture to say few have that quality of gift. And pretty much everyone gets a vocabulary together analyzing extant music. I don't really have any evidence that noobs grab midis off the 'net and analyze those to get their chops, you know. The whole exercise strikes me as the same old same old at this board.

To be fair, as a noob i grabbed MIDIs of my favorite SNES tracks and analyzed them in the piano roll to learn how to play them. It didn't really teach me anything about music theory, but it taught me where to put my fingers, as well as letting me (with my extremely pitiful knowledge of actually reading music) form a link between what I was hearing and what it the MIDI actually looked like.

I was in concert band for seven years as a youngster, two as a clarinet player and five as a percussionist, but even so, sheet music never really clicked with my brain. I guess that's partly why I switched to drums, and relied on guitar tablatures when that time came; I was extremely passionate about music but didn't really grok the traditional paradigm of notation. I remember back when Fruity Loops, my DAW of choice as a high-schooler, first implemented the piano roll around version 3.5 or so. That made so much sense to me; no key signatures or accidentals, no clefs, just a linear view of all the notes laid out in the most logical way possible. This allowed me to play keyboard parts exactly as they appeared on the screen, without having to go through the process of translating sheet music into "actual" music.

Also, I learned the various shapes/patterns of the major modes on the guitar before I actually took the time to understand what modes were. I just saw them as different colors on a palette. Now here I am, a total hack, but with a misguided passion for stuff I don't even really understand. Sometimes it's fun to load up a legato string patch in Albion and start spamming cheesy, soaring lydian melodies. Does it sound cool? Sure. Is it "good" music? Hell no. But that's precisely what I did for an indie short film that I scored (which is the extent of my experience in doing music to picture thus far), and the producer was happy. Granted, that was for a 48-hour film festival entry, so standards were lowered across the board.

Analyzing existing music is key. Mike Verta, a multimedia composer and instructor who seems to lean heavily toward the John Williams pseudo-jazz-piano style of film scoring , always preaches the value of transcribing music as the most effective means of learning composition. I'm inclined to agree with his view here, except I think that transcribing to a piano roll can be just as effective as transcribing traditional notation. It's really about the mental exercise of analyzing what you're hearing and translating it into a language capable of expressing it in a visual manner.

So, to OP, I'd say: find a piece you like, and transcribe it. Start simple if you have to; you can still learn a lot from transcribing a simple Ramones song, because it's about learning to isolate the various elements of the song in your head, and then being able to visualize how they all fit together to form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. It's fun to do this kind of stuff with something like Steely Dan because their music seems so complicated until you start to break it down and realize it's actually rather straightforward, for the most part.

I still try to make a regular exercise of it, usually with old video game music from the SNES era; load up a song onto an audio track into my meager orchestral template, and try to play each part in separately. There's no shame in using the vari-speed control; it's about the notes, not the chops. One of these days I'll work myself up to doing a Zappa song, but that's probably a few more years down the road.

[jancivil]

My 'to get their chops' was located in the context, 'composing at a professional level' which the composer cited here does.

[jancivil]

the value of transcribing music as the most effective means of learning composition. I'm inclined to agree with his view here, except I think that transcribing to a piano roll can be just as effective as transcribing traditional notation. It's really about the mental exercise of analyzing what you're hearing and translating it into a language capable of expressing it in a visual manner.

I disagree completely, and I'll indicate why. Above this you said you enjoyed not having key sigs or accidentals to contend with. While I can imagine the freedom from that for one who was not enjoying the experience of notation, it's just not sufficient grounding to understand most of what was ever written. Here we see it quite frequently, the person who's only ever dealt with notes in the piano roll who spells C minor C D# G. You're screwed for analyzing music in a way that gives you insight into the procedures of, really everybody. At such a fundamental and crucial stage.

The only area where it doesn't necessarily matter is totally atonal music, but the thought of these composers was also grounded conceptually in the normative procedures; such as I indicate here, a minor third has a meaning which is not what an augmented second means. In a line on top of its function in a harmony.
Anecdote: I had a so-called master class in composition as a result of my progress when I was 18. One student had a #9 chord (cf., Foxy Lady). The man heading this 'class' told the student "No such thing. That is just a major/minor." No, there is such a thing, Hendrix's idea notwithstanding. In jazz, a dominant chord, major third while the extension does a #9 to b9 move and then resolves. It is that, by definition in that language. The context will be what illustrates a difference like that.

[funky lime]

Edit, nevermind, my input on the matter is worthless

[nordickvr]

Edit, nevermind, my input on the matter is worthless

I don't know about your input here but I was listening to you SC yesterday to find out when coming back here that your thread (now entitle "ignore") was locked.
Despite the way you'r doing things, you'r very talented and I found your music quite interesting.