Do we need a proper musician?

[cyanoise]

*Mp3 link removed, thanks to all who listened!*

What do you think of this first track of mine? It's an intro music to an adventure game I'm doing with few friends, so it's not really meant to be listened to, but to create atmosphere combined with the visuals. It's a mix of weird orchestral instruments and ambient stuff. It should sound dark and spooky, or at least mysterious.

If you think it's not total crap, how should I improve it further? On the other hand, if it IS total crap (that's what I assume), I should stop wasting my time with it and find a proper musician to help us with the game. I'm not a musician myself, I'm just trying to keep our team size small by doing everything myself. So please don't pity me, tell the bitter truth. You help me more that way, since we want the game to be commercial or at least very good quality in every area.

Thanks for listening!

[danielmm]

You have no music experience???

This sounds pretty good to me....sets the mood nicely for what you are after. Mix sounds pretty good on my pc speakers...what did you use?

dano

[PaintedBlue]

Sounds very good to me...

In fact, it reminds me very much of the soundtrack from "The 7th Guest" by the legendary game audio producer, The Fat Man (who wrote the book "The Fat Man On Game Audio").

[DevonB]

The mix is off over here in the studio at least. Really thin on the low end. For not being a musician, where you getting your sounds from?

Devon

[dten]

The sounds are very good. Airy and sparse. I agree with the others that it's surprisingly good for someone who claims no musical experience.

Although, for your purpose--ambient soundtrack--I think it might be a little too dynamic. There are a handful of times when the sound noticably dies down, then starts back up again with a slightly different sound. This could have the effect of pulling the player back out of the experience to focus on the music. And if it loops over and over again, the distinctly different sections will quickly start to be repetitive. It might be better to pick a certain "sound" and just repeat it with subtle variations that might not even be very musical in the usual sense, if ambience is what you're after.

Also the piano melody in the last section sounds a little more sweet than scary.

But what do I know -- I'm not a musician either, and I've never designed for a game.

[maximilians1]

Can we have a synopsis without giving too much away? I think you'll get better suggestions then, and no I don't think it is total crap, I like the innoscence that the toy piano suggests, and how the strings and vocals hover in and out indicating larger mysterious forces at work. But I would like to hear more definition in the choir it sounds muddy to me,more male vocal sections more often, it blends with the strings too much, I just like clearer more realistic pads I guess. I Don;t think the cello section is clear enough in the mix, maybe it just has to do with mixing, but sounds good mate , you are a musician.
Max

[mystahr]

This absolutely is not crap; but I tend to agree on the dynamics thing. Like said; game music (and I have zero experience in that) should be an additional thing, not take over and distract the player.

Yeah there's an awful lot of low end missing, and I think it can be obtained in the timpani's if you make them deep and warm; they'll add to the suspence.

Musically this sounds quite right though

[Vegetarian]

This is really quite good; to me, it sounds like a cross between Tomb Raider and Donnie Darko. It does sound a little bit too active for ambience (particularly the drum rolls, which might be a little too frequent, but that's just my opinion), but who knows, it might be fine with the end product. Good stuff, dude.

[Mighty_Hero]

The truth is this is not 1/2 bad. Some of the eq'ing should be more level, bring the piano more up front, and take down the the percussion a hare. Other than this, it is not 'bad' by any means....maybe a little "odd" for an intro, but it does not push me away at first listen.

[lavoll]

it is utter crap and you should concider using a real soundtrack composer for the job, it just so happens that i am available

[Ixox]

Sounds like a joke...
For me, this track has been written by a musician who knows what he does and who has lots of good instruments libraries...

IF it's not a joke, cyanoise, you're a genious...
Very nice track... Prefect for the kind of game you described...

[vurt]

i agree with whats been siad
this is very good
ok few minor tweaks heren there on the mix and dynamics but this is a nice track

[cyanoise]

I was not exactly prepared for positive comments, hooray.

I started to experiment with making music just 6 months or something ago, and this is the first (almost) ready track I've done. Of course I have few tracks which never got ready, but I did rip some parts of those for this one. I haven't got a lot of time to make music since I'm also writing the script and making most of the graphichs for the game.

I'm mixing with cheap sony cans and old pc speakers. No, I'm not going to buy monitors until the game is ready and I'm bathing in money. There's not going to be awful lot of music in the game, escpecially if I'm the one composing them. And most of it will be more ambient than this one, I agree that this track isn't ambient enough as a background music. Maybe we'll use it in a title screen or something instead.

All my sounds and synths are free from the net or from magazines. I'm not 100% sure if the choir samples are free to use in a commercial game. They're from the Papelmedia site, can't remember the url now. The license text which showed up when uncompressing the soundfont files was in german, perhaps someone could translate it? Anyway, I was going to mail and ask the author. Those soundfonts certainly sound better than my soundcards oohs and aahs, but if they're not free I think there's a lot more versatile choises around for little money. The problem is I'd have to find that little money somewhere..

I'm not going to tell more about the game setting or story, but it's basically a typical ghost story, only better.

I got some really good tips from these posts, thanks everyone! Though I'm still not sure if I'm going to continue with music or going to find someone else to help with it, since there's so much to do besides music and not enough hours in a day.

[vurt]

why not have a listen to some postings here and see if you can find anything you like

[qa2pir]

Yeah! I can absolutely imagine this tune in a game. Good work! But don´t do EVERYTHING they say, you may want time for other tunes for the game as well...
I have made some game music before, though in MIDI format =)