Friday, March 10, 2006

Playing with a simple line


Don't pay attention to the stupid "waveform" image above, it's just there trying to be pretty. Here's a bit of totally useless messing around with music, with story telling in mind (as always for me).

Tonight I felt like playing a bit with the woodwinds. Here's a simple line of oboe (which is of course copyrighted and that you should NOT rip to use anywhere else:)):
1-Oboe

Then I added a bit of piano to kind of "cue" the Oboe melody, and a bit of harp in the background. It starts to sound a bit like a mother/child relation ship to me :)
2-oboe+piano+harp

Here I tried to replace the harp by a gentle celesta part, it now sounds a bit as if the scene was more set in childhood (but obviously the focus wouldn't be the child itself or else I would swap the oboe for a "cuter" lead; so the result sounds more like "childhood" than "child" to me.
3-oboe+piano+celesta

So finally I droped the celeste and re-put the harp instead for more "readability" and a warmer sound. I droped the piano as well and I doubled the oboe with a flute and finally added a simple part of backing strings chords to make the result sound "fuller" and more emotional (the string section is the most emotional tool in the whole orchestra I guess). Ho by the way: flute + harp = pure magic ! (easy I know but it works just so well).
4-oboe+flute+harp+strings

I think the flute and oboe playing in unison just sound so wonderful, they have such a strong narrative power ! And I intend to use this combination a lot. :)

It's past 2 in the morning and I would really like to build a true "tiny tutorial of basic orchestration for dummies" right now, but tomorrow I have to go to my faaking job, where I feel as useless as an unijambist in an ass-kicking contest. I'm always thinking that maybe when I have the guts to quit I'll have more time to put my back into music and orchestration and my piano lessons a lot more, but I know I'm gonna end up doing everything but that... Still playing too much Mame and trying to improve my BlitzBasic skills (for the good of the world though! :)). I'm just so depressed right now.

I'd rather kill myself than live a whole life knowing that I never was the composer I wanted to be. I have to convince myself all again that this is what I do, this is what I am, a composer. But the last five years at Lameloft really had a negative impact on my self-confidence and actual ability I guess. Anyway nobody ever reads the bullshit I write here, but it just feels somewhat relieving to write it down :)



Everything but the piano => Garritan Personal Orchestra

Piano => Malmsjo Piano from Artvista (which is my secret weapon for a convincing orchestra/piano mix with no effort)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

no, someones does read.

Nino Mojo said...

And did you listen ? :)

Anonymous said...

Sure i did, the last version is definitly the best of the three. best regards.

Nino Mojo said...

Thanks. It goes straight to the heart :)

Anonymous said...

YES i read !

Don't be depressed Nino, you are one of the best composer i ever heard :)

Anonymous said...

Salut romain. J'ai pas retrouvé ton mail.
Je suis tombé par hasard sur ce site : http://www.nicolasfournel.com/
il a un CV flippant :)

Nino Mojo said...

Yo David, dis-donc je suis passé devant un bar près de chez moi et j'ai vu qu'ils exposaient tes photos ! Petit cachotier :)

Pour www.nicolasfournel.com/
Si c'est lui qui a conçu Musyx, je connais quelques sound designers qui iraient le buter s'ils avaient son adresse :)

Anonymous said...

rhaaaaaaa

c'est bon de passer par ici des fois, rien que pour des posts comme ca;) ma journée est plus belle.

Tyrell Blackburn said...

That's quite a beautiful piece of music Nino Mojo :)

Wah, I want to hear the rest!

I just noticed your blog when I found you were the only other person here on blogger who is into 'chiptune'

But what you doing posting this music here? go out and show this to some film directors/game developers, and go get yourself a job as a composer!

Some excellent orchestration Mojo, although I must say I do like the sparseness of 2. Listening to 4, and then back to 2, I think it would sound great if the piece started with 2 and then the strings crescendo in at say the last bar of sample 2 into the full strings of sample 4, but perhaps with different chords or whatever.

I realise this is probably only a sample of a larger work, but by doing this you're giving the piece space to build up to a more emotional climax - but you probably knew this anyway.

"I'd rather kill myself than live a whole life knowing that I never was the composer I wanted to be. I have to convince myself all again that this is what I do, this is what I am, a composer. But the last five years at Lameloft really had a negative impact on my self-confidence and actual ability I guess."

Yes I feel similarly to you, but instead of Lameloft, I'm doing my last year of a Music Technology course which is pretty good, but dosn't exactly teach the same sort of composition found in this post - Which I do feel more of a connection with.

Nino Mojo said...

Tyrell Blackburn:

Thank you for the lovely comment. I never showed my music to film directors or any people related to the movie industry. But ss a matter of fact, the sad thing (and you will understand my post better now), is that I am already a "professional" composer. In fact, I am the audio Director at a video game company. What I wanted to say is that my job is depressing most of the time since I don't get to compose much anymore/compose things that I really care about. Now I have to get myself together and find some time and a huge amount of energy to make music that I like on my own, and when working full-time and having lots of other hobbies this is quite a challenge :)

Thanks for dropping a line, I appreciate very much feeling that this page is a bit alive and that people would read and listen. I will post new excerpts very soon (when I recover from E3 :).

Anonymous said...

Well, looks like I found you again man. Yes, I agree on your harp + flute remark. Magic indeed its what its all about huh? Anyow, Im finally here in San Francisco. Shoot me an email


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