Smokey's Music!

Agreed, Audacity is nice and all but I really have grown to hate it with a passion. As a DAW I’m sure it would have been fine, but I had a look into REAPER and downloaded it and it’s pretty interesting, if a little intimidating at first, what with all its options. I just messed around with the ones which I knew what they did, and stayed way clear of the rest. :wink:

Anyway, to everyone’s surprise, I actually have something up! I apologise for the (fairly lengthy) delay, but mostly I was trying to bring myself round to doing it. I have never been one to share and although I have grown to be able to play piano in front of people, I still feel uncomfortable, despite being in my most relaxed place when on my own. So it was quite a big step to actually upload and share anything. And I do have 2 more pieces nearly done. So new pieces soon!

Anyway, here it is:

p.s. excuse the rubbish name, I had no idea what to call it so I went with something that was along the lines of relaxing, as its quite a relaxing piece. Any name suggestions would be welcome!

Edit: Well, that didn’t work. It uploaded a track of no sound. I thought it was weird that REAPER was producing no sound when it was playing it through. I don’t know what’s going on. I’ll get back to you :angry:

Edit 2: From what I can tell, the MIDI file that Finale saved contained no sound. It contained the map for with which to play it, but no sound. I really don’t know what to do. YouTube and Google are obvious answers, but it’s quite late so this may be a morning job. Hmph :angry:

yeah! :+1:

awwww… :cry:

well, i’ll be looking forward to your triumphant return… :smile:

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Well, I don’t know what’s up.

After not much luck roaming around the internet to find out what was going on with REAPER, I downloaded Audacity. I imported my midi file into it, and surprise surprise, Audacity refused to actually play it.

I made sure to resave my .mid version of my piece in Finale a few times, to ensure it isn’t corrupt. If it still is, I think it must be beyond my control. But I think the problem either lies in a) Finale saving to midi files isn’t working properly or b) MIDI files don’t do what I thought they did. If it is b, I can’t transfer my file in any other way, so I may have to wait another 5 days until I get Sibelius First, and then export my piece onto that using XML and save it/export it using the correct format from there.

I sure hope it isn’t b. If anyone has any knowledge I really would appreciate some help. I just don’t know what’s not working and why.

@Smokestacks Hey, if you download Windows Movie Maker, which is free, you can import your .midi file into that, then save it as a different format. (.wmv, .mp4, etc…) Then upload that new format to Youtube.

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@Doug’s suggestion seems pretty straightforward … sorry you’re having so much grief @Smokestacks! I’m sure it will all be worth it in the end…

of course, this could all be some elaborate ploy in generating interest… I know I’m dying to hear your music now! :tongue:

@Doug that looked to be a superb suggestion, up until the point where I discovered MIDI isn’t supported by Windows Movie Maker :cry:

However from the website for that I stumbled upon JetAudio. This free converter installed upon the second attempt, and worked! Finally!

So here it is:

https://soundcloud.com/pattonator14/backseat

Apologies on the sound quality, as the piano sounds absolutely rubbish, but I’m just glad it’s up. I will be meddling and tweaking when I upload the next one (some point soon, needs touching up) and if I can get it to sound better then this one will be reuploaded.

It doesn’t work… :scream:

Oh for goodness sake. :cry:

I just clicked through, does it say “The track is being processed” for you? It does for me, but it was uploaded over an hour ago and I was waiting for that to go. I got bored and uploaded this to see if it worked. I’ll put it back up now and see if that works.

Thanks for telling me though!

I’m getting a “this page can’t be found” message… oh, fates… must you be so cruel!? :wink:

This is what I’m getting…

I took it down whilst reuploading it, as it didn’t work :wink:

IT’S WORKING!

Apologies, I’m not usually a man to caps but geez this was a journey…

https://soundcloud.com/pattonator14/backseat

Once again, the piano sounds rubbish, but I’ll mess with all that at some point.

so, you were “pool sharking” us, eh? “the piano is rubbish”, is it? bah!

very relaxing track… really enjoyed the piano… this music sounds more traditional than retro/16 bit, but that’s obviously not what you were aiming for…

so, you’re past that hurdle now… more tracks please! :smile:

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I like it. I’ll echo Steve’s calm/relaxing statement. It seems almost like a sunrise/sunset sort of thing, where the day is just starting or just ending. Its got a good vibe, and I found myself rocking to the ebb and flow of it while I listened.
My one critic would be the ending. It seems rather abrupt and big compared to the rest. Don’t know if that was what you were going for or not, but my preference would be for it to kind of fade out slowly, with the parts being played reduced and reduced till just a single note.
or something like that.
Just my preference though.

More! More! More! More!

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I know what you mean. I had problems for a long time on the bit where the right hand almost ‘solos’ at 0:15, that part getting completely redone about 5 times. And just for fun, the whole first 55 seconds is mostly repeated, just built up a little more, so I had to put in a different part for 1:05 too that was similar to it. This all meant I was very focussed on that bit, and listening to it I wasn’t fully taking in the song, just more hoping it would now fit. So yeah, I missed the ending, which worked originally, but I made a lot of changes since the original score and it is now fairly out of place. I’ll look into changing it. Thanks for the good feedback you two! :slight_smile:

Edit: So, I got Sibelius First, and you know what that means! A piece that doesn’t sound like I used my foot and a cat as an instrument! Here it is:

https://soundcloud.com/pattonator14/backseat-hq

Seriously though, just because of how bad the sound quality ended up being in the previous one, I left it up too. I recommend listening to both and seeing why it pained me so much to have the first one up. :wink:

Oh and also, @Lomico not only had I already agreed with your advice, but I took this opportunity to use it, and so the ending should sound far more appropriate on this version. However the last two (which became last three) bars are the only things to have changed, other than how I got the file up.

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of course, you catch me in transit home with a new piece to listen to… oh well, something to listen to this evening! :smile:

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It’s not new, just reuploaded and improved for doing so, the new pieces are currently a way off being finished. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’m liking what I’m hearing. :thumbsup: Keep 'em coming!

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Very nice, sir… I completely forgot about your musical abilities… :thumbsup:

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wow, it is indeed… sounds night and day different, even to my untrained ears! well done my friend… :+1:

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Very nice, like the way the ending came together with it, much more neutral and compost with the rest.
Keep up the good work! Can’t wait to hear what else you’ve got cooking

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