@Smokestacks Lovely! Well done! There’s a world of difference between the two version; the piano sound in the second is much more rich and characterful and establishes a very cool tone.
I’m impressed because of how subdued the music is; less is more is a lessons many musicians miss. I like how you give space between the notes for the melody to flex and breathe 
One question for you: why is it called Backseat? 
Oh god, is it bad that the thing I actually struggled with the most (other than the damn upload process for the first one) is naming it? Seriously, I was having a wail of a time, chilling out writing it and thought “Aha! I should save or people will spam the chat repeatedly” so I went to save and sat there for about 5 minutes scratching my head and feeling like an idiot. In the end the thought process went like this:
“Well, it’s quite a lazy and laid-back piece?”
“Perfect! We’ll just use something somewhat synonymous to that!”
“Dude, that sucks.”
“Do you have anything better?”
“Well, no-”
“So can we just get on with it and stop worrying about the stupid name?”
So yeah. Honestly, suggestions for a rename are welcome. I’d have called it Grasslands or something dead plain like that, if it weren’t for the fact I already have a piece under that name 
I envy your powers of naming!
Oh I am honestly very glad you do. After establishing the feel of the piece, I had to work surprisingly hard at this. There were gaps in which it literally just held the note for 1 beat too long, but instantly sounded very disjointed. I then had to be quite reserved though in how much I tried to fix it. So if I pulled it off, I am actually rather glad 
Thanks for the feedback guys! 
@Smokestacks Hahaha! Relax man, I’m not against the name at all. I was just wondering if there was a story behind it. If I had a song called Backseat, it would be raunchy and inappropriate 
so I thought it was interesting that you would call it that.
Hmmm name ideas…? I like names that add to the music and give it a perspective or story rather than just a title or a tag that explains it. To me, the music sounds like a quiet, peaceful European street where it’s not quite dark yet but street lamps are lighting up and shops are being locked up. I can’t think of any name ideas…but it sounds like something Joe Hisaishi would do. And his songs having amazing names. I would direct you to his work for inspiration 
And you pulled it off very well! Subtlety and restraint is always the way to go! It reminds me of what The Edge says about restraint:
“Notes actually do mean something. They have power. I think of notes as being expensive. You don’t just throw them around. I find the ones that do the best job and that’s what I use. I suppose I’m a minimalist instinctively. I don’t like to be inefficient if I can get away with it. Like on the end of “With or Without You”…the end of “With or Without You” could have been so much bigger, so much more of a climax, but there’s this power to it which I think is even more potent because it’s held back.”
i could give you any number of names to choose from… but i think you would grow weary of them before long…
So long as they don’t sound like movies that any of The Expendables could feature in, feel free
Laser Hunters!
Death Chasers!!
The Last of the…!!!
…oh
Hello people!
Still no news on the naming front, but lets move onto more important things shall we?
Unsurprisingly once again I find @Raj as an inspiration and I’ve once again sparked into life! As I mentioned in a brief discussion during the stream, I’m actually working on a piece for one of my GCSEs and would like to remake it at home into something I could use in SH. However it needs to be finished first. It feels like it could do with a bit of harmonising, a look at the ending and my transitions between sections (which are dire) and then it needs all the dynamics doing. But it’s ok. That should hopefully be done by next week and then I can get working on that.
But why do I post now? Well, it’s 1:43 AM here but football was cancelled in the morning so I can stay up. Basically, with that inspiration I’m going to be writing a long sort of piano symphony. I’m not much for repetition, so it should be evolving quite a lot, but that’s just my style. And it helps. Because basically this will provide me the means to make some new melodies (and a small amount of accompaniment perhaps depending on how I do the left hand) for some new pieces.
So I’m gonna do it in the style I think I saw RepeatPan do it; log times and changes as I go. I’ll probably keep going til I’m bored/out of inspiration/fall asleep. Let’s go!
02:16 Established a little melody line and put some reasonably sounding chords to it. Only 8 bars long so far but it needs to begin well and I think I’ve done that alright. Starting to evolve now though…
02:34 Second little riff created, tinkering around, 20 bars, eyes getting heavy…
02:50 Well I’ve added to those bars and changed them a bit, got a left hand I’m 50% happy with going underneath, and made some general revisions to the piece. As it is so far, it’s quite nice. However I think I’m calling it a night. But don’t worry, this isn’t just going to collect dust!
Yeah! That’s awesome! Keep this thread alive! I’m expecting great things from ya 
The pressure’s on now, @Smokestacks.
It better not. I’m allergic to dust. Don’t want to kill me or anything. 
Well apparently I have a duty to fulfil. So I’m gonna spend some more time on it today. I want to put in at least an hour, but quite frankly I have no set time restrictions so it could last a lot longer or could come to an abrupt halt. Anyway, lets go! 
21:22 Working back through yesterday’s creation. Tweaking practically done for now, and I’m a lot happier with it.
00:06 Well okay then, I think this is a night! I may decide to come back to it later, but for now, MOTD calls. Progress? Well the whole part I did yesterday is definitely in a state I’m happy with. The piece is now extended, however not as much as I would have liked, as I struggled a bit more today to get a melody together. However I think the basis of it is there and can simply be developed instead of created tomorrow, which should help. Growing a little collection of motifs for myself, which is exactly what I want; @Raj certainly has his own (although they’re definitely longer than mine) that shone through from the SH music into his background music from the stream, and this is definitely part of what I want out of this piece. Anyway, that’s it. Will be coming back to this hopefully tomorrow.
@Smokestacks O.o this is lovely.
Right names then eh? ummm…
Berry Baskets … no too jolly
Axe and Plough … sounds a bit like an olde English public house
Evening Glow … better, but things may be on fire
The Gloaming … oohhhh I love gloaming
After a hard day …
Respite
yeah I am out I think
Anywhoo love the tune … now moar!
T
Oh dang those are some good names, especially liking “Respite” and “Evening Glow”. Hmmmm. Hmmmmmmmm.
My appreciation to you all for all the support! It really is nice to get positive comments
Edit: Well, I’ve finished my piece in school! Now just waiting comments back from my teacher, but the brief chat I had with a different teacher about it involved him resorting to pointing out formatting errors, so it should be pretty good…even if pretty good is only that it contains what the examiners want and doesn’t necessarily sound good, but I gotta say I’m quite proud of it.
Apologies about no revisiting to my music, I want to but I haven’t the time, my life is suddenly swamped: I have a history controlled assessment due in within the next two days; I have ICT controlled assessment due in within the next two days; I have a solo music piece that I need to have ready in two weeks so want to make sure it’s thoroughly polished; I have my half of a duet (piano, not singing ;)) that I have only just been given to learn within the next two weeks to perform; I have a music composition to finish within the next month and a half (this shouldn’t take much time); I have just finished a few ISAs for science. Quite frankly, I’m exhausted. So amongst this work, I really need some respite. So sadly no updates on the music. However I have set a deliberate plan to try and work on some music for at least an hour a day for each day of half term next week (for you Americans that don’t get it, it’s the one week out of school we get for every 6/7 weeks in school between the larger holidays of Christmas, Easter and Summer), so I hope to make some progress then. I’m definitely quite pumped for it at the minute though!
Well…perhaps not tonight. I had planned on uploading the piece tonight, however since I can so easily export it off Sibelius 7 in school which totally trumps my Sibelius 7 First in sound quality, particularly for pitched percussion, I’m gonna leave it until tomorrow. I’ll also talk about it a bit more then.
Still waiting…
pulls up a chair, and waits patiently as well
hums quietly to himself
Well I forgot to go and export the song, however I’m in the room that has Sibelius 7 for my music class next Thursday so I shall either do it then or try and go Wednesday lunch. I would go on Monday or Tuesday but I have PE moderation over those 2 days for my GCSE so I’m likely busy.
However I will reveal a bit more about it; it is the aforementioned GCSE piece. It isn’t actually finished, however the direction I’ve been asked to take it is fairly different, and I plan on uploading version 1 first and version 2 later. What it is is a piece based on the style of minimalism - that means the examiners want to see note addition, note subtraction, layering, phasing/canons, repetition (and lots of it). It isn’t the most exciting of pieces, it doesn’t flow forwards throughout rather just swirls around for a bit then progresses slightly. But I think I could remix it for Stonehearth. So come Wednesday/Thursday, that’s what to expect.
As for the cable, I don’t know what’s going on, I’ll check with my parents that it hasn’t actually came and they just forgot to tell me, because this is slightly ridiculous, 10 working days!?
Looking forward to hearing what you’re working on @Smokestacks.
For anyone that is not familiar with minimalist music, here is a fine example.
Ooh, sensible idea to include an example.
I decided to go and find the set work we have to study at GCSE:
We listened to some Philip Glass as context when studying the piece and whilst I can’t say minimalism is a favourite genre of mine to be perfectly honest, none of what I heard was too bad at all.
Well guys, time for an update I guess…
So my MIDI cable finally arrived, and this is my keyboard setup. Looking for a couple of add-ons, like something that would mean it could register when both hands were playing (perhaps splitting it at middle C, so anything below that is entered in LH and above RH).
As for the pieces, they’re finally finished up and handed in. I’ll need to take in a USB drive though, because export them as .WAV files takes up too much file space for the network to allow it. I’d just access the file with my Sibelius 7 First, but when Sibelius 7 sounds so much nicer and I have such easy access to it, I might as well just do this. So expect music tomorrow, though not Stonehearth-specific.
However, if you can see on the screen, I did feel enticed to begin a new piece, using the MIDI input to help. Finally got my head around the kind of battle piece I wanted, so there’s something Stonehearth-y in the works. GCSEs though are taking priority. Come the 13th June, when I’ve sat my last exam, my focus can switch to my compositions.
so its now official! you can produce copious amounts of music, for our listening pleasure…
waits patiently for the 13th
