RPG - A Long Way From Home
Friday, June 15, 2018 - 10:46
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Hey Devs!
A loopable piece for you to use in your game if you choose to! This makes me feel like I am exploring lands far away from home both beautiful, mysterious, and dangerous. Yet I am alone and long to make my way back home. (Atleast that is how it makes me feel =P). You know the drill, if you can use it great if not enjoy the listen!
Cheers Devs!
Email: hitctrl@gmail.com
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/hitctrl
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HitCtrl
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RPG - A Long Way From Home.mp3 9.9 Mb [243 download(s)] RPG - A Long Way From Home.ogg 3.4 Mb [154 download(s)]
Comments
Your pieces are getting better every time you come out with new material!
Thank you for the great comment Amac! It means a lot coming from a musician whos work I admire! =)
Well, I can say the same about your work. Are you a music major?
I was inspired by this song. As in I wanted to make an RPG song after I heard this song. lol https://opengameart.org/content/rpg-ghost
I am not. Self taught. Was a guitarist in a metal band for a while and the band wanted little string parts here and there. Been trying to figure out composing stuff from there. Pretty much since I have been posting music on here...about a year or so.
Ah this is good, relaxing but somber.
Metal is actually how I started out to or at least for guitar. I played the flute in, middle school and high school and that is about all the schooling I did in music. They hardly taught me anything about music theory though. I just graduated with an IT degree. Because of my background in science and math, I'm a huge believer that the music notation system needs to change. Music notation was originally designed for one scale in one key. From there on it became a mess when they added other scales. In fact, I'm actually more into the new numbering system designed in the 60's where everything is numbered off of the major scale. Here is a poor tutorial I made over it if you're interested in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izIBxQiYPEw&t=7s
lol do scales even matter, you can make perfectly good sounding music without knowing any scales at all.
You can certainly play whole songs with arpeggios but the purpose of scales is to use as a guide rather than trying to hit every single note of the scale. For example, you can play the chromatic scale only knowing the pentatonic. In a single note played on any instrument contains overtones of the pentatonic scale. All these notes are consonant to the note thus when playing notes outside of the scale you can resolve to notes that are consonant.
If you play guitar than this tutorial will make sense out of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLCSA3tp-zM
Oh, I was not really thinking in terms of guitar, just in general.
Scales for the most point do not sound good because there to consonant to the chords you play behind or at least for the beginner scales. To much consonance makes a song boring. By playing modes you can add dissonance. I can play notes outside of a scale to technically define it as not playing within a scale by using the scale to resolve notes that are dissonant. The major scale can be converted into the Ionian mode and other scales. The Ionian mode is mostly consonant to major chords. The reason most people don't want to learn scales is that they play the scale without utilizing the modes properly which if you thought of it in terms of the major scale it's very much like playing multiple keys for a song. Which to the human ear does not sound like a scale when using modes. So for example if I played a major key only with 3 different major chords I can play the Ionian in three different positions or at the root note of the chord. Technically I would have to play the Ionian for at least four bars or measures as well for each chord to make it acceptable. If I want to add chromatic notes outside of the Ionian I can resolve those outside notes immediately with the Ionian notes. So technically if I add the chromatic notes I'm not playing a scale but rather using a scale to resolve dissonant notes.
Interesting, I don't know too much about music theory, but it would be nice to learn at least a little, and I have noticed the trappings of using just one key for everything makes songs sound samey and boring like you mentioned.
This entire song uses scales all the way throughout. https://opengameart.org/content/rpg-ghost
Cool vid Amac! You had some great points on building chords using scales. Interesting views from both you and Spring. I don't know too much music theory myself. I probably know only 4 scales, major, minor, pentatonic, and harmonic minor. I know the basics of music theory and that is about it. I think it is up to the musician to determine how much or little music theory they need. I think those that don't know much music theory or "ear players" can write things that they hear in their head, either through trial and error of by doing it so much to the point that it is instinctive. They write it but, they don't understand "why" it works. On the other hand someone that knows a lot of music theory can write the same melody and understand the why behind the musical idea. They both got to the end result, just taking different paths.
Even more important than learning music theory I believe is knowing that chords, chord progressions, scales, and modes are tools that musicians can use in their music. The creativity is what makes the music in the end. What I mean is for example, the A minor scale is the same A minor scale used by Mozart, Beethoven, Jimi Hendrix, Kirk Hammet, me, you, and everyone else. The creativity in putting the notes together to convey some type of emotion for the listener is what seperates each musician apart from one another. You mentioned above Amac that it is important to know when to use these tools appropriately or the music will end up sounding like a wreck. Which I agree with 100%. Learn the concepts and learn when to use them or when not to use them depending on what you are trying to accomplish. I think every musician gets to the point when they feel a need to learn something new in music theory. That is usually when you are ready to take your writing to another level. Learn a new concept, use it in a few pieces, learn another one and continue to take small bites at a time. It is true what Spring also said you don't need to know any scales at all, some people have a great ear for music, and there are a ton of musicians like that. However, eventually when you notice some things sounding "samey" that is usually when you reach for a few chunks of music theory to expand your skills. This was a pretty great conversation!
technically the minor key is 3 scales. you almost have the key ingredients to play minor keys HitCtrl you just need to learn the melodic minor. Here is a tutorial video that explains the minor key that I made. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MisvDaa0Ufw&t=206s
Basically what you should get out of the video is that you should be able to make chords out of the three scales and mix them together. For example, the 1,4,5 chord progression can be a chord from the harmonic minor, another chord from the melodic minor, and another chord from the minor scale (aka aeolian). If you want to play it without it sounding to off you can play each arpeggio or chord for four measures for each mode for 4/4 timing. This is four up and downs per each bar (measure).
You use the three scales to make the chords and the cool thing is that you can use modes found in the major key to play over those chords or at least for the modes that have the notes of the chord in it.
Keep in mind the new song I made uses the minor key and I used the Dorian mode from the major scale to play over the minor 7 chords in every case. I also used variations of the Lydian mode and Ionian mode over the major chords. Which all those modes are jazzy.
I invited you to the slideshows for those tutorials.
I even put a piano keyboard with the key of c major labeled with the numbering system. Keep in mind these numbers only apply to what is in the key of c. So you can only make chords that have the root note as c. such as 1,3,5,7. The piano is a little harder to memorize scales compared to the guitar because of the shape changes. If you wanted to know the key of D you would play the major scale in the key of d and number them 1-7. 1 as the root note,2 the second note of the scale and 3 the third note of the major scale. For example, a"b3 " would be a half step down relative to the 3rd note of the major scale.