Broken.mid - music by Flippy

[Flippy_D]

And here we are. It's only a short piece, barely half a minute, written in D-flat (that's five flats to you and me) and in 3/4. It's probably going to be used for an rpg intro screen.

Comments and Crit welcome.

[Archangel (aka SoupDragon)]

I v.like the descending suspended 4th thing you've got going on in the piano, and the fast harp bits, and your use of dynamics. Only way to improve it would be to make it longer, but I know you don't want a full length piece, so leave it. Oh yeah, and the piano left hand could be doing something, but I dunno if that would mess up the arrangement or not.

[m0ds]

Nice little piece

m0ds

[Neole]

I like it! Bass notes could be added somewhere maybe.

[loominous]

I like it. The arrangement is clear n well balanced but perhaps a bit too thin imo. I d experiment with adding woodwinds and brass (brass not meaning trumpet fanfares rather subtle horn n trombone lines giving it warmth n depth), and at the end reintroduce the lower stringsection.

Btw, I noticed that all intruments was panned in centre. Panning is crucial to make it sound rich n real n I made a version available here:

(an ensamble is always positioned from the left to the right whereas in your version they d be sitting ontop or behind eachother in a single file)

http://w1.865.telia.com/~u86517124/Downloadable/BROKEN_PAN.mid

Another technical matter is volume envelopes. None was present in this version n makes it pretty flat n lifeless. No real instruments starts at one velocity n remains it constantly. So to make it more alive, use volume envelopes to fade in n out lines.

[Flippy_D]

Funny you should mention that, because listen to the piano carefully - it does actually pitch soft and come back up to full strength at the end of the line - this is the first song I've done this on!    (incidentally, this is cakewalk 3.0 - not a very good piece of kit)

Also, I d/led the version you remade, yet there was only one difference (aside from the rearranging of the staves), which was a very brief extra note, about half way through. You'll need to expand upon your point about panning, because I have no idea what that is.

[BOYD1981]

nice little mid you have there

[loominous]

The difference between the versions is perhaps only audible if you have two seperated stereospeakers or are using headphones.  

The idea is that when you listen to a concert, live or recorded, you ll hear where the instrumentalists are placed on the stage. If it s not a soloconcert the intruments have to be spread out on the stage which will be heard on the record/in the hall. (an intrumentalist placed to the left will be heard as coming from the left etc)

The instruments in a symphony orchestra are almost always placed in the same manner. Explaining where they re all seated would take some time, so to get a picture of the placement, just look at some images of an orchestra.

Roughly they are seated as follows:

Far left: (pan 0-15)

Harp, 1st n 2nd Violinsection

Left: (30)

French horns

Middle: (40-80)

Violas, woodwinds, trumpets, percussion

Right: (100)

Trombones,  cellosection

Far right: (110-127)

Doublebasses

it does actually pitch soft and come back up to full strength at the end of the line

Think you re confusing volume with velocity. To alter the volume enter the 'pianoroll' of a track then in the menus to the upper left/middle, select 'Control' n in the other '7-Volume'. Now you can "draw" the envelope in the lower part of the window.

[Neole]

The panned version does make a big difference! It seems a little left heavy to me now, but its turned much more dynamic.

[Flippy_unplugged]

Oh, it must be my crappy sound card or something then. Also, to edit the volume dips, I went into the event list and fiddled with the values. I was sure that wasn't the velocity....

Oh well. 28-bit RPGs never did have orchestral scores.