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[According to Wikipedia]

According to Wikipedia: In jazz, a contrafact is a musical composition consisting of a new melody overlaid on a familiar harmonic structure. Contrafact can also be explained as the use of borrowed chord progressions.

As a compositional device, it was of particular importance in the 1940s development of bop, since it allowed jazz musicians to create new pieces for performance and recording on which they could immediately improvise, without having to seek permission or pay publisher fees for copyrighted materials (while melodies can be copyrighted, the underlying harmonic structure cannot be).

Your task: take the chord structure from an existing piece of game music and compose a new melody for it. You may change the style, tempo, time signature and dynamics to suit your needs but the underlying harmony must remain unchanged.

Please include a link to the original song with your entry.

[Your task:]

Sometimes a musical theme can be so enduring that it doesn't need to be changed, much.

For example, the Mario theme song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCndx_-c_p8

In over 20 years, the melody and the spirit of the song has remained essentially unchanged.  This doesn't mean that the track hasn't evolved with the times and the hardware. 

Your task:

Take one of your existing compositions and 'evolve' it.  You might completely change it or just re-orchestrate it. Whatever you do, the original track and the evolution should sound related.  You should include a link to the original track and the new version.

Tracks will be marked on musicality and how well they retain the essence of the original.

You may enter this competition if you have no existing compositions but this will mean you have to write two songs, an original and an evolution.

Entries close on the 9th October and I will announce the winner and give feedback within 48 hours.

Have fun!

Hey everyone,

I've recently upgraded my samples to Garritan Personal Orchestra and I've been trying to improve the production quality of my tracks.
Here's something I threw together rather quickly and would just like feedback on the mix and would appreciate any suggestions to make it betterer

Also, should I extend it out or is it a good length as is?

Sammy's Theme

Hey, what has happened to the newest tune contest? I'm on break so would be awesome to have something to work on with my copious amounts of free time

Hey everyone,

I haven't been very present lately and part of the reason has been composing music for Onedollar's Oceanspirit Dennis game. One thing I've been trying to improve in my compositions is the production, and I think my recent acquisition of a better piano sample has helped immensely. There are three tunes, a town theme, battle theme, and credits/overture.  My main goal was to make them all sound like they were composed for the same game.  As you can probably also hear, Final Fantasy was a huge inspiration haha
Anyway, any feedback is greatly appreciated.

RPG Overture
Battle Theme
Town Theme

This is a piece that I'm working on for a FPS.  The feel of the game is quite gritty and futuristic. This is the music that will play when players wander through a swamp area.  Exploring the possibility of making it interactive as enemies approach, but that's the programmers job

Any feedback would be gratefully appreciated

Swamp Theme

[Tune Contest: Number Crunching]

Tune Contest: Number Crunching

For this contest, you are going to assign each semitone a number, so:

C=1
Db=2
D=3
Eb=4
F=5
Gb=6
G=7
Ab=8
A=9
Bb=10
B=11
12=Any note

Then roll a d12 8 times (if you don't have one handy, you can go here: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm ).
The eight numbers you get are going to be the notes of your main motif.

So, for example:

I roll: 10 3 6 5 2 3 9 8
So the notes of my motif will be: Bb D Gb F Db D A Ab

Guidelines:

You must use the notes in the order you have rolled them but the rhythm and style of your composition will be up to you.
You must use the motif in it's entirety at least once.
You must put the number sequence in your entry.
Have fun with it!

Entries close: 12th March

This is actually a remix of one of my existing tunes but I thought I'd hop on the chiptune bandwagon and give it a go. Would really appreciate any feedback about making it sound more NES-appropriate

Alone Again

By the by, if you like the piece, I can give you the piano sheet music

About 12 hours ago, I had no idea AGS existed, let alone this forum.

Fortunately I popped along to AdventureX 2012 and met some fabulous people with terrific ideas and great-looking projects.

They told me I should join the forum.  I agreed this was a good idea, thus, here I am.

I look forward to many meaningful interactions with many of you

Diane

(You may wonder why I decided to go along to Adventure X. I'm a composer hoping to get involved with some gaming projects. If you found that last sentence remotely intriguing, you can listen to my pieces here )