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NinSheetMusic => Help! => Topic started by: NickTheBassoonist on June 14, 2008, 09:20:38 AM

Title: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: NickTheBassoonist on June 14, 2008, 09:20:38 AM
I was hoping some of you here can give me some tips or something to get started with composing/arranging. Like, what I should work on first...

I downloaded Finale, or the demo of '08, I'm not sure if I need anything else... Any input would be greatly appreciated!
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: KefkaticFanatic on June 14, 2008, 10:08:21 AM
If you want to just start arranging, download finale notepad.  The demo of the full version is nearly useless as you can't save anything.
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: NickTheBassoonist on June 14, 2008, 10:36:08 AM
Ah yea, That's what I have- Finale Notepad 2008. My bad.
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: Brawler4Ever on June 14, 2008, 04:22:12 PM
um... some vocab help(for fun).

arranging: a song that you like has already been made (i.e. Good Egg Galaxy from Super Mario Galaxy). You listen to the song, and put it in midi format(I'm assuming that you know what a midi is. It's fine if you don't  :P) on your Finale. That is an arrangement  of the song. It's supposed to sound like the original as best as possible. We use piano arrangements, which means that we tkae midis/our ears and we make songs into playable piano format.

Composition: This is a song that you have completely created yourself. This was not taken from a game, music artist, etc.
...
For arranging: Try to arrange a song by ear, and see how easy it is. If you're like me, you'll get to measure ten and have no idea where to go next. I use midis; I download a midi from vgmusic.com and open the midi in Finale. I open a blacnk Finale page and move the notes, measure by measure, into the black document. In almos tno itme at all, I have a perfectly good piano arrangement.  :D

Try this (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?fz1mxqmg0ne) for starts. It's nice and easy. It's called "Pre-battle" and it's from Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: Parker2334 on June 14, 2008, 05:50:57 PM
When your arranging by ear, it is helpful to have a sound of the song the song you're attempting to recreate like a YouTube video or a .mp3 or .ogg, or .wav, or anything.
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: Shadoninja on June 14, 2008, 06:50:11 PM
if you're gonna arrange by ear with windows media player then:
(http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n208/shadoninja/Playspeed.jpg)
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: B-Kpianist on June 14, 2008, 07:01:19 PM
Advice for composing: Try to come up with a melody by humming or whistling something that is playing in your mind. If that doesn't work, look at a picture to get inspiration. If your writing video game music (like me (http://www.ninsheetmusic.net/forum/index.php?topic=522.0)), try to picture what the level your music would go on looks like. If all that doesn't work- listen to a piece of music you like and try to bounce off of that idea.

Advice for arranging
: If your like me and arrange by ear- find an Mp3 to listen to while you arrange. If your slow at it... take the first segment of the song, and work on it, then the second segment to finish it up. You can find Mp3's at Galbadia Hotel (http://gh.ffshrine.org) or Apollomix (http://apollomix.com). If you can't arrange by ear- go to VGmusic (http://vgmusic.com), download a midi, and copy off of that. Midi's are not always clean, so you'll need to tidy up the sheet (key sigs, correct time sigs, cleanliness, etc.). Oh- one last thing if your using a midi, you should ALWAYS check an original Mp3 of the song your arranging to make sure the midi is accurate. Sometimes people will slop together something crappy and give it a title :D

Umm... that's about it- i hope that helped :)
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: Sirus on June 14, 2008, 07:09:58 PM
and dont copy directly from midis
ppl will flame u for that
and if ur song sounds like someone elses arrangement (especially from a different site)
thats not good
so far we didnt have a major problem with that
so i dont know the consequences
MORAL OF THE STORY dont copy/plagerize
good luck  ;)
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: B-Kpianist on June 14, 2008, 07:13:04 PM
yeah- that's why i said to "tidy it up", cuz if it sounds too similar, ppl will flame u.
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: Parker2334 on June 14, 2008, 07:39:42 PM
Original poster,

If you're new on the interwebz flames are bad.
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: Echo on June 14, 2008, 07:45:52 PM
Ok, I just had to laugh when Brawler said that song was easy, and yet it's wrong at least 10 seconds into it.

Oh, and as for advice, try playing the song first before notating it. This can help visualize the notes better, giving you a sense of what the key of the song is and such. For arranging, I recommend starting off with a gameboy game song if anything, since it's basically two channels at a time for the melody/background parts, one channel for the bass, and another channel for percussion (which you can ignore). Also, you should practice on focusing and listening to each individual pitch in a chord. Again, gameboy music is good for this since a chord should only be two pitches due to channel limitations (unless the bass is a part of the chord, and even then it should be easy to separate the pitches).
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: NickTheBassoonist on June 14, 2008, 08:39:15 PM
Wow, I didn't expect so much notice so soon! Thanks! I don't have anymore questions for now- you guys gave me more than enough information to help me get started, plus some tracks to work on.

Actually, here's a question- when I want to contribute, is there omewhere here I go to make sure two people aren't going to contribute the same song?
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: Echo on June 14, 2008, 08:51:59 PM
In "Requests" there's a pinned topic for people to call dibs on songs. Also, the arrangers' topics in the Submission forum should show what songs they are doing. Even with all that, though, people like me are so careless that they'll end up arranging a song even if other people have already done it. ::)
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: NickTheBassoonist on June 14, 2008, 09:15:15 PM
I lied- I have more questions- Brawler4Ever said that you find a song and put it in MIDI format... is there a program that puts mp3s to MIDI format, or do you do that by hand?

EDIT: Ha, I read that wrong- that's what arranging is. I always thought 'arranging' was the official word for 'remixing'. I suppose there's no program to do that, is there? That would make arranging too easy. =)
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: Shadoninja on June 15, 2008, 10:44:56 AM
Quote from: Brawler4Ever on June 14, 2008, 04:22:12 PMarranging: a song that you like has already been made (i.e. Good Egg Galaxy from Super Mario Galaxy). You listen to the song, and put it in midi format(I'm assuming that you know what a midi is. It's fine if you don't  :P) on your Finale. That is an arrangement  of the song. It's supposed to sound like the original as best as possible. We use piano arrangements, which means that we tkae midis/our ears and we make songs into playable piano format.
Arranging: Taking an original song and making it into another genre, or putting in your own spin on it. or, Mixing it with another song. basically trying to get the general feel of the original but in a different way.

what you describe is a transcription. and it doesn't HAVE to be on finale, it can be on any manuscript program, or even on a normal sheet of paper.
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: Beethoven II on June 16, 2008, 11:57:02 AM
Quote from: Shadoninja on June 14, 2008, 06:50:11 PMif you're gonna arrange by ear with windows media player then:
(http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n208/shadoninja/Playspeed.jpg)

Heh i never knew you could do that, thx!
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: KefkaticFanatic on June 16, 2008, 01:55:46 PM
What the...

WMP can do that?!?

Wow.

Well I still use Audacity for more better slowing down.
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: NickTheBassoonist on June 19, 2008, 06:27:24 PM
Ok, I'm about halfway done with the file Brawler gave me to work with, "Pre-Battle", and I was wondering, can I get some people's AIM who are willing to help me out with this? Just basically look at the file and tell me what needs to be corrected and anything else you might be willing to contribute. Anything's greatly appreciated. =D
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: pumpy_heart on June 19, 2008, 08:59:20 PM
Key Signature used to be very big here, and I believe it still should be.
Make sure your songs are in the correct key, and if it changes key, ask someone here to change the key for you.
Learning what keys the songs are in is very important to created a pretty sheet.

BTW I'm also a Bassoonist :)
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: NickTheBassoonist on June 19, 2008, 09:48:07 PM
Crap, I'm gonna have to re-do the whole thing... unless I Naturalize everything then change the Key Sig...

How long have you been Bassooning?
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: Echo on June 23, 2008, 12:42:10 AM
Oh, um... Yeah, I kinda already did that song as part of my project for the game. The key sig's G Flat Major according to how I wrote it out. I haven't uploaded or submitted it yet because I wanna upload all the Chain of Memories songs in one go, but I could show you it if you want... Sorry about telling you this so late btw...
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: NickTheBassoonist on June 24, 2008, 03:57:02 PM
No, it's fine, I'm actually really glad this is happening, when I think I'm done I can compare it to an actual copy of someone who has experience. I'm not really partial to Kingdom Hearts anyway, I don't mind at all. Do you have AIM so I can contact you later?
Title: Re: New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.
Post by: Echo on June 25, 2008, 02:42:11 PM
Eh, if it's about contacting, just send me a personal message through NSM.