A Haunted House

Nice. I really like the idea. I actually wanted to hear more of that first 20 seconds, before moving on to the next idea. The change felt a little too soon for me.. I think you could restate that melody another time round with some variation in the orchestration and harmony, before moving into that more legato section that you've written. I could even hear the piece potentially going into kind of a dark fanfare type thing at some point. That might be cool - If you really wanted to take it somewhere else. You don't have any brass or woodwinds in there yet either, so maybe that could be a cool way to bring them in (unless your intention was to write a piece just for strings?)

Anyway, just some suggestions. All the best with it!

Here's a quick example of the few things I mentioned..



Phil

 

Nice vibe. I like it overall. Was the "Night on Bald Mountain" quotation on purpose ?

There is nothing wrong with quotation in my opinion; it's just it knocks me out of the piece and into thinking about Mussorgsky whose work I adore.

 

You're welcome. I look forward to hearing more!

 

Sorry, I did not read your post before. I just listened and skipped over your stated goals.

That's all cool, and I think everyone has to just grab things to learn how they are put together and so forth.
I still, on occasion use "place holders" for sketch out a form or something. It's not where you begin that matters as much as where you end up. It's also perfectly fine to leave it as it is now.........

The section I mentioned sounds like cartoon music to me. I really enjoy cartoon music, so I am not "looking down on it". Animation is great genre in my opinion. It's just I am not sure that is what you are intending.

Bald Mountain of course was used in Fantasia, and the bass line 3rd thing is a classical cartoon bass line for spooky shit. Listen to about 10 seconds of this clip

Basically if you are looking to learn and add to your tools , lets just say you can clearly do what you posted above.
(I'll call it "A") So now try a B, and C, D and so on. Figure out what you like about the figure you have and remember you can mix elements of one idea with another.

There are so many examples you can study from the classical cannon. Basically .... to create a spooky affect you need non-diatonic tones. b1,b3,b5(#4),b6. (natural 7 is spookier as it avoids a perfect 5th with the b3. min7th chords sound rather peaceful and pentatonic like)

There are so many ways, but let me walk through one possibility.
Back in the day the octatonic scale was a lot. You can learn a good deal about "tension" spot and tonal "gravity" with them. Often, the composers of the 20's, 30's would create an "axis" point that they basically fucked around with.




The 5th - calm - 4th tense - third tense - minor 2nd --- shit your pants and vice versa.

I picked this as I like your opening chromatic descending idea.

Too much chromaticism gets boring. It's more spooky to have the maj and min 2nds.

So now ..... we can use this for the background. It will need to be divided.

We can make little ostinatos from this




The other thing I would say, is you are going to be backed into a corner the longer the piece goes with have such Down beat bass parts. Flip it to 2 and 4 or other variations. For example drop out a bar then have more --- like a drummer -- leading into new sections etc.

I'll flip it here in measure 5. I really like your example and wish you all the best with your music !

 

I found this track that I wrote a few years back. The main idea has a similar chord progression to yours, and it's also in that same kinda eeire/mysterious vibe. Maybe you can take some ideas or inspiration from it!

-Phil

 

Ohh..... that's never good. Let me know if you want me to try and clarify anything

 

Pretty close.. Here's the brass part isolated. I've panned the horns hard left, Trumpets in the center and Trombones and Tuba far right, so you can better hear the separation of the parts.

 

Here's the midi file. It won't look right as notation though, cause I wasn't using a click track. But you'll be able to see the individual tracks.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5tx4MpQJYt8RE1fdGg1YWtxTjA

 

Haha oh that D is my fault. It IS in the midi file. But I actually have that midi note muted in the audio exports. So you were right not to hear it.

 

Hmmm..... not exactly. I did not mean use those specifically. Let me see if an analogy is better:

Say you and I are two cooks in a kitchen. We have a soup. Inside the big soup bowl is the major scale.
That is our basic soup.

Now I say to you: We have some spices over here.(b1,b3,b5(#4),b6,7) You can add or leave out the which suits your taste. You don't have to use them all..... but you can if you want your ass to be on fire the next day.


Without getting into much more technical stuff, if you are not very familiar with the octatonic scale and/or augmented triads resolving to minor.... these are often used devices at a later time you may want to study.

Yes...... for scores that are string heavy I would say check out this classical score and then the film score below

It gets going at about 55"

Then this cue which has a LOT of octatonic stuff