some midi compositions

Not sure if this is the optimal subforum to post this, but ohwell...

I've been writing music for over a decade now, and maybe 7-8 years ago I stumbled on EasyBeat, a sweet little midi sequencer for Mac that I used to record my ideas. Since then I've made literally hundreds of miscellaneous midi files, and I recently got the idea to sort through some of the compositions and cherry-pick ones that might be appropriate as background music for pwads.

I picked out 15 that I think could work, and that maybe other people would like. Here's a .zip containing all of them: (it's only 57KB, gotta love midi file-sizes):
http://www.mediafire.com/?l1s49h3kndd1el1

Here's a link to the mediafire folder if you don't want to download the entire zip:
http://www.mediafire.com/?4dybn97asieeu

There's a text-file in there with more details, but basically I'm posting this just to share some files I've had sitting around on my comp that maybe someone would be able to get some use out of. Feel free to modify them in any way you see fit.

Also mods feel free to relocate this thread if there's a better place I could've posted this.

Very good stuff, overall! You're certainly a seasoned composer and your style is very clear, reminding me in places of my own, but more "matured", if that's an adequate way of describing it. You are, like me, averse to repetition and have a great grasp over variation, and the tunes themselves are really pleasing to listen to.

As Doomworld's resident MIDI nutcase (or, one of them :P), I'm always thrilled to see new MIDI composers turning up in the community, and I'd like to review each of these. :)

#1. Wake of a Dream - Great track to start us off. Sounds a bit dubsteppy insofar as the drumbeat matches. :P A simple chord progression, but the instrumentation surrounding it is really cool. Nice use of pitch wheels on the guitar, too.

#2. Chiggity - Okay, I can already tell that you've got a really great handling of melody. No lead section is exactly the same as the last. And ooh, dat time signature change. :D I love the way the harp and the strings bounce off each other effortlessly.

#3. Markov Process - Lovely little neoclassical-ish piano bit at the beginning. The drum rhythm of this one really confuses me, haha. Is that 18/4? You psychopath. XP

#4. Run - Wow, love it. A brilliant "silly" track - particularly the deliberately dissonant guitar stings remind me of the Gubble soundtrack (see this), which is one of my favorite puzzle game soundtracks of all time. ...Are you Seppo Hurme? :D

#5. Fight - Another "silly" track - fast and hectic, and definitely fitting for a boss battle of some kind. I love what the piano's doing all throughout this. Dat 15/8.

#6. Anathema - That's the weirdest guitar riff I've ever heard. Love it. :D By this point the time signature is just flying over my head, and I'm letting the guitars take me to some faraway place of ruin and desolation - at least that's the imagery I get listening to this track. There's a lot of cool stuff going on, melody-wise, and I'm really liking the adrenaline-pumping rhythm that the drums create.

#7. Beehive - That trumpet in the beginning really sets the progressive theme of the track. And then the guitars come in and good Lord is it hard to headbang to. XP Really liking the odd rhythms of this one, hope you can finish it. :D

#8. Bounding - I don't know if I've ever heard the Electric Piano used in that way before. x) I like how the trumpet seems to start out doing some kind of Egyptian melody but then just dissolves into the same crazy stuff the piano's doing. The vibraphone also goes some way to making sure this piece sounds really messed up, overall. :P Very interesting stuff.

#9. Entropic - That rhythm is seriously weird, but so cool. You seem to have a 9/8 melody going over a 10/8 drum pattern, or something of that sort... how do you come up with this stuff?! :P The song itself features some quite slow and sombre chords compared to the rest of these, but I really like that.

#10. Phatal - Very nice intro/outro, and great piano melody once the rhythm settles back into common time. Love the tubular bells. :)

#11. Rawr - Now this is a boss battle tune if ever I heard one. >:D The chord progression is very interesting, and I love how the guitar plays it out. The outro is seriously cool, too.

#12. Underground - The main melody reminds me of Tyrian. :D Great track overall - very ambient yet melodious. The strings play off the harp and bass really nicely. I get the feeling there should be some drums in it, though - even if they're only quiet.

#13. Nightmarescape - Very similar to the last track but has so much more going on. The choir sounds great and I love the way the contrabass harmonizes with it towards the end. That harp is gorgeous, too - highly reminiscent of our own Paul Corfiatis. :)

#14. Canyon - Wow, this is a long one. It just keep changing and changing - I'm pretty sure the only thing that repeats throughout this whole song is the bassline, but it's really great one, so that's fine. :P Spooky opening - vaguely reminds me of the Pikmin soundtrack. There's no real outro to speak of, though. Bloody great track overall. :D

#15. Toybox - A nice, slow, demented track to finish us off. :D Very Gubble-ish, this one, especially when the harp comes in (see this). Nice touch using the woodblocks as a ticking clock, and cool job on the 14/8 beat, too. x)

Very nice work on all of these, the Doom community could always use more musicians! :D I'll see if I can't find a use for them... ;)

These are absolutely fantastic! I'm still listening through. So far "Anathema" is one of my favorites. Your compositional style is really complex and interesting, and like Jimmy said, you've got a great grasp on melody writing, which ties together the complex instrumentation and makes it all make sense.

Thank you guys for the kind words! It's always rewarding to hear that people dig your music.

Jimmy91 said:

Very good stuff, overall! You're certainly a seasoned composer and your style is very clear, reminding me in places of my own, but more "matured", if that's an adequate way of describing it. You are, like me, averse to repetition and have a great grasp over variation, and the tunes themselves are really pleasing to listen to.

Definitely! I get incredibly bored with a song if the same part repeats without variation. Occasionally this is my undoing, it makes it hard to write good 'background' music because I insist on having radical changes in the compositions (see 7_Beehive for what I mean, constant start/stopping/rhythmic-changes).

Jimmy91 said:

#3. Markov Process - Lovely little neoclassical-ish piano bit at the beginning. The drum rhythm of this one really confuses me, haha. Is that 18/4? You psychopath. XP

Yup! It's really cool to have fellow musicians listening to these tracks that can pick apart some of the weird intricacies. The whole 'big' phrase is 18/4, but there's some weird interplay with the piano and bass on smaller scales.

Jimmy91 said:

#4. Run - Wow, love it. A brilliant "silly" track - particularly the deliberately dissonant guitar stings remind me of the Gubble soundtrack (see this), which is one of my favorite puzzle game soundtracks of all time. ...Are you Seppo Hurme? :D

Oh wow, I've never heard of this game before, the ost kicks ass!

Jimmy91 said:

#6. Anathema - That's the weirdest guitar riff I've ever heard. Love it. :D By this point the time signature is just flying over my head, and I'm letting the guitars take me to some faraway place of ruin and desolation - at least that's the imagery I get listening to this track. There's a lot of cool stuff going on, melody-wise, and I'm really liking the adrenaline-pumping rhythm that the drums create.

esselfortium said:

These are absolutely fantastic! I'm still listening through. So far "Anathema" is one of my favorites.

Ahh yes, I love that intro riff. This is actually a song I wrote and recorded several years ago:
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=8314418

Warning: the recording isn't great, that was made back when I wasn't the best at mixing

Jimmy91 said:

#7. Beehive - That trumpet in the beginning really sets the progressive theme of the track. And then the guitars come in and good Lord is it hard to headbang to. XP Really liking the odd rhythms of this one, hope you can finish it. :D

I hope so too. I was wanting to record this one on actual instruments too once I finished writing it.

Jimmy91 said:

#9. Entropic - That rhythm is seriously weird, but so cool. You seem to have a 9/8 melody going over a 10/8 drum pattern, or something of that sort... how do you come up with this stuff?! :P The song itself features some quite slow and sombre chords compared to the rest of these, but I really like that.

Oh boy, this one is a mess, here's a rough description of each 'big' phrase that repeats:

Jazz guitar: 1 bar of (1/8) + 6 bars of (9/16) + 1 bar of (2/8)

on top of that is the electric piano that plays constant dotted eighth notes.

The steel guitar and trumpets are a bit more straightforward, and just work off of the jazz guitar patterns. I love how weird the rhythm ended up sounding.

Jimmy91 said:

#12. Underground - The main melody reminds me of Tyrian. :D Great track overall - very ambient yet melodious. The strings play off the harp and bass really nicely. I get the feeling there should be some drums in it, though - even if they're only quiet.

There were some drums in the original midi I made for that song, but I think I removed them in trying to get a more ambient vibe. I think I agree that it does need something though.

Jimmy91 said:

#15. Toybox - A nice, slow, demented track to finish us off. :D Very Gubble-ish, this one, especially when the harp comes in (see this). Nice touch using the woodblocks as a ticking clock, and cool job on the 14/8 beat, too. x)

Another kickass Gubble song there! And thanks, I was surprised how well the 7-bar phrase seemed to flow.

Jimmy91 said:

Very nice work on all of these, the Doom community could always use more musicians! :D I'll see if I can't find a use for them... ;)

Thanks for listening! I really appreciate the commentary, and I'll definitely be checking out some of your tunes.

really cool :)

Ribbiks said:

Definitely! I get incredibly bored with a song if the same part repeats without variation. Occasionally this is my undoing, it makes it hard to write good 'background' music because I insist on having radical changes in the compositions (see 7_Beehive for what I mean, constant start/stopping/rhythmic-changes).

I sympathise completely!
Also, welcome! It's great to have more musicians around :)
Let's totally do a collab midi soundtrack from all the active musicians in the community.

stewboy said:

Let's totally do a collab midi soundtrack from all the active musicians in the community.

I am in complete agreeance (to quote Kurt Cobain) with stewboy

Ribbiks said:

Thanks for listening! I really appreciate the commentary, and I'll definitely be checking out some of your tunes.

Hehe, no problem. :)

stewboy said:

Let's totally do a collab midi soundtrack from all the active musicians in the community.

Now that's an idea I can get behind. :D I'd certainly like to coordinate such a project if there's sufficient interest. Ribbiks, would you like to partake in some kind of community composition project? :P

(Would probably be a good idea to make a separate thread pertaining to ideas for such a project, actually.)

I'm trying to envision how a musical collaboration would work, would we share WIP ideas and collab on individual songs, or would we like independently try and make a collection of songs with similar themes?


(also jimmy, was checkin out some of your midi, was pleasantly surprised to see you made some of my favorite SOD tracks, good stuff!)

Or a Community Music Chest with 32 separate songs.

Not Jabba said:

Or a Community Music Chest with 32 separate songs.

36. You forgot title song, intermission stat song, story time song, and victory song.

Gez said:

victory song.

what's this

#9 could be simplified to 20/4 or 20/8 depending on the tempo (played 8 times) for the whole thing, at least that's how I would listen to it. Cool songs.

I'd be down with a collab midi project too.

I try to resist grouping things into massive time signatures because at that point it's just telling you how long the entire 'riff' is, not really any information about how the smaller patterns are structured. Of course you could go too far in that direction as well, but whatever, it's just semantics.

also yeah, if someone organizes some sort of midi collab I'm down.

tempun said:

what's this

The one that plays during the endgame sequence, after the text screen, so in Doom II it's the cast call song.

Gez said:

The one that plays during the endgame sequence, after the text screen, so in Doom II it's the cast call song.

Doesn't that use map 31's music in vanilla? I'm sure you can customize it with a port, but I can't think of any megawad that has done so.

Gez said:

The one that plays during the endgame sequence, after the text screen, so in Doom II it's the cast call song.

It's always level 31 music in vanilla; perharps ZDoom allows you to change it, but this is irrelevant as ZDoom allows to use more than 32 levels continously.