Classical Waltz/Glitchcore/EDM/Pop/Jazz kind of piece for NGADM round one 😀

If people are wondering where my samples/sounds are from: Although I've been updating them recently, I keep the same ones and use them a lot, just modifying them a bit and putting them to own tunes. In this piece I have:

🎶Orchestral Strings: Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra + from scratch with Sakura

🎶Choir: Yamaha Gothic Choir (resampled an A) + my voice

🎶Bass drum + Lowpass Snare: LMMS Samples

🎶Realistic drums: Hydrogen Death Metal Drum Kit

🎶Music box: Yamaha Music box + Celesta (resampled an A from each)

🎶Piano: FL Keys

🎶Guitar(s): My own

🎶Synth sounds + Hardstyle Kick: from scratch with Sytrus

🎶Misc effects: recording of myself scraping a tin can, I think (It was sitting on a flash drive just labeled "tin can 19") + Yamaha Glockenspiel (resampled an A)

Most of the samples, aside from the orchestra, were resynthesized and modified through Harmor or just put through Granulizer. I used Sytrus for additive synthesis (which is my current obsession 😅), made little robotic FNF-like voices and added a bit of FM. I'm starting to get the hang of sketching where harmonics are in different sounds.

Tempo is 180 BPM, or 120 BPM in some places depending on how you hear it. Either way, each measure is exactly 1 second long, with either 3 or 2 beats per measure.

I think I have decided to focus back on more melodic pieces, since that is what I'm good at. Last few pieces were more of experiments with sound design. On complex digital projects like these, I normally just draw my melodies with a Wacom tablet, rather than play them. But I went back to at least planning the basic chords and structure on a piano/keyboard, which I hadn't in a while. This was originally in A minor, just transposed it by accident since some of the samples were initially tuned differently from the plugin (A vs C, so A turned to F#) and just kept it. Even though making music is largely visual for me, it helps to be able to actually hear it and feel the rhythm first, for obvious reasons. I've been releasing a lot of 4/4 catchy dancy poppy stuff, but I vibe more with the 3/4 or 6/8 beats for some reason. If I do become less shy, I can stream or record myself improvising on different instruments, and a lot of it really is 3/4 or 6/8, believe it or not. I did let this piece glitch out to djent-y polyrhythms, used hemiolas quite a bit and sometimes split the measures into halves and even quarters in 3/4, which was cool.

Last few uploads were quick 3-4 hour projects so I'm glad I put more time and focus into this one. About 25 hours over a week. I have a habit of starting on lots of projects and not finishing them, but I'm challenging myself to focus on getting them done faster.

I do want to dress this up with a bit of artwork. Here is a WIP/sketch as of 7-30-2022:

City background is modified from this photo.