\\ The Moonlight Path //

Hello!

I offer you now the chance to listen to some of the pieces I made from the sountrack to the videogame mod project called "The Moonlight Path":

-Theme Song- The main theme of the game is majestic, powerful and motivating.

-Town Theme- This is the daytime theme for a town called Triboar, a sleepy hamlet with a dark future...

-Town at Night- The abovementioned town's nighttime theme.

-Dark Forest- A dark, brooding atmospheric piece for a similar-feeling forest called Mornbryn's Shield.

-Town Theme 2- Another town theme, this time for a community called Longsaddle.

-Introduction March- Short, powerful march-like introduction to a character.

Please take a look and let me know what you think of them! :thumbsup:

Theme:

The opening string chords are too repetitive.

It's much better the second time around.

I like your transfer from the strings to the horns.

Good sense of swell.

At 1:20, you bring up the level quite nicely.

I liked the pulse at the beginning; that should continue throughout.

Not necessarily in the forefront, but in some level.

Perhaps battute strings?

In the slower sections, maybe.

The shift to percussion at 1:00 is a little abrupt.

The drop is too sudden I think.

Just a general word of advice about levels - it's always easier to jump up than to fall down.

I don't know what it runs over, though.

It is like a cinematic, right?

Then that'll be different.

Town Theme: nice, peaceful. I like :55 where you bring in the oboe, I think it is.

Town Night: nice atmospheric winds/percussion.

Leaps to dissonance - very effective.

No, that's great.

I like how you bring in the harp right at the end as sort of an homage to the daytime town.

Forest:

I like your use of percussion.

What are your sliding sounds?

And the sort of metallic creaking?

At :22 or thereabouts.

The melodic material seems a bit thin.

Have you heard Howard Shore's use of bassoon in The Two Towers?

The track called "Treebeard."

It's really thick.

And while I appreciate that you're going for a more atmospheric sound, it's really light.

It sounds like a floating forest.

And your own description is "dark, brooding."

I'm just talking about the bassoon. So I'd add more bass sounds in longer durations.

I like what bassoon material you have.

It just needs more, I feel.

Town theme 2:

Nice counterpoint. Good transitions between melodic instruments.

And the harp is back, which is good.

Is the harp sort of like your town-instrument?

Because if it is, that's great.

If it's not, that's a good mistake.

and I would do that anyways since I love harp so much

You have this moment of stasis at about 2:05. It's a little low-energy after all that counterpoint.

It goes away by 2:08, but that's a long time.

And you've got that harp pulse underneath for the entire rest of the piece, so it just feels stuck.

If you kept the harp pulse, you should be fine.

Same with the final long note at the end.

More harp pulse.

March:

I like the percussion.

Nice first brass entrance - the bass sounds.

I'm not sure about its power. It's a bit thin sounding.

Maybe some octave doubling in the melody would give it extra force in the early part.

Harmonies definitely would, but I don't know if that's the kind of sound you want.

But give it some more depth.

The treble horn is really isolated up there.

Also - think about maybe speeding it up just a tad.

If not, try varying the pulse.

You have this long-long-short-short-long pulse.

And that's great, but by the 4th time or so, it's a bit... well... boring?

Easy way to solve that - third time around, make it long-long-tri-pl-et-long.

So dum dum da da dum, dum dum da da dum, dum dum da-ba-dee dum, dum dum da da dum.

More pulse variety.

Even taking out the short pulses and making one long pulse in one or two iterations of the beat wouldn't hurt.

Mm - the other option to consider - that treble horn might sound more forceful were it down the octave.

Also.

At :36 - your percussion mirrors the melodic rhythm. It makes the piece a bit too static.

It'd be better to keep your initial pulse going through it.

It's especially a problem at :41, where you've got this long note in the melody, and nothing going on in the percussion.

It just sort of brings the entire thing to a standstill.

But it's easy enough to fix.

Melodically and harmonically, I think you're in good shape.

Nice work.

Great great stuff! :P

I have been on this forum for one day and still I heard enough great music to ask me this question: how come there is so mush horrible game music, and even rpg is on a downfall, in today

I have been on this forum for one day and still I heard enough great music to ask me this question: how come there is so mush horrible game music, and even rpg is on a downfall, in today’s games - when there are so many great, creative composers here?

I get the impression that a lot of game music composers feel that they have to reduce the prominence of melodies and such in their work due to the fact that game music repeats, fearing that players will be upset by blatantly repeating parts. While this is understandable, all it does in reality is make the music unmemorable and uninspiring, and I think most gamers would prefer to hear beautiful music that repeats every so often rather than a long stream of averagey music which is fairly indistinguishable from one section to the next. Heck, who doesn't like to hear beautiful music more than once?

Yeah. Some of the best music out there has repeating melodies, like LOZ, and Fable (Danny Elfman did this soundtrack).

Hey everyone! Thank you all for your wonderful comments!

For those who are having troubles with SoundClick, here's an alternate download location for all of the files; enjoy and feel free to comment some more please!

Alternate location is -HERE- :w00t:

Hey Marius, Do you have Finale? or can you make the sheet music into a .PDF file? I would like to play around a little bit.

So far I like it pretty much. I think your opening theme is the best part. There is a very good start to work with. I would like to see the sheet music and make my changes and then see what you think. Things like dynamics, tempo markings, etc are what I want to hear differently before I make up my mind. I would also have to get an ok from you after I have changed the specific notation because I do not know if it is really going to fit the scene in the game. I could really only do that effectively in Finale, though. If I could do that then I would come back and have a really detailed review (Even though I do not have compositional jargon to speak of, I do have a good opinion, a good ear, my own experience, and love for video game music. I think I may be able to make a few suggestions.)

Hey Marius, Do you have Finale? or can you make the sheet music into a .PDF file? I would like to play around a little bit.

So far I like it pretty much. I think your opening theme is the best part. There is a very good start to work with. I would like to see the sheet music and make my changes and then see what you think. Things like dynamics, tempo markings, etc are what I want to hear differently before I make up my mind. I would also have to get an ok from you after I have changed the specific notation because I do not know if it is really going to fit the scene in the game. I could really only do that effectively in Finale, though. If I could do that then I would come back and have a really detailed review (Even though I do not have compositional jargon to speak of, I do have a good opinion, a good ear, my own experience, and love for video game music. I think I may be able to make a few suggestions.)[/b]

I have the Finale 2006 files of these pieces, yes. All the dynamics and such are made to get the recording to sound the way I want; the score is not notated for official, live performance because the pieces aren't getting performed and frankly I don't care about readability because I'm writing for the ear, not the eye.

If you still want to change something then PM me with a good reason for it and then I might decide to send you a PDF so you can fix whatever you think needs fixing. I warn you though that there is a good chance that I won't use your changes because the piece is not actually done yet, I'm working on the employer's comments to edit it and make it the way he wants; his opinion is the only one that really matters considering he has the final say.

That being said, I hope you still post your review and whatnot so I can see what you mean and what your thoughts on the pieces are. In the meantime, stay tuned for more from the soundtrack that I'll post as I finish them.

Thanks! :ninja:

This is good music! You capture the mood very well. I listened to "Town Theme" before I read the description, and I thought to my self "this doesn't sound like a town at all! Everything is so sleepy." I then read the desc and it IS suppose to be for a sleepy town! =P

The only downfall I see is that they are too short. ne way to "cheat" in game composition is to have long sections where you only hear a little piece at a time. I know this is what the composer of Guild Wars did. When I first noticed it, I was like, why would you do this? But then I realize that many other games do this, as hearing the same melody over and over again does get tiring.

Thank you for your comments!

I have another piece from the soundtrack to share; the battle theme! (one of them at least)

-Mp3 Here-

For those of you who have trouble with SoundClick, it can also be found at the SaveFile project location.

-Alternate Location-

Theme

This song seems perfect for some sort of opening video, like you would have as a screen saver if you leave the game on the start screen. Do you know what I'm talking about? I think maybe it would have been better if you had added a section with wind instruments that's a little bit more subdued maybe at the beginning or somewhere in there to add a new section of the melody, or something like this.

Battle Theme V2

Actually, I don't think this song is cut out to be a battle theme. It doesn't sound exciting enough to me, and the driving. I realize that the percussion and the beat do drive it forward somewhat like a battle theme, but I feel like the melody and the instrumental texture that the piece has doesn't feel right for a battle theme. It sounds more like music that would go with a person having only a certain amount of time to escape from somewhere and so they have to run to get out. I guess it would be okay for a Battle theme, though.

Triboar

As I've already suggested to you, I believe this song would actually work better as background music for the night than A Night in Triboar, because to me, night is more melodic, and the echoey woodwind and harp make me feel like I'm walking around an ancient-style town at night. I guess if this is what your employer wants, then...whatever. I wish I could listen to the Night one again, though, but I didn't save it to my hard drive.

I couldn't comment on the others because I could still only listen to the Theme and Triboar on Soundclick, so you'll have to load the alternate links again if you want me to continue with commenting.

I really do agree with deathraider about the battle theme. I think that the situation he described is one of the only times in a video game where a broken melody should occur. In a battle I do not think that the melody should be very contemporary. What I mean is it shouldn't break and it should play in a loop continuously. I really do see that as a running away with a time limit theme.

Thanks guys, I agree with your comments on the battle theme, I expect it'll be used as something different in the game itself. :D

How do I hard-drive download? I want to put these to my PPC to listen to at night when trying to fall asleep. They're that good!

BTW, are these songs rendered in Finale? They sound completely real to me.

Gaius Marius. How are those cohorts doing?

Hey! Thanks Chubbs, you can right click the download button and say "Save Target As" to get a nice little copy for yourself! If that doesn't work, just drop me an email or add me on some messenger and I'll send them to you directly :D

The dark atmosphere you create is superb. The only real criticism I have is, as I think someone else suggested, that the march could use a bit more "power" and substance to it. Maybe some more brass - I'm sure you can think of something. Otherwise, good work. I look forward to hearing more. :laugh:

I've just completed a small sketch of what may become an overworld theme, have a look!

-Mp3 Here-

Hi there!

I really enjoyed listening to your music! Particularly the village theme day!

I have a few questions for you, and i hope you'll answer them!

First off; How and in what environment did you compose these tunes? In a Finale-like program and then GPO, or in a sequencer like Cubase with VSTs?

Secondly; how is this music getting implanted in the game? are these files going to loop while you are in that musics-domain? Or are you making "endlessly-loopable"-files? Please tell me!

Thank you for your patience.

Regards,

Morten

Your interest is very much appreciated, mpj-,

To answer your questions, the pieces were composed in a mixture between Finale 2006 with the full (not the included) version of Garritan Personal Orchestra, as well as some input from my keyboard synthesizer. All audio editing was done in Adobe Audition.

These files are not the final in-game versions; those will be made to loop a certain number of times and then it will fade to ambient sounds, or in the case of the title theme, an endless loop may be in order though I've not been informed as of yet.

I hope that answers your questions, thank you for your comments and stay tuned for more stuff from this mod; I'll upload soon.

Hey everyone!

I know it's been a while, but now that I'm back working intensively on this project, I can start posting more updates!

To start things off, I have another battle theme; everyone loves battle themes! Enjoy and leave me your comments please.

http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m...320377&q=hi

aaaaaand again!

I have a new piece (that I'm posting) from this soundtrack, it's a town theme. Please enjoy and let me know what you think! :toothygrin:

Click Me

One word: Brilliant! you get my 10/10 :blink:

Thank you kindly, James :blink:

Good stuff you got there Marius. Beautifully written.

Really reminds me of "Fable".

Although, I have to nag about the reverb. haha. Maybe it's just me, but I really don't like reverbed harp. That harp sounds like it's another 20 meters away from the rest of the "players". I think you should tone down the whole reverb just a little bit.

You know, I almost expected you to nag about that! :P

I think I have a fetish for lots of reverb or something :blink: I know exactly what you mean though, and the reason I used so much in this case was because my employer loves it. So I'll take it up with him when he gets back to me with his comments and then maybe I'll make a mix with less reverb just for you! :o

Thanks for the comments!