Stalagtite Cave - Tension Music

The sharp stalagtites hang from the ceiling as you climb the sheer cliffs of the Stalagtite Cave.  You notice many a dark abyss surrounding you as bats overhang the many arches of stone.  Creepy crawling insects slither through mounds of bat droppings, and you must tread carefully to not be engulfed by guano.  Many a creature have lived in the darkness for so long that they have lost their ability to see.

I tried to create a creepy atmosphere with this piece.  Especially the end is meant to be a particularly creepy chord - let me know if I've succeeded.  Also this is my first time publishing a pdf score with the help of MuseScore 3.  I tried to give the harp plenty of time for pedal changes but I didn't actually write them into the score.  I guess I'll include the midi out of habit.  I still havn't worked out my issues with recording mp3's so this is a non-stereo mp3.  Enjoy and let me know what you think!  Any comments or suggestions would be welcome (especially about the score - if there are things missing or mistakes and such).

StalagtiteCave.mid

Edited July 18, 20205 yr by PaperComposer

Nice work! It definitely feels tense and fits your description well. I think it would make good video game music.

My suggestion would be to try and get some good virtual instruments to represent your music better. If this is something you want to do, you can find some good free sound libraries on Spitfire audio.

Enjoyed listening, thanks for posting 🙂

Thank you for listening!  I've been meaning to download audacity.  Do the Spitfire audio sound libraries load into audacity?  ... or how does that work?

I don't think they would be usable in audacity unfortunately. 

You'll need a digital audio workspace. For this, you can use Reaper, which is free to download. Here's a good video of how to use reaper for this purpose

By playing around with this setup, you can get your music sounding more realistic (which isn't essential for composing, but it's nice to have).

I hope this helps 🙂 It's helped me a lot - in my latest piece for example, I've primarily used this setup.

Hey man

This looked cool enough by the score for my curiosity to peak, but those sound samples with what you wrote mesh like chocolate and ketchup. But because you're so awesome, you provided an mp3, score (which looks great and clean), as well as a MIDI. I really wanted to hear this one, so I popped the MIDI into my shiz and it sounds really cool. I had to drop the glock down an octave for whatever reason, and ya I left out the tremolos in the violins, but overall I like what you have here. My piece of advice is don't have the all the players playing all the time, it gets to be a bit overbearing. I think that your brash and powerful moments will have more impact if there is subtlety and scarcity for it to contrast. 

Overall, well done, and hopefully you like 😄

9 hours ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

This looked cool enough by the score for my curiosity to peak, but those sound samples with what you wrote mesh like chocolate and ketchup. But because you're so awesome, you provided an mp3, score (which looks great and clean), as well as a MIDI. I really wanted to hear this one, so I popped the MIDI into my shiz and it sounds really cool. I had to drop the glock down an octave for whatever reason, and ya I left out the tremolos in the violins, but overall I like what you have here. My piece of advice is don't have the all the players playing all the time, it gets to be a bit overbearing. I think that your brash and powerful moments will have more impact if there is subtlety and scarcity for it to contrast. 

Overall, well done, and hopefully you like 😄

Wow!  That was great, thanks!  Although I do have all the strings playing throughout the piece, I save the celesta for the 2nd repeat.  Thanks for reviewing the piece and for the great mp3 you provided!