CrazyHoundSounds - Beginner Music
A downloadable soundtrack
Free to Use if you think any are usable.
This music pack is a collection of the music I have been making over the last few months. I am learning, so not all of it will be good, but I have been improving and would like to hear some feedback if you're willing.
All of this music was made by myself using LMMS, and over the last few months I've hopefully gone from complete novice to ... better than novice?
Most of the songs are short, but a few are around the 2 minute mark or longer.
There are 10 songs in the pack, 2 of which are different versions of other entries. They are ordered from my earliest work to my latest. They are all MP3 files.
I'm posting this in connection with my latest blog post to hopefully support it and show that even though you may work and be busy or have other distractions, that progressing a little at a time can and often does help you improve. Even if it takes longer to get where you'd like (I'm still not there).
Link to post - https://itch.io/blog/829185/finding-motivation-and-making-improvements
If anyone likes these enough to use them for anything other than making a point, feel free, I would appreciate a link back to my Itch page or a credit, but it's not necessary.
Download
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Comments
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Amazing improvements mate! Honestly I feel like you can actually use song 9 & 10 in a game. The first 40 seconds of song 8 also feels like it could be used for a mysterious shop theme for a roguelike or something XD
For music theory it's optional to learn but I highly recommend atleast taking a look at it (TAETRO has some really great tutorials on it that I find pretty easy to follow as a beginner). For most programs you can also set a scale & lock it so you can only place notes on that musical scale (I normally just set a scale & just follow my gut feeling XD, as long it's on-scale it should sound good enough!)
Also if you want to upgrade a bit from LMMS, I highly recommend trying out Ableton Live Lite (The Lite version is the cheapest one & it's honestly good enough for beginners), there's a really neat feature on the app, it's basically always recording your midi inputs so if you're just playing around & you found a melody that you liked, you can just capture it & you don't have to redo it again.
Keep going mate, it's alright to make slow improvements! Good luck on your future music making stuff!
(Also consider investing a bit in music equipment such as a midi keyboard or a decent IEM if you don't have one already!)
Thanks for having a look, and the feedback.
I know there's other solutions out there compared to LMMS, but as my funds are limited at the moment, I don't feel ready to purchase other solutions or tools at the moment. However it might be about time to reconsider my position on this.
At the moment I don't have a midi keyboard or other device, so I have to manually place each note on the piano roll. At times it feels like I'm playing on hard mode using LMMS, but I have no other frame of reference for this.
Thanks for the advice regarding scales, I've noticed this setting in LMMS, but never really understood its use. From what I have been picking up from, I've noticed that the suggestion is to keep the notes within the correct range between chords, bass and melodies, but again I have tried to do this manually. I find it amazing that just having 1 note out of sync can drastically alter the sound of a song (normally ruining it), and at times have to rely on trial and error to find the errant note, listening to the same part again and again, and then adjust it to make it fit (as best I can).
A fun exercise I did recently, was to take sheet music of a piece of music from a well known game that I like and translate it into LMMS. I had to re-learn how to read sheet music, but was also able to make the connection between the notes on a sheet and how they look in LMMS. While it was written for a single instrument, after loading it making it in LMMS, I was then able to play with the song by introducing new instruments, changing up some of the sections and adding more sections. I haven't included this in the pack because I don't want to infringe any copyrights, but it helped me in visualising how the note structures looked and worked.
The songs I've made in the last week definitely feel smoother and more complete, but I still feel a little daunted as the complexity increases. I also feel like I need to understand how to emulate different moods. Most of my experimenting seems to result in either melancholic or bland moods.
My ultimate aim with learning and developing my musical skills is to be able to create music for my games that is at least sufficient - I don't expect to make any masterpieces any time soon.