Hello folks! :) I always wanted to create music for games, even if there is nobody creating games in my country. So few month ago i started to really dig into music composing but my problem is that i cant get feedback from anywhere. And then i found this site where people get feedback and decided that may be people will be kind enough to help me out too.

https://soundcloud.com/elnur-matov-shamiyev/cloudy-meadow--- and kinda remastered version: https://soundcloud.com/elnur-matov-shamiyev/cloudy-meadowremastered

https://soundcloud.com/elnur-matov-shamiyev/war-is-only-solution

https://soundcloud.com/elnur-matov-shamiyev/through-forest

There is other music too, through they are experimental and made for learning, you could check them if time allows.

Hi there, some quick feedback coming :)

Cloudy meadow: Sounds and feels mostly like the name of the piece which is good. Some harmonies sound weird and I'm not even sure if the guitar and piano are playing the same chords all the time. Melody doesn't fit the harmony all the time (or maybe it's the harmony that doesn't fit the piece at all times)

War is only solution: I love the beginning :) Rhythmic parts sound great. Try to concentrate on the melody strings a bit more. The melodies aren't going anywhere right now and the string sounds vary a lot. Sometimes even the panning was different between samples if I heard right. (0:38) But mostly the problem is in the actual melody line. Try to make it more interesting.

Through forest: This also has a nice feel in it. Again the string melodies (1:28) sound a bit like going nowhere. Again try to create something more interesting especially because this part could be the climax of the piece.

BTW in all your songs the pianos are really dry. Maybe some reverb could make all the instruments to glue together better as clearly some of the instruments are in a bigger space than others. Also the guitars in the first track are reallyreally dry.

There's some things I came up with after listening a few times. Hopefully you get something out of them and if you concentrate on those points and post the tracks again I can give some more feedback :)

Thank you very much for your feedback, sir Kasu, finally not a "nice track bro" :D. You are totally right about hormonies, i often do that beautifully horrible hormonies, sometimes on purpose :P, but apparently i should stop.

About string panning, yes there is weird string panning in LA strings' ensemble section, but i thought that may be its normal and its how it should be. But gladly i am wrong on this one.

When you say that melody not going anywhere what you exactly meant? It must lead to epic part or something like that? And yes, i totally should to learn to do climax parts because right now i am still trying to understand how pro's do it.

About piano dryness, yeah i had this thought and thankfully somebody feedbacked on it, but i were thinking that Through Forest had wide piano but i mistaken i guess.

Thank you again for your invaluable feedback ^_^

You are totally right about hormonies, i often do that beautifully horrible hormonies, sometimes on purpose , but apparently i should stop.

My brain was so in the mood of the cloudy meadows that the odd harmonies sounded off especially because the track continued with the same mellow mood after them. It's ok to do weird and horrible stuff if you have some kind of a direction that from this point forward I wan't to change the mood. Think of the gameplay also. If the player is wondering in the cloudy meadows peacefully and he/she hears that the music doesn't fit the stuff on the screen it's just weird.

Like sometimes in WItcher 1 I remember that I was just shopping at the city peacefully and suddenly there's a part in the music track where the music goes to a totally different ominous mood and nothing happens in the gameplay to emphasize that. The music should help creating the mood and guide the player to be aware what's happening but if nothing happens in the gameplay and the mood changes you can clearly notice that somethings off with the music.

Ok, my mind started to wander to gameplay stuff as you're not doing your tracks for any specific game right now if I understood right. But anyways :D

About string panning...

Yeah the panning seemed to change sometimes between different notes just a bit. I'm not even sure anymore. With headphones it's harder to hear. Maybe if it's trying to simulate an ensemble the lower notes are a bit right and the higher are more left. (Like in the "War" track 0:38 the highest note is clearly coming from left.) Maybe an ensemble is ok for some backing stuff but for melodies I'd definitely use individual instrument sections like cellos or violins only.

When you say that melody not going anywhere what you exactly meant? It must lead to epic part or something like that?

Something like that yes. Again I notice that when I listened more today the melodies started to make more sense. Maybe I shouldn't comment the actual music before listening a few days :D But sometimes I can hear from the melody that "from this point you're not sure where to go next" as the melody starts to sound kind of pointless and non-directional. Maybe you could try to do something at times like that, like change the instrument or add some harmonies over/under it or add some movement to it. Just some things to think about :)

About piano dryness, yeah i had this thought and thankfully somebody feedbacked on it, but i were thinking that Through Forest had wide piano but i mistaken i guess.

It was a wide piano but to my ear it still needs at least some space and reverb. But the problem is more that all the instruments aren't in the same space. Some are really dry and some are really lush and echoing. It's ok sometimes but more likely they glue together better if they all have some of the same reverb in them.

Thank you for futher explanation, i tried to work on cloudy meadow a bit and created remastered version that i put on first post, if time allows please check it. :rolleyes:

Getting ready for a merciless beat down :D

I like it better now :)

You added some reverb to the piano and something else also?

What if you tried to pull back the timing of the guitar strums at the beginning? Now the strums start on the hit and they're kind of late. As a guitarist I would play them so that about the middle of the strum is on the hit so the actual strum begins a bit before.

Maybe some reverb on other instruments also. At least the melody flute. It's okay when everything else is playing but at the end part it's kind of harsh sounding and maybe too loud also. I'd try to support it also with something else in the end. Now the ending is hollowish and you're just waiting if there's anything else for the flute to say than just long notes.

Timing of the quicker flute melody at 0:48 is a bit late to my ear or maybe the sound doesn't have enough time to get to the full volume. Same goes for 1:23 and maybe 1:35. Sounds like a lazy player.

Keep on the good job :)

Don't dare to touch my flute player, you monster :P. As seriously, i think its because of instrument preset thats slow, i should choose one thats more legatoish. About piano its right, just a bit of reverb made it much more echoing, you gotta be carefull with dat :wink: . I wanted to end music as soft as its possible so didnt added many things but i will take that advice into consideration. May be some celestial dust in the end? i dunno :unsure:. But its ma' problem now.

I expected it to be pretty bad when you said that you started a few months ago. I thought I was going to have to be nice and really resist the urge to say anything bad. You obviously didn't start as a musician just a few months ago. This is actually pretty good and I'm pretty critical. And I mean with the original Cloudy Meadow. When I saw "remastered" that also made me think it wasn't going to be very good. But after listening to both, the remastered version sounds MUCH better. Although, there's a bad note about 15 seconds in. Of course, you can tell everyone it's jazz and you meant to do that. ;-) It's a harsh dissonance that doesn't fit the character of the surrounding chords. I believe it's the piano that's making the note that's out of character. I listen to some pretty dissonant stuff like Thelonious Monk. So, it's not the dissonance itself that bothers me. It just feels out of place like you hit the wrong note.

The remastered version sounds pretty good on my TV(computer monitor) which is notorious for making anything not well eq'ed sound like nails on a chalk board. It highlights somewhere around 2kHz and just makes anything bad in that region sound 10 times worse. No problems there with the remastered version. So, if it plays well here, it's likely to play well on a lot of other systems as well.

I could definitely imagine it as a soundtrack for a game that fits the character of the music. This is good work. You shouldn't have trouble finding someone to work with if you find someone doing a game where the music fits.

On a quick listen of the other two, they sound good as well. The "War is the Only Solution" probably fits a wider range of games than Cloudy Meadow".

Don't dare to touch my flute player, you monster :P. As seriously, i think its because of instrument preset thats slow, i should choose one thats more legatoish. About piano its right, just a bit of reverb made it much more echoing, you gotta be carefull with dat :wink: . I wanted to end music as soft as its possible so didnt added many things but i will take that advice into consideration. May be some celestial dust in the end? i dunno :unsure:. But its ma' problem now.

Usually it's the preset. Mostly you choose a preset where the long notes sound good and then you're in trouble when you have to make quick slurs and stuff. You can try to use key switching patches that have different articulations in them that you choose by pressing the keys that are set for key switching. Or you can choose a different preset only for all the quicker notes that need better articulation with quicker attack. If end up keeping the preset you're using now, at least start the faster notes before they need to be played. The notes need to cross each other so that the release and attack of the notes blend and then you cant hear the swelling pause between them.

Hey BBeck! Thank you very much for your feedback, i really appreciate it. And.....it's all jazz and it meant to be played that way :D :D

I think chord is right one but the last note of chord should not have played, i will look upon on this. And yes, i dont started composing few month ago, it was year ago but i just began to get serious with it because what it was before was pretty casual and i often dropped composing to learn other things but now i am pretty sure that composing is my best way to go :)

About flute, i gotta create second flute track that will play fasta notes, because preset dont allows for switch with keys but its okay.