Original Tunes Contest 19: Love

#1

Theme: Love / Romance
Deadline: 2018-11-27

About the theme… Music to accompany scenes of affection. I want pretty music with warm feelings!

Every music style is welcome, you can make 8bits musics, orchestral arrangements, live recordings, electronic music… As long as it fits the theme, everything is allowed!

To enter your song must be an original creation of your own made specifically for this contest.
You can upload your songs on youtube, soundcloud or any other place that allows the listening without having to download it.

Your song must be 1 minute long MINIMUM.

At the end of the month, during 2 or 3 days people will vote to elect the best entry (voting info provided later on).

Good luck.

Previous (Ocean) theme winner:

1 Like
#2

Here’s my song (sorry, I couldn’t participate for the last contests) : You Look Wonderful - Love Theme

#3

well, guess what:
https://soundcloud.com/danilociaffi/love/s-9E9tU

#4

Finally found some time from University and life to make a piece for this month’s theme!

Here is my submission, hope you enjoy it:

#5

I’ll need a few more days for my monstrosity…

#6

Lol damnit avaruussaha, had I known it would be extended again I wouldn’t have pulled an all nighter for this when finals are due! Ah well; at any rate, here’s mine:

(Also @Danilo_Ciaffi, I feel like you could benefit from some of the Black Friday orchestral sample library sales going on rn; Orchestral Tools has 40% off of their Berlin series through 11/30, they’re still a decent investment but Berlin Woodwinds is entirely worth it, and never usually on sale for this much. Also Cinematic Studio Strings is 20% off, though that’s only until the end of today!)

#7

I had to rush a bit but here’s my entry. It’s a simple piano thing

#8

Yeeeeeeeeeah I know, my samples definitely need an upgrade, but I have to save up on money right now :sweat_smile:
Even though i have to say that after spending some (a lot of) time in humanization and mixing (which I never do for contests), they are not that terrible, I’d call that… an exercise(?) Thanks for pointing me on those libraries anyway!

#9

Sorry about that… I had some skill-level difficulties :grimacing:

I think I veered off the gamey submission once again somewhat, but I think its lovely. It’s love! Its more of a practice performance stitched together unfortunately :frowning:. No time for polish.

#10

Voting time!

There are 6 entries, so I’ll once again have everyone rank them all in order of preference (excluding yourself obviously).

#11

Some REALLY beautiful and sweet entries :smiley:

    1. Chloe Kwok - Love’s Journey
    1. Avaruussaha - Smile
    1. Evan Wardell - First Kiss
    1. Basisti - Make the Spring Happen
    1. Danilo Ciaffi - Love?
    1. Floflo - You Look Wonderful
#12
  1. Chloe Kwok - Love’s Journey
  2. Avaruussaha - Smile
  3. Basisti - Make the Spring Happen
  4. Evan Wardell - First Kiss
  5. Danilo Ciaffi - Love?
  6. Floflo - You Look Wonderful
#13

Solid stuff all around!

  1. Chloe Kwok - Absolutely beautiful. Wonderful development of motifs, great orchestration, really nice production (the harmonics at 0:15, OOMPH). I especially love the way you have the piano interact with the orchestra, it does the style a lot of justice. My one comment is that the bassoon sound at 0:33 feels a bit harsh for the context; it’s a good instrument choice here, but either the sample or the velocity might be a little off? (Not that I’d be familiar with harsh double reed sounds, heh)

  2. Avaruussaha - Niiice. The performance turned out pretty well, and it really communicates the theme. Some really nice balance between melody and counterpoint, and just some beautiful ideas all around. You mention it “veered off the gamey submission”; while technically I wouldn’t peg this as being for a game without context, I do think it’s still neutral enough of a style to work! (With the way the form is structured, you could pretty easily loop it, too.)

  3. Danilo Ciaffi - A pretty little tune; I especially like the darkness that briefly comes in at 1:08, it adds a ton of color while still transitioning pretty well. And you already know how I feel about some the samples, hahaha (totally fair re: budget, this was the first year I actually had the disposable income to go ham on black friday). Sheer production of each instrument aside, though, I do still feel like it could have used some more textural elements (some upper register wind chimes, triangles, etc. for example) to fill out the piece without taking away from its calming mood, which I do think is great.

  4. Miro Laaksonen - A simple, yet lovely track. I like the pacing of ideas, there’s a definite flow and familiarity, but nothing overstays its welcome! I’m not crazy about the augmented chord at 1:02, though. I can see how the raised note technically leads chromatically into the fifth of the next chord, but I think it interferes with the flow you’ve got going on, especially since A: it doesn’t resolve immediately into that next note, and B: it instead goes down a tritone. (I also think that this piece would sound really nice with some rubato, but seeing as you had to rush I can understand why you wouldn’t want to go through with that in a DAW!)

  5. Florian Decros - Nice track with some compelling development! (I’m assuming you didn’t, but if you actually did start and finish a 10 minute piece within 16 hours of the contest being announced, then color me impressed :P). While game environments/contexts/styles can vary hugely, though, I do feel like the power ballad-ish style for a love theme is more typically associated with a specific genre of film.

#14

Hello all!
Loved listening to all the tunes for this month’s theme :smiley:

1. Evan Wardell - First Kiss
Loved the motif that you used throughout, the harmonic progression for the motif has a slight dissonance which I thought was so interesting to listen to - could really imagine this piece in a Harvest Moon game!

I would say that the trumpet at the end which sustains a note, may be quite hard for an actual player to sustain a high note for that long - so for realism, it might be good to think about where a player would breathe throughout the phrases (same would apply for other brass and woodwind instruments!).

2. Avaruussaha - Smile
Great quality of recording, really enjoyed this one. Nice and simple, I could listen to this on repeat whilst I write my dissertation, really calming! I only put it in second, because in terms of love sequence for a game, Evan had just pinched it from you for me, but in terms of overall composition - loved it :smiley:

3. Basistti94 - Make the Spring Happen
Once again, nice and simple. I did feel at one point throughout the piece, that the piano sounded very robotic (might you have quantised it?), since it is a solo piano, you have more freedom to play with a little more rubato to humanise it a bit more!

4. Danilo Ciaffi - Love?
I second what Evan said about benefiting from better sample libraries. Spitfire Labs, do some great freebies that are free or so cheap that they wouldn’t break your bank, so maybe have a little gander at them! Other than that, I really liked the musical ideas that are in your piece :slight_smile:

5. Floflo79 - You Look Wonderful
I can definitely see where you were going with this piece, but personally 10 minutes is just too long! This piece would have definitely benefitted from condensing down the length into more concise sections, especially for the sake of this thread and it would have made the piece of music more interesting, as I was inclined to start skipping sections at one point. But other than that, enjoyed the mood of the piece :smiley:

Well done everyone!

#15

Here’s my ranking, I really enjoyed all the entries!

Florian Decros - You Look Wonderful
Avaruussaha - Smile
Evan Wardell - First Kiss
Chloe Kwok - Love’s Journey
Danilo Ciaffi - Love?

#16

Great tracks this month and some nice variety of styles too!

  1. Chloe Kwok: Love’s Journey
  2. Evan Wardell: First Kiss
  3. Miro Laaksonen: Make the Spring Happen
  4. Florian Decros: You Look Wonderful
  5. Danilo Ciaffi: Love?
  6. Avaruussaha: Smile
#17

Floflo (You Look Wonderful) - Love Theme
Hey, a new sound if my memory serves right! Certainly fits right into the heavy ballad sector (November Rain esque?), and the hope and positives themes suit the theme overall. The 10 minutes is however a bit long time with the constant power throughout the track (oh what unrelenting love!).

Danilo - Love?
The piano establishes a really nice base and atmosphere here. I’m not sure how I’d do it myself, but the other instruments could have been a bit more… Coy? I really like what happens at 1:20 - 1:26.

KwokWorks - Love’s Journey
Lovely intro! The following parts also seems to build on the depth of the “love story” nicely. Not sure what happens at the end of this journey though?

EvanWardell - First Kiss
Fanfarous and fantastic - sounds like a grand wedding maybe? Weddings usually involve love (at least ideally). You heard it from here folks!

Basisti94 - Make the Spring Happen
Although it doesn’t throw the love syrup right at my face, I imagine growing / developing feelings with this one. I think I just wrote down something really strange… Took a few listens but I started appreciating it more as I did.

5th: Floflo
4th: Danilo
3rd: Basisti94
2nd: EvanWardell
1st: KwokWorks - the intro is especially pretty for me, and the track lives up to its name otherwise too.

#18

And that’s the end! Barring any mistakes, KwokWorks takes the first spot this time.

Splendid job from everyone, I think every entry represented the theme quite well, and nothing too adventurous this time either (not that I mind anyway).

#19

Thank you! And haha yeahhh… I’m actually a brass player myself, so performer me and MIDI composer me are often at odds. While that high A is technically playable, it’d certainly be a bitch and a half to do, and part of me justified it to myself with an “ehhh it could just be a section unison with stagger breathing.” I definitely agree that it could be more practical though, maybe I’ll bisect it with an upper neighbor figure or something.

And congrats! Everyone had some great submissions for this, but yours was the clear winner to me and I’m glad others agreed!