you know something is dead? Well, the first clue is that it's not moving.
The first element on our journey is water which for us represents movement. There
are a lot of ways we can have movement in music and really what we're talking about
is rhythm. At the basic level we can make our music feel alive by giving it a pulse.
In climbing the 'Ginso Tree' we have a constant eighth note pulse from both pitched and unpitched
percussion which gives us a steady groove for the more flowing melody to sit on top of.
Later in that same track the pulse is given to the low strings with this climbing figure.
Just like a living thing has a pulse keeping it alive,
the steady pulse of the background parts keeps us moving forward.
We can also get a pulse from a more complicated pattern like an ostinato. Ostinato is Italian for
obstinate or persistent and it refers to a little musical motive or phrase that keeps repeating over
and over. An example of an ostinato is this figure that drives the background of 'Gumo's Hideout'.
Even though the rhythm is not a constant stream of eighth notes we still have a
steady pulse keeping the music alive Rhythm can also be used for agitation,
taking simple parts and invoking them with more energy. Tremolo in the strings is a
classic example of agitation like how it's used in the opening of 'The Ancestral Trees'.
At a basic level the violins are just playing whole notes
but by agitating them the part becomes much more tangible and visceral.
In 'Racing the Lava' we have another violin part
that at the structural level is just steady quarter notes.
But by agitating the quarter notes with these
fast falling runs we end up with a part that is violent and energetic.
The last thing we'll look at for rhythm is meter which is another aspect of the
music that is simple to overlook but can have a major impact on the feel and energy of a piece.
For example, in 'The Crumbling Path' Coker uses a 5/4 meter which
feels off kilter and stumbling. It's exactly the kind of feeling
you want to create for the player to feel rushed and uncomfortable.
The next element on our quest is wind which represents the cycle of breathing.
There are many aspects of breathing that can be expressed with music. To start there can
be a sense of rising and falling that mirrors the shape of taking a breath in and letting
it out. The strings at the beginning of first steps into sunken Glades breathe in this way.
Another way that wind and breath influence music is with natural phrase length. There's a reason
so much music can be broken down into two or four bar units which is similar to the amount
of time it takes to express a complete thought before needing to take a breath.
In 'Naru, Embracing the Light' we can hear this play out. The very
opening theme of the track is 8 bars built up of 4 distinct 2 bar phrases.
You might be thinking this isn't very remarkable but that's exactly my point. One of the most
common pieces of feedback I give to students on their work is that the melody feels like a
run-on sentence it never stops to take a breath or finish the thought I think there's a fear of
disrupting the flow but the more you listen to great music like the theme from 'Naru'
the more you'll appreciate that these little breaks between phrases are actually helping
the music feel natural and more like a living breathing thing. The last element to obtain to
complete our journey is warmth which represents imperfections and one thing that does not have
warmth is the YouTube algorithm so please remember to give the video a thumbs up and
subscribe to the channel so that we humans can beat the robots for a little bit longer, thanks.
One of the beautiful things about natural textures, for example a grain of wood or the
branches of a tree, is that well there may be certain general rules about how
the texture works like the color direction, width, and so on, there's also an element of
randomization and imperfection. When people say a mock-up sounds bad most of the time
what they're saying is that it sounds fake. One of the things about virtual instruments
that can sound the most fake is a sound that never changes. Now instead of going down the rabbit hole
of techniques for making Midi sound more real I'm going to share with you what the pros do:
Higher live musicians! Now hear me out before you
bail. It's the 2020s and if you're watching this video you probably have access to the internet
so sites like Fiverr or Musiversal who let you hire remote musicians. There are also forums and
Discord servers - all of these places where if you put in enough legwork you can find musicians
to collaborate with even on a tight budget. The value is undeniable. Just listen to this
oboe performance from Tom Boyd and up the spirit Cavern walls.
The quickest and best way to get a result like that, to make your music feel alive, is to have
a real live human performance. And if you want to take it to an even deeper emotional level there's
really no faster shortcut than a real human voice like this performance from Aeralie Brighton.
You don't have to hire a full symphony orchestra. Even one musician or vocalist
can completely change your music. I once scored an indie horror film
on a very tight budget. I hired the very talented Sandro Friedrich who plays like
200 ethnic wind instruments for a single one hour session and I gave him a couple
of motivic ideas and said please play these motives on a bunch of instruments, improvise,
have fun with it, send me whatever you get done in an hour. The result was a toolkit of custom
phrases and sounds that I incorporated into the entire score. That score ended up winning me this
from a one-hour session with a live musician. And if you're still resisting or you can't
find anyone to work with at least play something yourself. Even playing an egg shaker like this
one with an imperfect human performance can give your track a little bit of extra warmth.
Giving more attention to rhythm, phrasing, and actual human expression will bring your music
to a whole new level but if your harmony is boring your music is still going to fall flat that's why
you can't afford to miss this video here where I teamed up with Gavin Leaper to show you how
to turn C major into anime harmony. Thanks for watching, I'll see you in the next one!