Official OT-Creativity Thread 1

[CrematedPumpkin]

Heh, Indigo, that's pretty 
What's zbrush, though?

[Mega10]

school project i started tonight, self-portrait, oil pastel and colored pencil on a cardboard box i had lying around

[pkmays]

Hey Indigo, check out these zBrush video tutorials by Glen Southern.

[Lawrence]

Here's a little guitar solo I whipped up last night for fun.

I really like that piece Mega10, but the orange lighting in the room makes it hard to see all the colours.

Faktablad, thanks for taking the time to listen/comment on my stuff. I basically always 'make my own stuff' as you put it, with the exception of drum samples, (unless I record my own 'percussion' samples or use drum synths) since I can't play drums. For example, in that w.i.p. Orange Sun, the main synth sound is my own simple sine oscillation put through filters, resampled and cut up into loops, but the drums are sampled from Boards of Canada's 'Seeya Later'. More recently I've been incorporating a lot of guitar playing into my electronic stuff too, I just need a better computer now because the stuff I'm doing nowadays is much more hectic than that Limit 4 song and drains all the memory. Limit 4 was a song all about dispair and hopelessness, heavily inspired by the work of Autechre, so it's not really something I intended to be danced to but I see what you mean.

[Helm]

Lawrence: less reverb first of all. Nice solo section, try to emphasize intervals that 'lead' the ear somewhere, especially in harmonic relations. A good solo has a little interval progression of its own. Try the same thing, only second bar accent the stable fifth, then perhaps a seventh before resolving on tonic. You'll see your solos will start to be much more 'storytelling' rather than just a collection of interesting textural and aural sounds.

I share some of your musical interests ( AE, BoC ) though I am a Heavy Metal person, so I'll listen to your other songs posted in this thread as well. Since I critiqued you, here's some music in the case you feel up to returning the favour.

[Indigo]

[pkmays]

Damn. Quite a jump in quality from your previous image.

[Lawrence]

Thanks for the advice Helm. I really like your song. The high-pitch parts in the begining sound great. I think that the calm sounding bit which start at 0:23 starts a bit too soon though, and the 1 second outburst before it doesn't mesh well I don't think. I'd let the energy from that first section blend away into calmness a lot like Squarepusher does in Ultravisitor. The riffs in the calm part are very nice, great song.

Indigo that looks great.

[Helm]

Good ear on Squarepusher. The drill is an aspect I enjoy. Listen to 'Behold... the Arctopus' for the other aspect making this what it is.

I enjoyed both songs-in-progress you posted above. The Orange needs less critique. The other one, to make the 'fridge falling down the stairs' recursive beats of later AE, don't just hand-place them when they seem natural to fall. Eccentuating what is not natural rhythmically is what you want to do. Make out a numbering schema that will dictate where the beats will fall, either with some program or on a piece of paper. If you have a four-on-four behind it try to use some simple argorhthmical method to provide divisions of 16ths, or even 32s for where the next 'odd' beat will fall. I enjoy the rest of the song, the cadenced beats a lot. It's only the semi-random ones that show you don't have a clear concept of how that sort of stuff should work. I'm not saying go completely procedural with it, a good mid-stream solution. Remember you're working with machines and what music you make with them should be a reminder of the pleasant time you've had together.

[Faktablad]

Helm: What sort of program does one use to open an .ogg file?

Lawrence: Nice little interlude.  I'm partial to reverb myself but that was a bit much.  Good voicings, though.

Another opportunity to return the favor.   
He Stole My Spaceship