FreeOrion

I made some non-race-specific background music for FreeOrion.
Please tell me if you like it.

FreeOrion0 (1:52) - Electronic - Combat, Faster
FreeOrion1 (1:36) - Electronic - Combat, Slower
FreeOrion2 (2:58) - Ambient - Background / Idle
FreeOrion3 (3:28) - Ambient - Background / Idle

Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

I like 2 a lot, seems like map music...i got no sound on 3 and i think 0 would be nice menu or lobby music.

Thank you for your feedback.
3 is relatively quiet and takes some time to evolve. You could turn up your speakers a bit.

Good work overall.

0 is quite repetitive. The section in the middle where it changes up was a welcome break, and I wish you had given the whole piece more variation. That middle section was sort of too little too late.

1 is good. It sounds like it could be species-specific battle music, if somebody wrote species theme music based on it. I can't for the life of me figure out why you used the major third around 0:40 though - I don't like that at all.

2 is good ambient music, but the higher frequencies seem to be overpowering in many places, and in general should be made a lot more mellow to avoid distracting the player. I think in general when higher frequencies are sustained in an ambient track, they should be quite soft. I personally found them quite piercing.

3 is also good ambient music, but in the second half also introduced that loud high-frequency instruments problem.

Also in general, almost all music in FO should be looping.

I am glad that it's at least considered as music
You have to know that I created most of the pieces (1-3) by improvising and playing around with some instruments for about 2 hours. So I did not really put thought into those pieces and most of them are basically broken chord progressions.

0 -> It feels a little bit too long cause I have the pad playing 5 bars. If I shorten it to 4 bars and add some interesting stuff it should work.
1 -> I do not really like this piece (rhythm) maybe I will make something entirely different out of it
2-3 -> Transposing the second part one octave down and then EQing the lower frequencies is not a really good solution. I have to think about that too.

Maybe I'll just keep 0 and make something new.

What do you mean with making the music loop? Something like this where you chop the music into parts which you can dynamically arrange to reflect the current game state? Or does it mean that the game just plays the same music over and over again?

night wrote:What do you mean with making the music loop? Something like this where you chop the music into parts which you can dynamically arrange to reflect the current game state? Or does it mean that the game just plays the same music over and over again?

It means the game plays the same music over and over again. The player is unlikely to be doing anything for more than several minutes before the music changes, so there's no real problem with the player getting sick and tired of the music unless it sucks a lot. See this music for examples of looping music, and note how each track returns to the beginning in a fairly natural way.

I also think 0 is a bit to repetitive. Some variation in the beat before the change at just after a minute in might help? Extending the stuff in that short contrasting section might also be interesting.

I generally like 1. I don't mind anything happening around 40 seconds in. A bit of variation in the metal slam / brush beat might be nice. Getting rid of the seemingly-empty last 12 seconds might be better.

I also like 2. I feel like some mid-range instruments under the high stuff might be nice, though I don't really mind the mostly-high stuff. It's also got a bit of a long empty part at the end of the file.

3 is generally too quiet, as noted. The harsh instrument starting around 1:10 doesn't work for me.

Are these all released under the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license?

Geoff the Medio wrote:...Are these all released under the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license?

I don't know if you'll get a response to that, I haven't heard from night in a while now... maybe there's a higher chance of getting a response if you PM him?

Yeah you can use it under CC-BY-SA-3.0 if you really want to. I don't really like those songs anymore. Maybe I'll make some new/better ones in the future.

Vezzra wrote:I don't know if you'll get a response to that, I haven't heard from night in a while now...

To my great joy I stand corrected!

If they are released on a CC BY SA license, he can literally just drop a HI-Shelf on no.3 and fade the end back into the start at about 1min and call it a day. That's some lovely ambience!

If you don't want to I'd be happy to quickly do it for you.

Do whatever you want - that's the point of this project and it's licensing philosophy

EDIT: A slightly changed version of 3