This is an absolute banger, but here's some things that I can help with (even though I absolutely suck at FL) Use silence and reverb at conjunctions. If you're trying to transition between two melodies or instruments, if you just lower the volume at the end using an automation clip and/or add reverb, it will sound more human. You could also just cut all sounds like you did at the end there. You can also bounce out the 2 sounds and blend them together. Try to use more effects, they're really good at transitions too. A simple triangle low pass LFO can give a satisfying drop. Risers, Cymbals and Noise can really power up your music, especially for drops. Remember the video you made following Azali's method? You couldn't use velocity there either. It's just like he said, there should be highs and lows at certain parts of the song to match their energies and moods. Again you can also just lower the volume at a certain interval through automation clips for a few instruments for variations and lessening the chaos. That's all from me, this shit's still fire regardless. Keep up the good work!
@@dallinchristensen7460 This is a more generalized comment although I'd be happy to go through and give more specific feedback on each song! Listening and thinking through these things is teaching me a lot, too! I'd noticed in your older songs (some of if not all of the newer ones? are breaking away from this pattern though, which is cool!) (also yeah lol I went through and listened to everything you had up so far) is that you tended to have one aspect of the music repeat exactly as is many times-whether that be a particular chord progression, melodic line, rhythm, what have you. You'll have your one starting musical idea and layer patterns on top of that, one by one. This isn't inherently bad at all, and it's a good instinct to have. Music is all about repetition, and there are a lot of songs (I mean, most if not all songs lol) that do the same thing. I think it's a particularly prominent pattern in electronic music. But the thing about having one part repeat all throughout the song without much of anything about that part or the things happening around it changing is that it begins to get repetitive and can potentially bore the listener! I watched a video on this idea of the rule of 3s in music and how you never really want to repeat an idea more than three times, 'cause anything after that and your ears naturally begin to tune it out (of course with art all "rules" are more so guidelines and you can break them thoughtfully to achieve certain effects). I've found that even without knowing that rule consciously, those rare instances where I sit down to make something I've subconsciously adhered to that rule. I think you do too, in that you'll let a pattern play twice before adding something new. I think that adding more variation can make the music more dynamic and interesting, though. That's part of why Azali's music sounds the way it does-yes, there's the mere fact that they play piano, and so things like variation on velocity already adds a lot to their music. But it's also that they don't stay stuck in one particular musical idea for too long. The main melody changes (their use of different motifs), or that melody gets passed off to a different instrument, or the rhythm of that melody changes up-same goes for the actual rhythm of their songs themselves, or the chord progressions, etc. You'll have a song of theirs where there are multiple sections, each with their own unique and distinct texture (another thing that's important to making varied music). I know you said storytelling is something very important to you when it comes to music-it very much is for me, too. So I'll push you to think about your compositions more literally as stories, or as doing what stories do more generally and in terms of structure and movement (this may or may not work for you though so idk, i'm a creative writing/english double major so thinking about it in this way makes sense for me). Does the "story" start calmly, or in media res? Does it end the same way it started? What is the "character" of the song, and what is the shape of its overall arc? Does it remain stagnant, or are there peaks and dips in its "journey"? How high are they? When and where do those happen? In terms of more concrete advice/stuff you can implement more easily and immediately into your workflow (I'm so sorry for yapping and getting deep I've just been thinking about music a lot lately LOL) there are many ways to vary your music. Maybe instead of just adding one new instrument after an idea has looped, try adding two, or three, or four. The same with dropping instruments at certain points. Think about what adding/dropping certain instruments does to the vibe of the song. My favorite thing to observe w/ this phenomenon is how floaty and light a song becomes when you've dropped out its percussion. Speaking of percussion, you can make any instrument act as percussion/have percussive rhythm. In terms of other ways to intensify a song (or reduce its intensity), there's the obvious playing around with volume and tempo-but there's also things like increasing/decreasing pitch (think key changes!), adding more instruments (specifically percussion-but even with this, the rhythm you actually have it play is important), playing with octaves (sections of songs whose instruments are playing across multiple octaves feel bigger, whereas songs whose instruments are playing only within a few octaves feel smaller), adding vocals (this, too, depends lol), and adding harmonies (this is like...a whooole thing in and of itself and I've already yapped for too long LMAO). I hope this is helpful again I'm so sorry this got so long-winded, there's probably a good degree of stuff in here you already know HAHA but anyway. I look forward to your next upload! Genuinely seeing your channel is making me feel a bit less nervous about the idea of uploading more on here myself...I'm just nervous about trying to stick to a schedule 💀
Thanks so much for the insight! I think I'll legitimately try to incorporate what you said in future projects. I'm excited to see how it turns out! Also, I think that it's important for other creators to know: You don't have to be on azali's level to post your projects. it's just good practice. And honestly I started posting just so I could start getting feedback from people like you, so thank you! <3
It’s nice to see another Azali fan and beginner(?) composer trying out their work method, I’ve been thinking about trying out the same thing! I was actually watching through their production video more attentively last night to see if I could pick up anything new with regards to working FL Studio, as I’m trying to learn the program better, too. That’s how I found your video. I also finally started doubling-down on learning piano because quite a few of the artists I follow know how to play the piano at the very least. It isn’t necessary to make good music, but it certainly helps :> This was great, though!!! Keep going!!!!!!
now i can finally sound like Avali thank you for making this video :0 i really love the end product !!!! it sounds awesome already, and with some small reworks and potential additions, i can genuinely see it transforming into something very special !! i also feel its alright that you ended up with something thats a little different from the type of music i typically make haha i believe that rather than a style guide, my video is kind of a workflow showcase for how im able to make music relatively quickly and it seems you were able to make your composition pretty quickly as well, so i consider you taking from it a success >:) on the note of the first step being able to play the piano ;-;-; although the piano is a pretty integral part of my workflow, it's not at all a necessity in making cool music !! a lot of my friends just use like a mouse to compose, and many of them make way better music than i can at the moment haha i feel the main benefit of being able to play is that once youre used to working within a particular scale, it really keeps you grounded and lets you see the relationships between notes within (and outside of) the scale as you progress in composition and learn more things, im confident youll begin to exclusively use notes from just one scale less and less until you just pretty much never do it though :0 and because of that, being able to play may be pretty convenient in the beginning phases of learning, but i feel it really evens out in terms of convenience later on at the end of the day though, i feel the best workflow is just the one that youre most comfortable with :) to answer your questions at the end of the video, - i dont have any musical education !! i started composing at the same time i started my channel, and just tried to keep learning with every video that i posted haha because of this, i think your commitment to posting stuff regularly is really good, as im sure youll see similar improvement to how things have gone for me >:) - i do like doing collabs !! if someday in the future you develop a unique style and set of skills in your own music that could really complement mine well and we get along together really well as people then it might be fun to work together :) as for just like general things about stuff you said and the content of the video, - velocity isn't so bad to humanize artificially !! generally, when humans play, the velocity will peak and valley at the beginning and ends of bars (and more often just measures) :0 if you stick with this while deciding which measures will peak/valley and by how much, it serves as a really nice rule of thumb for approximating irl playing if you pay attention to my playing in my video and the associated recorded velocities, youll probably be able to notice a few patterns !! - compositionally, i feel your piece is awesome, but i think it could benefit greatly from a little bit of humanization and processing :0 each note sounds like its being pressed with a ton of force which at least to me, disrupts its flow a little bit generally, piano players will use dynamics with lots of force just in a couple of areas to pull your attention around or to add flair every now and then when its used on all notes, it subtracts from the delivery of the piece by a bit if you try out stuff in the previous bullet, this will be more than fixed though >:) aside from dynamics, the piano sound feels a little bit dry and unprocessed to me this can be fixed relatively easily by adding just a tiny bit of reverb to make things sound like theyre being played in an irl space, and also considering using an eq to boost some of the 100-200 hz frequencies to taste on the piano to help it feel a little fuller but anyways ;-; ;-; this comment is already way longer than i planned for it to be, so ill just leave things here for now lmao im looking forward to seeing what other videos youll put out !!
Thank you so much for your response, It means a lot to me. also how did i mess up the title lmao guess that's what happens when your 5 hours into a project haha **FACE PALM**
