music for suppressing the dark urge | solo piano 

real

@@BiggMilk 🥶INDEED🥶

thank you so much! :D i've been trying to be more conscious about the stories my music is trying to tell (usually, I just plop notes down wherever sounds good). one of my ultimate goals is to compose a soundtrack for a game/movie someday :)

Oh nice, I guess we have pretty similar goals then. I wanna compose for a game one day too!@@BiggMilk

that could be the mechanical sounds from the piano!! they weren't intended to be significant, but i love your interpretation :D

didn't think of vampires when I wrote this, but they fit the theme perfectly :D also, thanks for listening!!

thanks! :D

thank you for you continued listening, biinoo!! :D i'm glad you like the random stuff i put out

thanks! :D it's kind of surprising how important dynamics are to making expressive music! when i first started, I payed no attention to dynamics---it was always either the default velocity or the highest velocity. maybe it's so important because humans convey emotions through volume as well, sometimes, like how people tend to yell when they're angry also, I'm glad this piece conveyed a story to you!! it gives me confidence that I'm moving in the right direction (or at least a direction not adjacent to the right one lol)

@@BiggMilk You definetely are moving the right direction haha I really wonder how you make the velocities have so much space between eachother, like the distance from the lowest to highest. On the low velocities it sounds like whispers while the higher velocities sounds like thunder and lightning. Do you use a limiter or any other processing on the piano to achieve this sort of sound? I would love to know :D

@@Tides16001 the only effect i really use for dynamics is a limiter with the max loudness preset, mostly to make the quiets more noticeable. sometimes, though, that preset causes the loud notes to beextremely and obviously limited, so I lower the gain on the limiter until there is only a little bit of limiting that occurs for the actual velocities, a phrase will usually follow a common dynamic trend, like loud or soft, but I give each "voice" higher/lower velocity depending on the importance of it (or what I want to be heard most). Like, I typically give the melody notes the highest velocity, followed by the "essential" bass notes (probably the roots of chords)---everything else is usually lower than that. also, i do a lot of little crescendos and decrescendos within each voice to give it a more dynamic feel (and hopefully make it sound like a human played it). it is unlikely that any two neighboring notes will have the same velocity lol i think another thing that helps with dynamic range is pitch range---smaller, tighter ranges make things sound quieter/smaller, while broad ranges usually make things sound louder/bigger. for example, in the section "Break Free" of this piece, i combine high velocity with pretty much the full range of the piano, which I think makes it sound bigger (Noire's sub-bass feature also helps with that). also, the more notes you play at the same time or the larger your chords, the louder it will likely sound okay, one last thing: I think dynamic contrast is really important. If your piece is loud all throughout, then you can't really have any stand-out, thunderous moments. If you have moments of quiet to contrast with the big moments, then those thunderous moments will sound louder, as the listener has a benchmark for what is "quiet." this response was much longer than I anticipated, but I hope there are at least a few useful nuggets strewn about here!! :D

@@BiggMilk thank you very much for the detailed description. I generally try to make my songs as dynamic as possible. One song of yours that was inspired by spirited away used very low velocity tight high cresendos and I played arround with that too in one song and it’s really fun, it gives a lot of texture. Then you could have a moment that is very unexpectrd with more harded presses. I hope I can be as good as you one day especially in the orchestral aspect, you pieces are lovely :) Also one little thing, when you play short notes they don’t stop as soon as the key is not pressed. Do you have high release on?

​@@Tides16001 Noire and many other piano vsts use midi CC #64 to activate and deactivate the sustain pedal, which allows notes to sustain past when they are released! it's useful for sustaining and creating larger chords that would be otherwise physically impossible without it :D I happen to use it quite a lot (probably too much lol), just like when I play piano irl. AZALI doesn't use the sustain pedal feature in his music, but he mimics it by extending the lengths of notes to the desired length In a physical piano, the sustain pedal lifts all of the dampers off the strings, allowing them all to resonate freely. normally, dampers lift and rise along with the press of each note (there is a damper per key), which is why a note sustains when it's pressed and stops when released (the dampers drop to stop the string(s) from vibrating). also, thank you for the kind words! :D

thanks! I don't usually use any effects aside from reverb, limiting, and eq stuff, so it was fun to experiment a bit!! :D I tried to use it as a representation of the "dark urge" in this piece alongside the "dark urge" motif :)

@@BiggMilk you killed it!!

thank you, spiral! i'm happy you liked this piece :)