1. Didja accidentally blow through the whole, "We're using our real names" thing on registration? No problem, just send me (Mike) a Conversation message and I'll get you sorted, by which I mean hammered-into-obedient-line because I'm SO about having a lot of individuality-destroying, oppressive shit all over my forum.
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Crap comparison

Discussion in 'Critique & Feedback' started by Alexander Schiborr, Jun 28, 2018.

  1. #1 Alexander Schiborr, Jun 28, 2018
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2018
    Hey Guys,

    I thought about that for quite a while to post or not. But here we go. I often read in the recent months that I have a talent and therefore I write good stuff. No. First I don´t do. I do many mistakes still but I am getting out of the super sucking zone. I would like to share one track done 4 years ago where Mike gave me some good personal and brutal honest treatment with:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/ftf8mb4eb187p2u/Adventure_With_Jerry.mp3?dl=0

    Now..this piece was intended to make a Goldsmith Star Trek impression and it sounds like a total crap mess, all over the place and well and nowaday I feel only embarrassed to listen to that crap to be honest. But the intention is: Man..I have no special talent here I just took advice and kept on working hard, and now I am here:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/ptnephbom9swb2k/AS_JR_P_Template_Idea_v33_little_reverb_glue.mp3?dl=0

    Now that is still a track where I can improve a lot but well this is status quo and I think that I got better in some few things since then and I would like every single one of you to encourage just keep on working. I am still learning and will learn my whole life in order to improve things.

    Please keep on working, even if things don´t work out the way you like, when you keep on track seriously you will be rewarded with your work.
     
  2. Your crap is still better than a lot of things we can hear and far far away of what I'm able to do. Ok you worked, you work and you'll work but you have something more than other people. ;)
     
    Rohann van Rensburg likes this.
  3. #3 Alexander Schiborr, Jun 28, 2018
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2018
    NO. I dont think so, and that is exactly the answer what I feel comes to often to excuse and make you feel comfortable to give reasons for an excuse. I did just worked a lot on my problem zones. That has nothing to do with special abilities here. Mike once said, not only one time: He is not that talented, now you can say: That is crap, he is. Well, he has some good instincts, but man..most of his chops comes from his hard work and busting his ass of. Because he is on a mission with that for his freaking whole life. 4 years ago I was thinking exactly the same like you. But thats not true: You need to bust your fucking ass of. If you really want that. Don´t go party, stay in your piano room and work your fucking ass of. Don´t fall intot hat missthinking that the big great composers have just luck and talent..no they worked insanely hard. I see too many people expecting results in no time. Thats not happening. No the fuck it will. It takes time. Sorry for the F words.
     
    Rohann van Rensburg likes this.
  4. Talent is not the word I would use. It's more a combination of genetic, social, environment, opportunities, luck, etc. The thing is that now you have something that people call talent. I think you already had it 5 years ago, it's just better now.
     
  5. @Alexander Schiborr thanks for the positive attitude and encouragement. I am not sure what to make of the talent vs hard work thing. But whatever the reason, I have observed your steady increase in skills with tremendous excitement for you. I admire your compositions, your midi-performances, and your mixing abilities. I always look forward to listening to your next work.

    [​IMG]
     
  6. Congratulations, that was some serious improvement.
     
  7. Great work Alexander, stunning improvement. One thing that I noticed, correct me if I am wrong, is that you worked a lot, not only on orchestration and composition, but on mixing and mastering as well.
     
  8. Yeah the difference is staggering. Excellent.
     
  9. Quite an impressive transformation!
     
  10. Huge difference! Interesting Purassic Jark thing you've got going on - I'm assuming that record is the basis of your template for testing?
     
    Federico Solazzo likes this.
  11. Hej Guys,

    Still I hope you take this to continue work because you see I was able to improve myself within the last 4 year and sure my JP Impression (at least the beginning bars) is not perfect at all but it shows in comparison to my old version in some fields improvements. It still has problems which actually and that is the difference 4 years ago that I am fond of that and I know where actually. However my point was mainly: Keep on doing the stuff. Here are a few points in how I work:

    First of all after Mike talked to me in early 2014, his review was pretty much hitting me like a stone in my face. Not that I was dissapointed, but I realized that I lacked of total basic fundamentals, which he said pretty much like: Hey write me a simple tune with a I IV V I progression using a structure of A/A/B/A. So I started practising a lot of those piano sketches, most of them were 1 minute long and not good at all. But I tried in simple words to write an idea and a 2nd idea trying to have something to do with the first. Now..I did that a lot and I am still doing that and still not being a master, sure not.
    Another point is: When you want to write in an idiom or if you want to make an impression you need to know more about the harmonic language. Williams was at that time totally not comprehensible for me, so I started with easier stuff which had not all those jazz chords but more clean, simple chords like and I took simpler themes which followed those I IV V thing and had major and minor chords. And there are many you can pick up not only from Silvestri, Goldsmith, Horner etc, also from other composers and 80s adventure sci fi themes. Also I watched a lot of Mikes MC in addition and learned a lot of his chords and progressions which he shows. Why? Because they sounded cool to me and they had this typical sound which I connected to great more classic filmmusic. So for instance I learned all of his major modulations. And since I learned them I always when I sit at the piano I play them just to warm up. That took me a long time first to learn them but also to understand them which is still but it is getting clearer and I start to develop my own things there. I remember as Adventure brass came out, that was the time I learned them, so of course I wanted to use some of them at some point. In the first days I just slammed them into my pieces here and there to let the pieces modulate cooler than I did before at that time which was mostly either brute force modulations which I find super boring nowadays or like total non cohesive chord progressions which were pseudo sophisticated modulations imo.
    Another point which I do, still do but did was to mockup filmmusic but also classical music stuff. And the idea was to improve my production sound but also to getter a better feeling how you create the right timbre combinations with samples to let them sound more like a real orchestra. Because you all know: Even with libraries which are balanced..often they don´t sound right. So you have to develop an ear to know how loud things are in relation to each other which is very important.
    A third thing: I practise creating textures and orchestrational presets from the composers I like. Also in that JP template thing, I like a lot of the flowing textures (Which is typical for Williams) but ecpsecially I like the way that they were not so clear. His textures are flowing but also very playful and evry detailed. So I look at the scores, I listen to the references and I repeat creating a similiar thing with samples and look why they sounds like that. I keep practising that as well.
    So that kind of stuff is going on like a lot in my life. Almost everyday. Sure I take my sunday of, but often I sit in the morning also on the sunday and doing something. However, I think and that was my main point: It is a lot work which I put into that and I believe that you can compensate with dedication a lot in your life even if you are not an Einstein.
    And I feel that mos people think they work hard but they don´t do that enough and then they fall into the trap to think they are not talented enough which is sometimes annoying to me especially when I read mails like: Hey you are so talented.

    Another idea: Don´t try t be good or great in every genre. I see composers on soundcloud writing all kings of "impressions". and none of them are really cool. SO concentrate and focus on something specific you want to be good in. When you like the music of Horner, spent at least 1 year studying his orchestrations, chord progressions and stuff. Learn them, repeat them, imprint that informations into your limbus so that it becomes a part of you. And maintain those things with exercises even when you start learning new vocabularly from a nother composer.

    Sure I believe that a talented guy who is also dedicated can make it far. But you need both. And imo dedication is the more important thing. Sure I will never be a Lang lang on the Piano, but who cares? I will be no JW but maybe one day I will be a good composer. And that is what counts to me because I love this music and that is my drive to continue doing it because the music gives so much enjoyment for my personal life. That is why I do that. Nor for money or something. Especially not this kind of music.

    And let me tell you: Frustration in this process is a normal thing. You will not be always motivated, you will fail a lot and I do and did and the important thing is at that point not to give up. Believe me I had a lot of frustrations because a lot of things just didn´t work how I wanted them to be. That is normal. So why I write that all. I think most of what I said is superfuous because you know that. Still giving those 2 examples should tell you: Ok that guy is still in the process and has to learn a lot but in comparison to his 2014 work there is a difference. But it takes time. And it will be a failure time but you will make progress, slow but you will, I guarentee that if you are willing to focus.
    And don´t be afraid of that failure.
     
  12. Does he have my coffee cup ?
     
  13. So true. I had a friend who decided to enter a bodybuilding competition.
    He told me "if you are not hungry, you are not dieting".

    For me, if I am not having an existential crisis I am not composing.

    Of course the universal joke is we create this stuff for ourself. No one forces me to compose.
    In fact I have fought so long to structure my life so that everyday can be an existential crisis.
    I am literally like a man walking himself down the street on a leash.:eek:

    Good times ! :confused:
     
  14. Yeah, a lot of stuff is so called placebo drama which we create because we compare too much also. I mean..to have goals is great and should be there but to make comparisons all the time to the best and feeling therefore inferior makes life pretty hard.

    I mean..to be honest guys. I could see my transformation here also in 2 ways: Look I have improved or could say, booboo I am still not nowhere a class of JW. Yeah the one who drowns himself into that all the time makes it definitely a lot harder to keep motivated, isn´t it?
    I think to have goals and look up to the great ones should be a motivation to set goals. Also I think a mistake is too work on too many places at once which then you lose focus on something specific. But yeah, what do I know..about bodybuilding.:D
     
  15. That's YOUR thing ! Nobody else has it.
     
    Doug Gibson likes this.
  16. There is also another component to all this that's critical - consistent, constructive and "accurate" feedback. Unless your lucky / talented in a discipline you can spent all the time studying but end up making little progress (because your study was incorrect but you didnt know it). For me I got a lot of "that's amazing, sounds great" which did me little good and also made me think my work was fine. It's also hard to find a teacher who can talk about this material from composition to production (massively huge set of topics).

    Redbanned has provided me with better feedback then I've ever had and I'm very grateful to Mike and its community. I'm also studying a bit with Alex and already I can tell that I'm headed in a positive direction - well I'll actually leave that assessment to Alex, and hopefully this re-written work I'll be sending over today is an improvement.
     
    Rohann van Rensburg likes this.
  17. The 2014 piece seems (to me) to show the ability to orchestrate short 'action' flourishes but is a mishmash, where the later piece is more coherent with good mixing to accentuate the various voices ... but I guess I'm just repeating what others are saying, including Alexander. After hearing the first, and just starting the second, my mind went "aaahhhh ... nice". Thanks for giving us the details of your 4-year journey from 2014 until today - that alone is motivating because it (almost) seems achievable ... at least for those who have the motivation and environmental situation to dedicate a lot of hard work. One practical book on creativity that I got a lot out of was "The Power of Thinking Differently" by Javy Galindo.
     
  18. Massive difference. There are a surprising number of people on this forum whose opinion I genuinely respect, and will tend towards continually re-reading; yours is certainly one of them.

    Great advice too on the specific points, going to write those down! And for the record your presets sound fantastic. I think you did a carnival-themed piece some months ago and I thought the orchestration sounded amazing, but I think I neglected to write that.

    Overall, fantastic advice, thank you for sharing -- this forum is one of the few places on the internet I can go to to be genuinely inspired to work harder (and not just buy more sample libraries). For someone with a primarily academic background, it's always helpful to hear "keep going!" advice from the people who are closer to where you want to be.


    I'm so glad others struggle with this too! Love the bolded sentence, by the way, that feels like me every time. No one's telling me to compose, and I often don't want to, but I have to. I feel miserable if I don't.
     
  19. Sylvain Provenzano likes this.

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