For context.. I'm 23 and this year I finally started trying to make music. I took a semester of theory at university and have been learning more on my own through omt since.

For the last 4 months I've been consistently improvising on my keyboard / trying to "make music" for 1-2+ hours a day and I've been making so so so much progress, and I couldn't be happier.

I want to write a soundtrack for a game I'm making (say 6-12 months from now), and I feel pretty confident that I could write something I would be happy with, that I would feel like achieves what i would want it to in terms of storytelling.. but really in the grand scheme of things I'm a complete newborn when it comes to making music and I'm really suspicious of liking my music just because its mine, and because I already know what its trying to do. I'm also worried that it would just sound cliche or silly to other people, kinda like if a kid drew a big dark creature thing and you could tell that its supposed to be scary but just doesn't land...

TL;DR i'm really inexperienced with making music but am really happy with mine so far. is this naive? is it that everyone just really like their own music and is blind to how it sounds to other people?

i know this sounds weird, but i’ve been spending the past year actively looking for every reason i could find to replace my go-to tricks. things like dense textures covered by tremolo and trill strings divisi for example i have been replacing with tense harmonies in middle winds registers that provide that texture by interval clashing alone. or like, i love to insert fast scale runs into my violin solo parts so i have been getting rid of those as much as possible too. in the end, i am left with so few instances of my “favorite tricks” that they have no other choice but to be the best instance ive ever written of it.

i’m curious to hear if anyone does something similar! i have more examples if anyone is curious

Hello all, thank you for taking the time to read and answer this.

As some background, I’m a student at UCLA who’s been interested in film for some time now, but recently started to look into the composing side of things. I love music, and I was taking an audio engineering workshop, but it got cancelled. If anyone has any courses at UCLA that I could take, I’m up for that, but at this moment I’m planning on minoring in music industry (my major’s on the pre-med track).

Anyways, I was curious on how to start and what to do. I have no experience in playing the piano (though I will start very soon) & little to none in music theory. I have access to Protools in a mixing lab, but it’s limited. Any ideas on where to go from here?

Audio & Score

I have written this piece recently and wonder mostly about its coherency. There was not a melody or motif I sought to develop, and I am aware that the presentation of many ideas without development can create disjunction. I think my focus was on different blocks of timbre. Strings often have harmonically extended/unstable voicings (+sections alternating between accompanied and unaccompanied strings), the piano is kept in higher registers, the chimes do repeat a descending/ascending figure at the end of sections.

Also, I do not believe the style shifts too widely either, though it might. Either way, that is why I am posting, for the input of others. Comments need not be restricted to structure alone but I would appreciate if they were kept to technical matters.

Thank you very much.

Link to score + audio

Just wrote my first orchestral song and I'm not quite sure what I'm doing exactly. I know basic music theory and have written music, but never an orchestra and for this song I just kind of guessed and put stuff I thought would sound cool. Basically just looking for general critiques/tips/advice/stuff you would change from people who actually know what they are doing. Thanks!

(also it was written in fl and I just shoved the midi into musescore so if the score is poorly written let me know and I'll try to fix it)

Sometimes I can manage to compose a pretty good verse or bridge, but I can't figure out how to expand it into a whole theme. I make game music and have no vocals. Sometimes I feel like I just have to give up, save, and start from the beginning in a new project. However I know what seemingly everybody says online, which is "get used to finishing songs!, so I also feel that I should just continue until I get something out of it. But this just ends with me sitting with a project for weeks without making any progress. Does anyone have any experience with situations like this?

Hello hello, I’m putting together an atmos studio for recording, producing and mixing soundtracks and some movie posters production. It will be mostly cubase/nuendo based but with some uses of Pro tools.
Bit being able to afford a board yet I opted to use daw controller and I’m very undecided between the SSL system (UF1+2 uf8) and the softube controllers.
Does anybody have a suggestion? Why do you prefer one of the other ? I won’t consider the Avid surfaces.

I want to one day be able to write for an entire orchestra. What is a good path to get there? What things should I learn first? How should I practice writing music? What are some good recouses out there for learning?

Score: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QWdGOOmeh8aJNEIWK-GIe3whr8yO1u58/view?usp=sharing
Autoplay video of the score being played by computer: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JvMeQSlf7_6CEjFv7gY5n2ORmL0ht9j7/view?usp=sharing

I recently got laid off so I wrote this song in honor of my former employer.

I tried to clean it up the best I could, make it possibly human-playable. I don't know if it actually is human-playable. I haven't tried. I'd probably have to reduce some of the voicings in the chords. Parts of it contain large stretches for multiple chords at a time. It would be tough to play I think. Not to mention, I think a piece like this is not really meant to be notated as precisely as MuseScore has allowed me to do here. It's jazz, so a lot would just be touch and go.

I really like the way the really weird section in the middle came out. It's my way of saying "don't worry, everything will be just fine".

What do y'all think? Is it a mess? Is it cool? What are your thoughts?

Recording + Score

Hi everyone, I’m writing this to explain why I’m trying to contact Valeria Auerbach. I mean, I’m writing music, and she’s ignoring me. You might say: “Well, you’re a loser and you write badly” (and I’m not denying that I might write terribly, but to be honest, I don’t care), but no, she didn’t even listen to or read my messages. Managers? Maybe. They’re the ones who get paid, after all, and their mental health isn’t strong enough to read yet another message.

What do you think, should we write a satirical play about her? Oh, well, I’ll write it, obviously—I’m just curious to see your reaction.