@@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!
Would you like constructive criticism on these beats btw? 👀 (Don’t worry I won’t be mean I just like to ask beforehand bc I think it’s good practice!)
Absolutely! Any advice is greatly appreciated. I want to improve as much as possible.
@@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!