New Battle Theme? - Percussion ensemble and choir

Create music and sound effects for mainline or user-made content.

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doofus-01
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Re: New Battle Theme? - Percussion ensemble and choir

Post by doofus-01 »

"northerners.ogg" is sort of a percussion piece, isn't it? With some work, couldn't the first part of this piece have a similar purpose, or possibly be a replacement, without crossing any new lines?
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Blueblaze
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Re: New Battle Theme? - Percussion ensemble and choir

Post by Blueblaze »

This piece defies the standards for which Wesnoth is acclaimed to. Wesnoth has highly regarded music, not for its electronic stylings, or African styled beats, but for its great orchestrated passages. This piece and any piece which attempts to create a pseudo-orchestrated or non-Western style of music usurps the quality of Wesnoth's music. I promise you, if Wesnoth had another SNES-synthesized background for music, we would -not- get requests for people to download the music without even getting the game. Many people have come to Wesnoth because of the music, electronic tracks and putting the rhythm as the prominent quality in the piece will undermine this and do the opposite.
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zookeeper
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Re: New Battle Theme? - Percussion ensemble and choir

Post by zookeeper »

I'd personally like to see this piece tweaked to fit in as a replacement for northerners.ogg.

As long as we have tracks like elf-land.ogg, frantic.ogg and northerners.ogg and we accept those as part of the soundtrack, then it would be simply stupid not to replace them with better tracks, regardless of whether or not the replacement is as good as we're eventually trying to get all tracks to be. So, if this piece can be hammered into a replacement for northerners.ogg for instance, then it should go in, replacing that one. There's no reasonable argument against that as long as it's an improvement, which would be hard to avoid.
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Blueblaze
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Re: New Battle Theme? - Percussion ensemble and choir

Post by Blueblaze »

Please note, northerners.ogg is only 35 seconds long, this piece is at least 7 minutes long. I don't think we want to flesh out northerners.ogg to be an entire full length piece. Full percussion pieces are far too monotonous whenever they use the same set of instruments with no variation. It's just the same beat repeated over and over. I personally am not a fan of such percussion ensemble styled pieces, but I still can make a judgment on the quality of such piece. I personally feel that both pieces are too redundant and boring, but one you only listen to for 35 seconds.
yobbo
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Re: New Battle Theme? - Percussion ensemble and choir

Post by yobbo »

West wrote:...if that is what you meant, yobbo. Looking at your post again, I might have read more into it than what you intended.
Well, I did kind of leave that unspecified.

I do feel that even if an experimental percussion piece is unsuitable for mainline it shouldn't be discouraged. I know that if I were designing a campaign I would like to have a wider mix of music to choose from, even if it wasn't included with the main game.

But then I also do feel that many of the recent music contributions feel too similar to one another.

They do make a very nice soundtrack though. Have you noticed there is almost enough good music for a Wesnoth CD already? :)


In any case, given Blueblaze's strangely irrational responses, I fully support the inclusion of this piece in mainline in its current form ASAP.
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ancestral
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Re: New Battle Theme? - Percussion ensemble and choir

Post by ancestral »

West wrote:If I seem conservative when it comes to Wesnoth music, it's because we need clear guidelines for music submissions. If we allow more experimental stuff in the game, the soundtrack will soon branch off into so many different directions that it will lose all sense of consistency. It won't be a soundtrack, it will be a large pile of random music. And for the record, I'm not some stuck-up classical music onanist who detests electronic instruments -- on the contrary I use tons of synths in my other projects -- I'm just saying this kind of all-percussion music doesn't fit the game.
From the perspective of an "outsider in", I want to hear a soundtrack that flows from piece to piece. Ultimately it's up to the campaign designer how they want to use Wesnoth's music, but as a player, I'd like some semblance of continuity if I were to "just hit play".

Seems to me once music goes into the project it's likely not coming out (right?), which makes me hope that the music gets thrown around and that when pieces are judged the best choice is made the first time. Being stringent and adhering to strict guidelines is a good thing since it causes people to go back and find ways to improve their designs. Successful companies will have dozens or even hundreds of prototypes until the final one is chosen. Hopefully the same passion is put in by music contributers.
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jeremy2
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Re: New Battle Theme? - Percussion ensemble and choir

Post by jeremy2 »

ancestral wrote:Being stringent and adhering to strict guidelines is a good thing since it causes people to go back and find ways to improve their designs. Successful companies will have dozens or even hundreds of prototypes until the final one is chosen. Hopefully the same passion is put in by music contributers.
... can possibly be a good thing. When you are relying on volunteer efforts or have a limited budget, it can be quite easy to be demanding enough to the point to where very little actually gets done. Some of us don't have the time to go through hundreds of prototypes before submitting - myself included. I think momentum is more important than "perfection" in the creative process, with revisions as necessary.
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