Gothic Supernatural Music

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MattMVS7

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Edit: Thanks for your replies. But just out of curiosity, how do those songs feel to you in your personal opinion? Do they portray the feelings I've described, or is it just a mess of audio at this stage that doesn't portray any emotion?

I am now going to try one more thing here to see if my perception of the song I made with the choir and guitar gets through. To do that, I am going to use a song I didn't make just as an example. Go ahead and apply the generalized feel from that song to my song with the guitar and choir and see now if you perceive my song the way I do. You notice the eerie choir in that song which lowers and rises in pitch (like with how my choir does in my song). If you still perceive my song as having no emotion or as something completely different from what I've described even after applying the generalized feel from that song to my song, then perhaps my perception of my song is false and it's just some perception of my own that I've given it when, in reality, it portrays something completely different and/or really has no emotion.

Here is this other song as an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPKqVMmD6NY

And then here's my song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t17EWF1DQj0

I am a complete beginner when it comes to making music, but I have cool ideas (and a short song I made) that I wish to share. This is a short song I made (using the in-built male choir in FL Studio and a guitar). It has a harsh destructive and supernatural personality. You hear a male choir with lowering and rising pitch singing. It is supposed to be dark with, again, a supernatural harsh destructive personality. It is combined with a guitar (another harsh instrument that completes the song's personality). The notes of the guitar rise and lower with the choir.

I suspect that maybe the volume of the guitar is too low in comparison with the choir. So I have played the choir alone first as an example so that your ears get trained to just listening to the choir alone so that when the guitar does come in, you will be able to hear it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t17EWF1DQj0

As for this song right here, it's not something I made and isn't an actual song--it is an idea for a song. This song is supposed to be gothic. Sort of like the song "Going Under" by Evanescence which is a woman singing with metal. Except in this song, instead of a woman singing, it is an enchanting gothic woman witch singing who is singing enchantments with heavy metal. It is a song that is very powerful in a dark way. You hear them both in this video. These two ideas (feelings) are supposed to be ideas that go together for an actual song. Also, the voice you hear is not a witch (it is a singer's voice reversed). I just interpreted this voice as the perfect voice for a gothic witch that would perfectly go with heavy metal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUwjNeavPsE
 
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My first thought is, you have some concepts here. Concepts are not the hard part. I think everyone in the world has ideas with music some shape or form. What one does with those ideas, how to translate it to us, the target listener is really what separates the "wheat from the chaff"

Put together your ideas a little more and think about how to tie in your ideas. In the type of music it sounds like you are going for, I think two key ingredients will help:

Working with musical keys - as a guide, not a rule, this will help you to know what notes and tones you can use to give the music life and still sound pleasing to the western ear

Transitions - this can help you build on an idea or take you from a set of ideas and tie them together.

Lots of areas for you to study and get a better feel for ways to get the idea more solidified.

Hope this helps.
 
This is just a general observation, not aimed at your music. (I didn't even listen to your link, I have no speakers here at work).

But generally, a song is like a joke. If you need to explain it, it's not accomplishing what it's supposed to. It should stand on its' own without a 3 paragraph set up.

I'm not sayin'....I'm just sayin'....
 
RAMI said:
This is just a general observation, not aimed at your music. (I didn't even listen to your link, I have no speakers here at work).

But generally, a song is like a joke. If you need to explain it, it's not accomplishing what it's supposed to. It should stand on its' own without a 3 paragraph set up.

I'm not sayin'....I'm just sayin'....
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+2 cause +1 is getting old. To explain the joke...:p
 
RAMI said:
This is just a general observation, not aimed at your music. (I didn't even listen to your link, I have no speakers here at work).

But generally, a song is like a joke. If you need to explain it, it's not accomplishing what it's supposed to. It should stand on its' own without a 3 paragraph set up.

I'm not sayin'....I'm just sayin'....
Click to expand...

Pete Townsend has been explaining his music for 40 years ;) No one seems to have any issues with that!
 
Thanks for your replies. But just out of curiosity, how do those songs feel to you in your personal opinion? Do they portray the feelings I've described, or is it just a mess of audio at this stage that doesn't portray any emotion?
 
To me, the first one doesn't portray any emotion. There are a few moments I think a song can be started from, but no feeling to it. Just sounds.

The second one strangely does conjure up feelings, not sure what, but it has an energy to it.
 
First one sounds like, if it was shorter, it could be a useful beginning or middle to something with a beat. I wouldn't describe it as music in its current form. Even at 0.36 it's too long to sustain my interest on its own.

The second one is just cut and paste juxtaposition of separate soundscapes in an alternating fashion. Again, I wouldn't describe it as having any particular musical quality as a piece itself. Perhaps if you'd run the backwards witch woman into the heavy metal segment at the end (and even took it somewhere else) then I might have thought "There was a point!" but you didn't so I was just left thinking "What was that all about?"

In your set up (and I agree with RAMI on the need to set up 0.56 of sound in such a comprehensive fashion) you talk about it being a witch with heavy metal, but it's not. It's witch before heavy metal and then after heavy metal, then more heavy metal, then more witch. There's no "with" involved.

But hey, what do I know, I'm sure you're a misunderstood genius, like the rest of us...

Musicans and songwriters create, they don't (or perhaps, in my opinion, shouldn't) workshop what they're doing along the way. If it's what you want to do, them make a fully realised piece and stick it in the MP3 clinic and show us your true brilliance - these fall into the "interesting snippets" category, as I see it.
 
I am now going to try one more thing here to see if my perception of the song I made with the choir and guitar gets through. To do that, I am going to use a song I didn't make just as an example. Go ahead and apply the generalized feel from that song to my song with the guitar and choir and see now if you perceive my song the way I do. You notice the eerie choir in that song which lowers and rises in pitch (like with how my choir does in my song). If you still perceive my song as having no emotion or as something completely different from what I've described even after applying the generalized feel from that song to my song, then perhaps my perception of my song is false and it's just some perception of my own that I've given it when, in reality, it portrays something completely different and/or really has no emotion.

Here is this other song as an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPKqVMmD6NY

And then here's my song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t17EWF1DQj0
 
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Sorry man, still doesn't do it for me (and I'm really trying). I think your perception of your song is askew from the audiences.
 
jigfresh said:
Sorry man, still doesn't do it for me (and I'm really trying). I think your perception of your song is askew from the audiences.
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I think it might be because I still need to explain further. You notice the eerie choir in that other song which lowers and rises in pitch (like with how my choir does in my song). Go ahead and apply the generalized supernatural feel from that lowering and rising eerie choir in that one song to my song, and my song should now have a harsh destructive supernatural eerie feel to it. But the guitar combined with this lowering and rising pitch male choir in my song is what portrays this personality. If I just had the lowering and rising pitch male choir alone play without the guitar, then it wouldn't have this feel I'm describing (it might), but it would just simply be a male choir lowering and rising in pitch more than anything.
 
RAMI said:
But generally, a song is like a joke. If you need to explain it, it's not accomplishing what it's supposed to. It should stand on its' own without a 3 paragraph set up.
Click to expand...

I'd have to go with this. (3rd time it's quoted now... let it sink in this time)

Not one song or album I love did I get an explanation of the music before I heard and loved it. Have you ever had an explanation change the overall experience of a song?

EDIT: ^beat me to it.
 
In conclusion, I agree with what you just said. It's just that when it comes to music, emotion and getting that emotion across to the audience is the most important thing to me. I feel that if practically no one interprets any music I create the way I do and it just comes out as something that is either completely different and/or has no emotion, then I will be all alone with my own interpretations. With that guitar and choir song I made, I could already hear it as being perfect and I could already make out its emotion 100% (there was not a moment where I will listen to it and it either has a different emotion or no emotion at all). So to me, this song was already perfected which is why I shared it.

But according to the world of music theory and music psychology, it is not perfected and does not portray the emotion I described. This brings up this concept of music psychology. Music theory just involves you learning about scales, note lengths, etc. and does explain the emotional (psychological aspects) of music to a certain degree. But it does not fully explain the psychological aspects. For example, if you wanted to create a song that is happy, music theory would just simply say to do that, you would use a major scale (the white keys). But if I were to just tap away at a bunch of random white keys (that does have rhythm and would technically be a song), even though it is in fact a song, it does not portray any emotion due to it being a bunch of random white keys and would, therefore, not be happy or anything. So there is clearly something more deep in terms of portraying emotion through music. Another example would be that there are different feelings of happiness (there is cheerful, motivational, heroic, etc.), so how would you know what combination of notes/rests to use to portray the specific feeling of happiness that you want? Music theory does not answer that (or does it)? This is obviously where music psychology would come in handy. It would be a book/teaching that explains the psychology behind knowing what combinations of notes/rests/instruments to use, etc. in order to portray the exact feeling that you want.

Is there such a teaching available on Youtube? If so, could you give me the link? It would be interesting to know the logical explanation behind my musical interpretations and everyone else's. It would be interesting to know if my musical interpretations are illogical and false and don't follow any given musical logic according to music theory and music psychology (some interpretation outside the realm of musical logic that I've just simply applied to my music), or if my musical interpretations really are true and it's just a matter of having the right audience who does have a knowledge of my style of music.
 
MattMVS7 said:
if my musical interpretations really are true and it's just a matter of having the right audience who does have a knowledge of my style of music.
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That's the journey, finding your voice and the folks who want to hear it. There is no youtube that can help with that, however if you focus on the style of music you want to make, then the people who are having success reaching people, you may want to study their style.

But try to finish the message you are trying to convey. If it is a story, even without words, you need to introduce, tell, conclude. In some of what I've heard of your stuff, walk into it, set it up, get to where you are trying to go from the beginning, arch up, reach the end. That's why this stuff is hard. Not because of the notes.
 
Elementary Penguin singing Hare Krishna.....

Whatever the writer of a song may be trying to convey may not be obvious to the band playing the song or the producer producing and even if they all get it and record it to the satisfaction of the writer, the listener may not get what the writer intended at all. And why should they ?
"The listener" is a nebulous concept because there could be three listeners or 13 million and they're all different. Interest in explanations come after the song is out there and people have shown an interest. Sometimes, on the sleeve info, there might be a bit of blurb about what a song is about {eg, Deep Purple in rock} but by and large few people really take in that kind of thing until a song has grabbed them.
Make your song, do it how you want it to be and don't sweat it about how we feel because it's your music not ours.
Sometimes a writer "gets lucky" and 'everyone' gets what they were trying to get across. Most of us either like a song or we don't. One might start analyzing the whys and wherefores years later.
 
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