Mostly Involving Robots: The Log

No, not at all. Theoretically, you can end any measure on whatever you want. The rules aren't hard and fast, after all. What you're really trying to do is work with varying amounts of tension. Since you're working in C major, C is the root note, and therefore the least tense. When you end a measure (or stanza, or run, or whatever) on a C, it feels the most relaxed, least tense, or most consonant (if you want the technical term).

The problem with this is, if everything starts and ends on the root note, the song is going to sound boring. You need a little tension to spice it up. Ending on the fifth note of the scale (G, in the case of C major), or the fourth (F) is a little more tense, but still pretty consonant. The other notes are more tense to end on (or more dissonant, if, again, you want the technical term).

In terms of developing a melody versus a harmony, theoretically your melody can be any notes in the scale over any chord progression in that scale; you don't need to tie your melody so closely to your harmony, as you've done in the town theme you posted. Even notes outside of the scale (commonly referred to as "blue" notes) can work! Of course, this is all a matter of personal preference, which is why music is art and not science, but play around, there's a lot of room for experimentation.

There are, too, certain chord progressions which are pretty amenable to just about any melody. The weirder you get, the more you'll have to tune your melody (unless avant-garde is what you want). These chord progressions show up in pop music all the time. Wikipedia actually has a pretty good article that lists some common progressions. You might want to use that as inspiration.

The most common is some variation of I - IV - V (1st note in scale, 4th, 5th). Try making a repeating progression of C, G, F, G and then writing some kind of crazy melody on top of it. It should work.

You could also try the sensitive female chord progression, which wikipedia just taught me about!

[edit]I couldn't help myself!
(Percussion helps a lot any time you want to make a song exciting, as you might during a battle. Also, sorry it isn't midi, but I threw this together in garage band before I realized it wouldn't export midi.)

Although it's MP3, I'm nevertheless shocked at the LEAPS AND BOUNDS the quality jumped, while remaining so clearly the same song.

That's incredible. And helpful, too! And a little inspiring, because it seems like I'm getting close, and just need to bring it all together.



I'll try this when I get home.

This is what I cam up with

I kind of want to enter the Halloween Contest just to use this

We'll just say I took this weekend off. I'm only now getting sick (I think it's just a sick stomach, and will pass in 10 minutes anyway), but I'm retroactively blaming it for last weekend of inactivity .

Wow, I fell out of working on this for nearly a whole week

Came back with a song.

http://www.castleparadox.com/songlist-display.php?song=378

I was experimenting a bit. I kind of like the result, really.

I'm doing stuff!

Love that lightbulb-turret-esque robot. Looks adorable.

That is all.

New song!

I like this one enough to maybe work a church in. It was pretty much as-is, but not very good until my girlfriend poked me to experiment with the instruments.

It makes such a difference!

Trying to make a demo of this as a Christmas present for my girlfriend. It's getting me to work! Made nine new tiles, a handful of variety tiles (Floor. Floor with a crack in it. Floor with plants on it, etc.), and a new enemy sprite which will utilize an idea stolen from inspired by Vikings of Midgard.

All I really "need", is a theme for the dungeon. I have a simple enough plot to carry through the demo (it'll be a self-contained adventure, that will be part of a larger whole later on), and then it's just writing NPC dialouge, designing the actual dungeon layout, puzzles, battles, and a little scripting. And I have all the way until about a week from now to have a playtesting release

Don't know if I'll post the demo on SS, it'll probably be too short. But at some point I want to have a release that I'm not shamed of.

Though...It's weird how Wizard/Thief/Lich is going from horrific shame to mild inspiration. That game was made in a single six hour session, and really didn't have much less content than MIR's demo will (It's a standard town and dungeon demo, but I'm going to make the dungeon much more interesting, and longer. Really just quality up). There's really nothing stopping me from staying up another few hours and putting this out tomorrow, except wanting it to be at least mediocre .

By scaling the game down to a very small scale for a Christmas release, I've gone from "I need this to make the game playable" to "I need this to make the game better". It's an empowering feeling. I've got a lot of work done today. I'm a little energized still, but it's time to sleep. I'll put in another few hours tomorrow.

My new year's resolution is to at least have a demo out.

I made a big sprite! My first!

I even made a video of it

http://www.viddler.com/explore/Momoka/videos/8/

The audio's not too good, alas (I'll shout next time), but if anyone wants to look at it and tell me where I go wrong, I'd be obliged.

So I'm starting again on trying to write a G-major song.

And only now, after many failed attempts, do I realize "G" scales start on G, not C.

God dammit

I wrote a song! I've lived in the real world with a job for so long, that it felt [i]so much fun[/url] to write this.

Their are instruments meant solely for MIDI, and I never even touched them before! This is hardly my best song, I think, but I'm really energized now. I didn't really analyze this, I just kind of threw a bunch of stuff at the sheet, and deleted bad-sounding bits.

ETA: This song is WAY worse than it was yesterday, and now I want to delete it off CP.

Still, had fun making it, learned something, and will try more thoroughly tomorrow.