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03-20-2024, 12:38 PM | #641 | ||||
Overshadowed Eagle
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I didn't actually realise we were trying to rhyme daring/Beren; those are very different sounds in my accent. ^_^ I would quite like to keep "Finrod", because I've just checked, and it would be only the second time Beren uses his name to his face - and the first is qualified, "Finrod Elvenking" back in the Appeal. I quite like the idea that, right at the end, Beren's finally able to relate to him as an equal. No, Finrod! O loyal friend, let hope abide! But Beren! How can/could my life be justified? Okay, I really like 'abide', and 'friend' rather than 'king'. And it pulls 'justified' in and keeps the name exchange... the only thing we lose is Finrod talking about deeds or actions, but that gives us that ambiguity: he's either saying 'I'm rubbish, I should just die' or 'how could I live knowing I let you die', and there's no way of knowing which. hS
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Have you burned the ships that could bear you back again? ~Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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03-20-2024, 10:59 PM | #642 | ||||
Blossom of Dwimordene
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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03-25-2024, 07:49 AM | #643 | |||
Overshadowed Eagle
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hS
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Have you burned the ships that could bear you back again? ~Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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03-26-2024, 12:45 PM | #644 | |
Blossom of Dwimordene
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It is done!
I hear the last horn's dying call
I wasn't sure how to best cut out the score at the end and played around with some alternate endings. This is another prime candidate (music starting from "No, Finrod"). There are a couple other variations too. What are your thoughts? Any preference? I think I am most pleased with the raging against the dying of the light in the 3rd section. I am happy overall too. My main goal was to make the song dynamic and avoid falling into an endless dreary dirge for the whole thing, and I think it ebbs and flows enough that it still sounds alive. Quote:
Over the next couple weeks I wanna try to record the actual singing to test it out and maybe come up with the 2-voice harmony lines.
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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04-08-2024, 09:16 AM | #645 | ||
Overshadowed Eagle
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Cripes, I need to start thinking about animation, don't I? The easy route is just to directly run-on from the end of Captivity and keep the prison backdrop, but it feels like a very long time not to change the scene. Um... I don't really have any other ideas, though. Is there another background that could fade in during parts of the song? I don't think the Throne of Day making an appearance would really work. hS
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Have you burned the ships that could bear you back again? ~Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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04-09-2024, 10:07 AM | #646 |
Overshadowed Eagle
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"Who is Thu/
To hinder work that is to do?" I've never been happy with the Sauron portrait. The design yes, absolutely, I love it; but not the pose. So I decided to go right back to basics and just rip off Tolkien's own drawing of the Lord of Wolves: I love the shape the cloak makes down from the arm, and by turning his head (the lower picture) we can keep the eye contact. It does mean I'll need a second, mirrored image if he ever shows up on the right-hand side (which I think he will when duelling Luthien), but that's just a matter of moving the scar. No biggie. Still no thoughts on how to make the Prison Duet more visually interesting, though. I considered a window, but, um, they're supposed to be in a dungeon, not high up in moth-calling territory. hS
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Have you burned the ships that could bear you back again? ~Finrod: The Rock Opera |
04-20-2024, 08:46 AM | #647 |
Blossom of Dwimordene
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I like the new Sauron!
Meanwhile, I lost my voice to a cold and haven't been able to experiment with harmonizing. And today will be Leaving on an Adventure for a bit, so no computer. But! I did fiddle around with the ending, and have Option 3. Thoughts? The goal in all cases is to have "doom fell" fall into dead silence, without any music. Depending on how dramatically slow the last line gets, the final note here might be a bit short or a bit long. Also, we can put a slight "fade out" effect on Audacity to make it a smoother stop. Also, I started dabbling with Duel again. ^.^ Looking back at it, I really like some elements, but in terms of creating electronically-generated music, it was quite immature. I am adding two more instrument lines to fill it out a bit, and rebalancing the volumes so that you can actually hear the countermelody. I really like how it's turning out so far.
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
04-26-2024, 11:16 AM | #648 | ||
Overshadowed Eagle
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As for me, I decided to try something today: (Direct link if it doesn't load/to larger version) I'm fairly pleased with it as far as it goes, sausage fingers aside. Whether I have the skill for animation is arguable, but what I definitely don't have is the patience: this took an hour and a half, and I couldn't face any more. The original plan was to try and animate the Ballad to Amarie, but no, that is not happening. Still a fun experiment, though. hS
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Have you burned the ships that could bear you back again? ~Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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04-27-2024, 10:50 AM | #649 | ||
Blossom of Dwimordene
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That is incredible! That's amazing! What a cool idea. I love it!
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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05-15-2024, 02:43 PM | #650 |
Overshadowed Eagle
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How shall I stay/At throne of day...?
[Mesmerised witnessing ensues] I know you're still thinking about a harmonised version, but I decided it's been 8 months since we last had a video; we deserve something. So this is officially a first draft of the Prison Duet video, but I'm not planning to change the visuals. It should be pretty easy to replace the audio if and when we have a new version. Which means, unless I'm mistaken, that we now have a complete first-pass run of the first 19 songs! It is literally only the three finale songs to go. hS
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Have you burned the ships that could bear you back again? ~Finrod: The Rock Opera |
05-30-2024, 09:20 PM | #651 |
Blossom of Dwimordene
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I have really been dragging my feet... Sorry
I have finally made a sung version. It is not great, but I didn't have another day to get another pass at it. It shows me four things. Firstly, the harmony is a bonus but definitely not a must, and can be easy or complicated; I would say this is medium. Secondly, for the final "doom fell", I sung it the way it felt natural to me, and then just faded out the excess music to match the singing. I think this works better than trying to force the singing onto the music. Third, my mic is dying. I don't know what I did with it. I used it for Aria, and it was amazing. Then I used it for Luthien & Feanorians, and it was already giving poor quality. And now this - it's absolutely unpresentable. I would get better quality from phone. It's good to know before I do any actual recordings, but it's a real shame. And finally, listening to both recordings, I really really like the lyrics we settled on for the last stanzas. I have been thinking about how to best get a "sketch" for the harmonies to you, and figured it would probably work best if I just sent you a separate Audacity file with my sketches and my recording for reference. So look out for an email. ^.^
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
07-11-2024, 10:30 PM | #652 |
Blossom of Dwimordene
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Lest spammers alone haunt this thread
...the Duel is now complete! Again!
This version is so much more full-sounding. I am pretty happy with it. It's curious to see how my music style changed over the course of this project... Funnily, I feel like though I got better at balancing multiple instruments, I don't think I could recreate the musical complexity here. Some silmarils are only made once, as Feanor would say. The thing I'm not sure about is if there was a slow-down somewhere at the end. I tried playing this against the sung version on youtube, and I don't think there is, but it's hard to tell if there's something subtle when both musics are playing. Would have to test it with just the voice. But other than the last few seconds, it should match beat for beat exactly what was in the original version, the timing should be exact. Edit: just thought to mention, this version will probably sound louder compared to the previous and will probably need volume adjusted relative to the vocals. Where shall we wander next? Luthien vs Sauron? Doriath Duet? Truth?
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera Last edited by Galadriel55; 07-12-2024 at 04:36 AM. |
07-17-2024, 09:48 AM | #653 | |
Overshadowed Eagle
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I should be able to put it into the video fairly easily, at least once I draw New Sauron, buuuut... I'm not entirely happy with some of the lyrics. ^_^ A really obvious one, why did we go for "Could save the one who wasn't born" instead of the far more natural "Could save a soul who wasn't born"? That's weird, right? I did make a start on the harmonies for the Prison Duet, I promise. Turns out I need to insert them into the full recording to get the pitch to match, but I can do that. I just need to... actually do so. But it will happen, and so will new-graphics versions of the Act 2 songs so far (again, once I draw Sauron and the Minions). Where next... where do you want? ^_~ Doriath would be easiest to animate, and Truth probably hardest, but that just makes it a challenge. The Showdown might be the most fun to sing for me, because Sauron, but Thingol is also pretty fun. So yeah, as usual I defer to you (sorry-not-sorry). hS
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07-30-2024, 11:24 AM | #654 |
Overshadowed Eagle
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I did stuff!
First off, I think (hope) I got the harmonies working. My difficulty here has been that I'm not a singer - I'm a sing-alonger, so I either wind up singing along with myself-as-Beren (wrong tune), or you-as-Finrod (wrong pitch). Like I say, I think I got it, but let me know which bits I didn't. ^_^ Secondly: Who is Thu/to hinder work that is to do? A digital sketch rather than a finished version, but I'm relatively happy with it. He's not malevolent enough, and the outlining makes him look like he's melting, but you can see the shape of it. Once I've gotten him pinned down, I can update the Duel video to go with the new music. (All this brought to you by me finally realising - duh - I can move my files to the laptop rather than needing the main computer. I never claimed to be smart...!) hS
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07-31-2024, 02:29 PM | #655 | |||
Blossom of Dwimordene
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I figured I'll start by sketching the remaining songs. Truth I had from earlier. Doriath Duet I rewrote on a new time signature so that we could do the overlapping note when Thingol's part transitions to Melians. And then I started making it faster and faster, to see how far it can go. I can't shake the feeling that this song needs more speed than we gave it initially, but it's hard to say how much is too much. This isn't the fastest that I can sing it, but speeding it up more makes it a challenge to be comprehensible. Thoughts on the speed? Now, Showdown was quite challenging to sketch, especially Sauron's part. He sort of... talks musically, more so than sings. I am mostly sure about first and last notes, but everything in between just doesn't sound right on paper but will probably be fine when sung/spoken naturally. If all three sketches pass the singability / pitch / tempo check on your end, I can start on them. I've had Doriath and Showdown stuck in my head alternatingly all week from working on them, I might start with one of those two if you have no preference.
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Listening through it, paying special attention to the harmonies: Unwitting - sounds right
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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