My two latest tracks - "The voice inside" and "A new beginning"

Hey everyone

So here are my two latest tracks, both are completely different from each other. The first one is called A new beginning, and it's a kind of French themed orchestral piece which I was particularly inspired to make after hearing some music by Yann Tiersen.

[link=http://soundcloud.com/user9603240/ali-price-a-new-beginning]http://soundcloud.com/use...-price-a-new-beginning[/link]

The second track is a sort of Reggae Dub track which I was inspired to make after going to see the new Bob Marley documentary at the cinema called "Marley."

[link=http://soundcloud.com/user9603240/ali-price-the-voice-inside]http://soundcloud.com/use...price-the-voice-inside[/link] 

By the way Marley is a really good film and I would definitely recommend it to anyone even if they aren't the biggest Bob Marley fan. So I hope you all like my two latest tracks, I would really appreciate any feedback or opinions that you might have.
 
Thanks
 
Ali

I think you used chord progression for both, so there is a similarity in that respect. However I cannot disagree more with Lynn. There is nothing wrong with the structure of either song. I think "A new beginning" is a beautiful piece. I love the progressive layers. I think "The Voice Inside" has a cool vibe, the Marley voice dub sounds great. Well done.

Orchestration and arrangement.

A New Beginning.  It was described as "French orchestral", so I sat back waiting for strings, brass, etc, maybe a soloist or two.   The first picture I got from what I heard was a young girl sat at her grandmothers piano practising her "party piece", repeating it over and over.  Then someone joins in with a violin playing a counter melody over the top, with a bit of improv,  but there's no melody to play over...
It needs a well defined melody line, however simple, that follows and fits with the chord progession you're using.

Hi Ali, I like "a new beginning", nice and simple. Nothing wrong with that !

Rik

Hey everyone. Sorry I hadn't replied again sooner, I just got home. After reading all of your comments and really thinking about it, I do believe that Lynn is correct, it is simply me who is finding it hard to consider my own music in an objective way. Still though it is very encouraging to read Foxwolfen's comments and to see that the actual feeling behind the music is coming across. The problem with most of my music really is the technical execution of ideas.

I only started all of this about 18 months ago now. Before that I had no experience in music and no musical background at all. I have been entirely self taught as well, as I don't really know any other musical people, apart from a couple of people who play a bit of guitar. Oh and there is my friend Pete who has just let me record his first EP so that's been really good. But really the issue is that whilst I have been getting better at the actual art of music (I hope), my technical knowledge isn't progressing quite as fast.

I have been trying to make a point of really listening to more music and trying to figure out how it all works and how it's put together, but clearly I still have some way to go. On a technical level I have been doing my first bit of proper recording recently, and that has taught me so much more about how to use compressers and equalisers etc. But I think really for my own music, I need to focus more on song structure and progression. It's like I have one good idea for a chord structure or a melody or even just a concept, but then I find it difficult to actually develop the idea further.

Anyway I absolutely do not mind reading negative comments, and to be honest I actually expect most comments to be negative in some way, simply because I'm still really just a beginner (Although of course the longer time goes on the less I can use that as an excuse). But really I'm just happy to hear any kind of feedback about my music, and then try to integrate that into my future learning and keeping improving one project at a time.

Actually whilst I'm thinking about it, maybe I should also post the link to the EP that I have just recorded. This isn't the final version by any means, but I have put it up on soundcloud for now just to see what people think (Also don't worry my friend is totally find with me doing that). So any technical suggestions you might have are much appreciated, as there is definately time to re record some or all of the songs again. This was done using my only microphone, which is a vocal studio cardiod microphone, specifically an SE 220A. The recordings are all single track recordings so obviously that has made it more tricky to get the sound I really wanted. Anyway, I don't know if it's considered good forum pratice to post a completely different project in the same thread as my last one, but still any comments or suggestions would be much appreciated

http://soundcloud.com/user9603240/sets/peter-douglas-ep

Hi Ultrabra. To answer your questions in order: I did use just one mic to record the vocals and guitar and the same time and this went straight into my soundcard. My soundcard is a motu ultralite mk3 hybrid connected to my PC using firewire. The recording was done within sonar and the processing I've done is basically just using an equaliser and a compressor. I also used a noise gate and de-esser a bit but I don't really think I was using either of them correctly. And all of the recording editing and processing was done only in sonar (8.5.3 producer x64bit to be exact).