「果てのない旅」(最弱テイマーはゴミ拾いの旅を始めした。OP) orchestral arrangement

[@radomdude2839]

Hi, I've been following your work lately, and I am wondering how you can create all these beautiful compositions. Can you tell me resources and the methods to learn? I would really appreciate the help. Thanks for the amazing work as always.

[@syncopika]

Hi! Thanks so much as always for your kind words :) I really appreciate it, as well as your interest in how I make my arrangements! The tools I use are: - LMMS (but version 0.4.12 specifically because I'm too used to it and I think I had issues working with .sf2 files with the newer LMMS versions and was too lazy to figure out why lol) - free soundfonts you can find on the web. There's some good stuff at soundfonts.darkesword.com/ and www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1200140. I load whatever soundfonts I want to use into LMMS with the built-in Sf2 plugin and enter notes into the piano roll manually. If you'd like you can also try my piano roll web app @ syncopika.github.io/piano_roll_browser/ to get a feel for working with a piano roll. There are demos there that you can experiment with by moving notes around, changing their lengths, adding or subtracting notes to make new chords, etc. See how those changes might affect the feeling of the piece. As for creating the orchestral arrangements like this one, I usually start by just transcribing the original song using a piano soundfont (my fav is the Steinway D from Equinox Grand Pianos - see www.polyphone-soundfonts.com/documents/10-pianos/262-equinox-grand-pianos). My goal is to get a simple foundation down first, so that's just copying the melody and bassline. Then once you have the foundation, you can add more instrumentation, flesh out chords based on the bassline, and add your own ideas to it. And that's pretty much it! Just listen, copy, change stuff up however you like. The more you do it, the easier it gets I think (though depending on the song or piece, hearing the notes of the bass or the melody can be tricky and require many re-listens). You'll also get better at picking out chords and identifying progressions intuitively I think the more you practice transcribing music. Sorry that was so long; I really hope that was understandable and possibly helpful! Apologies if it wasn't. Please feel free to ask any more questions. :D

[@radomdude2839]

@@syncopika Thank you so much for answering. This seems to be a bit difficult as I am a beginner, but I will try and play around with it. Thank you again🙏🙏