For two weeks in May of last year, I tried to teach myself how to compose some music. I had a couple of games in production and I wanted to make sure I would be able to provide music for them.
Save for a few drum lessons in high school and standardized recorder use in grammar school, I didn't know anything about music. But with a few internet searches I was able to understand the basics. The most helpful page, a page on key scales, is gone now, but I found a couple of suitable replacements:
http://method-behind-the-music.com/theory/scalesandkeyshttp://www.howmusicworks.org/ I also took a few notes, in case anyone else wants a starting point:
Quote:
Chords have to do with keys, a scale of seven notes from lowest to
highest. Sometimes there are eleven notes, but they have to be the
right ones.
All notes being played in a key have to track along that key's scale.
If a note leaves this range, it sounds "out of key". It has literally
left the range of notes that define the key.
Major chords for keys are three notes: the base note in the key,
another note four steps up, and another note seven steps up. Because
it is three separate notes, this is known as the key's "triad".
Minor chords are the same, except the second note is only three steps
up instead of four. The difference is subtle but striking--it's called
a dominant chord because it wants to land on a major chord to resolve
it.
This time, I wasn't paying as much attention to the key scale as I
should've, so it sounds a little discordant, where some notes are
going out of key.
REMEMBER: To find notes, use famous song:
Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do (The last "Do" is the first note in the next octave up)
A Key chart is attached.
(
http://www.nofna.com/key_scales.png )
That got me going on something resembling the right path.
For composing software, I used
Little Sound DJ, in ROM form. It is a steal at $2; totally worth it. This allows you to compose music using the Game Boy sound chip.
Other interesting choices are
Famitracker, which allows you to compose music directly for the NES, and
TFM Music Maker, which which allows you to compose music in the style of the Sega Genesis/MegaDrive sound chip. Both are free.
Here's my final experiment in a series of nine, a short loop:
http://www.nofna.com/gb9.mp3