4. Judges like it if you keep the song interesting. Try to change motifs every other pattern or so. Sometimes you'll also want to experiment with lots of random key changes and chord progressions. One of my favorites is going from F minor to C# major, over and over again. If you're really daring, you can also try the opposite approach, which is to make the song really catchy and ingrain it into the listener's mind. Try repeating the same pattern, 8 or 9 times in a row. Good patterns are like fine wine, you can't ever get enough of them.

3. Make sure the song is long enough. Nobody wants to download a 800k tune and then only get 45 seconds of tune! Try making it as long as you possibly can. I usually try to get it to about 15 minutes in length or so. Making a song that long is pretty tough work too, you know. Here's a trick, though... re-use those patterns! In fact, you only need about 5 patterns for a really good song, just experiment with putting them in different orders.

2. Judges like nothing more than hearing original samples. So here's some places you can get those fresh new sounds which will make your friends go, "Hey is that a new WAVE song?"

• Take your pets, squeeze soft parts of their anatomy, and record the unique sounds they make. You can get great leads this way!

• Tape your car's exhaust, loop it, and use it as a drum sample! Heck, use it as a bass sample too!

• Borrow a friend's 1985 Portasound and get lots of samples of that Harmonica patch. It's really groovy if you play it an octave or two above what you sampled it at.

• Sample at 44khz, 16bit, and resample in CoolEdit down to 4khz to save space. This also gets rid of that annoying high end on your samples.

1. Write orchestral. Everyone loves orchestral. In fact, try to emulate every Danny Elfman score you've ever heard. Some people also like to sprinkle in some samples from UNREAL.S3M, but that's strong stuff and I'd be careful.

Until next time...

Necros / Five Musicians - necros@fm.org
16 May 1997