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A weird tipp for some inspiration

This immediately made me think of Zelda's Lullaby (played backwards, it is the theme to Skyward Sword) and Bear McCreary's main theme for DaVinci's Demons, which is essentially a musical palindrome (sounds fundamentally the same forward and in reverse). I never thought of this myself. Now listening to my own stuff backwards.

Thanks for the idea!

It's actually a great way to get new melodies.
 
This is a great tool for developing ideas. In formal circles, it's called retrograde.

Another cool one is 'inversion' - basically flip your melody upside down and see how it sounds. You can also combine both techniques to get even more ideas.

This is a great tip and great to have in the toolbox!
 
Hello,
The main melody of well-known song (at least here in France :)) has been composed like this.
The song is called "Destinée" and its melody is the (quite) inverted melody of the chorus of "L'été Indien" (sang by Joe Dassin and copied from a song called "Africa").


Bach also mirrored many of its melodies inside the same piece.
 
Another cool one is 'inversion' - basically flip your melody upside down and see how it sounds. You can also combine both techniques to get even more ideas.
Also good to know and experiment with. Somewhat keeps the style of what you are "copying". I imagine this to be useful in many cases, for further development of a specific musical theme inside a song and beyond that
 
Yeah, this is a great way to get more mileage out of music you've already written. So, you come up with a cool theme and put it through all this and sometimes other cool stuff emerges.
 
I knew it was gonna be this tip, hehe.

Another one I like is - take two somewhat interesting parts and play them unison, but displace both MIDI events in a random fashion. Suddenly your brain makes some new sense out of it, fills in the blanks and corrects durations and pitches where it's needed.
 
Good tip.

I'm studying digital art along with music in my spare time and I see artists flip their artwork horizontally many times whilst drawing out their composition and in later stages of their artwork too. I guess the change in perspective helps you see things better.

I'm going to have to listen to the soundtrack to Davinci's Demons, I never realised it was a palindrome.
 
MusicJot - on iPad with pen is capable of both retrograde and inversion. Pretty fast software with General midi sound. I use it for sketching ideas and I use it more often than I use Staffpad.
 
Try listening to some music you like while it's reversed!

Might sound strange, but when I do that, no matter if it's my composition or somebody elses, lots of new ideas pop up immediately.

Very interesting idea! I tried it with one of my favorite bands and now the drums sound fucked up, the vocals sound slightly more satanic, and guitars are almost unchanged. It was blackmetal :D.


Good tip.

I'm studying digital art along with music in my spare time and I see artists flip their artwork horizontally many times whilst drawing out their composition and in later stages of their artwork too. I guess the change in perspective helps you see things better.

I'm going to have to listen to the soundtrack to Davinci's Demons, I never realised it was a palindrome.

The "fliptest" is supposed to alleviate the effect of getting "blind" to your own mistakes (especially weird proportions and anatomical mistakes). In audio I experience a similar phenomenon when I export a track to mp3 and listen to it on another device.
I think the digital painting equivalent of playing something back backwards would rather be a more extreme change, like inverting the colors. I can also highly recommend putting a black and white filter over your painting, it's like the piano-reduction of a composition, only it just takes 1 click instead of serious work. If it doesn't work in black and white, it likely won't work in color either.
 
In audio I experience a similar phenomenon when I export a track to mp3 and listen to it on another device.

Yes, this! I sometimes only ever find mistakes or spot areas of improvement when I render to wav and listen on a hi-fi device.

I think the digital painting equivalent of playing something back backwards would rather be a more extreme change, like inverting the colors. I can also highly recommend putting a black and white filter over your painting, it's like the piano-reduction of a composition, only it just takes 1 click instead of serious work. If it doesn't work in black and white, it likely won't work in color either.

Good points!
 
Very interesting idea! I tried it with one of my favorite bands and now the drums sound fucked up, the vocals sound slightly more satanic, and guitars are almost unchanged. It was blackmetal :D.
I actually recommend to focus on not-so-drummy music, the transients of reversed drums indeed are weird! It's mostly about melody, though I also found some reversed rythms / percussive patterns interesting :D
 
Try listening to some music you like while it's reversed!

Might sound strange, but when I do that, no matter if it's my composition or somebody elses, lots of new ideas pop up immediately.

interesting idea, but i don't know if it's for me. music in reverse sounds so freaky, man haha
 
I’m a graphic designer by trade, and if it’s one thing we graphic designers constantly do with everything it’s flipping our work around. Horizontally. Vertically. And inverting its colors (when it’s black and white). Interesting I’ve never thought about this for music!
 
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