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EIS Student Examples

Tried my hand in some 90s Videogame Castlevania style based on a reference track, which is mainly 3 parts stitched together.
Very cool to see and hear EIS coming together on paper and then in the final "mockup".

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/illusionist-dance-mp3.18624/][/AUDIOPLUS]
 

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  • Illusionist Dance.mp3
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Just leveraged some of Book V for a small cue - render from Sibelius with Noteperformer.

Reason was that somebody needed a 32 bar cue with Flute and Piano in E Major - I think it turned out ok and that it was worth sharing :)

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/piece-for-solo-flute-with-piano-mp3.19749/][/AUDIOPLUS]
 

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  • Piece for Solo Flute with Piano - Full Score.pdf
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  • Piece for Solo Flute with Piano.mp3
    1.6 MB · Views: 95
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"diatonic" inversions FTW! Nice work, Mat! It's pretty, it's elegant, it works. I think you can swap piano for harp as an alternate "arrangement"... flute and harp lay together really well, ask Ravel. :) Very nice work!

Mike
 
Really great ideas...Alexander these are a thing called equal Interval runs, first part are single line runs. Second part are equal interval chordal runs. It will make more sense if you read the notes while listening. There are many separate ideas with no continuity (on purpose).

Lauri, you may wish to fix the 3 tones together.
 
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Craig, I really, really liked that big band example! I'm trying to write a big band style remake of a piece from one of my favourite video games, and this kind of style and energy is exactly what I want to emulate. Do you mind if I save the video from YouTube and analyse it with a fine-toothed comb?

Did you play in all the parts yourself after notating in Sibelius, or did you choose to directly import the MIDI from Sibelius and then tweak everything in Logic? I'm wondering what it took to get the feel and energy just right.

Also, what brass libraries do you use for jazz/big band? This is a gaping hole in my library that I need to fill!
 
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Craig, I really, really liked that big band example! I'm trying to write a big band style remake of a piece from one of my favourite video games, and this kind of style and energy is exactly what I want to emulate. Do you mind if I save the video from YouTube and analyse it with a fine-toothed comb?

Did you play in all the parts yourself after notating in Sibelius, or did you choose to directly import the MIDI from Sibelius and then tweak everything in Logic? I'm wondering what it took to get the feel and energy just right.

Also, what brass libraries do you use for jazz/big band? This is a gaping hole in my library that I need to fill!
I didn’t see this to now, sorry. I played everything in, no quantizing. Some of it is in Sibelius and I play it in and other parts I know book 9 well enough I can figure out the parts w/o writing it down. Most of the brass in this is Sample Modeling and Audio Modeling. Happy to send the video.
 
I didn’t see this to now, sorry. I played everything in, no quantizing. Some of it is in Sibelius and I play it in and other parts I know book 9 well enough I can figure out the parts w/o writing it down. Most of the brass in this is Sample Modeling and Audio Modeling. Happy to send the video.
This is brilliant info. I have had my eyes on the Sample Modelling and Audio Modelling stuff for a while, and I think I'm just going to save up for the complete bundles and go for them. I'll PM you my email address so you can send the video!
 
I recently finished Book II and thought I'd post some of my exercise doodlings. Be aware, these are all just short exercise phrases that I wrote as part of the course (so over the last six months or so, I've written probably 200 or so of these phrases).



EIS has been a brilliant experience so far. A well-structured and practice-focused dive into what makes sound sound good. I know interest in EIS around here waxes and wanes (as does the forum opinion of it). What I really love about the course is how it has forced me to confront the fact that writing good music is about hard work and practice, just the same as playing an instrument. The course is better compared with going through weight lifting training, or learning an instrument, than in "magically unlocking" some next-gen theory that will instantly make you John Williams or Hans or something.

That having been said, Spud was clearly a savant when it came to sound and its application to making music, and he absolutely offers a unique way of thinking about harmony and music that allows for very effective organisation of all the available harmonic resources. He's just not interested in giving you the 5-lecture version that will be nothing more than an idle curiosity.

To put this in context, this morning I played the melody from a kids' action TV show I loved, made back in the 60s/70s (so, before my time!). I have never been able to figure out the harmony of this piece properly (I like to work intuitively, from memory, rather than transcribe as listening). Today, I instantly played the piece on the piano, with full and (certainly to my musical memory/feel of it) correct harmony. I couldn't believe my hands! The things I've learnt just in Book II of EIS absolutely made my natural understanding/instinctive inner ear kick in in a way that it could have not done before. That's not just EIS being a good 'theory', it's EIS being excellent musicianship training.

So thank you awfully to Spud for creating the course and apprenticing as many students as he did. And thank you to his musical descendents who continue to pass on this most excellent and wonderfully idiosyncratic music education.
 
I recently finished Book II and thought I'd post some of my exercise doodlings. Be aware, these are all just short exercise phrases that I wrote as part of the course (so over the last six months or so, I've written probably 200 or so of these phrases).



EIS has been a brilliant experience so far. A well-structured and practice-focused dive into what makes sound sound good. I know interest in EIS around here waxes and wanes (as does the forum opinion of it). What I really love about the course is how it has forced me to confront the fact that writing good music is about hard work and practice, just the same as playing an instrument. The course is better compared with going through weight lifting training, or learning an instrument, than in "magically unlocking" some next-gen theory that will instantly make you John Williams or Hans or something.

That having been said, Spud was clearly a savant when it came to sound and its application to making music, and he absolutely offers a unique way of thinking about harmony and music that allows for very effective organisation of all the available harmonic resources. He's just not interested in giving you the 5-lecture version that will be nothing more than an idle curiosity.

To put this in context, this morning I played the melody from a kids' action TV show I loved, made back in the 60s/70s (so, before my time!). I have never been able to figure out the harmony of this piece properly (I like to work intuitively, from memory, rather than transcribe as listening). Today, I instantly played the piece on the piano, with full and (certainly to my musical memory/feel of it) correct harmony. I couldn't believe my hands! The things I've learnt just in Book II of EIS absolutely made my natural understanding/instinctive inner ear kick in in a way that it could have not done before. That's not just EIS being a good 'theory', it's EIS being excellent musicianship training.

So thank you awfully to Spud for creating the course and apprenticing as many students as he did. And thank you to his musical descendents who continue to pass on this most excellent and wonderfully idiosyncratic music education.

Couldn't have said it any better! He really changed the way I look at music.
 
Spud probably saved my music career. I was a jazzer and needed to learn more than that and Spud was there for me to learn from after suggestions from my friends whom I had no idea had taken the course.

Nice and varied work Modal Realist. My guess is there are a few OOD's you could suss out but all in all very impressive. It reminds me how much information is in Book 2 and it is easy as one progresses through the course to forget book 2 but it may be the most important one.

As far as the forum's opinion of the course, only those who have never taken the course put it down and of course they can't possibly know what it is.
 
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