Forums » Smalltalk » Sheet music?

I know people use songs from Youtube as character theme songs, I do too, I just wanted to touch base if anyone else used this method. I'm thinking of starting to use sheet music scores of songs to depict a better perspective of characters. To explain, I think writing a song from sheet music with instruments adds to a better feel than just hearing the song in general. I was wondering if there are some instrumental fans out there or people who use instrumental music as theme songs since I am certainly considering it!

I prefer instrumental mucis for that sort of thing. I feel it better conveys the aspect of a character being highlighted without having to grasp at straws to connect the character themes to the lyrics. The vagueness of meaning without words lets the viewer make connections on their own, and that can sometimes lead into interesting perspectives on the character.

Then again, I'm a scummy musician so I'm a little biased.

I pretty much compose all of the music for my characters myself. I mean it's hit and miss because I tend to gravitate toward dark minor key themes, resulting in compositions much darker sounding than they should be for the character, but it feels more... bespoke than relying on music from others.

As for trawling youtube for lyrical pieces, that can often be a hit-and-miss thing. You could find a song that perfectly matches one character, whilst struggling to find anything close for another. Instrumental music is more subjective, however - more open to interpretation, and therefore easier to match to a character.

I recently wrote this and when it's done, I'm certainly thinking of using this a theme song for one of my characters.

I've got ambient music for Nessa, Ardira and Faeranduil, but from games that I think represent the tone of their characters, rather than using songs with lyrics. I think music (or a tune) with no vocals is less distracting! And like already said forcing lyrics onto a character on top of that can sometimes, at least in my opinion, be grating.

I've not tried composing my own scores because I'm not very musically inclined (I can draw, but I'm more of a visual person creatively!). It does sound awesome though!