Do you need some musical inspiration but aren’t sure where to find it? Or maybe you want to further your understanding of music but aren’t too sure what to read? Or maybe you’re just looking for some resources? Well I’ve got the thread for you. Well, kinda lol.
I’m pretty jazz and blues inspired person in my musical compositions for FE8 (which I’ll get around to posting one day) so my advice will lean more towards big band-ish applications than orchestral, but the concepts and resources could absolutely still be used by anyone in their hack’s score. Idk maybe if people want it, I can attempt a tutorial later on jazzy or blues-y composition for FE8.
I’ll probably update this as I find and/or think of more musical info resources.
For some concepts that I know not everyone is familiar with off the tops of their heads, I’ve included an appendix to talk about some things and the history behind them for fun.
Appendix
Lead Sheet
Lead Sheets are pieces of sheet music which will traditionally just notate the melody/form of a song along with the chords along the tops of the measures.
This is what a majority of pop music is written as these days, though its roots are typically associated with being used by the swing big bands of old like Duke Ellington and Count Basie. These usually show music pieces in their simplest form that gets to the point with melody and harmony.
Fake Book/Real Book
Fake Books/Real Books are traditionally a collection of lead sheets put into one compilation for easy viewing. You can often find them filled with a couple hundred pages of one-page melodies and are one of the most abundant book types in any music store aside from etude books.
They were initially made and named by jazz musicians to make fun of players who would take stacks of sheet music to jam sessions, cutting contests, and gigs instead of remembering their set list. Eventually, jazz musicians would use them for personal practice and illegally print and distribute the books of copyrighted music, and you’d often have to buy one in the back room of a shop after hours, or out of someone’s trunk like my father had to. Eventually companies licensed music and legally sold Fake Books, playfully advertised as Real Books instead.
The Jazz Piano Book is perhaps, without exaggeration, one of the most useful books I’ve had at my disposal in composition aside from a Real Book. This book is a fairly comprehensive introduction to music theory if you’ve learned how to read a staff. It starts with introducing basic chords and goes into extensions into the 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths. It delves into piano voicings, voice leading, and harmonies, which are easily some of the most important concepts when composing a big piece with tons of instruments. Along with this version being able to be downloaded publicly for free, it’s basically a free extensive music theory textbook.
VGLeadSheets.com is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a group project of hundreds of transcribed pieces of video game music into lead sheet format. If you want a song in your game and there’s no good midi of it, you can always start it here if said song is in the list. Personally, I think it’s hella useful when making remixes since it presents the melody and harmony in the simplest form possible.
Solfej.io is a website with two main functions: scale lookup and chord lookup. In the scale side, you can either search by the name of a scale or by what notes are in a scale, and it’ll tell you the notes, intervals, and how to play it on piano and guitar. For the chord side, you can also search by either chord name or note composition, and it’ll tell you the notes, intervals and piano and guitar fingerings. Very useful resource if you’re looking for a specific scale/chord and don’t remember the notes that make it up.
RealBook.site is a website that serves as a huge Real Book to draw from. Hundreds of jazz and blues standards are logged here, and you can change the key of them with a convenient feature too. Even if you don’t want to compose jazz for your hack, they’re called “standards” for a reason! Draw upon them for inspiration, or lift the chord progressions to use over your own melody like generations of musicians before you! (Those songs are known as “contrafacts” actually.)