Online Sequencer Forums

Ladies and gentlemen, grab your (imaginary) dicks into the musical weld because I'm holding an Artcore workshop for those who want to attempt playing around with the style.

(I know I named this Artcore Contest in the past, but I doubt enough people will join so I'm rewriting this as a workshop instead.)

For those of you who are new to the site, whenever I refer to Artcore, I mean the distinct hype-based piano style that I often incorporate into more of my recent piano-based songs.

But in actuality Artcore is an unofficial EDM genre that is popular in Eastern rhythm games like Cytus, Deemo, and osu. Mainstream artcore is often described by the following traits:

Very fast pace music, like an adrenaline rush.
Structural piano incorporates mostly impressionistic notes, but some artists lean towards classical.
Distinctive rush piano, often playing around with complicated chord arpeggios and other abstract improvisations.
Distinctive synth-based instruments, or electric sounding violins.
Drum and bass like percussion.
Always changing. Artcore does not have to strictly comply with one key signature.
Any other special features can also be included into artcore, like bass drops and etc.

Because of the versatility of Artcore, it is extremely hard to pin the genre as a whole down. But the point of this challenge is to discover how you guys see the genre.

Here are the requirements for me to review your song:

Must be an original song.
Minimum note count is 500.
Uses at least the "rush piano" artcore mechanic. The sequence can be all in Electric/Grand Piano.
Good standing terms with the Online Sequencer community.

If you guys are stuck on how to get started, I have a list of references you can copy listen to so that you can better grasp how the music works.

Not all of these references are artcore specifically, but I find them classy enough to be able to incorporate some element in the tracks.

The Inconsistent Artcore Tutorial is still inconsistent. You can jog your musical mindset with this, but as of the moment I have not thoroughly elaborated on it.

Ayato (Downloadable MIDIS!) transcribes a lot of pieces from the composers below, so you can refer to them if you want to see how the artcore works more clearly.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1frxbW...cyIO5elXGw

Phyxinon is a really divine pianist considering they have transcribed and played some pretty dense artcore tracks with flying colors. I didn't know they had used Synthesia until now, so I'll post the playlist below.

(No Downloadable MIDIs, unfortunately.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mp4OSap...Hv0JayYN6D

xi is probably the one artist that a lot of rhythm game fanatics have heard of. His style is the most basic artcore style you can get.
(Also Freedom Dive sucks, so don't listen to it because I'm saving you a lot of time by not doing it.)
Mix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO4fTczi...brtQDAXAQz

Sakuzyo / 削除 is my personal favorite of the list because they compose an extremely diverse platter of EDM/piano music.

Last Dance (EDM): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2jUaR5U...joDr4P_sd9

14 Scores: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFlAPqy6...jASIsy1kYN
Piano13 (includes MIDI files!): https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6TrKN...FZXSm0yVGc

penoreri isn't that well known among the Cytus/Deemo fans considering I've just stumbled upon them a few days ago. Has a style similar to xi, but is still very astonishing.

Preserved Valkyria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gar9A4OZKZ4
Everlasting Message: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5leVql3RVnA

Lemm is a VOCALOID producer, but I've listened to one of their albums monograph and the temporal feel of the tracks are very heavenly.
(My personal favorite is Blind, some very pleasant piano and a sick bass drop, but the rest are good too! Well maybe with the exception of Accel.)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6TrKN...W5GdzlwalU

- The TL;DR Section -

The Computer Friendly TL;DR:

The Not-So Computer Friendly TL;DR (But better.):

Here's my entry:

may update later-

My Artcore Entry

my entry... Laifless

First round of advice for those who posted. Please note that I'm comparing your entries to what musically feels right and not to other people.

Crimson
<I'll get this to you before 2 AM.>

XStep
I will base critique off of [url=

]this version[/url] since you already fixed some things that I pointed out to you earlier which makes my job much easier.

The main point of this review is to touch base with distinguishing the rush piano. The rush piano is a finicky balance to play with, you have to make it both dominant and background noise at the same time.

For your entry, the rush piano lies deeply as background noise and that it's hard to pick up if people want to try to "closely listen" to your song. The foundation chords overshadow the rush piano and although foundations should be fairly dominant to guide the song, you still need to let the detail of the rush piano be audible as its own individual thing.

There are two things I can suggest to fix this problem. One of them is changing the rush piano pathways to Electric Piano since EP has a stronger bite than GP to help it get some attention. It also makes it easier for you to edit both layers, since you can just lock/unlock the EP and GP respectively to focus on one layer in case you don't like something.

Two, allow some rush piano notes to go higher than the foundation chords. Higher notes always end up being more dominant, but of course use this sparingly since you need a balance of the two layers.

There are a few measures that appear really messy due to this lack of distinguishment, if you can attempt to sort the rush notes out, it might be easier to elaborate on what can be fixed in those measures.

I'll comment on the less dense part of the song once I figure out what to say for it.

My initial rating on the song so far is 7/10. The organization of the song is rather decent and when ignoring the rush piano you are able to emphasize the rhythm of the music with the wide chords. The sequence of course needs some cleaning up, but there is nothing so far I can say to add on. Do note that it's your first draft of the song so I can't compare it to anything yet to give you an accurate score.

Phaliyah Dragneel
<I'll get this to you before 2 AM.>

My entry:

How's this for a start:

(10-09-2017, 05:54 PM)LucentTear Wrote: [ -> ]First round of advice for those who posted. Please note that I'm comparing your entries to what musically feels right and not to other people.

Crimson
<I'll get this to you before 2 AM.>

XStep
I will base critique off of [url=]this version[/url] since you already fixed some things that I pointed out to you earlier which makes my job much easier.

The main point of this review is to touch base with distinguishing the rush piano. The rush piano is a finicky balance to play with, you have to make it both dominant and background noise at the same time.

For your entry, the rush piano lies deeply as background noise and that it's hard to pick up if people want to try to "closely listen" to your song. The foundation chords overshadow the rush piano and although foundations should be fairly dominant to guide the song, you still need to let the detail of the rush piano be audible as its own individual thing.

There are two things I can suggest to fix this problem. One of them is changing the rush piano pathways to Electric Piano since EP has a stronger bite than GP to help it get some attention. It also makes it easier for you to edit both layers, since you can just lock/unlock the EP and GP respectively to focus on one layer in case you don't like something.

Two, allow some rush piano notes to go higher than the foundation chords. Higher notes always end up being more dominant, but of course use this sparingly since you need a balance of the two layers.

There are a few measures that appear really messy due to this lack of distinguishment, if you can attempt to sort the rush notes out, it might be easier to elaborate on what can be fixed in those measures.

I'll comment on the less dense part of the song once I figure out what to say for it.

My initial rating on the song so far is 7/10. The organization of the song is rather decent and when ignoring the rush piano you are able to emphasize the rhythm of the music with the wide chords. The sequence of course needs some cleaning up, but there is nothing so far I can say to add on. Do note that it's your first draft of the song so I can't compare it to anything yet to give you an accurate score.

Phaliyah Dragneel
<I'll get this to you before 2 AM.>

When is "before 2 AM?"

its improved if u havent listened to it since last saturday. no. last thursday.

Made before I had an account.

LucentTear

Crimson

XStep

Phaliyah Dragneel

LucentTear

Nt45

Guest

Phaliyah Dragneel

Phaliyah Dragneel

Frank