Hey,
I thought those were both really good tracks for someone just starting out, certainly .a lot. better than what I was making at 15.
Melodies;
Well written, solid track (don’t listen to lili…), and obviously it’s your music so don’t listen to me either if this doesn’t make sense, but here goes…
The intro melody is good, but without something backing it up it comes across, (at least to me), a little weaker than I think it could.
The implied harmony, as I see it, is A minor, G major, F major, E minor, repeat. (or at least that sounded right to me, whatever).
So if you want to reinforce the melody, here are some typically things you might do
-
stick a low instrument playing A, G, F, E, under it, or
-
maybe chords along with the bass?, and if you want to get ridiculously fancy, you can
-
make all the G’s G#'s during the E minor chord and it will make the resolution back to A minor even stronger. Or even
-
take this last idea and make the G#'s A’s for half the bar, then pull then back down to G#'s just before you start over again.
Here’s the quick sketch of what I’m talking about…
http://soundcloud.com/the-land-elevator/harmony-example
http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http://soundcloud.com/the-land-elevator/harmony-example width=100% height=81[/embed]
None or these ideas are remotely original, but hopefully it can give you some idea what you might do under a melody in future tracks.
Also, this (A,G,F,E), is such a common harmonic idea that whether or not you put it in, that’s what people are going to hear. So throughout the song, it might be a good idea to make sure the notes you are using for the melody fit that harmony. (Like at 0.18 to 0.38, it sounds good, but it’s implying a different harmony than what the melody was doing a second ago)
I’m too tired to write anything meaningful about the other song, but I actually thought that one was pretty solid.