Hey everyone,
I have been working on this track for the past few days quite intensely and I finally feel like it's finished (99% anyways).
I'm quite happy with the results but I'd love to hear your comments and feedback
Thanks for listening
Edit V2
http://soundcloud.com/jaycay/a-new-frontier-v2

 

Wow, i love it man. It brought me goosebumps

If you may give me your permision to spot some things for some suggestions... i would suggest you to bring down a little the riser on 1.17 - 1.20 area like 1.5db or 2(or use a shelving eq on the riser and bring down some of the highs) so the higher freqs of the transition will get smoothen up a lil bit.

Also the drums starting in the 1.53 area, their fill-ins are good but the region between start and end of the drum loop sounds a bit fixed, like you would've played them on a very similar velocity value like they would lack enough round-robins , which i think i'm wrong. Every drum shot sounds a bit different one from each other, but i feel the difference being like too subtle and it implies a static feeling. Try to increase a bit more the velocity differences between drums shots to sound a bit more organic, but don't over do my suggestion, try to keep the same epicness feeling.

If you used compression on the drums, check your gain reduction and make sure it's not too much compressed (because it would be another possible reason of decreased organic feel)

Anyway, overall i just love it. It really engaged my feelings while i was listening to it. Would you have the trust to provide me a download link? It's too valuable for me to leak it anywhere. I'd love to add it to my workout music library, which i listen to enhance my mood while i workout.

 

Thanks for the feedback and the kind words, I will go back and change some of the things you mentionned.
As far as compression and Round Robin you're right, I used Cineperc (which is known to lack in the Round Robin Department) and I did use compression on the drums, it's the first time I used compression on orchestral drums. They lacked a bit of "tail" so I compressed them a bit to blend everything together. Maybe I went overboard with it.
You're a veteran on this forum, I trust you with a download link, no worries. I will send you one once I've fixed some of the issued you mentionned
Anyways, thanks a great bunch for the feedback, this is really what I needed to finish it 100%

 

If you want to increase the tail of the drums, use a transient shaper instead of a compressor and just play arround with the "sustain" parameter until it suits your needs.(but pay attention on the output meter at the same time and make sure you match the levels so you don't get an unwanted increase in volume while you're tweaking the sustain)
I don't know which transient shaper/designer you have, but most of them are great, even the freebies like dominion signal modelling device

 

Thanks for the suggestion, I messed around with Transient Master for a bit but it distorted the sound a bit too much for me so I ended up fixing the issue another way, a more "natural" way.

There's so many mic positions in Cineperc and yet I couldn't get a big enough sound to my taste (sounds dry no matter how much you pump up the different surround mics) so I created my "own" surround mic: I created a send signal with a big hall reverb (with a slight stereo enhancement) and sent the Percussions to that channel, that way I could keep the original sound with its attack and just add the extra depth and give these percussions some tail. It definitely sounds less static now and blends wayyyyy better with the rest.
Some people would say it's too much reverb but I think it really works well here especially since I'm going with a "space" vibe on this one.

I adjusted the velocity of the percussions as you suggested so that accents fit better the track (and more round robins at the same time).
I also adjusted the transition you talked about, it's true that it wasn't very smooth especially in the beginning of the transition so I slowly increased the volume as well as a high-pass.

Thanks for the constructive feedback man, it really helped. Let me know what you think about the track now
http://soundcloud.com/jaycay/a-new-frontier-v2

 

That's great!!!
The drums are great now and i really like the trick you did with the reverb send. The drums feels more glued to the other elements and it sits just right. Also about the reverb amout, there's no problem with it as long as everything is controlled, the rest is only about taste(some people may like more, other may like less)... pretty subjective, but personaly i like how you just did it this time.

Make sure you don't forget to provide me this wonderful piece.

Take care man!