littlewierdo, please accept my sincere apologies! I mean it. This is a good community!

I was rude to you and you shouldn't judge others because of me. I will be removing my comments as soon as I finished here...

 

It really is.

I commend you for that.

 

The question, how did you get it to sound so real?

Here is the secret with orchestral composition. While we have many amazing sounding libraries to work with, they are not perfect. Many sound synthetic, even for as real as they sound. Probably the biggest issue anyone will face with these libraries is, what I call the "sucking" effect. This is where a note is played and another note immediately follows that note and there is an appreciable volume decrease at the start of the second note, hence, the sucking effect. The secret to fixing this is...

Dynamics!! Use them. Orchestral music has a natural eb and flow to it. Strings swell. Brass swells. Woodwinds add sparkle. When you listen to music, woodwinds are not necessarily heard distinctly, but if they arent there, there is something missing. When you listen to the third verse after the key change, the winds add a special touch, they give the sense of flying.

Also, listen to orchestral music. Turn off the monitor, stop scrolling on FB, and actively listen to what the composer is doing. Listen to key elements. What did they do with the woodwinds? How did they make the strings sound the way they do? How did the composer separate the chording structure of all the different instruments? When are thirds being used? On this note, here is a tip, only one or two instruments should ever be playing the third in a chord, and when they do, it should be subtle, the instrument undetectable. Anyway, the point is, how can you know whether music sounds good unless you are familiar with it?

Lastly, one of the mistakes every new orchestral composer makes, not every instrument needs to be heard or distinguishable. I make heavy use of woodwinds in the first verse, but can you hear them? Not really. But they are there, adding nuance for the big brass and string swells.

Bonus tip, learn to layer. Some libraries are not good by themselves. They might need help. No library is good for everything, some libraries are good for highly specific cases. Many people for example, love Cinesamples Brass because it can really cut through a mix. Sometimes however, you want more subtle brass that has that more "royal" sound, enter Orchestral Tools or the Native Instruments Orchestral libraries.

Bonus tip 2, if it doesnt sound right, use dynamics. Quickly have the sound turn down over the course of one beat if you are getting the sucking effect I described above.

Bonus tip 3, Look up Daniel James on Youtube.

 

Great tips, thanks for your contribution. I'm sure that everyone here will agree that even if you are not (yet) a pro, you obviously know your stuff and might become one soon.

 

Admittedly I've struggled with the "Suck affect" myself once or twice... Please share any tips that come to mind, your Jedi methods are welcome.

Thank you for these tips!

 

I've been removing part of the comments that were not related to the music, but hey, if you wanted reactions about the music only, why did you posted a video with written statements that are quiet able to call polemics to say the least?
You say that you are "hugely disappointed" by this community, but honestly you received much less negative/off topic reactions than than I thought you would.
Given the content of the video, at the contrary, many members have controlled themselves not to say what they think.

 

Dynamics and understanding velocity layers. These are both key. Velocity layers are different timbres that each instrument is recorded at. Vienna Special Editions have 3 velocity layers for the Coronet for example. Use a velocity of 88 and the timbre sounds completely different than 89. So, if I want a note to have a certain tonal quality, I find a velocity that has the tone I want, then use main volume to make it louder or softer. You may have to use the modulation wheel instead, for libraries that use the mod wheel for volume.

Other more expensive or complete libraries, have more velocity layers. My Special edition libraries, while they cost me $2000, have a rather limited selection of velocity layers, but makes up for that in more articulations than any other library in this price range. Its usually a tradeoff. If I purchased the more complete libraries from Vienna, they would have more velocity layers.

This is also where layering is helpful. That thing about some libraries not being good at everything, some of that has to do with release or attacks, that sometimes can be overcome in the settings that come with the library, for example, Orchestral Tools and Cinematic Strings, but other libraries, there is no such luck.

 

impressive peace of art

 

Last edited: Aug 23, 2019

As a Greenland citizen I would love to have this song as national anthem.

(PS. if someone is interested we are selling a moon crater, a black hole and 1billion tons of solar magma too)

 

You are 100% correct and to be honest, I had to restrain myself a bit so I wouldn't trash anything or anyone as you just wrote.

In the end, what matters is the music, only the music.

 

I haven´t rated you tune/arrangement @littlewierdo because of various reasons.

The movie you added to "your" tune is (imo) political. It exalts the US military and the United States as if they are always fighting fair wars without even benefiting from the same - especially economic and geopolitical.

You´ve made an arrangement of a very simple old and well known scottish tune nearly every kid in the western world knows, there´s not really something spetacular new added to the tune in your arrangement and it´s bit dull imho.

Strings in the silent passages do not really sound quite like a real orchestra but more as a digital orchestra - which it is... but Im sure you can fix that.

It might looks fancy with a movie added, but I´ll suggest you share you music only in the future, so you´ll have feedbacks only on music and not on the movie.

Cheers

 

This is not a press release piece, I am not being paid for my work, this is not sponsored in any way, this stemmed from a music teacher asking me what reverb is. I played the original coronet used in the piece by itself with and without reverb, using the Konerthus concert hall in Vienna impulse responses. It sounded so stunning, I decided to write music to it. It then turned into video. I spent almost two months on this.

 

Last edited: Aug 23, 2019

Music says things better than I can...

 

I am a fool who deleted Berlin Orchestra (10gb of from sister site.) by playing just one midi from my song. I thought if it can't sound good with my midi then it's no good at all. the track is good. I wonder how I'm going to get 48 gigs of ram though jk. BTW which DAW and midi can u give it away to poor musician like me.

 

It isnt hard to find again. As to DAWs, try Reaper. Very affordable, $60, also available on the sister site if you cant afford it. By the way, Reaper is better than Cubase Pro in many ways, if you are only looking at the DAW itself. Cubase Pro brings alot of other things to the table that extend outside of the basic DAW, but if you are just looking at a DAW, Reaper is actually better in many ways.

Often times, its not the sounds themselves, but the time spent massaging the sounds we have that make them sound realistic. You dont need the biggest and best libraries to make convincing music, you just need to be willing to spend the time massaging what you write.

Biggest tip I can give, watch streamers like Daniel James on Youtube. Pay attention to what they are doing. Mike from Cinesamples has done some nice shorter streams of live composition as well. Look at how they work, look at what they are doing.

The biggest problem is, this is a craft. It requires more than just music theory, it requires how to technically make things sound good. Really sit down and get comfortable with a library. Learn how MIDI actually works. Programs like Orb Composer dont work well out of the box, there is a reason no one has written software that algorithmically writes music in a convincing manner, because it is hard. Practice is the key, practice, time, and patience.

Also, if you arent aware, EastWest has something called composer cloud, $20 a month I think. This gives you access to their entire sound library. If you dont believe that EastWest is a good library, you just havent heard someone that has taken the time to really massage the sounds and make them sound good.

For $80 worth of software, you can be writing music straight away ($60 for Reaper and $20 for EastWest).

 

you got me all wrong. I watch Daniel James and I also make music with FL studio k'd. so I know basics and stuff and also I've released some stuff. actually I can't afford shit. that's why I'm trying to move out of country let's not talk about that and make this offtopic.

 

I thought I might respond to this, after taking some extensive time to research this.

1. Political, no need to discuss this, if you saw it as that, that wasnt really my intention, and the closing quote should have been removed, this was my mistake (one that has not been used against me to argue this point by the way, but I am intellectually honest enough to admit that if my intention was not to make this political, that quote should not have been there).

2. This is not a Scottish tune, this is an American tune. Through about an hour and a half of searching, I have found no basis of this originating from Scotland. I have found suggestions that suggest Newton may not have in fact written this based on slavery or the music sung by slaves, but no hard evidence to prove this.

3. Nothing spectacular or new added, well, I dunno, I disagree, I dont think I have ever heard Ostinato strings used for the third verse, nor have I ever heard a nod to William Tell with trumpets used in the third melody. I have also never heard America the beautiful follow immediately after Amazing Grace, going into the Star Spangled Banner, followed by the last stanza of Amazing Grace, so, I dunno, this statement actually perplexes me. I will agree, there is nothing new or innovative in the first two verses, and strange as this is, I guess Im going backwards here, the entire idea of 12 bell tolls laid under the taps theme is something I have never heard before. There is alot of symbology both musically and visually that I used. There are specifically 12 bell tolls for a reason, Ill leave it to you to think about why I might have done that, given the context of the subject material. More on this in point 6.

That third verse also has woodblocks and is played in the style of racing horses. The woodwind chirps is also something I am very proud of. So, yea, Im not sure how the claim is that there is nothing new or innovative really adds up. Have these things never been done to music? Of course they have, but Ive never heard them done to this specific tune. To claim there is no originality is actually kind of insulting.

4. If you found it dull, coolios, I respect that.

5. Strings in the silent passages... where specifically? If you are talking about the opening, yea, thats because they are meant to sound digital. They are much more bright than normal strings. I used an electronic sound that came with Albion One in the opening along with Fluffy Audio Dominus choir.

6. The video wasnt about theatrics, it was about adding to what I was trying to say. The opening quote from Lincoln really explains and sets up why you are hearing taps at the beginning of the piece. The 12 bell tolls add levity to the piece. There is even a, as one person that objectively listened to this said, what sounds like a wrong note coming from the choir in the opening taps theme. This is purposeful, to add a sort of hint of an underlying problem, it is foreshadowing if you will of the back third of the work.

Everything in this was carefully thought out and planned. I orchestrated every bit of it to have meaning. Another person who watched this that is in the film business said, he has watched it three times and picked up little subtle things that he didnt notice before. Some things he noticed that were in the video, other little details in the music. That is how it was intended. To those who have an open mind, you will see details that you didnt see before, little nods to things that were not apparent. This isnt bragging, this is just how I designed it and the nature of art. Put alot of attention to detail and there will be little things people wont notice on the first watch / listen. The art that tends to last through time is that which adds new meaning every time it is watched.

I wanted to give a thoughtful response, and that is ok if you found it dull. Not everything is for everyone

 

Last edited: Aug 23, 2019

Thread closed.