[kuruC]

difficult tuning for "moonflowers".

Listen on Soundcloud.com

[kuruC]

okay i haven't used this in a while cause pretty much nobody said anything so i gave up but here we go

http://tmbox.net/pl/193619

i stopped using SC because it kept reencoding my stuff to 128kbps and it sounded really bad, this is 320kbps mp3

couple of notes

1) this is not mastered (it's in pre-mix phase) so it's sitting around -10db peak which is why it's really quiet
2) vocals aren't in place, intended recipient is vy1v3, starts around 1:09 and is the english horn part
3) not all the levels are right for the parts, still adjusting
4) going to reduce ~1000hz on the cellos and take out some the muddy midranges later as well as boost 4000-6000hz on the violins to increase high freqs. it sounds a little too bottom-heavy for right now even though the bass isn't super aggressive
5) meloB 2 @ 3:47 has been eluding me for a week so i haven't finished it yet. sabi 3 at 4:56 is not done yet nor the outro, you can ignore all of these for now

looking for very specific critique of things not already mentioned above. specific as in if there's something that sounds off please provide a timestamp and an explanation. "it sounds off" or "it's fine" doesn't really help but "the violins around 2:20 are too loud" would be useful. since i've heard this song so much it's getting harder for me to discern things so more ears are helpful

thanks in advance

[Anime on Tuba]

Well, fuck.

I had everything written out for you and then my interent crapped itself when I tried to post. Royally pissed. I'm done for today. Sorry, I'll get to this tomorrow.

EDIT: Thank god, most of it ended up on my clipboard. Tell me if anything sounds incoherent.

I feel like you could use more instrument families. You have strings and some high voice woodwinds, (I think.) but this could be fleshed out with brass and low woodwinds. (If you don't have a brass section... Er, sorry for wasting your time.) It would be awesome if you could make the french horns build into a raunchier sound, leading into 1:00, this could be used as the symphonic version of a sweep effect. (Maybe through EQing and distortion this could be achieved.)

1:48, (And through the rest of the piece.) the snare could be dryer, but that's just my preference.

At 2:19, I'd bring in the brass section, if possible. Probably just trumpet and horn, though. (Seeing as there's already enough bass.) At 2:58, I'd have the horns attack those notes harder.

And 3:10 should be a much bigger hit imo, and then you could strip from there to 3:30 down to high voiced woodwinds. Halfway through the vocal solo, I'd bring in an airy woodwind. (Oboe, Flute.) And at 4:22, reintroduce the brasses, maybe including the trombones. The last hit of the song should be the biggest, like, fff.

This post has been edited by Anime on Tuba: 17 January 2013 - 09:05 PM

[kuruC]

that makes sense, thanks. i've been avoiding brass mostly because acoustica's brass samples were ~awful~ (like worse than everything else). i'm not too sold on sonatina's brass yet but they do sound better. side note: i actually don't really like brass sounds in general quite honestly... i love french horns to death because of their mystic and noble sound, trumpets and trombones and tubas not as much (there is tuba layered in the bass line along w/contrabass and cello but that's it).

i think the main issue is that there's already so much stuff happening that more layers may end up hurting things than helping. i need to really think if i want to do that or not; right now i'm leaning towards no because 1) another 2 tracks (i have to do the staccato and sustain separately because sonatina is a sfz bank, so there are no articulation settings) and 2) a more cramped soundscape (the war drum EQing already took a really long time because it kept clashing with the bassline). i might try layering in trumpets with some other parts to get the quality without affecting the soundscape too much.

snares after 1:48 is the same dryness as beginning... i'll double check though. it was reverbed more for meloA 1 (the mystical-choir sounding part at 1:09) and removed after that.

i agree w/more aggressive french horns overall; i've been conservative on them because i didn't want them overtaking everything else. in orchestras there's a tiny fraction of the brass players as strings because brass packs so much more power. i'll tweak those later.

thanks for the advice, it's rare to get useful feedback around these parts

edit: some other things.

1) sonatina samples come preverbed heavily, so it may not be possible to make those snares drier. this is sort of a huge disadvantage and for another project i'm doing i'm using squidfont, which is 100% dry 96kbps mono

2) a common critique people have for me is my stuff is too busy as-is, so i've been trying to make it less busy. as you can see with this project i sort of failed in that department. anyway more brass is a consideration but i think it would be best to layer them in not make them distinct. adding them in subtly should help the impact of those hits i think

[Anime on Tuba]

Oh, not sure why I thought the snares weren't there. I meant dry as in the sound of the drum, rather than the reverb. iirc, a dry snare is snappy and bright, while a wet one has a longer sustain and has a slightly bassier sound. Then again, I do prefer dry to wet most of the time, so you should make a call on this yourself. I just feel like dry would be better for this piece.

[kuruC]

Anime on Tuba, on 17 January 2013 - 01:56 PM, said:

Oh, not sure why I thought the snares weren't there. I meant dry as in the sound of the drum, rather than the reverb. iirc, a dry snare is snappy and bright, while a wet one has a longer sustain and has a slightly bassier sound. Then again, I do prefer dry to wet most of the time, so you should make a call on this yourself. I just feel like dry would be better for this piece.

yeah i think i'm out of luck on that one orz. the snare you're hearing outside of the 1:09 segment IS how it comes in the sample pack. i'm slowly working with various soundbanks to get a better handle on using tools before springing for something like garritan. sadly at the moment it's actually one of the better orchestral snares i have. i think i'll keep it the way it is, maybe reduce the verb slightly, since it replicates the distance/ambience of a percussion pit. with all the built-in reverb in sonatina having certain parts extremely dry would've sounded a bit awkward so i rolled with what i had