Positive Instrumental Queue

[SamGreene]

My piece: Ready for anything - https://rcrft.co/reel/GreeneMeansGo/ready.

Please let me know if it the edit is good - ending ok? Tried to make it usable from the middle as well.
Hows the mix? Any other advice?

Thanks for your help.

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POSITIVE INSTRUMENTAL CUES are needed for TV COMMERCIALS by a High-End Music Library with countless credits in Feature Films, TV Shows, and Commercials.

NOTE: We recently ran this request as TAXI Listing #Y191212FR. The client LOVED what we sent them, but they didn’t get enough material, so they asked us to run this request again to see if we could find them even more. If you submitted to #Y191212FR, please submit different material this time around!

They’re looking for Instrumental Cues in All Tempos that would fall within the stylistic wheelhouse of the references we got from our client:

Positive Ad-Friendly Examples (Dropbox playlist) https://www.dropbox.com/sh/khf81tqld290 ... jMPva?dl=0

Please submit well-composed Instrumental Cues that have an "advertisement-friendly” sound and vibe. Your productions should be driven by organic-based instrumentation and should have some development as they progress.

The key elements that make this Music Library happy are:

Cues can have a Positive mood (they can be “warm” and/or “motivational”, but ALWAYS positive).
Cues MUST have good edit points.
Cues must be Library "friendly" (i.e. - a clear theme right from the start. Proper mood and pacing).
Instrumental Cues can have an ABAB structure, but certainly don't need to (check out the referenced examples).
Prominent leads/solos are not needed. Each theme/motif should be found more in the arrangement/chord progressions (again, listen to the examples).
High-quality compositions, tones, and performances are all required.
All submissions should be approximately 2 minutes long, give or take. Non-Faded, Buttoned endings are preferred. Broadcast Quality is needed.

[lesmac]

Hey Sam! This is a good arrangement with some nice elements to it. I am just at home listening on laptop and headphones. I remember the referenced playlist from a while back now.

A few first impressions:

I'd drop the piano intro and start at 0:10. See what others say. Maybe shave some lows off the piano to give a brighter feel.
Drums and bass have some boom to them too. I'd do a Warren Huart and take a bit of 350Hz out of a few instruments, organ, drums and anything that doesn't speak down there too.. You don't have to scoop everything out but do enough to clear out a bit of mud. With the toms sweep an EQ to find the fundamentals and boost then cut around them.

The organ and the plucked instrument have some drive but I feel that could come out a bit more with maybe some saturation/bit of grit in the mid to high mids.

There is a little bit of movement in the guitar part that comes in at 0:50. I'd accentuate that and push out to the edges more. The strings that come in late in the piece could be spread out and set back a bit.

All in all I think it just needs a bit of clearing a few lower frequencies, some spread of some instruments and some punch added to the drums and the instruments that drive the track along along.

My two cents.

[gregorym]

Nice track! I like the composition and the way you arranged this. The way you bring in the shaker after the initial statements is really tasteful. The composition is there. The mix is balanced really well, but it needs something to bring it to life, mix wise. Is the guitar real? If so, it's played so well it sounds a little stiff. I stop short of the dreaded too midi comment. I don't think you have a midi problem, but something in the mix needs something. I can't express the problem. The more experienced members will probably be able to articulate what's going on in the mix and give you instructions to enhance this beautiful track.

Really nice work! I tried this listing. It wasn't easy for me.

[SamGreene]

Hey Sam! This is a good arrangement with some nice elements to it. I am just at home listening on laptop and headphones. I remember the referenced playlist from a while back now.

A few first impressions:

I'd drop the piano intro and start at 0:10. See what others say. Maybe shave some lows off the piano to give a brighter feel.
Drums and bass have some boom to them too. I'd do a Warren Huart and take a bit of 350Hz out of a few instruments, organ, drums and anything that doesn't speak down there too.. You don't have to scoop everything out but do enough to clear out a bit of mud. With the toms sweep an EQ to find the fundamentals and boost then cut around them.

The organ and the plucked instrument have some drive but I feel that could come out a bit more with maybe some saturation/bit of grit in the mid to high mids.

There is a little bit of movement in the guitar part that comes in at 0:50. I'd accentuate that and push out to the edges more. The strings that come in late in the piece could be spread out and set back a bit.

All in all I think it just needs a bit of clearing a few lower frequencies, some spread of some instruments and some punch added to the drums and the instruments that drive the track along along.

My two cents.

Thanks for the great advice, I’ll try some of that out. When you say ‘push out to the edges more’ do you mean give it some top end EQ?

[SamGreene]

Nice track! I like the composition and the way you arranged this. The way you bring in the shaker after the initial statements is really tasteful. The composition is there. The mix is balanced really well, but it needs something to bring it to life, mix wise. Is the guitar real? If so, it's played so well it sounds a little stiff. I stop short of the dreaded too midi comment. I don't think you have a midi problem, but something in the mix needs something. I can't express the problem. The more experienced members will probably be able to articulate what's going on in the mix and give you instructions to enhance this beautiful track.

Really nice work! I tried this listing. It wasn't easy for me.

Thanks for the feedback. I hope do another 1 or 2 of these this weekend - came out easy, opposed to the tension and dramedy cues I took a shot at.

Guitars and shaker are real. Electric is using an amp sim. Everything else is hand played on a keyboard and sometimes partially quantized. I’m guessing you are referring to the electric guitar at the end - but maybe not?

[SamGreene]

New version up here: https://rcrft.co/reel/GreeneMeansGo/ready

I think I implemented all the suggestions and more....

Mix 2
Chopped off piano intro.
Tuned the toms to (E and A).
Pumped up the low end on drums and bass, and scooped the mids.
Added a lower doubled acoustic lead.
Changed piano from grandeur to new York grand (Phil's).
Created reverb bus and sent most instruments.
Lowered ending strings and added a micro shift plugin to widen.
Brought bass in immediately at ending.
Added a little decapitator to several instruments.

Mix 3
Tweaked some tom timings in Mix 3 and lowered piano level.
Raised string level at end. Got buried by other instruments coming up.

Mix 4
Eliminated tom eq boost and dropped level a little. Toms were way out of control!

I used the feature of iZotope Ozone mastering that lets you A/B to a reference track. I used one of the references from the listing and found my low and high end severely lacking. Very glad I tried that feature out - love it. Just got that plugin last month and need to dig into it.

I think the ending electric guitar part could be better. May take another few cracks at that later. Not sure if the low end is too much. Will listen outside the studio soon.

Thanks so much for the help so far and any other suggestions.

[gregorym]

The guitar part I was referring to is at :40 (49 in mix 1) or so. In mix 2 onward, it sounds really good now. Perhaps it just needed to be louder. I see the wave form is bigger than mix 1. Did you bring up the guitar in mix 2? Whatever you did, I like it much more.

Good luck with this. I hope you get the forward and the pickup and the placement.

By the way, isn't that interesting how some music writes itself and other times it's painful. It's like "B" what!!! "G chord" huh??!!

Good day my man,
Greg

[lesmac]

You have improved things a lot mix wise. The toms [and kick and snare] are still problematic for me. What the toms are doing rhythmically don't seem to enhance the drive of the track. At the moment they seem to make it less cohesive to me.

They are overpowering the kick. I'd focus on the kick, bass and snare to get the definite forward momentum and then augment with the toms

Gotta go new

Good luck

[SamGreene]

You have improved things a lot mix wise. The toms [and kick and snare] are still problematic for me. What the toms are doing rhythmically don't seem to enhance the drive of the track. At the moment they seem to make it less cohesive to me.

They are overpowering the kick. I'd focus on the kick, bass and snare to get the definite forward momentum and then augment with the toms

Gotta go new

Good luck

I get what you're saying. I got the general vibe from the reference tracks that they weren't driving, but after listening to more of them, they span a wide range of feels. I've taken another swipe at enhancing the track. Lowered the tom volume, added some kicks. Changed the drums completely to a driving beat after the break - didn't spend much time tweaking fills, so that could probably use some love. Good change?

update: after listening back to the reference tracks, none of them have a driving beat like this. They are all halftime or halftime with offbeat. Back to work

https://rcrft.co/reel/GreeneMeansGo/ready

[SamGreene]

As I'm presently heavily rendering (Beethoven, again), I can't listen to the track very well, but one tip if you're using Ozone (I do as well): check out Tonal Balance Control 2. It's supposed to be last in the chain, so after the mastering, and let's you compare frequency ranges. Very useful to get a quick view of how your regions are holding up to a specific genre (included in the plugin) or a reference track. There are a few videos on Youtube from Izotope on how it works exactly.

Paul, I've been using the mastering assistant and was under the impression it does the same thing if you have it use a reference track. I'll have to check out that specific module - thanks.