Election Night Coverage Feedback, Please

[karafinman]

https://www.taxi.com/industry#listing-S220618CM

Here is my track:

https://soundcloud.com/user-913241419/y ... al_sharing

[Paulie]

The orchestral sounds are not good enough quality for this... the bar today for brass and strings is so high right now.

Also, generally speaking, be sure to remove extended silence at the beginning of tracks. Sounds like you had a full bar of silence at the front.

Paul

[timothycook]

I think the tempo is kind of slow compared to the references.

[Casey H]

Sounds more like Star Wars/Raiders action/adventure to me than election night news, though I admit the lines overlap. But it's well done. I don't know about the sounds per what Paulie said, I'll leave that to others with that expertise.

[funsongs]

"Mood-wise" - the composition sounds on target; so, that's a huge plus (+1) in TAXI listing terms.
How to get it up and over the bar, per Paulie's comment, seems to be the consensus.
Let's tally the votes, and check the results.

[karafinman]

Paulie, this is East West Hollywood Orchestra Gold, using Opus Player. The melody is a combination of Hollywood pop brass and Fable Sounds Broadway Lites. It's not the samples, it must be me. Do you have any advice such as effects, mixing, etc. to make them sound better?

[Paulie]

Paulie, this is East West Hollywood Orchestra Gold, using Opus Player. The melody is a combination of Hollywood pop brass and Fable Sounds Broadway Lites. It's not the samples, it must be me. Do you have any advice such as effects, mixing, etc. to make them sound better?

The most important thing with orchestral sounds is to record them with the inflections that real players add. When the brass comes in, the notes are all the same velocity and duration, no variation in dynamics, no swells or volume shapes to the phrases. The brass articulations need more attention as well, don't use one patch articulation for an entire section... short notes need to sound short, long notes have a different attack, and the volumes vary based on the phrase.

Also, the mix sounds fairly mono to me, it would be nice to hear things spread out some more. Pan the instruments as if you are at an orchestra concert, there are plenty of sample seating charts out there you can use as a reference.

Last thing, figure out which instruments or section are the main focus of each phrase. If it's the brass, then bring the string sections down a bit, and vice versa. Right now it sounds like all instruments are playing forte the entire track, it's like everyone is shouting. There need to be more dynamics and phrase shaping.

Hope this helps.

PC