The End (Hybrid Orchestral)

[lestonal]

BradNice to meet you. I'm Les, and the rest is more.You have a good ear for production. Whether these samples came prepackaged or not, the attack and gain on most of the instruments is just about perfect.....except the string sections. There was something about the strings that really rubbed me wrong. It was not the notes you chose to play or how they were performed i.e. the melody, but rather the samples. Instantly, from note one, I did not prefer the string sound. No fault of yours of course unless you can afford better software, and at that point I would have to question you.In the first 30 seconds you have that ever so cliche in and out of the digital drums. Not a thing wrong with that. It works right? This is good for dynamics, but at the same time gives the listener that privelege of predictability that something more powerful is on its way, and as we soon find out, it is. But, you could have transitioned them just a tad bit better. As is, it's an obvious in and out rather than a blend, if that makes sense to you. This is a mixing issue and nothing more but some of the noise during those few transitions need work on. It's obvious in its current state as a`punch in punch out.The ideas of this track are endless and I hear many, many paths to take. Those strings, although written well in the arrangement, simply need a better treatment. By treatment, like I state above, BETTER SAMPLES. Most software allows you to get down to the nitty gritty of attack ratios, gain, and compression. These strings need some work. More depth, and without question more attention to the attack and release. Around 1 minute you kick it into high gear. Very cool of you and this sets the stage for potentially a powerful melodic song. I can easily see this is nowhere close to being finished, so here you sit. Where to go? Me, well, I would take this song to the vocal realm. You have my attention. You have the climatic build up. You have the emotional entrance into something.. ..but what? Where do you go from here? Personally, I would go vocal. All the way. This reminds me of material that started surfacing in the mid 90's musically and even more in arrangement. So what have we decided? You need to work on your sample library. No question about that. You also have a masterpiece in the making, but that of course is up to you. I would not keep this as an instrumental piece at all. Like I said before, go vocal. I hear so much potential in this it almost upsets me I don't have control over it. We need a strong lead vocal, female background vocals. Think operatic and definitely climatic, which I think you have a solid control of already. To grab my attention with just under a few minutes of music really says something on your part. I see the stage being set, but where is the performance going to go? Show me.Let me know when you have this piece completed. I am really biting at the bit to hear its completion. I love this kind of powerful arrangement, especially done right. What you have currently is the preview, the tease. You have the audience and you have their ears, now, let's see where you take it.Great start. Now build.

[crs7string]

Les,Reading a comment by Brad earlier in this thread, he seems to be using East West Orchestral samples for this track. Their libraries seem to still be the high standard for strings, so I don't think upgrading the samples is necessarily the issue.The East West stuff has a lot of articulations and that seems to be the learning curve part of their libraries. Which articulation(s) do you use for a phrase, and does a particular phrase even work with the section choosen. Mazz frequently refers to playing the strengths of a library and avoiding the weaknesses. This is a skillset in and of itself, and is acquired by really learning a library. That is a journey unto itself with 30,40 and 50 gig libraries now very commonplace.Chuck

[mazz]

Brad,Sounds nice. I like the way you blended the electronic percussion and the orchestra.One of the things that I heard with the strings was with the legato line they were playing. There's a sound in sampled strings that sounds like the players are rearticulating the note and doing a swell before each note, kind of like changing the bow direction with each note. In the "real" world, the string players may not actually do that, depending on how their parts were notated. In fact, they may play more than one note per bow direction and you really may not want a swell on the beginning of every one (or as one friend of mine referred to it "that telltale sucking sound". That's not to say your sound sucks, but that sound resembles a reversed sample that sounds like it's being sucked back in on itself).Later you play a faster legato line that doesn't do that so I know you have the articulations to pull it off. Experiment with the different legato articulations and, in fact, switch among them during the line. I often will put one of those swelling, vibrato-y articulations on the last note of a line to give it some drama and transition to the next section.Another thing that will give the strings a bit more life is to really think about your accents in the short articulations and use velocity to do the accenting. It's cool to group notes according to accents. For instance, if you're playing straight eights, accent every 3rd or 5th eight note or accent offbeat chord changes. Don't quantize to 100% and play every part by itself and then tweak the track. No real orchestra plays exactly in unison, which is one of the things that makes an orchestra sound "real". Even in the best orchestras, part of the charm is hearing everyone struggle to stay together. In the best orchestras, they're just better at it.Of course, you have to adjust the start times when you're doing this hybrid stuff in order to keep the orchestra in the pocket with the loops, but that's part of the aesthetic of this style and it sounded fine in your piece.Good work, just keep tweaking away on those articulations. If you're using the Play version, all of the legato and short articulations that used to be in two different Kontakt instruments are now in one big Keyswitch patch, which is very convenient. If you were to see one of my orchestra tracks, you'd see keyswitches all over the place.And yes, play to the library's strengths. There is no one library that does it all. In fact, I've seen videos of Nick Phoenix, the inventor of the East West orchestra, in which he says he will layer long and short articulations, like for fast runs in the strings. Whatever it takes.Nice piece!!!Mazz

[bucyboy]

Nice Job, Very well done! Do you have more posted?