antler

Mix sounds quite good to me. Could be my setup, but the lead guitar sounds slightly panned right in the first section. Something to try might be a tiny bit of master bus compression (slow attack/release, shallow ratio, and fairly low threshold) - it should help gel everything together a bit. If the compressor pumps, try feeding the sidechain with a version of the mix that's been passed through a HP filter, maybe set to around 150Hz. Some compressors have this option built in, otherwise you might have to be a little creative with routing. Excellent guitar work by the way!

Love the bluesy sound Freddy! As others have mentioned, the vocals are competing with the horns. I would suggest spreading them out a little in panning; maybe the trumpets on one side and the saxes on the other, but not hard left/right (unless you're going for an LCR [Left-Centre-Right] mix). You might want to try some complementary EQ too: try boosting somewhere 3-4K on the vocals, while cutting the same frequencies slightly on the brass; it should help the vocals stand out a bit more.

There's definitely a sunshine sound to this one - well done!

As much as I would like to find out more (I love Sound Yeti's instruments), it doesn't look like I can even log in to my own account (no username/password boxes) Any further details on DV8 Larry?

I thought about it. It looks good and also a bit more flexible than the previous ones, but the thing that put me off is that it's effectively a loop-based instrument [nothing wrong with loops; just personally not my thing]. Picking up something from OTS or AmpleSounds seems a bit more flexible to me.

That's kind of UJAM's ethos though - to make musicmaking as simple as possible and to that end, three synths for ~$33 each could be seen as quite good value. You could achieve the same results with u-he synths, or PhasePlant for example, but it'd cost more both financially and time-wise (though you'd also have more possibilities). The same could be said of e.g. their drum plugins - while you could get the same results with e.g. Battery or Superior Drummer, the UJAM ones offer an easy and relatively cheap way in.

Thanks for listening and the kind words @Old Joad, @Douglas Kirby, and @David Sprouse It's legit - or at least as legit as the spectrum analyser plugin in HitFilm Pro 16 can make it; I didn't compare it to e.g. Voxengo SPAN. I set its range to 20-12,000 Hz (it looks like that's where most of the noticeable movement is), with a 200ms duration.

Some people like updates, some don't; the state of health of XLN's Addictive Drums 2 was a reasonably colourful discussion the last time it was brought up. Just remember: if updates to your DAW plugins come out and you don't think they're useful, no-one's forcing them to be installed. The plugins without patches could be down to no-one being available to look for/fix bugs that aren't noticeable without being pointed out.

Thanks for listening @Mark Stow, @Larry T., @jack c., @bjornpdx, @treesha, @Tim Smith. I'm glad you liked it. Thanks Jack - I might revisit this with a supporting orchestra at some point. Thanks Bjorn - it's a (surprisingly versatile) desk bell(!). The main audible tone is actually a backing sine wave (also in the library), but the bell overtones transform it into something quite special. If you mean the pics, they're usually free stock photos from Pexels, or Pixabay. The videos (and spectrum analyser) are put together using HitFilm (picked it up cheap from Humble Bundle one year).

A beautiful tune - thanks for sharing Bjorn.

Hi Doug. Sounds good to me. I like the changes in sonic texture between the different song sections - how the prechorus opens up with the arpeggiated chords; and the crunchy chords in the chorus.

Thanks - I uploaded to both SoundCloud and YouTube, and submitted the SoundCloud link. I generally link to YouTube as it seems (to me at least) to have a higher sound quality for playback.

A good/bad thing (depending on how you look at it) about some of the other scoring competitions that have taken place recently was that the competition runners asked for entries to be put up on YouTube/other social media sites, so you could have a look at the other entries (the titles had to be hash-tagged); it was kinda fun to see what other people had come up with. My entry's in this thread Something else I had previously created using only Desk Bell is here Comments/feedback about either are welcome, but please do so in their respective threads so that this thread doesn't get hijacked.

Looks to be up and running again

A few questions about the gift cards: Can you buy multiple at once? Can you spend multiple at once? Do they expire? Can you spend them over multiple purchases? e.g. If I have a £25 card and I buy something for £20, do I still have £5 to use on the next order; or does it disappear? Any clarification would be much appreciated @Time+Space

Hi Tim. I like this - the piece has a very nice overall flow and direction. The dynamics in some of the instruments surprised me on a few occasions. You mentioned that the instruments (or at least violin) have an unpredictable velocity arc - is there some other way of controlling it (e.g. legato time, or a midi cc)? Alternatively, it might be an idea to either use a volume envelope or gentle compression (not too much for this type of music) to help smooth it out. I saw your comment in your other post about wanting a more through-composed piece. It's certainly true that there's a lot more repetition in film music, as the score writers would want to give each visual theme and musical theme, and repeat/build on it. However, I might suggest that you don't worry too much about repeating a theme once or twice in your future pieces; something like an ABA style probably wouldn't feel too out of place. If you don't mind me asking, what orchestra did you use? It sounds good.

Hi Allan. Great song - love the contrast in texture (playing style and panning) between the verse and chorus.

Some excellent guitar skills you have there Makke, as always. Love the tune - to me it sounds a bit like a variation of the 12-bar-blues with a cool surfing vibe. Well done!

Hi Treesha Very creative - I don't think I've ever heard Desk Bell like that before! Nice tune - best of luck with your entry.

I always assumed it was some variant of ethereal

Another winter-themed piece, attempting to capture the atmosphere of frosty winter mornings. Comments/feedback welcome

Very nice tune Tim. A small criticism is that the flute and strings are quite tightly meshed. It might be an idea to try what Wookiee suggested, or maybe some complementary EQ: find the flute's principle frequency and boost it slightly, while cutting the same frequency in the strings. If you have a reverb, you could try giving the strings a bit more predelay (by routing them through a delay plugin) than the flute to help 'push' it into the background a little.

Sorry yes - the KeepForest ones are pricy. When I wrote my response, I was thinking more about the Ethera series which is more modestly priced, especially during the sales periods.

Thanks Tom My competition entries were all good fun and learning experiences anyway - plus, I never knew that I could crank out music so quickly before 😁

To be fair, Keepforest did update SFX Designer Toolkit to v2. Downside of going Player is that their libraries would probably go up a little in price, though they might offset that with number of sales.