Amicus717

Very nice, Wook. Has a slight hypnotic vibe, but also kept me just a bit off balance with the timing and rhythm. And I mean that in a very good way; it is a nice mix of elements, and keeps the listening focused on the music.

An enjoyable listen. 

I like it! Hypnotic and calming, and builds rather nicely. Very enjoyable listen.

One detail that I noticed -- is there a ghost of a hint of clipping or distortion in the right channel at certain parts? eg: I noticed something around the 0:16 to 0:24 mark and a little afterwards. Very subtle and at the edge of hearing, just the slightest hint of crackle...

Great channel. Just watched the video above, and perused a few others. I always like seeing what the pros are doing, and this is some interesting stuff.

Nice post, Bitflipper.

Rob

Hi Justin,

I use Albion One all the time, and have built a sizeable orchestral template that incorporates a good number of Albion patches, especially the strings patches from Albion Orchestra. There are a bunch of different ways to do that, based entirely on what feels right to you, but my current approach is this:

1) For strings I prefer using the individual articulation patches rather than the main group patch. This means I go into the "Individual Patches" folder and load the Sustains, Tremolo, Spiccato/Staccato etc articulations all separately into their own midi track. This is not technically necessary as I believe you can load up the strings main multi-articulation patch as many times as you want and Kontakt lets you control the various articulations simultaneously while only loading the actual samples once. But having each articulation in its own lane better suits my sense of organization.

These primary Albion patches form the backbone of my string section, and I think they sound just great -- glossy and big, with just enough ambience baked in. I then mix and match patches from other libraries to fill in whatever gaps are left over, such as section legatos and special fx patches. I don't much like the Albion strings legatos, as I find they are kind of limited and too low-key for my tastes; and other libraries have much more robust sets of fx and special articulations patches. So I mainly use patches from 8Dio, Musical Sampling and Sonokinetic for these roles. It takes a bit of touchy microphone mix, pan and eq work to get the various patches working together, but it's doable if you're careful. My current setup has the Albion string patches set to a mic mix that uses the decca tree with a hint of close mic to create a slightly closer-than-the-default sound, and then I tailor the other additional stuff to match. I have never gotten the various libraries to match 100% perfectly, but you can get pretty close, and within the context of a full orchestral mix I find that this works quite well.

Albion Orchestra comes with a full set of runs patches, covering different scales and octaves, but to be honest I've never really got the hang of using them, and anyway I have runs libraries from Sonokinetic, CineSamples, Project SAM and Red Room Audio that are much more configurable and easier to use. But admittedly the Albion runs do sound pretty nice and obviously their sound meshes perfectly with the main string patches.   

2) The woodwind patches in Albion are ok, but kind of limited and not granular enough for me - I prefer to use more configurable patches from VSL and CineSamples for that purpose.

3) I have a couple of the Darwin Percussion Ensemble patches in my template, mainly the Easter Island hits, Cymbals and Gongs, and the XXL Percussion patches. They are quite nice (I think the Easter Island Hits are the nicest deep percussion booms that I have in my library). I have found some of the Darwin patches to be a bit twitchy when it comes to velocity layers, so they sometimes take a bit of work in the piano roll view to get everything calibrated properly for the music in question. I tend to get the most use out of the Albion percussion patches when I'm doing more hybrid,/contemporary orchestral stuff. For more classical orchestral percussion, I tend to use other libraries, like NI Symphony Series and CineSamples.

4) The brass patches in Albion One are not my cup of tea at all -- kind of synthy and lacking character, to my ears. I never use them.

The other stuff in Albion One -- the Steam Band and Brunel Loops -- are fun to have around and they see occasional use, but they are not part of my standard template.

These two tracks were done using the setup listed above:

https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/a-song-for-the-trillium-queen-adrielles-theme?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/the-soldiers-hornpipe-ver-4?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Hope this info helps. I don't use all of Albion One, but the parts I do use are pretty integral to my work flow and are mainstays in my template.

Rob

1 minute ago, craigb said:

Hehe...  I couldn't help but be reminded of that absolutely horrible Scorpion King CGI scene from the Mummy Returns in my head when I read this!  LMAO! ?

Oh yeah! Exhibit A...

2 hours ago, JohnG said:

If you do decide to try scanning it in, one of the most accurate I've found (and I've tried a few) is the latest version of SmartScore, SmartScore  64 Pro or for the slightly less well off, the MIDI only version. The full version will additionally generate Music XML which you can import into e.g. Finale or Sibelius.

It will take note of marked dynamics e.g. pp to ff, and also hairpins, etc.

The latest version also includes a piano roll editor which gives you access to MIDI control lanes so you can draw in the dynamics if you like.

I upgraded my copy last year and am very pleased with the results.

Take a look here www.musitek.com.

Yeah, I doubt I'll even attempt it. Really, I just want to watch the music happen on the page while listening.

The score breakout matches perfectly with the double CD re-issue of the Krull soundtrack by La La Land Records, which I also happen to have on hand. So I've been literally sitting down and just listening and following along. Very educational.

Anyway, select pages from this score are so dense with notes, lines and esoteric notational whimsy, that at first glance it looks like bizarro wallpaper. I can see SmartScore taking one look and throwing up a BSOD, just because...

1 hour ago, Kevin Perry said:

 The bluescreen technology shows its age though!

Oh, it does! Mind you, that's almost part of the charm. I'm actually getting kind of jaded and tired of the excessive, realer-than-real CGI that they currently dump all over today's movies. Sometimes it looks pretty good, sure, but just as often it looks plasticky and fake, and breaks the illusion just as effectively as bad bluescreen work from 1983.

56 minutes ago, craigb said:

I like your restraint.  I know I couldn't have resisted making the topic title "Score!!!" ?

Restraint got nothing to do with it. I just didn't think of it. Dammit.

1 hour ago, Shane_B. said:

I've seen scanning software that will convert sheet music to midi. Here's one program. You take a pic with your cell or use a flatbed scanner, load it in, and it converts it to a midi file. Don't know how accurate it is but I'm sure there's something on YouTube about it. 

22 minutes ago, Notes_Norton said:

I tried one of those, and the problem for me is that they quantize all the notes and play them at equal volumes, so it sounds robotic. I suppose for some forms of music it might work, but it didn't work for me. YMMV

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Well, I mainly got the score for the purpose of study, and it's just as well - I can say with certainty there is no sheet music to midi converter in the world that will work with this puppy...barely 10 minutes into it, and I've come across string writing that involved 16 divisi parts across all four sections, and one page that had five bars of music...and five separate time signature changes to go along with them. 

2 minutes ago, Kevin Perry said:

Shame about the film ?  To be fair, I loved it as a kid when it came out, but looking back at it, it was truly awful!

Well, that's true, although it's developed a pretty good cult following in later years and I think it's now seen as a high water-mark for the golden age of 80's fantasy cheeze.

I saw in theatres as a young teenager and thought it was pretty boss, at the time. Yeah, the story makes zero sense if you think about it even a little, and despite the lavishly appointed sets, Krull never escapes looking like a dolled-up soundstage full of bad theatre fencers. But the music is really great, and that helps a lot. It's also a lot of fun to see Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane in pre-stardom roles. 

2 hours ago, Tim Smith said:

Congrats!

That's an awful lot of midi programming.

I may need to learn how to use macros for this one. 

8 minutes ago, Fleer said:

If you like this, check out Albion Tundra and Neo. They’re both pretty pretty good. 

Fleer, are you and Larry trying to bankrupt me? 
 

(I already know the answer is “hell, yes”)

The full score to James Horner’s Krull soundtrack! Released for the first time ever, as far as I know. This baby clocks in at over 400 pages.

One my favorite soundtracks, bought on CD in my youth, and in heavy rotation on my iTunes to the current day. It’s a huge, heavy, full throttle bit of orchestral thunder in the old school style but with modern touches (circa 1983).

For many years, I’ve wanted to know the full details of what went on inside the orchestration for this one — listening to it isn’t nearly enough with this score, as the music is so dense and you can sense there are a lot of things going on that are not immediately apparent.  

Really looking forward to reading through it while listening…

I use Engine only for Eduardo's libraries.

It's pretty bare-bones, but I find it easy enough to use and it gets the job done.

FWIW, the support from Best Service is really great -- I had some issues with the "Ancient Era: Persia" library over the holidays, and they responded promptly and very helpfully.  I appreciate that a lot - good customer service seems to be getting rarer, and my experiences with Best Service have always been good ones.

So I jumped in, got it.

Symphobia is awesome. I really like the new interface and setup, although I never used the previous version, so I can't compare the two.

The overall sound of the samples is freakin' exquisite, and they are so easy to play. I always wondered if the baked-in sound and Project SAM's predilection for combos, multis and blended sections might not work for me, as I like being able to control every element of the orchestration. But so far I find the patches to be really useful and surprisingly effective. 

I can see a lot more Project SAM libraries on the horizon...

20 minutes ago, Yan Filiatrault said:

With Time+Space 15% off code valid on Project Sam products, it could reduce the price even more 

You are right -- Symphobia 1 for $195.76 with code applied.

That's kind a good price.

On 12/16/2021 at 10:31 AM, Reid Rosefelt said:

aka "tomorrow."  ?

Thanks for the news. 

Reid, when you get your Symphobia updated to 2.0, I'd be really curious to know what you think.

Project SAM has got a 30% off sale going on, and I've been thinking of jumping into their ecosystem since forever, and so maybe it's the time to do it.

Anyone who owns Drums of War 1 should check their inboxes for an update notice and a personal code. Says the email: "Cinesamples Drums Of War 1 has now been upgraded to work with the free Kontakt Player 6.6.1+!  As an owner of the original Drums of War library, you can upgrade to the new encoded version by entering your following unique coupon code at checkout"

They have also announced Drums of War 3, coming soon. 

Drums of War 1 page is here: https://cinesamples.com/product/drums-of-war-1

I have eyed the OT libraries for a while -- they're right up my alley, for the most part -- but Sine Player is pretty unappealing. I've used it a little bit, as I have a few of their free libraries and got a couple of patches in a giveaway that ran a year ago. But it did nothing for me, and I really find it clunky and awkward. I much prefer using Kontakt, and I've no interest in dropping a pretty big chunk of cash on stuff that I won't enjoy using, no matter how useful it may be in my template.

I do my midi in Cubase, which I picked up when Gibson shut the doors, but I always do my final mixes and mastering in Cakewalk. And when I help my partner record her V/O work, we use Cakewalk also. 

Cubase's midi tools are pretty much state-of-the-art, but I've never come across a DAW that I find as intuitive or fun to use as Cakewalk when it comes to audio editing and mixing, and I really like ProChannel. So, Cakewalk has remained a key part of my workflow and I fire it up routinely.  

3 minutes ago, Jay Legere said:

Hey @Amicus717 I've always had issues with opus on both my pc and Mac but I've found a way around it. so if you go into the actual plugin in your daw you'll notice the database button beside your libraries button. Click that go to your desired instrument/sound go to the cloud beside it and right click. Then download to your correct directory(where you want or keep all your sounds). This way for me is actually better then downloading everything at once and gives you the option to pick exactly what your looking for without overexerting space. Hope this helped. Cheers.

Hi Jay, and welcome aboard. Appreciate the suggestions, and thanks!

However, to be honest, I've kind of moved on from Opus (and EastWest in general). I still pull up one or two of their instruments every now and then, but my full template is mostly Kontakt, Engine 2 and VSL libraries, all of which are generally better and easier to use than the EastWest stuff. 

1 hour ago, kitekrazy said:

So how many of you would actually use this? I rarely use their stuff. It's not a quality issue it's just I never bother with it.  Would you buy it for $56?

Shouldn't this be in their new strings package?

I will use this one. I found two of the three Ostinato libraries disappointing, and the only one that sees occasional use is the Brass one. 

But Modal Runs is in my template and sees regular use, and I'll be adding this Sordino freebie to my template, also. I actually think this one will be get used quite a bit. 

I have to think they can do this successfully because their samples are so good. I've only got a couple of their libraries, but from what I've heard in them -- and from the demos and walkthrus for the rest of their products -- Project SAM's samples are exquisitely recorded, and so the fact they are ten years old or whatever is not an issue. Some clever new scripting and programming, and its the same as a having a whole new product.  

38 minutes ago, Fleer said:

They actually changed it. Sneaky fellows. 

Yeah, I also saw the original 97 GB compressed stat on their site, and thought "whoa!", that's a hell of a freebie. However, it still a pretty impressive freebie at 24gb -- the library sounds great. 

Just now, Reid Rosefelt said:

This is a 24.3 GB library.  Compressed.  To my knowledge, this is the most substantial library Sonokinetic has ever given out.  

Definitely I think this is a way to get people to want to buy the strings, which is still available for €199.99 (reg price €399.99) for over 5 days.   They are giving people time to play around with  the Sordino. 

I think it is brilliant marketing.

 

That was my exact thought on the subject. I am actually surprised they didn't give Orchestral Strings owners like myself a free upgrade to the Sordino Strings as a separate deal, and leave more Xmas freebie licenses for folks who might be lured into getting the whole package.