Amicus717

Hi Kenny, I just caught up with this thread -- I've been out and about for a few days and wasn't checking the forum much. Just saw your heartbreaking journey with Duke. My sincerest condolences, and if it helps to know this, you are not alone in dealing with this kind of grief. My girlfriend went through the challenge just a week ago -- she had to put Luna, her beloved 12 year old Lab, to sleep after the sweet girl had sickened with a large cyst on her liver (among a myriad other health problems). She was positive it was the right decision, and she and her children gave Luna a great send-off: as Luna's pack they gathered all around her 24/7, and for those long finals days she got only the BEST food (prime steak, fresh-cooked chicken, cheese and red peppers - Luna was a delightful dog and a bit odd, and red bell peppers were her most favorite food in the whole world). And then the Vet came over, and my girlfriend and her family gently let Luna go, while their hearts broke wide open. They too clung to her for a while after she passed. They were all shaken by this, and it will take time. But even now, a week after the sad moment, my girlfriend is cheering up -- the grief is easing and a lifetime of great Luna memories remain, and she is busy memorializing her beloved companion in photos and written tribute on Facebook. I truly hope your experience is the same. All the best, Rob

The Orchestra Complete Crossgrade is pretty affordable, if you qualify ($299 US). I think you'd save money buying this, even with the sale price for The Orchestra and the upgrade price for Complete: https://www.bestservice.com/the_orchestra_complete_crossgrade.html Update: never mind -- I just realized this Crossgrade is for owners of Strings of Winter...

175 Euro (199 US) at Best Service: https://www.bestservice.com/deals/the_orchestra_summer_sale_33_off_2658.html

At Best Service (27% offer expires July 19th): https://www.bestservice.com/deals/engine_facelift_flash_sale_27_off_2614.html

Just great. Really like everything about it -- love the arrangement; Mrs Daryll1968 sounds just great, and is perfect for this piece of music. Mix sounds great on my monitors and headphones. A really fun listen. Also, the video ads a lot to the overall vibe. Really nice stuff.

Sad news: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ennio-morricone-oscar-winning-hateful-071217867.html

I use Nimbus almost exclusively -- it's in every single one of my projects. I do orchestral stuff only, and Nimbus has a clear transparency and sense of natural space that is better than any other reverb I own. It's an awesome plugin.

Yeah it does...wonder if this is the start of a whole set of solo string releases, including cello, etc...

Hi treesha, I enjoyed this one. Nice sounds, and a good mix - I could everything cleanly, and the balance is nice. I'd call this a hybrid type piece for sure -- the kind of piece that could play over a montage in a movie or similar. From that perspective, the drums as currently recorded would work just fine, to my ears. Rob

Thanks, HS! Appreciate the kind words and the listen.

Thanks, Bapu! Appreciate the listen. This piece needed that pounding, pulsing thunder to move it along and I'm happy how it turned out. But it took a bit of work to not let it overwhelm everything else. Rob

Hey Wookie, Like this one a lot. In regards to the vocal parts, I kinda like where they are currently situated in the mix -- sort of deep inside the soundscape and haunting the music, rather than leading it from the front, so to speak. I think that kinda matches the vibe of the music overall, and I think it works. Just my five cents. Rob

This is a really good song. Nice vocal work, also. Really enjoyed listening to it. The one element that didn't really grab me was the drum sound, in particular the snare - a little too thin and kind of anemic, or something. That's just a personal matter of taste, though. Rob

Hynpotic and fascinating all the way through. Like Tom, I found the second half more arresting and more unpredictable, which is an element I really enjoyed. But overall, very nice work. I'm curious if you composed all this on paper first, or it came together during the recording of the parts, or how you created the music. Thanks, Rob

I liked this a lot. Very nicely put together. The soundscape is huge and all-encompassing -- which I like -- and despite the large number of instruments and the complexity of the arrangement, I thought I could hear all the details. I particularly liked the guitar sound that entered at 4:45 - really nice. Rob

Kaustub, I think that's pretty well done! Your music is synced beautifully with the action; didn't override or otherwise obscure the essential audio ingredients of the clip; and is present enough to set a tone but not so forceful that it intrudes. Rob

Hi folks! Wookie - Thanks! Yeah, I think there is a bit of mud in there, for sure, and I want to clear it out without gutting the impact of the piece. I will experiment! Treehsa - Thanks for the kind words, appreciate it. I've always understood this kind of stuff -- orchestral in general tone and scale, but employing a lot of synth and sound-design stuff -- to be classified as hybrid orchestral or hybrid-symphonic and similar. Seems to define it pretty well Deering Amps - Thanks! Appreciate the listen and the kind words. emeraldsoul - Thanks, and appreciate the kind words and the input. I think adding some more high sparkle would potentially be very helpful. As for the violin (it's actually a fidule -- a medieval/Renaissance progenitor of the violin), yeah I've been wondering about its placement in the soundscape. It does have a fair amount of reverb applied in the mix, but it's a very dry sample library and tends to stand way out front. I sort of like that, actually, but also wonder if I need to tame it a bit. I will experiment. bjornpdx - Thanks for the listen and the kind words! Appreciated, as always. Yeah, Eduardo's libraries are flat-out awesome. I use them a lot. They are geared for a pretty specific kind of sound and vibe, but they excel at it. They are well built and well-designed, but you will need to learn how to work his libraries, as they have have a LOT of details and quirks, and are loaded with ways to tailor the sound: finger noises, instrument noises, fret noises, etc, -- all which can be turned up or down or off, depending on what sort of vibe you want. Plus, the patches have all sorts of keyswitches for different articulations, accents and ornaments, etc. I cannot recommend them enough, but you gotta take the time to learn them if you want to get full value out of them. Also worth noting that they run in Engine 2.0, as opposed to Kontakt. Some folks don't like that, although I personally have no problem using Engine. It has its quirks, but I don't find it any harder to use than Kontakt, and I like it a lot more than Play. As always, YYMV Thanks for the input, everyone! Rob

Sigh, I really have to get Omnisphere. I am beginning to suspect my composers' toolkit is not complete without it...

Sounds great, Tapsa.

Hi folks, Here's a new composition. It is a bit of a departure from my usual stuff - this is more of a hybrid-orchestral piece, and it's something of an experiment, and a rough draft that I'm still working on. The music is a gift, and is being written for a friend of mine (the "Bjarn" in the title, of course) as a short theme/motif for a Norse persona he portrays in a historical re-enactment society he belongs to. I am trying for a sort of dark ages/pagan vibe -- think of it as the sort of scoring you'd use for a stormy sea voyage in an epic movie about Vikings, or similar: Part of my interest in writing this was to explore the Dark Era library from Eduardo Tarilonte that I picked up a few months ago. Like most of Tarilonte's stuff, it's pretty awesome, and I wanted to compose a piece that took advantage of it's particular kind of sound. I'm happy with the results, so far, although this sort of music is blunt force trauma compared to the stuff I usually try to create, so I'm not too sure about the current mix - I worry it's a bit thick and boomy. Any feedback on that (or anything else) would be greatly appreciated. Libraries used: Dark Era (Shamanic chanting, Inuit Vocal Rhythms, various Throat Singing Patches and percussion patches including Roman Tympanum, shaker, frame drum) Era II (Fidule - the solo instrument that plays the main melody, a few sound design patches and pads, Tavern Singer shouts) Forest Kingdom II (Shamanic Chanting) Epic World (Female Temple Voices patch) Era II: Vocal Codex (Heroica female legato voice) Cinesamples Voices of War: Men of the North (Vowel Morph, Shouts) KeepForest Vikings (Acoustic Rolls, Cello loops, Shouts, Viking Hits) Albion ONE (Easter Island Hits) NI's Rise and Hit 8Dio Lacrimosa Choir As mentioned above, this one is still very much a work in progress. Thanks for listening! Rob

lol. Your post is better -- more detail. My post was the "I gotta beat Larry to the punch" version - short and to the point...

Info here: https://www.orchestraltools.com/store/collections/48

Yeah, I have Da Capo. I use it fairly often, although not it's full set of patches -- just the string patches, and mostly because I like how they sound when dialed low on the mod wheel. They have a nice, quiet rasp that works as a sort of sordino-ish patch, and they see use in my template for that reason. I reviewed Da Capo in a post on the old Cakewalk forum: http://forum.cakewalk.com/Bought-Sonokinetic39s-Da-Capo-library-quick-first-impression-m3425007.aspx One thing I didn't mention in my review - there are no trumpets in the brass section. Just Horns, Trombones and Tuba. It sounds ok, but I have no idea why they didn't include Trumpet, which always struck me as a bit weird. The Woodwind Ensembles are probably their most polished multi-sampled library -- very configurable, and they sound pretty good. That have become my goto for woodwind ensemble patches. Just FYI...

I have a few of their libraries -- including two phrase based ones: Grosso and Vivace. The other ones I have are the various Ostinato libraries, and the more traditional multi-sampled libraries like Da Capo and Woodwind Ensembles. The phrase-based libraries have their moments, and every now and then they offer up exactly what you need to fill a gap in an orchestration. But that doesn't happen often enough for me, and aside from those instances, I find the phrase-based libraries are generally a bit awkward to use. I much prefer their multi-sampled ones (both Da Capo and Woodwind Ensembles are currently present in my main template, and I like them a lot). Your mileage may vary, but that has been my experience.