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Malena - Ennio Morricone Cover

markno999

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markno999

markno999

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Still experimenting with East West Opus picking some songs that aren't overly difficult to work out musically or rhythmically so I can focus on how to do orchestration and programming articulations, dynamics, space/dimension,  etc.. to create realism.    This track is all EW Hollywood Strings,  Symphonic Strings and the lead violin is EW Gypsy Violin.   Pretty straight-forward arrangement with Gypsy Violin as the soloist, 1st and second Violin, Viola, Cello, Bass, Flute and Oboe.    This is from the movie Malena from year 2000, I have not seen the movie but a fan of Morricone for many years and this was one of the songs in his Anthology Book that I thought looked doable.     Comments Welcome.  

https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=14460758

Regards

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markno999

markno999

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Jeff,

Appreciate the listen.  That means a lot as I am a great admirer of your work.  

For those interested in checking out Orchestral music templates, part of the realism in this track, and the others I have done, comes from a template which I purchased from Synthestration.  https://synthestration.com/store/

Ryan Thomas, who works with East West, provides a demo song in this orchestral template so you get a look at his programming along with getting the template.   This particular template is for Logic Pro which is what I used for this piece but Synthestration has templates for other libraries such as ProjectSAM, Spitfire, etc..and other DAWS.   Most of the templates for this style of music will be found on Logic, Studio One or Cubase.     

This particular EW template includes sends to EW Spaces II broken out for the different sections and this really creates much of the realism.    The instruments are very well recorded and balanced in the library as well so there is very little mixing going on.   I really only play the parts and add Expression and Modulation Wheel for dynamics.    The lead Gyspy Violin in this piece has a lot of the expression you hear already baked into the sound.  

Opus also includes the Orchestrator which offers a number of instrumentation breakouts so you can quickly hear how different parts works together, and includes common Ostinatos and other tools for building a realistic sounding piece.    While I have studied music and harmony for many years, this is really new to me so it is great that many of these new products like Opus offer some short-cuts for beginners in this area of music.


Regards

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jwnicholson78

jwnicholson78

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On 7/15/2022 at 4:14 PM, markno999 said:

Jeff,

Appreciate the listen.  That means a lot as I am a great admirer of your work.  

For those interested in checking out Orchestral music templates, part of the realism in this track, and the others I have done, comes from a template which I purchased from Synthestration.  https://synthestration.com/store/

Ryan Thomas, who works with East West, provides a demo song in this orchestral template so you get a look at his programming along with getting the template.   This particular template is for Logic Pro which is what I used for this piece but Synthestration has templates for other libraries such as ProjectSAM, Spitfire, etc..and other DAWS.   Most of the templates for this style of music will be found on Logic, Studio One or Cubase.     

This particular EW template includes sends to EW Spaces II broken out for the different sections and this really creates much of the realism.    The instruments are very well recorded and balanced in the library as well so there is very little mixing going on.   I really only play the parts and add Expression and Modulation Wheel for dynamics.    The lead Gyspy Violin in this piece has a lot of the expression you hear already baked into the sound.  

Opus also includes the Orchestrator which offers a number of instrumentation breakouts so you can quickly hear how different parts works together, and includes common Ostinatos and other tools for building a realistic sounding piece.    While I have studied music and harmony for many years, this is really new to me so it is great that many of these new products like Opus offer some short-cuts for beginners in this area of music.


Regards

Thanks for the heads up about SYnthestration and their templates.  I am going to have to check them out.  I've got Spitfire BBC and I'd love to see what the templates can do with that.  Do they have templates for Cakewalk?

Jeff

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markno999

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On 7/15/2022 at 5:16 PM, musekamp said:

Very nice! Your dynamics combined with the sound of the strings and reverb add up to quite a gorgeous sound!

Did you work from a full score, or was it a piano reduction?

Walt

Walt,

This project I would call a hybrid piano reduction.    I specifically chose this song because it is fairly blocked out chordally so I could play it on the piano even with my limited skills as a piano player.   1st thing I did was import the original song and Tempo Map it.     Rather than piano I used an Chamber Orchestral Template in Opus which was laid out with 1st violin playing top note of the chord, 2nd violin playing next note down, Viola playing the bottom note and the Cello and Bass playing a C drone in octaves throughout much of the piece.      This original bit playing chords with the orchestral template is still in the piece but pulled way back in the mix just to give some depth.    

Then I split out individual parts from Opus via MIDI export.    Once I  had those parts split out I just replayed them one-by-one while adding in Expression and Modulation for dynamics.    Flute and Oboe are just playing the violin parts in places so easy to re-create them as well.   Lastly added the Gypsy Violin for more color in the mix which I think brought a lot of realism to the track.

I did buy Ennio Morricone's Anthology off Amazon and Malena is in the book as a piano solo.    So I did use that for reference.  While it has some details it is definitely not a score.   For me it is easier to do this stuff by ear as I am not a real strong reader but any stretch of the imagination:)

 

Regards

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markno999

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On 7/16/2022 at 5:33 PM, jwnicholson78 said:

Thanks for the heads up about SYnthestration and their templates.  I am going to have to check them out.  I've got Spitfire BBC and I'd love to see what the templates can do with that.  Do they have templates for Cakewalk?

Jeff

Jeff,

The Synthestration site does not have any templates for Spitfire BBC or Cakewalk.  They do have some scores available with MIDI plus the score but that wouldn't really help with a template.  

Try these guys.    They have more DAWS listed than Synthestration and are specific to Spitfire BBC.     https://www.spitfireaudiothepage.com/templates

 

Regards

 

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markno999

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On 7/21/2022 at 1:06 AM, bjornpdx said:

Very impressive work on this! I think this is probably the closest I've heard to an actual symphony recording.
-Bjorn

Bjorn,

Thanks for the listen, appreciate it.   The template mentioned in previous post helped immensely in that realism, the samples in EW are terrific and the Spaces II reverb setup in the template really create a sense of natural space.   Makes the process much easier as you can focus more on the music aspect and less on mixing and balance.    Thx.

 

Regards

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markno999

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On 7/24/2022 at 1:05 PM, DeeringAmps said:

Add me to the “list”, much impressed!

thanks for sharing the links, must check it out. Pretty sure @Jerry Gerber would award high marks!

t

Thanks Tom, appreciate the listen.    Yes, I would be interested to hear what Jerry thinks about the mix, his compositions are really good and he is most generous releasing his score's as PDFs.

On 7/24/2022 at 6:53 PM, David Sprouse said:

Nicely Done!

Thanks David, appreciate it.  

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