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The Composer's Thread


Justin

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3 hours ago, Arpy said:

I can screenshot the score, I'll do it when I get home.

 

I got it, amigo. :)

 

EDIT: See bottom of post for image

 

I'm too tired to put in the effort of trimming the page down, but those are the chord voicings respective of the order I listed in my earlier post. (That last one would really benefit from a tuba playing that bottom note). See what I mean when I say open, you can tell they're more spacious just by looking at them! Or, you could voice it even closer if you want, so the notes are really tightly packed, getting a sound like:

 

 

(French horns)

 

or:

 

 

(Trombones)

Amaj7-1.png

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts !I'm curious about how it make you feel. I was going for "Positive melancholy" here. As for musescore I need to learn more about it for sure. I'll revisit this piece soon. It's litteraly the first time I compose a piece. I usually juste play around on my midi controler for fun creating small tunes.

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Sounds nice @toothless I echo @Nick Parker's sentiments about it creating a particular mood from the beginning.

There's some nice soundfounts on New grounds which covers all the orchestra sections.

@Nick Parker I love the snare drums! 

 

I've abandoned my jazz piece for the time being and working on a different piece yesterday afternoon, noodling around: http://picosong.com/w9BnQ/

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/2/2018 at 6:13 AM, Nick Parker said:

 

Creates a mood very quickly and strongly. I'd really like to hear it with MuseScore's dumbass mixing levels sorted out, the balance is a little funky here--I'd love to hear more of the harps and less of strings, for example. In fact, just turning the strings down would do a lot of favors. Thanks for sharing.

 

 

I tried to correct a few things today ;) (The beginning is still abrupt, as I didn't think of a proper opening).

 

 

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It's been about two years since I worked on this one. I posted some of the music for this earlier in this thread, but after finishing its run at the festival circuit, they've put the whole film up online. So if anyone is interested, do check it out! Would love to hear your thoughts!

 

 

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5 hours ago, toothless said:

 

I tried to correct a few things today ;) (The beginning is still abrupt, as I didn't think of a proper opening).

 

 

 

Sounds quite nice!  As for an opening, perhaps you could have the harp and maybe strings start playing for a couple of bars before the woodwinds come in. 

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Thank you for the advice :)  I'll try this during the week end !  Also I noticed some notes that are off with the harp at the begining. Need to correct that.  After that I'll move on to another piece. I don't want spend too much time perfecting it as the main goal is to learn musescore. That being said, for a first composition (all medium included), I'm happy with it :)

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55 minutes ago, KK said:

I posted some of the music for this earlier in this thread, but after finishing its run at the festival circuit, they've put the whole film up online. So if anyone is interested, do check it out! Would love to hear your thoughts!

 

 

 

@KK, I think that is really nice.  Music definitely captured my interest.  Very nice moment, when the flute comes in at 8:34, with the strings and piano.  Nicely done.

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6 hours ago, toothless said:

How can I remove useless bars at the beginning (or at the end) of a score ? (See picture attached)

 

 

 

 

V2.jpg

 

@toothless, hope you are enjoying (or enjoyed) the concert!  As for your question, make sure you are not in note input mode, and click on the measure you want to delete.  A blue rectangle should form around it.  Right click inside the rectangle, and click on "delete selected measures" from the menu that appears.

Hope that helps!

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I'm watching the concert right now :) A very nice program, as always. John williams work soon (in 10 minutes I would say). Anyway thanks for the tips ! Realy easy, I feel dumb not to have at least tried this before asking :)

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I composed that three hours ago and recorded its six layers one after another. I needed a piece of music for an application video and I'm quite satisfied with it, considering the lack of time I had.

Mine.WAV

Once more I have to acknowledge the fact that one's music always tends to sound like the music you use to listen to.

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A short I scored is now available to watch!  It's another minimal piece, but I was able to put in some motifs.   In the film proper, there are a few times when the cues weren't edited in the way I originally wanted, but that's fine. 

 

 

Here is the full score for your listening pleasure.

 

 

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On 1/23/2018 at 8:09 PM, karelm said:

 

But since this is actually a film score, you don't know if that non-harmonic tone is warranted.  That might actually be a subtle dramatic tension or hit.

 

I remember you asking for the film some time back. They put the whole thing up recently so thought I'd post it up here too:

 

http://www.nsi-canada.ca/2018/07/inland-freaks/

 

 

The music got a fair bit of attention at the festivals it played at and reviews it received. People do like "weird" after all. 😛

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey @KK your mockups have always impressed me - what are you using again?  I feel like my setup is getting dated and most of my colleagues are set in their ways using old stuff so they're useless for personal and honest input.  You have your finger on the pulse?  What's good lately?  Anyone else too, @karelm etc., and where's @Sharky?

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14 hours ago, TGP said:

Hey @KK your mockups have always impressed me - what are you using again?  I feel like my setup is getting dated and most of my colleagues are set in their ways using old stuff so they're useless for personal and honest input.  You have your finger on the pulse?  What's good lately?  Anyone else too, @karelm etc., and where's @Sharky?

 

I love the Berlin libraries but they are really hard on your resources/I need to update my gear now.  I think you need a minimum of 128 gigs of ram for these libraries or a slave computer which most of my friends and colleagues use but I haven't figured out how to do that yet.  I also like some Cinesamples (harps), and Cinematic Studio Strings is a good general string library.  Spitfire is a very fine but costly library because you have to purchase articulations separately.  So if you like good strings, you won't go wrong with Spitfire but if you need consordino too, that is another purchase.  So that one gets expensive quickly.  For the non acoustic stuff I use omnisphere 2 or 3 (I forget which one) and a bunch of specialty libraries like tension risers, Rev, etc.  I have a good guitar library but lately have just asked a friend to play in the guitar instead. I am definitely not that advanced technically so want to hear what others are using.  Probably stuff I've never heard of.

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13 hours ago, TGP said:

Hey @KK your mockups have always impressed me - what are you using again?  I feel like my setup is getting dated and most of my colleagues are set in their ways using old stuff so they're useless for personal and honest input.  You have your finger on the pulse?  What's good lately?  Anyone else too, @karelm etc., and where's @Sharky?

 

A lot of my basic ensembles are still Cinesamples actually, because I got a bundle deal a long time ago and Spitfire and Berlin were (and still is) out of my budget and my gear isn't necessarily equipped for that kind of hardware. I've found them fairly reliable: Harps, Piano in Blue, Strings, Brass, Winds, Percussion and the solo cello patch they recorded with Tina Guo. So that makes up most of my basic orchestral palette. I have some specialty stuff from Spitfire, like the Union Chapel Organ library, or their Albion V Tundra (really neat library, lots of cool aleatoric sounds in there). I've been playing with Omnisphere recently for the synth stuff, but there's also this cool little VST called Colourform, by FrozenPlain. Inexpensive and produces some neat sounds to add to the palette. I have a decent guitar VST too, but I forgot where I got it from. Will check once I'm home. I have some specialty instrument libraries too, like dulcimer, sitar, tablas, but I try my best to nab live musicians for that kind of thing.

 

I'd like to upgrade to Berlin libraries sometime soon. Sometimes, the software is not as flexible as I'd like it to be, and it's a tedious process of manipulating libraries to get the sound I want. That's why these days, I'm trying to incorporate and manipulate acoustic sounds and musicians as much as I can. It produces more interesting results.

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19 minutes ago, KK said:

 

A lot of my basic ensembles are still Cinesamples actually, because I got a bundle deal a long time ago and Spitfire and Berlin were (and still is) out of my budget and my gear isn't necessarily equipped for that kind of hardware. I've found them fairly reliable: Harps, Piano in Blue, Strings, Brass, Winds, Percussion and the solo cello patch they recorded with Tina Guo. So that makes up most of my basic orchestral palette. I have some specialty stuff from Spitfire, like the Union Chapel Organ library, or their Albion V Tundra (really neat library, lots of cool aleatoric sounds in there). I've been playing with Omnisphere recently for the synth stuff, but there's also this cool little VST called Colourform, by FrozenPlain. Inexpensive and produces some neat sounds to add to the palette. I have a decent guitar VST too, but I forgot where I got it from. Will check once I'm home. I have some specialty instrument libraries too, like dulcimer, sitar, tablas, but I try my best to nab live musicians for that kind of thing.

 

I'd like to upgrade to Berlin libraries sometime soon. Sometimes, the software is not as flexible as I'd like it to be, and it's a tedious process of manipulating libraries to get the sound I want. That's why these days, I'm trying to incorporate and manipulate acoustic sounds and musicians as much as I can. It produces more interesting results.

 

Do you have 128 ram (or more), an SSD drive for samples, and/or a slave computer with similar specs? 

image.png

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I do have an SSD drive dedicated to my samples, but my RAM is lacking, and my setup looks a lot less intimidating than your picture! I am long overdue for proper gear upgrades, but hopefully soon!

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1 hour ago, KK said:

I do have an SSD drive dedicated to my samples, but my RAM is lacking, and my setup looks a lot less intimidating than your picture! I am long overdue for proper gear upgrades, but hopefully soon!

 

I would suggest updating your computer first.  It's very frustrating to spend a lot of money on samples you can't use because the computer isn't up to par.  That picture isn't my studio but it is what I would imagine Gray's to look like 🤣.

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Yea, it's largely why I haven't bothered upgrading yet. All in due time!

 

45 minutes ago, karelm said:

That picture isn't my studio but it is what I would imagine Gray's to look like 🤣.

 

 

You're just missing all the velvet furnishing!

 

The%20Secret%20Lair%20of%20Hans%20Zimmer

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3 hours ago, karelm said:

I love the Berlin libraries but they are really hard on your resources/I need to update my gear now.  I think you need a minimum of 128 gigs of ram for these libraries or a slave computer which most of my friends and colleagues use but I haven't figured out how to do that yet.

 

Just for the record, I use Berlin for my mockups and I don't have a slave nor 128 gigs of RAM. I have 32GB and load the samples off a 7200rpm HDD. It is still possible to work with this environment, however for projects with more than ~50 tracks you don't really have the option of playback in situ without samples constantly dropping out.

 

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Thanks for the ideas guys, I have used Vienna Symphonic Library and 8dio products for years now and the newest of them is probably just a little less than 10 years old.  Definitely time to update but as I understand it those two companies have fallen from grace somewhat.  Spitfire and Berlin are tempting but I'm not convinced I want that much room hard wired into the samples.  I remember when Albion V was released KK, it sounded enchanting but pretty niche.  I hear only good things about the Cinematic Studio line but apparently there isn't much known about when the full orchestra will be complete.   Also my studio isn't quite that bad.  A DX7, some old Roland and Moog bits, and a growing modular rack but no nightmare wires.  No bordello lighting and furniture either sadly.

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16 minutes ago, TGP said:

I have used Vienna Symphonic Library

 

I'm very new to orchestral samples, and I've been using the Special Edition libraries. I love the interface and optimization, but I wonder if my investment was sound. I feel the same about this: 

16 minutes ago, TGP said:

Spitfire and Berlin are tempting but I'm not convinced I want that much room hard wired into the samples.

 

and I don't know where to turn. Essentially, I've been asking the same questions you are.

 

16 minutes ago, TGP said:

A DX7

 

Hell yeah.

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When I listen to the Vienna stuff against what's out there now there is no comparison.

 

6 minutes ago, Nick Parker said:

Hell yeah.

 

I've gotten paid more thanks to that than any single other instrument or sample library.

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1 minute ago, TGP said:

 

I've gotten paid more thanks to that than any single other instrument or sample library.

 

The interface sucks, but damn did Yamaha craft such a beautiful instrument for the ages. Selling my TG77 rackmount was a very difficult decision, but I'm too nomadic to justify this honk-box. With any track that needs synthesizers, though, FM8 is the first place I turn--it's easily my favorite plugin, and makes FM programming just about as easy as possible. 

2 minutes ago, TGP said:

When I listen to the Vienna stuff against what's out there now there is no comparison.

 

I know you were just asking about all this stuff, but have you reached any possible leads or conclusions? I feel like I might be being too choosy as far as wanting the features I want--real-time playability and dynamic flexibility is what I desire the most--for the price and disk space that I want as well.

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I am most interested in the Cinematic Studio line.  What I may do is get what is out so far and keep relying on my old stuff until they roll out the rest of the orchestra.  I know I won't be getting anything from Vienna anymore, and 8dio's new strings and brass sound great but are reportedly not as playable as we might want.  Briefly I considered Eastwest's Hollywood series, which I had avoided for years being on Macs but now that I've switched to PC I'm turned off to Eastwest too.  Another big player from days of yore that seems to be stagnating.  Also that sound is very vanilla.  KK's music makes a good case for Cinesamples too.  More research needed it seems.

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5 hours ago, Loert said:

 

Just for the record, I use Berlin for my mockups and I don't have a slave nor 128 gigs of RAM. I have 32GB and load the samples off a 7200rpm HDD. It is still possible to work with this environment, however for projects with more than ~50 tracks you don't really have the option of playback in situ without samples constantly dropping out.

 

This is an excellent point and I love Loert's mockup sound.  How you use the instrument will affect your resource needs. 

3 hours ago, TGP said:

I am most interested in the Cinematic Studio line.  What I may do is get what is out so far and keep relying on my old stuff until they roll out the rest of the orchestra.  I know I won't be getting anything from Vienna anymore, and 8dio's new strings and brass sound great but are reportedly not as playable as we might want.  Briefly I considered Eastwest's Hollywood series, which I had avoided for years being on Macs but now that I've switched to PC I'm turned off to Eastwest too.  Another big player from days of yore that seems to be stagnating.  Also that sound is very vanilla.  KK's music makes a good case for Cinesamples too.  More research needed it seems.

I think the Cinematic Studio library is a very good deal and is a good go to library for most stuff.  Basically 80/20 rule that 80 % of your needs can be accomplished by this one library and the 20% that remains needs a few additional thousand bucks worth of libraries.  I also like playability - libraries that sound great with very little fiddling because I am not great on the tech stuff.  I never got great results with LASS 1 and 2 which were costly and I pretty much never use.  I know others did get great results but it was too complicated to figure out how to tweak it.  Cinsematic Studio (do note there is a V2 of strings) and Berlin are pretty much out of box great which I love.  It is still resource heavy but that pretty much goes without saying for all these new libraries.  Also a great library I liked but did not buy (this year at least) is Soaring Strings:

 

This pretty much does only big stuff but sounds great as an added layer when you want to sound big on very low budget.  My problem with Eastwest is I freaking hate the Play VST.  It used to be super buggy with very little support which burned me from that product compared to kontakt.  I thought the Hollywood libraries from Eastwest sounded good but wasn't worth dealing with the unstable platform.  One very nice feature about Cinesamples is their prebuilt mixing presets.  For example, Dennis Sands mix with a button.  Also, I love the team behind their products.  Mike Patti is a very good guy and he did an act of kindness to me once that I never forgot and pay it forward.  In short, there are lots of great options and you kind of need the mix because each does something well but none does everything well.  Just make sure your hardware can handle it and Loert seems to have better guidance on how to squeeze out every ounce of power from your system than me.

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6 hours ago, KK said:

Yea, it's largely why I haven't bothered upgrading yet. All in due time!

 

Earlier this year I found a laptop with 16GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, 2 TB HD for $750 on eBay. You might surprise yourself!

 

Thank you @karelm for your write-up. You've convinced me to look more into Cinesamples.

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Yes thanks Karelm, very informative all around.  I'm not worried about system performance since my recent hardware upgrade which I took care to be as future proof as possible.  Plenty of RAM and CPU power to go around.  Cinematic Studio seems to be in my future and I'll suffer along with my current libraries for the rest of the orchestra until their catalogue expands.  Noticing plenty of less traditional choices from Spitfire which are highly intriguing as well.  How can I not own Hans Zimmer Strings?

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Cheers Karelm for that informative post! Thinking about Cinematic Studio myself!

 

On 9/11/2018 at 3:46 PM, TGP said:

I remember when Albion V was released KK, it sounded enchanting but pretty niche.

1

 

It can be a nice supplementary library and it has a great interface too. There was a film I scored last summer where I relied mostly on Albion Tundra with some solid results.

 

https://picosong.com/wLfy

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2 hours ago, Docteur Qui said:

Here's a piece I wrote for a rescoring assignment (clip is from Coraline). I went with a much more traditional orchestral sound than the original score (which I hadn't heard prior to writing). Recorded with the Prague Orchestra, I'm mostly happy with the recording except for a few misinterpreted trills (didn't have enough time or communicative ability to fix it during the session). Had a lot of fun writing it, hope you enjoy!

 

 

I like it and think it fits the visuals and mood nicely.  Nice job on the hits (like the trumpet and the horse).  Congrats!

On 9/11/2018 at 6:16 PM, TGP said:

How can I not own Hans Zimmer Strings?

 

Oh we all know you already have a couple of copies of that library.

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6 hours ago, Docteur Qui said:

Here's a piece I wrote for a rescoring assignment (clip is from Coraline). I went with a much more traditional orchestral sound than the original score (which I hadn't heard prior to writing). Recorded with the Prague Orchestra, I'm mostly happy with the recording except for a few misinterpreted trills (didn't have enough time or communicative ability to fix it during the session). Had a lot of fun writing it, hope you enjoy!

 

 

Really well done!  Fits the pictures very well and flows together quite nicely indeed.

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8 hours ago, Docteur Qui said:

Here's a piece I wrote for a rescoring assignment (clip is from Coraline). I went with a much more traditional orchestral sound than the original score (which I hadn't heard prior to writing). Recorded with the Prague Orchestra, I'm mostly happy with the recording except for a few misinterpreted trills (didn't have enough time or communicative ability to fix it during the session). Had a lot of fun writing it, hope you enjoy!

 

 

 

Nice work! Quite professionally written, IMO. I like how you play with that high-pitched ostinato throughout the clip.

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5 hours ago, TGP said:

 

One for every room, and a few more as Christmas gifts for the family.

 

As I would if there was a John Williams brass library or something.  Did zimmer have anything to do with that library or is it just a marketing label?

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11 hours ago, Docteur Qui said:

Here's a piece I wrote for a rescoring assignment (clip is from Coraline). I went with a much more traditional orchestral sound than the original score (which I hadn't heard prior to writing). Recorded with the Prague Orchestra, I'm mostly happy with the recording except for a few misinterpreted trills (didn't have enough time or communicative ability to fix it during the session). Had a lot of fun writing it, hope you enjoy!

 

 

 

Well done! Really hit the picture well.

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2 hours ago, karelm said:

 

As I would if there was a John Williams brass library or something.  Did zimmer have anything to do with that library or is it just a marketing label?

 

As I understand it it started as his own samples for Dunkirk and ballooned into a full commercial product with his involvement.  I forgot that Spitfire got their start with Zimmer's legendary bespoke libraries.  No surprise they still work together.

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