Music Works In Progress Thread

[StoneMcKnuckle]

smegman

[V-Ormix]

Rockish I guess?
https://soundcloud.com/ormix/golden-giant

[StoneMcKnuckle]

man ormix that flute lead sounds really good, what is it? I think this song would sound absolutely amazing with some better mixing tbh, I really like the composition in it but some of the samples are really muddy/crappy and it feels kinda toned down on the upper frequencies somehow

ps im ssh hehu. I really need to start writing more riffs like this, they sound hella fucken badass lmao

[Calcium Deposit]

experimenting with making a "real" guitar-synth

http://tindeck.com/listen/nnrv

Several synths layered to get that sound, ironically one of them was slayer 2 heh

[midnghtraver]

Originally Posted by Calcium Deposit

experimenting with making a "real" guitar-synth

http://tindeck.com/listen/nnrv

Several synths layered to get that sound, ironically one of them was slayer 2 heh

Guitar Rig 5

[V-Ormix]

Guitar rig is amazing, I need to get that again. Btw yeah the flute is from my motif rack es I got recently and I love it. Keep in mind those were sounds out of the box with no editing so with some work I think I can get some decent sounds. I really at this point need to work on making more interesting compositions but I keep hitting some sort of brick wall and getting frusterated (especially orchestral stuff).

[midnghtraver]

Originally Posted by V-Ormix

Guitar rig is amazing, I need to get that again. Btw yeah the flute is from my motif rack es I got recently and I love it. Keep in mind those were sounds out of the box with no editing so with some work I think I can get some decent sounds. I really at this point need to work on making more interesting compositions but I keep hitting some sort of brick wall and getting frusterated (especially orchestral stuff).

-shrugs- definitely some of the most complex music to write.

I thought that your rock track was composed pretty well myself.

[StoneMcKnuckle]

orchestral stuff is like 100% banks and automation. not really that difficult to write, but both tedious and annoying.

[Calcium Deposit]

Originally Posted by midnghtraver

Guitar Rig 5

Well I'm sure there are some decent guitar vsts out there, but I was trying to see if I could pull off making a good one out of the stock instruments in Orion

tried to get Guitar rig working but I think since I'm using an outdated version of Orion it wasn't compatible. I cant for the life of me figure out how the standalone of guitar rig 5 works though, seems to lack some sort of piano roll or sequencer or anything that would actually play/record notes. But then again I haven't read the documentation on it yet so I might get around to that

[Coolboyrulez0]

Guitar Rig is just like an amp / external FX program that makes your already existing guitars much better (if done right of course) its not an actual vst that generates sound

[Calcium Deposit]

Well that clears that up, I was under the impression that it was a synthesizer for some reason.

I don't know if I'd be willing to throw down 200 bucks for an Fx program though, even a fancy one.

[Jonlovesddr]

what does everyone use for their orchestra instruments

[Choofers]

same thing that clonepa uses

venetian snares

[StoneMcKnuckle]

Originally Posted by Jonlovesddr

what does everyone use for their orchestra instruments

symphonic orchestra gold

as far as symphonic instruments go the sickest shit you can possibly get is probably symphobia 2, but if you want to be legit as fuck this library is seriously too expensive to be worth it. I don't actually own any of these, they cost far too fucken much. $375 for EWQLSO gold ($675 for platinum, $145 for silver), and $999 for Symphobia.

[V-Ormix]

If you think that's expensive look at Vienna instruments rofl

but yeah I guess what I mean is my orchestral stuff just doesn't have the feel or dynamics let alone a solid composition to stand out... my formula at the moment is just make a song with as many layers as possible and label it orchestral x) but theres sooo much more I can do with time signatures, dynamic tempo, and instrumental characteristics that I simply haven't put enough time or effort to explore yet. but here is were I'm at currently, and yes I have a habit of adding drums that don't fit a style lmao

https://soundcloud.com/ormix/skyline-view

[Coolboyrulez0]

yeah the composition itself is good but a better library will make it sound phenomenal and less midi-ish

although i feel lows could be more prominent and there is a bit of cacophony at parts (intentional?) / mixing could also be better

[V-Ormix]

well the midish feel comes from the fact that everything is playing at one velocity which immediately takes away any realism from other samples in the voices im using and this was recorded through my mic jack so sound quality isnt near what it could be if I only had the right F*cking drivers for my audio interface... gg windows 8... I cant even install the proper midi drivers for my module cause the installer said "your processor is not adequate" but guess I'll upgrade my setup a bit more in the coming months :V

[StoneMcKnuckle]

Originally Posted by V-Ormix

If you think that's expensive look at Vienna instruments rofl

The old Vienna banks cost $10000, but their newer stuff is very affordable AFAIK. Vienna Pro is like €145, Ensemble is €235 etc...

Originally Posted by V-Ormix

but here is were I'm at currently, and yes I have a habit of adding drums that don't fit a style lmao

Er, I dunno what to say. Knowing you, I expected a lot more. Composition is just plain bad and the drums have no place whatsoever here. If you want drums, use something like Stormdrum or Drums of War or even bass cello slaps, nothing else. Anyway, I'm not sure what the hell's going on here but it sounds like you have several chords layered on top of each other on different scales or something, resulting in an assload of cacophony throughout the entire thing which makes it tedious to listen to. I'm not sure how you missed this. Was it intentional or something? Either way, I don't think it sounds good at all.

Putting the composition aside, here are some tips:
For softer/sustained strings, automate volume. For leads like flutes or violins or whatever, automate vibrato in whatever way you can - it's sometimes built into the VST, sometimes you have to manually make a vibrato LFO in Kontakt and automate that (guides on this @youtube), and sometimes you just have to use pitch automation... either way, vibrato and volume automation is really important for that dynamic sound you're going for. Automating the tempo is also easy, just set FL to "record everything" and press play and then fiddle with the BPM while the song is playing. You'll still have to program the super drastic BPM changes by hand, but if you're just going for humanization the method I described is really simple and effective. Just don't think BPM fiddling is crucial for orchestral music - most tracks don't need it at all. The volume/vibrato programming I mentioned is much more important.

And when I say volume, I mean channel volume, but you should also ALT+R to randomize velocity settings and then adjust velocity from there.

Hope that helps.

EDIT: Also, I really can't stress this enough: High quality banks are super important for orchestral stuff.

[V-Ormix]

Basically that composition was a polyphonic test to see how well my racks playback was, I used it only as an example of the typical route I take when building some thing "big" or "straight forward". I'm glad I did that track cause I found my rack could not handle 12 channels at a time with out seriously lagging unless you have it hooked up with usb... course the drivers wont install so fml...

As for dynamic tempo, I just try to give a piece a "pulse" by recording tap tempo into the event editor on a blank channel and if it sounds too mechanical I'll try to keep it more consistent but I find playing ghost notes in a sampler channel and working with them after the fact would have a nice humanization cause, well, I'd have to play the notes. course I guess the main idea is to keep what ever I play in a certain time frame and I'm good...

Automation is powerful in every respect regarding dynamics (and most anything else) - but yeah sooo time consuming, and that's usually were I hit one of a few brick walls is just on the automation alone... I'm working on some thing now and I hope I don't get burned out too soon cause I'm def exploring more of what I'd like to think of as interesting compositions.

For me the brick walls can even be mental, most of my songs might have 1 point that even make them listenable at all well the rest of it is filler... I'm having problems simply making a good track from start to finish and I begin to think I'm thinking too hard D:

edit: thanks for the advice tho :3

[Coolboyrulez0]

i made happy musiks !?

(melody is just improv, quantized heh)

ps panning is fun, kids