Orchestral Action Theme (Machinima)

Hi folks!

Some of you may have heard that I've recently gotten into scoring machinima works, and so I figured I may as well share some of the work I've been doing on that front, especially since I haven't posted much recent work these days.

What I'm showing you here are two tracks for one of the projects I'm working on which still lacks a decided title (Moogle is the developer's codename) but will essentially be some kind of interesting action/comedy/gameshow mix. The first cue is the 30-second opening track, which was supposed to be an alternative/rock style and be upbeat and positive:

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The second is the action sequence for the project. I say "the" because they've only asked for the single one, so I'm not sure how that's going to work out, but whatever. Anyway, it's a lively orchestral action track with some Latin influences to keep up the positive and slightly humorous spirit. I had a lot of fun with it:

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Thanks for listening, and feel free to leave comments if you have any. Hopefully I'll be able to update the thread soon enough with the actual video itself so you can see this stuff in its intended environment.

Enjoy! :happy:

Hey Marius these pieces song interesting. In the first piece your orchestra sounded awesome but the guitar sample you used just doesn't sound that good to me. The second piece was very entertaining. I would have never thought of mixing a Latin/samba like style with an action cue but this worked out pretty well. Keep up the good work.

Thanks, Reth!

I actually have some discontented feelings about that first cue's guitar as well, it's more the way I mixed it than the actual patch...I'll see about fixing it. Thanks for pointing it out though!

I'm happy you enjoyed the second one. It's a bit of a style mash, yes, but it was extremely fun to make and it turned out quite nicely so it's cool that my enthusiasm comes across.

I appreciate the comments! :happy:

Awesome stuff Marius. I agree with Reth about the guitar samples, but since guitar is one of the hardest instruments to sample I'll give you the benefit of the doubt...haha. My one gripe is that the percussion and the orchestra don't seem to occupy the same acoustic space. The percussion springs out a bit too much in relation to the orchestra. Perhaps a tad more reverb and a slight drop in volume for the percussion would help solve this problem.

Hey Andy!

I can see what you mean about the reverb discrepancy, I'll see if I can sweeten up my percussion section a bit and get it to sit in with the rest...I always like to keep my percussion loud, so I end up having them too much so sometimes. :P

Thanks for the thoughts!

Wow Marius! You wowed me again. This is awesome stuff. And all of your pieces bring a "clean and crisp" quality, which most of my tracks lack. I wonder how you did it. I really like the 30 second intro, as I thought it really captured the feel you're going for wonderfully. I agree with the others about the guitar, but I know it is a pain to use guitar from samples, so I'll go with it. Good job!

These are great... forgive my ignorance, but I don't know what "machinima" is. Nevertheless, I like them both. They sound like they would be great for a video game, like in a tense mission or boss level. I couldn't help but thinking of Sonic the Hedgehog while listening to it :P I don't know why because it sounds like nothing from that game's soundtrack, but it would work!

Great job! :)

It's animated tv programmes about robots and stuff i think?

Which is great because the first thing i actually thought of was the anime gundam seed.

( YouTube - Gundam Seed Ost: Justice And Freedom to compare )

First thing, I think the first modulation where you cut out to just percussion is very cheap!

The guitar doesn't seem to serve too much purpose other than simply a lead instrument, it doesn't feel like it contributes to the feel of the piece as much as the rest, maybe because of the sound, maybe because it doesn't discover much of the full pitch range of the guitar, and use its full capabilities... could have a play around with it maybe.

I'm a big fan of epic, and i think what the fight scene lacks is a bit of building up (that video link will show this... perhaps a bit too much), which would help bring more tension, perhaps dropping out the drums or halving the note value for a while or something.

But regardless of these thoughts, they both seem ideal for their purpose, so good job!

Hi guys!

In fact, "machinima" is a type of film-making where you use video game engines and capture live action from there in order to make your film. You get people to "act" out the movements and then you record the dialogue and add it in post and so on. It's an interesting medium.

You made me laugh with the Sonic reference, Leigh...I'm not entirely sure why it would remind you of Sonic, but I'm glad you enjoyed the tracks :P. Andy, I don't disagree with any of your commentary, but I should clarify that the fairly even tone was intentional because the track isn't exactly supposed to "build" too much — it's intended to keep a steady pace and assist the action on-screen without becoming too obtrusive. That's also why I didn't go nuts with the guitar line; I used it as an extra orchestral instrument because I find that, for me at least, when electrical guitars go off and do their own thing, it tends to be overpowering if not done correctly and I just didn't want to risk it.

Hopefully it'll be a bit more clear when I can show you folks the video clips that they're written for, which should hopefully be sometime in the near-ish future. :)

Thanks for your comments! :happy:

Well I guess I haven't seen the clip so it wasn't based on anything more than musical preference i suppose...so if that's the case then cool

As for the guitar... I'll be impressed if you can make it truly fit in as an orchestral instrument, i've tried it a few times and even attemped a performance with myself on guitar... Didn't work out too well.

But i have no doubt you can sort something out =)

Oh! I have actually heard of that before, just didn't know the name for it. Cool! I don't know why it made me think of Sonic, probably just because it is an up-beat kind of game :)

btw thanks a lot for explaining the video editing stuff to me, I figured out Window Movie Maker this morning, it is a lot of fun! I could really get into that.

the sound is extemely real

dark@@-raptor

Marius

Your ignoring me again!!

I assume you have posted these for fun instead of actual feedback on what is off in the pieces so I will only tear apart the first one.

That guitar sample sucks!

The piece as a whole is very upbeat except for 2 parts in the brass. One at 1:49 and the other at 1:57. While I think they sound cool and should stay, they make the piece lose its positive/upbeat feel.

Fun to listen to.

Well done

Ron

Thanks for the comments, guys!

Ron, I'm not ignoring you :P You're welcome to do any tearing apart you like, even if I did just post these for fun. The guitar sample shouldn't suck, considering it's Vienna's Overdrive Guitar, but it's very hard to get it to sit nicely in the mix. Wasn't really worth getting the part recorded live for a piece like this.

As for the horns, the mood is actually meant to be a mix between happy and marginally tense, so that's why the horns do that funny dance between "salsa brass" and less blatantly bouncy material.

I've got to try doing more things with the guitar's mixing to see if I can get it sounding better....

You misinterpreted my post.

What I meant is that you are once again ignoring my music. Shame shame shame.

I do know what you mean about trying to get different libraries to work together. I mostly use GPO and EWQL and EWQL has way too much inherent reverb to do deal with.

For marginally tense, the brass works perfect. Like I said, I liked it in there.

Ron

I take it you've updated these cues recently? The percussion is sounding much better! I'm really digging the second cue. I think the problem with the guitar is that each note has slightly too little decay. This is pretty prevalent in the first cue. The second one is a little better because you've mostly got held out notes in the guitar.

Either try tweaking the patches in your sampler or overlapping the tails of the notes a bit. Maybe try adding a little bit of chorus and reverb and a very tiny amount of delay to your guitar patch. A little tweaking of the EQ couldn't hurt either. I think a slight boost in the bass frequencies might help round out the sound of the guitar.

Opening:

The band mixed with the orchestra created an interesting mood to this opening. However, I'm afraid the (orchestral) strings are a bit high on volume, sometimes going beyond the band instruments. Since the band constitutes the background of this short piece, I see it as something negative. As to the music itself, it's good and fits well to the purposes you aimed at.

Action sequence:

The 'Latin' element was very well employed. And I liked the brass addition here and there as well. On the other hand, I found the string pattern to be too much repetitive to my taste (maybe it's a standard of the genre, I don't know) and the guitar solo does need some refinement (maybe I'm being too meticulous as a guitarist, but I think that some more technical feedback is always valuable). As a whole, this is a decent piece, though I liked your opening best.

Keep up the good work,

Pedro