Magical Night

Hey everybody here is a short 2 minute cue that could be used in a semi fanatasy movie, kind of like Lady in the water kind of stuff. http://www.geekingreen.com/storage/Magical%20Night.mp3

Wow, that's really good. I really like the chord progression and the underlying string ostinato

I was just wondering which notational software do you use because mine gives out this really horrid midi sound, which makes composing such a chore

I think you put in too much cymbals and tambourines, other than that pretty decent.

Aruya- Thankyou for your comment. I actually didn't use notational software for this I used Sonar 7. But the sounds are from EWQLSO Silver orchestra.

Phantom- You know my biggest problem is turning down percussion. I need to learn that percussion can still be heard if it's not as loud as all the other instruments. Thanks for your comments.

I like it a lot. Very nice indeed.

It sounds very Philip Glass-like and has a minimalistic style to it.

But dump most of the cymbal part as is it overdone.

What a treat!

I really liked the movie Lady In The Water, despite its bad reviews. But what really made the movie for me was the music. You've done a great job of capturing that sort of atmosphere and sound. Kudos... here's a cookie. :thumbsup:

The problems I have are the same as everyone else's.. TOO MUCH CYMBAL! :toothygrin: I had to pause the music for a bit cause it was just getting annoying after a while.

You've also overdone the wind chimes. If you still want all that sparkle, then I would suggest a glock and/or tubular bells (chimes). You could probably replace a few of the cymbal rolls with gong hits for some variety, but personally I think you only need the cymbal when the music swells, as with the [wind] chimes.

Thanks for the listen!

I agree with the percussion comment made by Phantom. Perhaps this problem could be fixed by using different types of cymbals and wind chimes so the flavor isn't so over done all of the time. Then, I'd work not having those percussion parts repeat the rhythm so much. It happens over and over.

Now I'm going to talk about the other posts don't bring up: Audio production. I see so many composers write great music then have it ruined by sub-par to down right terrible audio production. If you're going to use samples and produce your songs in a digital format, then you have to know about audio production and how to get the best "performance" from it. You need to work on your mix. Many of the sections peaked and your bottom end is way too compressed. It gives the audio a very bad vibe overall. Your swells are greatly ruined by having the audio clip and begin to distort. Sounds like you need to spend a bit more time with the tracks ensuring they don't peak then use the tiniest bit of compression and limiting possible. Those tools are not end-all solutions and over using them does much more harm than good.

I hope that helps,

Nathan

Nathan- Your exactly right. This was my first piece that was composed entirely on my sequencer. I am completely ignorant to mixing. I have a vague idea of what it is and I know that it is a good thing to do but I don't know much about it. What resources would you recommend that would give me some insight on this?

I'll need to know what sequencer you're using, but the general idea is:

1) Always check your meters. When you reach 0 dB output you're peaking. In fact, I often try to mix between -2 and -4 dB at least. You can have points that get close to peaking, but longer sections (like the swells) really should not peak or distort.

2) Experiment with turning down certain tracks or instruments. You'll be surprised how several small tweaks can make the overall track come off much, much better.

3) Try and make the song sound the best with no limiter or compression set. If you can do this, then you'll be making some great production happening. From there you can experiment with subtle settings to make the mix "pop" or "sparkle."

Let me know what app and sample package that you're using and then I'll give you more specific pointers.

I'm using Sonar 7 and EWQLSO Silver xp for my sounds.

I'm just going to chime in here to mirror the responses that you've received so far and offer some added thoughts that came to me while listening.

First off, the percussion is ridiculously obtrusive as you know, so toning it down would be a great idea, and Nathan also brings up a good point about varying the sounds of swells and hits that you use to break up the monotony. I'd take that one step further and remove the vast majority of them from the mix — replicate the effect in other instrument groups, modulate, do something else to keep up the interest and save the neat percussion effects for key transitional points where they can really accent the music.

With that in mind, I'd like to expand on the orchestration comment by suggesting that you really work to vary things up a bit here. You've got a great sort of piece going and you seem to understand the mechanics of manipulating moods through music fairly well, but you're not being adventurous or even slightly intriguing with your arrangement and it really sunk the mix for me more than the production values (which Nathan has pointed out). Your writing is nice but extremely repetitive and aimless — where's the progress? Where's the variety in the instrumentation? Where's the development of ideas?

I realize that this is a short cue and that it's intended to serve as underscoring, but — since you mention it — listen to the Lady in the Water score and notice how James Newton Howard keeps the underscoring interesting too even though it's subdued and unobtrusive. Pay particularly close attention to his use of percussion — many times, the mallet percussion instruments are almost imperceptibly quiet in the mix, but it's enough to have a profound effect on the music.

Anyway, nice work, but this could use a serious re-edit to get it into top form. Thanks for sharing! :thumbsup:

Okay, I use Sonar in my home studio as well. One of Sonar's strengths is mastering. Here's the approach I use for mixing a song (and I do this in any application, not just Sonar):

Prep: Make sure you have GOOD speakers to mix with. Don't use headphones. It helps to be in a quiet room, without many distractions.

1) After having written the song, I bounce out each track individually as an audio file. This is some what tricky because you have to select the MIDI file track and also the VST container track. An easy way to tell which container track the MIDI track is tied to is to SOLO out one MIDI track. You should see two yellow S blocks light up in the track. These two tracks need to be highlighted for the duration of the piece. (Not doing this will cause an error about having "no audio data selected" and you'll not be able to bounce out anything.) Bounce out for each track.

Side note: Most of the time the individual tracks are not clipping themselves but the overall combination of tracks will be. It doesn't hurt, however, to go through each track and make sure something isn't clipping before completing this first step.

2) Create a new session where you can import all of the individual bounces alone. Not only does this make the session lighter (Sonar doesn't do a great job of handling VST typically) it allows you to begin to edit with envelopes. Here's where you start adding even more musicality and "performance" aspects of your piece. This is also where you begin to mix and identify trouble spots.

3) Now you've found that you're peaking in some sections. There are several ways to tackle the problem. First you can see the waveform data. In spots where the waveforms are larger, you'll need to bring these down a bit. Experiment with which tracks are the bigger culprits. Sometimes it is only one (like a taiko or really hot timpani part) and other times its several working together. Get the song to where you can play the whole piece without a single clip.

Note: Make sure you're watching your MASTER track during all of this. If not, you're shooting in the dark and may or may not fix the problems.

4) Once the song doesn't peak at all anymore, experiment with making some parts softer and putting a bit more emphasis into the swells. If you've done the mixing right this is more of a "taking away" method than adding to. After all, if you just start adding in more and more again you could be right back to the peaking out problems. This is a balancing act. Try to do ALL of your mixing at ONE volume level (speaker volume that is). Also do NOT use headphones for mixing. They do not provide reliable results and can throw off your mix greatly. There's tons of audio nerd science stuff as to why this is, but I'll spare you the lecture. :)

5) Once you feel that you have a pretty good mix, bounce it all out as one master file. From there you'll wanna test it EVERYWHERE. In your car, on your iPod, computer, stereo, etc. You want to see how the song reacts in a variety of situations. What you'll probably notice is that the song's mix sounds different on all set ups. Sometimes just a bit different, other times vastly different. What you're aiming for here is a solid average. Make your song sound TERRIFIC on very high end set ups while also making it sound good to crappy lap top speakers.

6) Publish and collect the millions** from you loyal fans!

**Cash amount subject to change without notice.

Hope that helps,

Nathan