Times Up

Here is an Action Cue I wrote. It sounds like it could work in a movie possibly more so a game. What I'm looking for is production advice. Mixing, etc. Other advice is welcome too.

Time's up

Time's up- New Version

Reth

The piece itself is pretty cool. Now that that is out of the way, some production comments.

The piece is way too low in overall volume. What you got works well for a baseline, but you need some heavy dynamics to make some of the lines jump out at you. Those brass swells for example need to be blasting out towards the end of their runs.

You need to do some volume envelope work to get those lines to jump out. You may need to use a limiter to keep down some of the peaks.

Mostly though I just hear the need for more massive dynamics.

Nice work

Ron

Thanks Rolifer for the comments. Question, What is a volume envelope? Limiter for the Peaks? I'm completely ignorant to mixing. All I do is bring up the mixer in Sonar. Bounce all of my midi tracks into Audio. Play each one individually make sure it doesn't peak. And then play it all together and see if the master peaks. If it does I take the volume down.

K, I tried some of the things we talked about Rolifer. Tell me what you think of the new version.

Reth

I think that this is better, but it still needs some overall volume. I think that once you get more volume, you can play with the dynamics more.

Ron

You've mentioned you can get more volume using audacity. How do I do that in audacity?

Reth

That is something that takes a bit of doing.

First off I look at the file in audacity and then go back to Sonar and add a volume envelope on my master file and try to get rid of any high peaks. That is also done sometimes with Boost 11 or with some of the other tools in Sonar. Then I export again and open in Audacity. Click on edit/select all and then go to Effect/Amplify. I once again look at the amplitudes and do some more work in Sonar to get rid of any spikes. I then go back and forth between the 2 programs until I get a decent volume hike out of it. I will even sometimes click on "allow Clipping" and amplify even higher than normal. But if you do that, watch out for distortion.

Hope that helps

Ron

Do you export individual track s to audacity or the whole thing as one file?

Hi Reth!

I've listened to both versions of this track, and while the second is an improvement over the first thanks to Ron's excellent advice, my initial problem with it still remains.

This is a really cool action track, and you're working with some very potent sound libraries, so it's a real shame that you didn't put a bit more work into the sequencing...some elements — especially the percussion and strings — sound extremely mechanical in their rendering. They lack a bit of human touch that would make the whole thing sound more convincing.

Besides that though, I thought the track was solid. Since Ron's taking you through production, I won't bother commenting there unless you'd like me to later. Overall, what it sounds like is the stage music from a Soul Calibur game, except watered down. I'm fond of your choice of percussion instruments.

Good work, thanks for sharing! :)

Marius you sure know how to bring a guy down, but in a good way. So what suggestions would you give to make my strings and such sound more humanistic? I assume you know that I'm using EWQLSO Gold symphonic library. What things can you do to introduce those specific elements that you might suggest?

Do you export individual track s to audacity or the whole thing as one file?

Reth

I export my final bounced track from Sonar that has everything included. I take that one file into Audacity and work with it there.

I had asked you if you do any controller work in your projects. That is where you get the realism. The composing part is usually pretty easy for most of us here. The hard part is in the cc work. I usually spend 80% of my time on a piece working with cc data and envelopes and automating data.

But the end result is worth it.

Ron

Didn't mean to be negative, Reth, I apologize. Soul Calibur games happen to contain some of my favourite game music, so that was a compliment in case you mistook it.

In any event, the nice thing about EWQLSO Gold is that you've got Round-Robin patches that help avoid the machine-gun effect that used to plague mixes with lesser libraries. They're not going to do the trick on their own though. A convincing string line will not only have variations in tone colour (which the RR functionality handles for you), but also in key velocity (because no string player will produce every note at the exact same volume). So what you need to do at this point is go back to your string lines, mostly the staccato, and tweak the velocities to give them a more natural variation — some irregularity, in other words, to mimic the "human" factor of a live performance. The same goes for percussion.

The easiest way to accomplish that (in my experience) is to input your MIDI data via keyboard right from the start. That way, you don't waste so much time tweaking and fiddling with everything. Some adjustment may still be necessary, but you save the tedious grunt work, and the result is not only more efficient but also vastly more convincing. It's immediately noticeable.

To squeeze more realism out of your renderings, or at least get rid of the "canned" sound that EWQL libraries in particular are known for, you should mix libraries or at least tweak the EQ settings of an instrument to give it your own signature sound. That's something that takes time to develop an ear for — tweaking the patches without ruining their quality. It's something that I definitely recommend you start playing around with though, because it's a great asset in producing crisp and convincing mock-ups.

Anyway, as I said, what you have here is a solid track, and my issues with it aren't with the writing so much as the sequencing. I'll keep an eye out for more updates, but feel free to pager me if I miss them. :happy:

I feel as though this piece needs more voices of the orchestra to be playing. Not necessarily in unison, but individually. Maybe add chords in the background to accompany, a more defined background melody to help transitions flow nicely, even if the melody isn't fancy or heavily developed. Just throwing some ideas out there. I agree with everything that the others have suggested, or what I have read of them. I would recommend taking the time to study the contents of this site as I am almost sure it will help you understand the world of mixing a bit better.

Tweak's Guide to the Home and Project Studio

Specifically look at the mixing, compression, and effects sections. Though I would recommend taking the time to read as much as possible even if not in one sitting.

I hope that helps you. Nice start though and I think you could really make something out of this. Good luck.

Hey I think you have some really nice ideas going on here, good work!

I won't comment about production etc... because these guys already have. I think you need to fatten out the sound with some extra parts written in, or different orchestration. This piece needs a 'wall of sound' and at the moment it sounds like something is missing. You could add some synths to broaden the sound to do this. Even some clever effects work could do this. What ever you do get as far away from the out of the box sound of your samples is my advice! That is when your work will start to come alive and take on your own character :-)

Really liked this track. Good job.

I don't think i can add any critique which Marius or Rolifer hasn't covered already, but i just wanted to say i liked the music. hehe.

Ok... went through all the thread, reading all the advices and I guess I have not heard the 1st version so I don't really know rolifer was talkin about. :)

Anyways, You had some nice Ideas there, But I felt as if you were stuck a little with the composition so you ended quickly.

The main action Idea is very nice although I have heard piece that sounds alike (excluding the trumpets all combined). I believe giving this composition some tone shifts would have made it a little bit more interesting.

i like it first of all, it has the right feel of something that is in the process of happening-action...the ideas are there, dynamics range would bring those ideas more to the front i think..lowering volumes of notes where the ear is expecting to hear them and surprising it where least expected.