Ice Castles of Ganymede

I have been working on this for quite a while and think it is finally ready.

The piece is all EWQL Gold and the gong patches were the basic inspiration for the piece. I use Sonar 8 PE to compose.

I see this as a trip thru a castle made of ice, but you may see it differently.

Here

Ice Castles of Ganymede

or here

Ice Castles of Ganymede (Boxnet)

Comments are always appreciated.

Ron

I am wondering, are you going to make this into a series?

A plus material as always :D

Ron-

I didn't really see this as a trip through a castle made of ice, but maybe more as a trip through a demented carnival or circus, (not that that is a problem, I loved it). I liked the whole ebb and flow idea you had going on throughout the piece.

Also, I don't know if it was just the speakers I was listening to it through, but at times there seemed to be slight artifacts in the track. At times the audio quality dropped a bit and a tiny bit of distortion was introduced.

Heckel likes this :D:toothygrin:

Sax

I am never sure about anything, so there may be more Ganymede pieces or there may not. I was doing a suite of pieces about Alice through the looking glass and thought I would do a complete series with all of the characters, but that sort of died out, so who knows?

Andy

There are actually 2 different types of distortion going on in the Take you listened to. I just replaced it with a version I didn't even listen to (real smart right?), but I did hear some of the distortion that was in the take you heard. I ahd a few snare drum hits that were louder than what I wanted, so I changed their velocities and posted that version without listening to the rest of the piece. Well bring down those velocities allowed the Timpani to get louder which ended up causing one of the types of distortion. So I went back in and nudged down the timpani volume in thoese spots and posted the new version without even listening. I am typing as it all uploads.

The other distortion which you might be talking about comes in at the real loud parts, mostly in the strings. I get lazy from time to time and use Boost 11 which is a cheap Limiter that just loves to mess with the strings. I think it cuts the freqs in and out in a weird way. In time (like maybe tonight) I will do all of the work required to just get rid of Boost 11 all together, which should make the piece sound a lot better anyway.

Thanks Graham

Any luck yet with making mp3's?

Thanks again guys

Ron

It's an interesting piece, but like Andy said I didn't see it as a trip through an ice castle. Somehow I think of something very fragile, very dark, and very ambient when you say ice castles of Ganymede. This piece sounded very dramatic, very heavy. Sorry I can't say much on the specifics (though if you ever included guitar work I could comment on that, haha). The theme with the bells and drums try to hint at your original title, but I feel as though the rest of the music is too harsh.

This can be solved by a simple name-change. :P In any case, it's hard to see what you were intending this for. A movie? A game? Some context would help!

Sounds good overall though; no complaints about the music itself.

I think the title suited this piece fine. "Ice Castles on Ganymede" sounds vast, epic and unearthly, which is what this song delivered. I suppose it could have been more unearthly, but other than that I thought this song would have been very appropriate for a tour in an ice castle. I don't think Ice castles would be fragile at all, by the mere fact that there castles.

As far as the distortion goes, it was annoying and should probably be ironed out of this piece and any piece in the future. Unless of course you can use it to your advantage? It might make for some cool effects, if you did a bit of experimenting with it.

Ohhh man, this would work wonders as a world of warcraft soundtrack... Thats one of my favourite soundtracks to date, and I think that this song of your should be in there :D

I liked the occasional eastern feel, I'm guessing you used some arabic modes whether it be intentionaly or not, it turned out good. You really make some interesting textures and convey certain emotions without much melodic content, I admire that. I have that thing that if there was 10 seconds without an in-your-face melody in my work, there is something wrong... :P

This is great work, one of your tracks that I enjoyed the most I have to say.

I have time to leave a more detailed comment of what I specifically liked.

-probably said this before, but you have , imo, a distnct composing style that is completely yours and yours alone.-

I really liked the brass in the beginning.

The snare drum I also liked.

Is that a gong of some sort i n the beginning?

Oh woops -reads the thread starting post-

Nevermind :D

I didn't exactly get an "Ice Castle" feeling, but I did get some type of building/station feeling of some such from that.

Ron

I like this piece but I think you could get more out of some of the fine melodic ideas that are submerged in soundscape effects. Yes it does work as background or incidental music but I find a tendency to have competitive ideas clashing with different orchestral sections as opposed to an idea leading in say strings and getting cooperative support from other sections.

I can hear some great stuff that just goes by - there is melody in this and most of your pieces but it isn't developed to any extent.

Here is an old piano improv of yours which I worked into a quartet: http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/white-chocolate-butterflies-13484.html#post211502 where the sound is mellow and introspective - it is you piano with a backup combo. There was no commenting back then so perhaps some of the current listeners to your music could comment now.

Just my non-expert two cents.

Herb

Thanks Graham

Any luck yet with making mp3's?

Not one bit :(

To All

Sorry I didn't respond sooner, but I try to spend my time listening to as many pieces as possible and offering any meager help that I can. I also type slow, so that doesn't help.

I have posted a version that gets rid of most of the distortion and am working on one that doesn't use the cheap limiter I was using. It is almost completed and I will re-upload it when done.

Thanks to all of you for taking the time to let me know you listened and any thoughts you had concerning the piece.

Ron

Hey Ron,

Sorry for taking so long to post, I've been a bit busy. I really liked this one. When listening to this a did actually think of an ice castle and I thought of some beasts dancing in it, sort of a twisted ballet. Actually, it wasn't a castle, but more of a manor or mansion. I get what you were saying about GPO and EWQLSO and it really shows here. I guess it's just a matter of selection and preference.

Nice work.

Ron

You already know that I love this piece. The color you implore here is wonderful as always. I don't know if you're familiar with Schoenberg at all, but he uses tone color melody in some of his works, I got the same impression with this. Not really a traditional melody or motif in this piece, but the way you treated tone colors kept this piece coherent and fitting.

I really urge you to post more "Ganymede" pieces, making a sort of orchestral suite and posting them together in the MW section, not only to have your music heard by more members (although it looks like more are finally coming around) but to have a large orchestral work under your name. It's already a great accomplishment having teh vast array of works completed, but a suite would be nice. :)

The theme at around 4:00 was awesome, it was an excellent. My only criticism would be at the 1:20, 3:25 marks. I think the orchestration was a bit dense. Dense is a good thing, but what I mean is it just seems too cluttered at these parts, I'm sure there are others as well. Since you compose with Sonar, I don't know if it's orchestration or a mixing issue, it just got a bit tiring.

Great work as always Ron, gonna listen to Lucifer's Lullaby now ;)

Vince

P.S. I just got EWQLSO Gold from a friend, good deal if you ask me for what I paid. It's PLAY edition too, so it should work. I'll let you know.

I think you have very good color and mood. The orchestration and arrangement is nice.

Nice changes through the song too. I can tell a lot of work went into it.

It's quite dissonant, which is right up my alley.

In reality it reminds me of a science fiction soundtrack, except the bell glissando things.

In the show The Outer Limits they use this type of melody and strings/brass/drums all the time so that's what it reminds me of.

So all in all good. Keep it up.

sswave

I also envision a dance going on in the middle of the castle. And like you I don't see it as a typical castle. To me, since Ganymede has a surface of ice, this all takes place underground in a large dwelling made of ice. So I use the term Castle just because it brings images of a large dwelling.

If you get the chance, listen to my piece in Orchestra called Lucifer's Lullaby. It is done entirely with the newest version of GPO. This piece and that one gives a good side by side feel for the 2 VSTs.

Vince

I'll start with the good one at around the 4 minute mark. That's the celeste again making an appearance. It gives that imaginary/fantasy feel to a piece everytime.

Now the other 2.

The main differencve between notation and DAWs is in the details easily applied in a piece. In notation you have basically 8 levels of dynamics going from ppp to fff. In a sequencer, you use continuous controllers that allow from cc0 to cc127. So there are 128 levels of dynamics. When in the skilled hands of a professional, there is no such thing as the orchestration being too dense. Just the user being too dense. So it is all in the mix. I am getting better, but I still have a long way to go.

I am almost finished with a new mix on this that hopefully addresses those issues. I will pm you when it is completed.

This piece is over 8 minutes long and I have to adjust all of the parameters on each and every note for all of the instruments. I am faster than most because I let a lot slide that I really shouldn't. You and others have already caught me on this one in a number of places. But I am still working on it.

Schoenburg has some works that are just too far out there for me and some that are pure genious.

Keep me updated with how EWQL is working for you. I can at least get it up and running for you in Sib so you will hear it. The rst will be up to you. PM me the price you paid as well.

Thanks guys

Ron

Ron there's no way I would accidentally mix up your music with someone else's. You definitely have a distinct musical identity. This piece is very mystical and ambient and could very well illustrate an Ice Castle. There's a lot of distorted melodies and I picture myself walking through the castle looking at my reflection being distorted off the glass like ice. As I have said before I really don't care for this kind of music, but I did like the part at 6:00, which toned down most of the craziness and had somewhat of a melodic identity. One thing I don't like is the EWQLSO gong. It sounds so cliche I hear it all the time. I typically like to modify it to where it's not easily recognized or use a different instrument to produce a similar effect. Anyways, keep up the good work Ron.

Ron, what you were saying to saying to Vince about dynamics I might add that there was one part (maybe halfway through perhaps?) where the brass and strings were playing more or less in unison, though it seemed that the strings had the melody. Maybe turn the brass down a bit when the strings are driving the melody. Though, I've never formally studied orchestration so...

Also, I reallllllly loved the ambiguous end part with the celesta - it was so cool!

A very enjoyable piece, well done. There's interesting orchestration and harmonic movement everywhere. And I just noticed there's a lot more music on your page, might listen later. :P

Reth

I understand you remarks about the EWQL gongs. They have been used a lot.

Nielda

I tried numerous endings for this one and ended up taking Vince's advice on how to end it, so he deserves a lot of the credit there.

Max

If you do listen to any of my other works, just bear in mind that some of the pieces on that site are from times that I knew a lot less than I know now.

Thanks guys

Ron