It Had to be Snakes

Hi everyone!

I have a piece to share with you and, contrary to usual, it's not actually brand new...I wrote this as my entry in the recent EWQL competition, and sadly did not win said competition with it. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun making it and now that the competition is over I figured I'd share my entry.

The idea of the competition, for those not familiar, is that you produce a track using ONLY instruments by EWQL that you own. In my case, I used EWQLSO Gold, StormDrum, Colossus, and a bit of Symphonic Choirs to put this together.

Have a listen:

It Had to be Snakes

I hope you enjoy! :happy:

It was those long slithering reptiles!

HSSSSSSSSS

.

Epicness.

Nice!

Though I think the ending horn melodies are a bit too obvious, would have liked something else.

Thanks, guys!

Coax, you're totally right but I was trying to play to the strengths of the libraries, and that kind of sound and melody is what they do best...certainly not the most innovative, but ah well. :P

How do you make the same VST that I have sound so much more real!? It's driving me insaaaaaaane! XD

Well done on the piece, sorry that you didn't win. You must have been up against some pretty epic stuff! I loved that melody that came in with the brass near the end, maybe overdid the cymbals a tiny bit, but it put me in mind of some stuff from Uncharted. You really know how to capture the feel! Better luck in the next one ;)

Very good stuff, I'm so much impressed!

You have all reasons to win!

Fox, it's magic. A careful blend of black magicks that allow me to do it. ;P I have no hard feelings about not winning though, there were lots of excellent entries (like 160-something of them) so my chances weren't huge anyway in such a crowd.

Marat, welcome to the forums — it's great that you're commenting on other peoples' work, I really appreciate it! I'm also happy you enjoyed it; as I said, I was very pleased with it, so even though it didn't win I consider it time very well spent. :happy:

Marius

Little question: that choir shouts starting at 1:22, they're from Symphonic Voices? They are really good with singing all you type in from keyboard?

Marius,

That piece was unbelievably professional. I love the marimba line. It totally adds to the jungle-Temple-of-Doom sound.

What was the choir saying?

Peace on Earth,

-John

WOW ! (=>first reaction)

I especially like the bass line, and the staccato trumpets and horn. How did you make those trumpets sound so, i dont know how to describe it, fluttery i think is the best to describe it ^^. And ofcourse the brass at the end, magnificent!

Funny though how i recognise all your samples, I think i have exactly the same samples as you use, however, it sounds much better when you use them :o You might have some secrets to share with me? :)

Grtz

Hey folks, thanks for all the replies!

Marat: The shouts are definitely from Symphonic Choirs, yeah, but they're not responding to any words in particular; there's a dedicated "shouts" patch with a bunch of different syllables, so I just put the phrases together from those. As a general idea, the choirs DO indeed sing what you type for them, but you need to write the words in a particular phonetic language to get it to work properly, and setting up the WordBuilder to work properly with your sequencer is a giant pain in the donkey. I honestly hate using it.

John: Glad you liked it! :D I was channeling some subtle Williamsness with that marimba (which is actually a xylophone). As I told Marat, the choirs are just singing syllables strung together into the semblance of language. So technically they're singing nothing at all. Secretly, it's an evil chant. Evil evil chant.

JijGaat: Thank you for your kind words! The brass is set up with a combination of the multi-RR short staccato patches from EWQLSO Gold layered on top of each other. I also made liberal use of short rip patches to add some flavour to the lines. Sadly, because of the restrictions of the competition, I was only able to use my EWQL samples for this competition so you're not really hearing my actual orchestral sound, but yeah....I guess I've just been using EWQLSO enough that I have a good idea of how to get it to sound the way I want. Secrets must not be shared!!! :P

I really appreciate all your thoughts, folks, makes me happy that you enjoyed it!

wow, this is really cool, I love the percussion. :)

Marius,

I just listened to your piece and here are my initial comments. (I will listen again and again, but these are my fresh impressions after only ONE listening.)

1) A great cue! (of course) very jungle-y

2) I wanted more cinemactic bottom end "BOOM BOOM!" but you where limited with the older EW samples. So for what you had to work with, you exectuted it superbly.

3) Very good use of brass flutters and rips. They were subtle as they should be.. the tendancy is to overpower the other instruments with these type of effects and you resisted. Good.

4) As rhythmic as the piece is I was wanting even MORE going on in the percussion department... again kinda hard to do given the older non-looped samples (at least as far as I am aware the older EW stuff has no percussive loops)... so, being that the beats were your own, you did as well as could be expected with what you had.

5) I remember a spot toward the end where some cymbal crashes felt too syncopated and left too much "open" space, at least to MY ears.

6) The little voice in my head is saying tempo was a little too slow.. just a little.

7) Nothing melodically stood out as memorable, but what incidental cinemactic music ever does?

All in all, I guess the best overall initial comment I could give is to say that it didn't make me too critical and this is a good thing because the cue is only an exclamation point to what's happening on screen and nothing more, and there were no melodic squeekers that stood out and might make one think "something's not quite right" (and that's important).

The cue isn't supposed to be a masterpiece. It's kinda like when Brian Setzer (greatest guitarist alive) wails away on one note making the audience go crazy rather than doing his usual virtuoso finger-pickin'.

If I only had three words to comment with they would be:

More bottom end

Now, I will listen to it a second time and see how off I was.

epii (Rick)

Oooo lotsa comments, thanks k&g and Rick! Let's see if I can address them in list form....

1. Yaaaaaay!

2. I was considering doubling the low end staccatos but the sound just isn't authentic. I find that the low end in many cinematic tracks these days are fairly ridiculous and I'd rather not succumb to that unnecessarily.

3. Definitely a good point, I love the effects but one must keep them quiet or they ruin everything.

4. I'm a percussion freak, so this is a comment that made me smile. The reason I didn't go overboard was because a) the piece didn't need it and I find that with percussion subtlety and taste is just as important as a full broadside assault, and B) the samples I was working with didn't have the RR layers I've become so used to, so producing a convincing percussion line is more challenging and I'd rather have less that sounds better than more that sounds fake.

5. Not sure what you mean, but....okay! :P

6. It could be faster, but then it wouldn't have fit the 2-minute limit as snugly as it does now.

7. I tend to love tossing in some memorable melodic bits, but it wasn't the focus here so you're definitely correct to remark upon it.

Let me know if more listens change your thoughts! :)

Fun piece! Like a dank and rainy jungle...

Okay, now I'm in full blown analysis mode.

After many more listenings I look back at my initial comments and I guess they haven't changed much.

New impressions:

00:00 - 00:27 I thought it could use more ambiance in the background AND more reverb but I know these samples are to blame... these EW samples seem too "up front" not enough room space to give it the distance it deserves.

00:27 The entrance of the wooden flute added to the snake-y, jungle-y flavor but then went away. I thought it could have been the featured instrument throughout the piece. It appears again at 01:06 and again I wanted more of it at least until the large brass takes the lead.

00:53 Here is where the great choppy rhythm on the strings just stops and the next few seconds are kind of "lacking" something to my ears. I thought maybe continuing the string thing an octave higher but reeeeal subdued... or maybe not, just think it needs something here, not much, but something.

01:00 A little empty hole here.. where's that wooden flute?

01:06 Oh! there it is - I love it!!! I want MORE! (I don't even know if it's wooden, but it sounds jungle-y to me). Whatever this instrument is, I think it could play a bigger role in this piece. After all... we all have the architipical snake-flute association deep within our collective unconscious.

01:16 Another little hole where maybe that flute could say something

01:22 This is where after my first listening I remarked that there were some syncopated cymbal crashes and you correctly though I was retarted. I am. And I'm sorry for that. I just remembered after the first run-through that there was something metal-y and syncopated. This was the spot but of course they are not crashes but rather rides and are in syncopation with the vocal "grunts". I dunno Marius, I'm liking this part better as I listen to it more. I was going to say that I didn't think the cymbals and grunts should be adjoined but I think they're okay now. I think it's more a mic'ing thing. The cymbals seem too up front to me, I think that they should be way back behind the orchestra. If I remember correctly I think EW Gold only uses the "far" mic, so you would think this would give the distance needed here. Maybe more reverb on the cymbals would do the trick.

Great overall stereo imaging! And nice use of pre-Symphobia, pre-Evolve orchestral effects.

Marius, take everything I say with a grain of salt cuz I'm just a dumb guitarist and not really qualified to give orchestral advice. I'm trying too hard to analyze things I have little experience in. But, I'm learning.

Again Marius, this is a great cue and given a home (on film) would do it's job just as is. I'm critical of Beethoven too... nah! not really.

Hehe, sounds awesome to me <_<

Pity you didn't win that contest. Snakes sounds really great, I mean, I personally thought the drum at the start could have been a little lower down, but hey, that's just my preference and taste, not really an issue.

BTW, was the competition the one with EWQL Composers Collection for the prize????

WOOWWWW It's AMAZING AND COOL

I have one question though, how have you maintained such a long streak of awesome music? :lol:

Marius

You have such a talent and such great rendering skills that I wish you would forget the idea of

"Secrets must not be shared!!!"

And let us all in on some of them.

Well done

Ron

Whoa, sorry guys — I didn't notice there had been more replies! I think my email settings are broken...anyway, allow me to address your thoughts!

Rick (Part 2): great to have some updated impressions, so let me see what I can say about them. You're right that I'm somewhat limited reverb-wise given that I own the Gold version of EWQLSO so I don't have access to the multiple mic positions. In terms of spacing though, there was also an error on my part in the rendering because I forgot a particular step in my effects chain that generally helps lend samples the depth they require — it's a basic EQ thing that must be applied because of the nature of acoustics, but in any case you're right that there could have been more depth. The problem with that particular ethnic flute is that it's a sample from Colossus and it's not very versatile at all. It has a beautiful sound and is great for effects, but if I used it any more it would be easy to pick out the fact that it's just a repetitive sample; in other words, it would have been more trouble than it was worth for me to coax an organic performance out of a fairly rigid patch. Besides that though, I didn't want to play up that subconscious association too much — it's there, we all recognize it, so I didn't see the need to belabor the point. When you're talking about "gaps", you're right to notice them but they are totally intentional. I wasn't meaning to have them filled, the whole point is to have some spaces and contrasts that help make the hits and so on more intense. It's basically the idea of staggered building instead of a constant growth to the climax. I find the listening experience to be more engaging this way because you expect one thing and get another, then there are hits on strange beats, etc. Snakes aren't meant to be comfy and predictable when they strike, after all. :P Thanks for all the detailed thoughts, Rick, they're really helpful for my understanding of how an audience gets my work!

Cheeselord: Glad you liked it! It was definitely the competition with the full collection as the prize...would have been nice, but ah well, such is life! I suppose the percussion is a matter of taste...I'm a percussion freak, so I like to mix it fairly loudly...

Heckel: Hahaha that's a funny question since I actually meant for it to be quite a bit longer, but had to condense it to fit the 2-minute length requirement for the competition. I'm considering doing an extended version so I can fully flesh the ideas out...we'll see if time permits.

Ron: I'm really happy that you listened and enjoyed it. You're right, I could be more open about my rendering techniques....I guess I just like the idea of forcing people to use their ears and learn by experimenting and trying new things like I did. Especially in cases like this where people are likely to have the same samples I'm using, it really comes down to just listening closely to the sound you want to get and figuring out what's different between it and the sound you are getting. That being said, if people have more precise questions I will answer them about this piece. Might even put up some screenies from the sequencer if people are interested. :)

Heckel: Hahaha that's a funny question since I actually meant for it to be quite a bit longer, but had to condense it to fit the 2-minute length requirement for the competition. I'm considering doing an extended version so I can fully flesh the ideas out...we'll see if time permits.

You're going to make it LONGER????

EPIC WIN :jedi: :jedi:

Might even put up some screenies from the sequencer if people are interested. :)

Well at least I am interested :D

I agree. Even a small insight into your compositions would be like a lamp into the mists of composition!! :happy:

Hey guys,

So I decided to grab some screenies of the sequence, as promised! The gigantic image below (sorry for the size) is a picture of the entire sequence, up to the 1:45 or so mark:

I've also included a shot of one of my Kontakt instances (the one holding the brass section) so you can see my selection of patches and panning and so on:

And finally here's a shot of the mixing area, where you'll notice each instrumental section has its own dedicated reverb (SpaceDesigner is a Logic's wonderful built-in convolution reverb plugin) and channel EQ settings to help place them properly:

Enjoy! :)

Very Very Good. The choir was my favorite part.

WOW. I read all the comments here, and I laughed at how worshipful everyone was of your composing abilities. "How can he be THAT good?" I thought. But then I listened, and now I belong to the Church of Marius too :blink:

This is very awesome, genuinely awesome. I'd shied away from it before, because it's name bored me to tears ("It Had To Be Snakes" sounded like something you shake a few maracas at or something), but the power of the atmosphere is unmistakable, and the way you lead into your climax is genius. :phones: