Dragon age origins re-score

Hey-

A re-score of a trailer for dragon age that I made. Software used: SD2, Symphonic Orchestra Gold, Symphonic choir. Comments welcome.

-jdrcomposer

Hey there,

I must say you did a great job. The sounds fit very well to the pictures. I hoped to hear more of the choirs, though ^_^. Some massive climax with choirs would have made it even better I think :)

grtz

Hi JD!

This was a fun project, I'm glad you took it on, but I have several comments about your results. First of all, sorry, but I found the music to be quite intrusive on the visuals and considerably overdone, especially at the beginning. The battle sequences were fine, but you really didn't leave much dynamic range to grow and breathe with the visuals. It sounds more like you wanted to write a cool piece and you fit it to the video's timings than actually scoring the clip legitimately.

Production-wise, I would say that — even taking into account YouTube's compression — the realism just isn't there. You used some very good libraries for this, but you didn't spend enough time sequencing the MIDI to get a realistic sound of of your ensemble. It also sounds as though the mixing is completely centered and that the instrument section are on top of each other, but that may just be YouTube, I'd have to hear the actual mix to see if that's actually an issue.

Overall this seems like you enjoyed yourself, and the writing is adept enough, but it doesn't distinguish itself from the masses and doesn't show off the full capabilities of your software in terms of producing a convincing mock-up. My biggest issue with it wasn't those things though, it was that I got the impression that you didn't respect the personal space of the video. I realize that you may have done this as a portfolio piece, but films are very rarely made to show off their music, and so if you really want to attract a director's attention, show them that you can stand out and write good music without obscuring or overpowering their visuals.

Thanks for sharing and keep at it!

Hey good stuff. I assume the music will be quieter (compared to sound effects and dialogue) in the actually finished thing?

If I could chime in with a very vague and general point: I felt the music synchronised a little too well. This gives it a "matter of fact" quality which can detract from its believability. If you swap some of the less important 'mood jumps' with smoother transitions, and perhaps experiment with offsetting the other jumps a little, this can give quite profound results - from something that otherwise looks a little a bit of a caricature.

I don't know, maybe tailers require a tighter treatment, but it's worth playing around with.

Hey JDR,

Job well done! One place that I think where I think the music doesn't fit so well is when the enemies first approach at 0:54-1:03. It's doesn't seem dark/tense enough considering that our band of heroes just got surprise attacked by horrible monsters in the fog. The music is a little too busy right now for the action on-screen. I can see this music fitting really well with gameplay (especially like Fire Emblem turn-based gameplay) but not so much with the cinematic.

Still, it's a nice piece of work you created, JDR. Keep it up!

Peace on Earth,

-John

Hey Guys-

Thanks for the feedback! How long can i make this-well, this was a project for me just to try and hit as many points as I could without making the piece comedic, so it may sound quite synchronised. Marius-wow.....this is actually really helpful for future work! Thanks! Is there any guide (online or the I can buy) that has an in-depth explanation of how to make MIDI sounds more realistic? I would be very interested to spend time with that. JijGaat-god, I wish I could use those fantastic choirs, but my computer freezes when I load up any large patches, which is a real pain. Is there any way I can fix that?

-jdrcomposer

JD, there aren't really unfortunately any guides that go really in-depth about this kind of thing (though I've been asked to write one) so what I can tell you is to listen to real orchestras and film orchestras play things. Listen and then compare those pieces to what you're producing....listen to where you hear the instruments coming from, to how they produce the notes, to how notes are linked and how the reverb is set up and all those little details. Once you've done that, you'll immediately begin to understand where your piece's realism falters. Most things you can fix or avoid with samples, some things you just need a real orchestra for, but either way you can get a far finer sound out of those samples than this.

Well I think the fullchorus choirs, can be easily loaded right? Or just 4 nki files with a soprano/alto/tenor/bass singing one of the vowels, or the aah/eh/oh sound. I have the same problem with the multi's that can make the choirs sing text, with loading in my program, but I can use them as standalone application. Considering the fact your computer is at least 4 times better than mine, I think you should be able to do that too :o

How long can i make this-well, this was a project for me just to try and hit as many points as I could without making the piece comedic, so it may sound quite synchronised.

Ah I didn't realise a comedic effect was intended.

JijGaat-god, I wish I could use those fantastic choirs, but my computer freezes when I load up any large patches, which is a real pain. Is there any way I can fix that?

You should start a new topic for this, listing the details of your setup.

Marius-I listen to film score orchestras all the time, I saw the LOTR concert at Radio City. I just am trying to find a way to replicate the sounds that they are able to get, I'm hoping to get EWQL Hollywood Strings or Vienna Symphonic Orchestra's strings soon. I'll try working with the reverb settings.

Jigaatt-the full chorus choir is what I have trouble with, I've been trying to work with different inserts for different sections and vowels, which works a bit better, but crashing can still occur when I try to alter it, I'll make a new topic for that.

-jdrcomposer

Well the problem isn't with reverb, it's with sequencing. And if you don't polish up your sequencing skills, then it doesn't matter what library you're using. VSL is notorious for being a difficult library to get the optimum sound out of. They're vast and extremely good instruments, but they don't sound that way "out of the box" like EWQL does. In any case, my point was that you can get a more convincing sound out of the libraries you have, it's just a question of spending time with your MIDI data to get everything sounding real and human.

I was thinking of getting VSL for the violin transitions, but should I hold off and wait for Hollywood Strings? When you say polish up your sequencing skills, is there any specifics that you are referring to?

The best individual string library on the market right now is easily the LA Scoring Strings. Their legato is more natural than any of the others. Obviously the best sound will be obtained by combining several libraries. At this point, Hollywood Strings is looking a bit bloated to me...last count it was more than 500GB for JUST strings. Still, I'm sure they'll sound lovely — as they should for that price. As for sequencing, I mean your handling of note velocities, expression and mod values, variations in tuning, slight imprecisions in tempo, note lengths, legato, etc etc...all the little technical elements that make it sound like people playing the music and not a computer.

LA Scoring strings is outside of my budget at the moment, although I do agree that it has the best sounding strings. Is there any way I can manipulate EWQLSO string samples for legato aside from the script?

Scripting is the most effective way to get convincing legato out of non-legato samples. Whether it's SIPS or another script, you can't go wrong. You'd need the script to be built-in or you'd need the full version of Kontakt to be able to apply it otherwise. Failing that, the only way to get legato out of non-legato samples is to slightly overlap notes and work really hard on getting the release times and note velocities right so that it doesn't just sound like a drunken string section.

Hi jdr!!

I'm seconding most of what Marius has said. However, I'd say that this sounded much better than what the last one I listened to. This is actually decent for realism, although still, more time needs to be taken for details.

This contrasted far too much IMHO. From the start for this style of music, you should either go for heavy orchestration, or light orchestration. The part at 1.25, although you're trying to make it seem abrupt, it seems too abrupt. A fireball just landed there, make a meal of it, especially when there's a fight!!! This doesn't mean full brass, drums etc. but even a heavily dampened timpani would increase the atmospheric tension. Happily, you've improved over the last few pieces, which is great news though, so looking forward to see more!!

Marius-I use the PLAY version, I wish I could use SIPS though. Is the PLAY legato changeable?