Gathering (Somewhat of a war theme)

Hello. I started this a long time ago and just decided to finish it off with a quick ending for now to get it over with. I'm not that good or experienced as a composer and know no theory, so all suggestions and advices are welcomed. :)

This theme accompanies the scene of the gathering of an army. Somewhat dramatic, I hope for it to picture the scene of a leader standing infront of an army giving final speeches as the troops get ready.

Download:

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Made in Finale 2006; had to record with I-sound recorder due to some program mess up, and it seems to mess up the quality up a bit. Not that it was that good of a quality to begin with though.

All feedback welcomed, and thanks for your time~

Well, you had a good start on this, I like how you use the snare, but I don't like the use of 'too much' gong. Yes, it does sound like an army gathering, keep it up, good job. :dry:

Hello.

Hello!

Thank you for having the courage to post your piece for us, speaking of which I will now give a small review.

It's lovely!

Yours sincerely,

Blenching Snail............

Hehe!! I'm only joking of course. I wouldn't post one that short! Your piece has an interesting subject (I mean the film bit) and I think the music would fit well. I don't think the gong is too distracting, but there might be a bit too much. Perhaps some orchestral cymbals could be used instead, and the gong could be used for a couple of extra special moments!! After all, the gong is an extra special instrument.

Perhaps the speech could go like this,

"Men. Women. Ogres. The time has come. We must take back the marshlands - the MOTHERLAND!! Take no prisoners. Have no mercy. Take a packed lunch. Have a banana for extra nutrients. And then rip off their faces!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Please excuse my aggresive tendancies.

*slimy signature*

Blenching Snail

Hey you know what that reminds me of? Lord of the Rings 4, Men and Women and the Ogres goes to Picnic hehe. No offence mate, just sticking in a joke ;)

What the heck is an ogg file? And what can be used to play it? Or view it?

An ogg file is an audio file saved using the ogg vorbis codec and can be played in just about any media player as long as you install said codec.

Linkage.

That's a good piece. I liked the mood you created with the percussion and the strings. The beginning is really tense, a kind of atmosphere a battle usually takes place in. The brass section playing the main theme was also a good choice. The only thing that stood out to me was that the main theme has too many notes. I would have imagined something stronger and easier to remember. Perhaps you should try to simplify the melodic contour (I think you don't need to change the main melody), so that it would better fit the scene you've described. But overall, you did a good job!

Keep it up,

Pedro

Hey,

It's not bad but there are some glaring issues. First off, the gong is seriously overused and the suggestion to replace most of the gong hits with orchestral cymbal hits (or maybe something more creative) is a very good one.

Next, those snares - and the rest of the recording for that matter - sounds like it was dragged across the bottom of the Atlantic before being posted; I don't know if it's the reverb you used or just poor mixing but the whole thing sounds drowned and artificial.

Your instrumental parts are fine and the them is effective, if not particularly original. I'm guessing that the strange oscillating humming is supposed to be male vocals? It's hard to tell in the mix.

Overall it's fine but you need to work out those issues if you can before you consider it a finished work. A good finished work, at least.

Keep composing!

Ah, thanks for the replies guys!

Yeah, point taken for the gong issue :o I really need to fix that up. As for the sound quality blurring part, half of it is due to the recording process. But finale's own output seems to be (ironically) gong-less, so I had to use an internal recording. For some reason, it still changed the sound.

Thanks for the tips and things, I'll keep them in mind when editting it!

Edit: I updated the link with a much much better qualitied mp3 version, however it hasn't been fixed yet and the only change is the quality.