~Rum and Gold~

Hi everyone!

This afternoon I felt the sudden and inexplicable urge to write a piratey piece....and so here's the result of a couple of hours of hard labour scrubbing the deck. Err, writing the piece.

It's fairly simple and short but I think it gets the message across. Let me know what you think! :ermm:

Mp3 Here

Mp3 Alternate (SoundClick)

Well Marius I like this, although it's rather short and it seemed a little underdeveloped IMO

one thing that I think would make it better, and this is only my opinion, but I think it needs some kind of thundering drums to make it more dramatic

That's really all I can say about your 45 secs of music :ermm:

Cheers!

Hey, er, wasn't there that one movie.....what was it called?

Pirates of....something or another....

:ermm:. Anyway, I thought there was a slight resemblance, at least in style, to the Pirates movies...which was definitely not a bad thing. Catchy melody(s), with a very upbeat, exciting mood....I thought it sounded great :D.

Pirates of the Caribean;)

Yeah it is quite similar to the music from that movie. The story sucked but the music was good.

Hi guys, thank you for your replies!

So I decided that I should probably try to extend this piece and I spent a bit of time today doing that only to discover that my Finale has decided to refuse to let me record the final part of it.

Anyway, my point is that there will be an update coming for this piece as soon as I coax my Finale into letting me finish the piece properly. :P

Hiya Marius,

I like this piece but as with alot of your pieces I think the orchestration could be thickened up a lot just to give it that edge! I think its just crying out for some bass macarto and just a general adding of layers perhaps a piccolo stac? The ideas are there! Just I think it lacks the propulsion and power.

Look forward to hearing the update,

fourthage

I found the theme to be very enjoyable! Although, as others have said, I'd like to hear a more developed version of it. The background effects also sounded quite nice. Which sound library did you use?

Best Regards,

Pedro

Hello guys,

I agree with you, fourthage, on the orchestration point. I didn't really detail it too much in my two hours of putting together this initial version; it really was just a sort of release of piratey energy more than a serious attempt at a magnificent piece :D

However, I fully intend to remedy that with this new version so I expect that you will feel slightly better about it overall once you hear the revision.

Pedro, I'm glad you enjoyed it and you can stay tuned for the new version too! As for the sound libraries, it was done with EWQLSO Gold Pro XP. The extended version uses more though so you can ask me again when I manage to finish and post it. :P

Thanks everyone!

heys! it sounds like he's a pirate hahaha. yea, and i feel that it sounds lacking, its not rich and full enough IMO, it'll be great if u use stormdurm heh.

Alright everyone,

I've taken into account some comments from here and other places, completely ignored others and come up with an updated version of this piece.

Please take a listen and let me know what you think!

Rum and Gold

Hey Marius, nice job! First of all is your art, don't let everyone mess around with it, it's good if you think it's good. To be honest, anyway, I believe the middle part should be left aside the piece, to develop a new theme. Maybe you went a bit too far when you wanted to develop it. I would try to figure it out in a more simple way, like you did the first time, maybe extending the variations on the theme in the new key, before repeating the first theme. I have the belief that simple ideas are always the smarter ones.

Excuse me about my english! I've got lots of vocabulary to learn, I hope you don't misunderstand what I've wrote.

Keep it up!

That's a very interesting point of view, my new friend. I would agree with you in most cases but I think that the middle section I have in there now gives the piece some mood and rhythmic contrast which is why I put it there to begin with. Perhaps I didn't succeed so well.

Thank you for the comment! :whistling:

Actually it works out great... I just heard the piece again, maybe I was too comfortable with the first versions, hehehe. Good luck! I'll see you on the forum.

Wow! Awesomeness:).

They should get rid of Hans Zimmer and Klaus Bedelt and give you the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie to score! This captures that "pirate" mood perfectly.

Wow! Awesomeness:).

They should get rid of Hans Zimmer and Klaus Bedelt and give you the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie to score! Rhis captures that "pirate" mood perfectly.

er, i see that as pure exaggeration, sorry. :whistling:

anyway, the Final Mix does sound better, but i feel that its still kinda empty at some parts. the piano and violin part at the middle, i feel that its kinda "squeezed" in if you get what i mean, it doesnt really feel natural in there. Overall its a nice piece, :).

Maybe a bit of an exageration but people like Marius are the Hans Zimmers etc. of the future.

Thank you very much guys, I feel loved :blink:

That's an interesting comment, Songjun, thank you.

The train of thought behind this title was fairly simple actually, so maybe that's why it seems out-of-place; I simply decided a while back that when I was going to write another piratey piece, it'd be called Rum and Gold...so yeah. :P

If you think of any possible replacements, don't hesitate to post them - I don't mind changing the title.

I appreciate your comments!

Personally my comments go mostly with Diegord's I think the beggining could use some more development. I needed to be pounded in the head a bit more before the violin and piano. Ending felt a bit abrupt in a not so good way.

I liked it alot. Fabulous.

Hey Marius, I really love this piece. I believe that I am hearing some improvement from you in this piece. If there is one thing that I have ever thought that you lacked was that some of your pieces were without a really definable, strong melody. I have always thought that your orchestrations were beautiful and your ability to match the atmosphere of a video or picture was amazing. However, I have sometimes thought that your melody was not neccessarily being developed or carried through in a way that would lend to a full uninterrupted phrase. I know that sometimes when you are scoring stuff like trailers or video that flashes from one thing to another then the music will follow that short of choppiness. I have always understood what direction you were taking with the sound but sometimes you have interrupted the direction of the melody and maybe cut off a phrase or something in order to develope the sound. Well, anyways, in this I hear a strong melody present while still retaining the musical and emotional direction of the piece (as a score composer you are always trying to portray a certain emotion on screen or envoke a certain emotion from your listeners). You developed the melody and revoiced the melody very nicely for such a short amount of time!

My constructive criticism is very minimal for this piece, but here it is anyways. I think that there is a short period in the piece, towards the beginning, where there is a melody present, but it is not heard very well. I think that the melody needs to be brought out more by just simply increasing the volume of the instrument playing the melody and maybe the strength (the flute seems to be a little echo-y). The section I am talking about is basically from 16 seconds to 39 seconds, but I have it split up into subsections where I think there is a slightly different issue to talk about. From 16 seconds to 24 seconds the flute plays the melody and I think the strings just slide into the melody towards the end of that phrase. This part is not really too bad but the melody could afford to be a bit stronger. In other words, I would like to here the flute sing and instead I am not hearing it well enough. Then from 25 seconds to 31 seconds I am not sure what you entended to take the melody. I hear melodic parts in the arpeggiated strings. Then I faintly hear some background strings towards the end. I am also wondering if you have a flute part during this second subsection. Now if the melody is supposed to be the emphasized part of the arpeggiated strings then that is good. If it is supposed to be the background strings then that needs to be much louder. Either way the background strings could be louder as I can only hear it faintly. Then from 31 seconds to 39 seconds I have the same problem with the flute as before.

I did not think that the ending was abrupt. I thought that the second transition from the piano part to the upbeat part was pretty brilliant. I thought the first transistion could have been a little bit more drawn out or what not. You may even want to come to a stop and have a "dramatic" pause before starting up the piano/violin section.

I would like to say one more thing. This is really exciting music. I love your use of brass in this. That along with the rhythm makes it incredibly exciting. I would love to see you further this piece into an actual 5 minute or longer masterpiece (which I think it could be). This could be an actual film-score piece on a soundtrack rather than your typical short vgmusic piece.

I of course listened to the newer version first, made my comments, and then listened to the old version. I agree with people thinking the first was a bit dry. I think you fix that beautifully in the second version.

Whoa! Thanks RRR! I loooove huge reviews :P

I'm glad you enjoyed it and I thank you very much for your comments. I'll try to address your points to clarify anything I disagree with.

The section you mentioned around 0:16-0:39 is lacking in clear melody, definately, but that was intentional. I have a problem with pieces that are always stating and restating melodic material; it gets tiring for me to listen to, so I try to give my own listeners parts of my pieces where they have a sort of respite - an interlude, if you will, where they keep the feel but aren't constantly having melodic material pushed at them. It leaves more up to interpretation and imagination. Anyway, that was the intention behind it so I suppose if it didn't work out I'll have to re-think it. Oh and the flute is intentionally echoey as it's only meant as a supporting effect rather than a real melody carrier, as I said.

I'm also very glad that someone finally understood my transitional material to the ending; I did not find it abrupt myself, so it's good to see that someone else caught on too. I toyed around with having a longer pause before the piano part, by the way, but it didn't sound right for some reason. I couldn't put my finger on why though so I opted to just leave the pause out and have the piano start up almost right away.

It seems again I'm being called upon to extend it! :P I don't mind, I'm getting quite fond of this little thing actually...who knows, another few days and I'll have another double-length version *sighs*.

Anyway, thank you kindly for your comments again and stay tuned for another update! :D

I listened to this when you first posted it and couldn't really think of anything constructive to say, i still can't, but I love it :P

It may not be constructive per se, but it makes me happy to hear it, so there's certainly no harm done! Glad you liked it :P