Your Stage : Feedback please? by Liam Taylor

Hey Liam, Feedback from another composer. Love the use of organic strings and electronic sounds. Great use of drums add very cool linear motion. watch the string marcato at about 50 seconds gets a little machine gun. Try huminize plugin depending on which software you use. it might be eaisier to just perform that short section. All in All great effort nice work

Thanks Shawn, much appreciated! I think you might be right, I can never be sure how far to go with humanizing, but I'll remember "more than I did for Erebus" for the future. Cheers

Hi Liam, Wow! Cool!

No thank you liam for sharing your work. I learned so much from just listening. keep up the great work

I particularly love the pan sweeps in the ending starting at 1:45!

Very cool. Powerful and beautiful. Well done!

Cool.

Impressive track. Maybe an explosive sound as the worlds collide.

Then the cool sound you already have at the end. Amazed by all of this, the video and music seemed so in sync.

Nice work!

Very nice works well with the animation :-)

Wicked cool Brutha

Well done! Which libraries did you use, e.g. for drums and orchestra?

Hey Michiel, cheers! For orchestration I use Miroslav Philharmonik by IK Multimedia. The drums are from the Epic Drums sample packs by Big Fish Audio, who also did the FX pack, Dark Skies, which I used a bit too. I used the free Alchemy player and Padshop Pro for the outro FX. Hope that's useful

I would advise not to play legato strings as chords on your keyboard, becaus it immediately makes them sound more midi. Try adding one track of each string; violins 1, violins 2, violas, cellos and basses, and play their individual legato line with their own attack, their own slightly different dynamics. This will make it sound much more real. You can also add on top of that a solo string or first chair for each section, and play it so that it is barely audible but it adds a texture to it all. Perhaps also some doubling with horns, or some staccatto strings moving around would be nice, since its an epic piece and movement makes it even mor epic. Good job!

uhm - don't have any professional qualifications, but as the everyman representative it seems somewhat overpotent - those beats reminds me of a discovery or animal planet series, but then again taste varies.

Nice. BUT: I'd like to see you tell more of a story - possibly go from everyday life of this planet, calm; to the horror of it's demise - the big crash. But what you've done is great, I'd just like to see some more variation. BTW where does this footage come from? It's very well done JR

Not bad, back out some of the percussion along the way so the when the impact 'whoosh' happens it makes sense, right now there is all this snapping and banging until the bang and then there is nothing but whoosh. seems to be counterpoint tot he action rather than supportive. I was actually thinking "when they hit how is he going to make this more powerful... and you didn't. Silence might have worked.

Hi Liam, You asked for feedback so I'm gonna be honest with you mate. Its not a bad piece but there is a lot you can do to improve the sound overall. The mix is very muddy, and it sounds like you have used compression to the point where it has deadened the whole mix. Its also very dry which makes the overall tone very 'dead' if you know what I mean. I also agree with the comments about some the orchestral samples sounding 'midi-ish', like they have been played on a keyboard. Its a problem that all PC/Mac studio based composers suffer with - the continued problems of making things sound 'real'! Also, what mastering have you done to finish the mix? In terms of the musical structure, I agree with both Joe Benit and Micheal Caputo's comments. When the climax is meant to come, it doesn't. Overall the music needs to follow a bit more closely what is happening on the screen, and you have to have enough of a build to be able to signpost that impact, 'cause when two worlds collide - man that is a BIG IMPACT, and it needs to addressed in terms of story telling. The sounds we hear after the impact make it feel like we are into something 'peaceful/spiritual' - is that meant to be the case? Have a listen to some older film scores where this kind of thing happens on the screen and listen to how the big names in film composing dealt with this. However, a nice job mate. Keep at it and keep practicing: and as the saying goes 'practice makes perfect' (I'm still learning at my age!) Kind regards, Dale,

Wow, lots of great feedback! I'm going to do my best to respond to questions and comments. There are some over-laps in response so feel free to read the whole thing... Milo Coello - I usually do write instrument parts separately and spend time making sure each part is actually playable on the instrument. I have no idea why I chose to use only a couple orchestra patches for this piece. Lesson learnt. Joe Benit - Original footage is from this site, used with permission: http://ch3.gr/erebus/ Several - In retrospect, the percussion does start way too early, so when we notice the impending armageddon there's no real impact from the music. As Michael Caputo pointed out, silence would have been preferable to the lacklustre hit I used for the collision. Dale Sumner - I think it's a bit dead sounding because I'm using only a couple midi patches rather than separate, humanized, instrument patches. As per my comment to Milo Coello, lesson learnt. I'm still learning to be comfortable with compression, and listening back to it now with that in mind I certainly agree with you, (although, I have to say, compared to some tracks I was doing only a few months back this is an improvement) Regarding the closing scene, I had actually intended for it to seem an eerie kind of peaceful. I realize it's not what most people would instinctively expect, but I'm glad that came across. Thanks a lot all, the honesty is greatly appreciated! Hopefully I'll have something new for your feedback in the next month or so. Cheers! L

Hi Liam, yea please do! Its always great to hear/see how people are getting on and improving - if there was nothing new to learn, or if there was no way of getting any better then there would be no point in doin' it! Part of my passion in writing music is to try and do something better today than what I did yesterday, and there is ALWAYS something that could be better. Good luck!

Great Job Liam!

Great job Liam. It works.

Awesome man, very cool.

Sweet.

Nice!

Overall it's a nice job. I agree with some of the other comments re: compression and making string sounds idiomatic. I have had great success with using an actual string player to perform each string line and then use the synth to fill in the rest to make it sound like a section. I was wondering if you ever considered lowering the percussion track to give the drum track more 'gravitas'. (Oops, sounding like Dick Cheney there, sorry!;) A bigger bang at the end would fulfill our expectations a bit more.

Excellent. I like the stomping clacking - like something's going to happen.

"Stop the world, I want to..." ;-)

"What goes up must come down spinning wheel got to go round Talking about your troubles it's a crying sin Ride a painted pony Let the spinning wheel spin" - BS&T

Cool stuff :) We're looking to add more composers to our group for a live action science fiction television series and audio series. You can check it out at www.intergalacticspacerangers.com - If you're interested in joining up let me know. Thanks!