AngelCityOutlaw

Well, you may only need some timpani and bass drums there which is at least not a ton of percussion

Unless it's tuned idiophones But for just "drums"...ugh. I'm putting the finishing touches on my new album, which is orchestra but has some of the more modern cinematic sensibilities: Some electronic, world and rock music mixed in, and while I know a lot of people find the big "epic" drums and stuff stimulating and fun, I find it just such a slog. It's very hard to resist the urge to copy and paste drum parts. On most of my orchestral pieces, I actually try to avoid using drums save for where absolutely necessary. It's not even a serious orchestration choice, it's just I find composing for percussion so boring and I don't even know why.

Excellent work here

It's probably not exactly what you're looking for with "Microtonality" in the strictest sense, but there are some rock songs that are 1/4 step down. This is probably the result of tape speed and not actually intentional, though. As I recall some of Danger Danger and I think Pantera's albums have this going on.

Hey thanks a lot Peter! Yes, you have said before haha. Believe it or not though, aside from Aliens and Zorro, I'm not really familiar with much of Horner's work.

Other: I do drop the occasional review, but for the most part, I don't do a lot of reviewing. There are a few ostensibly different reasons, but I feel they're connected by a common thread. That being: I feel that my advice is better spent in discussing music and composition in a more general sense or regarding specific topics like perhaps harmony or melody writing as a concept rather than trying to tell someone how to "fix" or "improve" their piece; I would rather talk about that stuff and feel I'm better at "helping" with that sort of insight that way anyway. To be frank, I also always found those sort of posts more useful than what are often highly subjective grievances with a specific piece, from a specific person. Another is that I don't like to listen to music analytically most of the time. When I listen to users' music, I mostly just listen to enjoy it. If I do, I'll usually drop a like on their YouTube or whatever and if I don't, I usually just move on. I wouldn't enjoy music if I was always in this "critique mode" and as a person who has an obsessive personality, it would be very easy for me to fall into that. Most of the regular posters here, I like their music and there really isn't much for me to say beyond "Yeah, this is great". I hope that maybe some of them also enjoy my stuff. ---------------------------- However, I will say there is a final reason, and I know I risk sounding a like narcissistic @$$ by saying it, but I really don't mean to be or think I'm the very best, but it is just fair and honest: When I started frequenting musicians forums some 20 years ago, I was often frustrated by how the more experienced musicians we all looked up to didn't really give much feedback or help n00bs like myself. However, now that I'm getting to be one of the "old men" with a lot of experience, having made money with it, got into prestigious national programs by the merit of my own work, and now releasing albums with some of the bigger music libraries and did all of this so far coming from a family that couldn't afford to put me in proper music lessons and I was forced to learn most of this stuff on my own over the course of my entire youth and adult life so far...I understand now why many of them weren't so willing to dedicate that kind of time to what essentially amounts to being a free teacher for strangers online. Over the last five or so years, I've had people send me emails or messages asking to help them make some piece they're working on into their grand vision. The problem with most cases is, at a minimum, I would have to make posts or videos much longer than this, with pictures, custom examples, or recomposing aspects of their piece. In the more extreme cases, which are many, I would essentially have to teach this person how to compose from the ground up. I would not just have to teach academic music theory and such, but more importantly, I am pouring in my own perspectives and experience — my life with music — in order to truly help these people grow, and I don't think it is arrogance to feel that that is worth something. The "something" doesn't necessarily have to be money, but in the cases of most, money is all they'd have to offer in exchange.

What Rick makes tons of videos so if he said it somewhere it's not really easy to find. Even in this video, by its title you would never guess that this is what he talks about in it. However, he also doesn't even really so much "talk" about it as he simply mentions that different songwriters have different styles. He doesn't really say that music is all sounding the same because of the process of "bed tracks", either. I'm sure that if I brought up my point to Rick, he would agree, but I have not seen any video (still) in which he talks about how "modern music all sounds the same" and that this is because they are literally repeating the exact same musical ideas, which was my point.

Hey all, trying something new with my videos. Here is a MIDI sequencer playback of "En Route To Atlantis", which is both the first track on the list and the first one I composed for my "Lost Worlds" album. Let me know what you think.

Nice. Sounds like it has the potential for a hit country/folk song tbh I would say that the vocal melody phrasing could use some work on the last lines of each verse. It feels like the last line goes on just a bit too long, melodically. I would also say the instrumental gap between verse 1 and 2 is too long and makes it feel awkward.

For Musescore, I would use Berlin winds, brass and strings. Spitfire is also not a bad choice.

Those bugs are a problem across musescore and that's why I don't use it very much, but I found less bugs with Berlin. And yeah, I can't recommend Cinesamples, even as a company, in good faith to anyone. I only use them presently for the woodwind trills and the odd legato patch from the brass. Other than that, it's one of the few libraries I regret buying over 15 years. Their samples are simply not very good, there are many imbalances between articulations, and very few dynamic layers for what market themselves (and are priced) as big league libraries. Their customer service is also the worst I've ever had to deal with in software. The 1.8 update to Cinebrass for me would not detect the samples on any other mic position than the default. I did everything they said to try, and when it didn't work, they straight up ghosted me.

Definitely better than Musesounds.

Really nice work, Henry.

A complete failure, really. If you want to get that Dark Souls sound, you need much, much crappier string samples; perhaps from a '90s children's CASIO keyboard. This is much too high quality and musical for Dark Souls. In all seriousness though it's a great, short piece. My only suggestions would be that I personally yearned for a bit more movement in the bass and felt the violin line could've been at a higher dynamic. You're using Musescore? I'm not sure if you've got the Berlin First Chairs, they're fairly cheap (at least when I bought them). I'd try the violin on that for the 1st violin here; I bet it would be great. Other than that it could benefit IMO from just a SMIDGE more reverb tail to really go with that isolationist feel of Dark Souls. The only thing I would say actually disappointed me about the piece, was that ending chord. I really think a darker harmony at the end would really drive it home.