The Fortress of Your Heart

The music of Castlevania has long been an inspiration to me, and I think in this tune I really channeled that energy.

Hope you guys like it!

13 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

The music of Castlevania has long been an inspiration to me, and I think in this tune I really channeled that energy.

Hope you guys like it!

 

 

note to readers - i had planned to write any review and/or critique of this work in a nice readable form. those comments are at the end of this message, please see below. instead of writing up my comments i have decided to let them stand as was after i first noted them down. see the First impressions section way below. until then just let me say, wow what a good-time rollicking ride this piece gives us! Not sure what the title refers to, would be interested to find that out. 

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Before writing about the actual work I typed up the following:

FY(A)I [For You-All's Information] While I am not a true southener being that I was born, bread and raised in Viginia which, according to anyone from North Carolina or even further south, "ain't the south"- of which I was duly informed at a NC diner by a waitress who upon hearing my brother say "we're from the south. we are from Virginia" said "that ain't the south!!!" - but even so we often used the phrase "you-all" thus my use of it above can hopefully be excused, at least by anyone below the Mason-Dixon line.

FYAI,
Here was my procedure I followed in listening to and later offering comments upon Angel's work which I list here as some of the things I did may interest you if you are not already doing some of the things I did:

1. I could have listened to The Fortress of Your Heart on my crappy laptop speakers but that would not suffice, good music needs to be heard goodly. Thus, using this site:

Youtube Downloader (https://yt1s.com/en1)

I downloaded Fortress from the Internet to my hard drive. Here at Mabry Central we have one of those Sonos systems that you connect to certain sites on the Internet or to your local PCs from where you can then play mp3, wav, etc files but not mp4 (see item 2 for the denoument of that) through the Sonos single speaker,  which has a quite nice sound quality, btw.

2. Fired up Sonos and played The Fortress of Your Heart on it's, as I say, quite nice speaker. (First converted the mp4 of Fortress into an mp3 using ConverterLite (http://www.converterlite.com) since Sonos, as I sort of stated above, cant play mp4. (God forfend that it should be able to play files encoded in the most advance type of audio under God's yellow sun. Yes. Sonos and I have issues).

3. Listened attentively quite a few times, gathered thoughts, typed them up as seen below, uploaded them to YC.  

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First impressions: grabs you from the start and never lets go; some intervals of a bit of rest but once things kick back in again i am ready for the ride to start up again; would feel kind of silly to superflousy add any real criticsm as nothing really to criticise. very professionally done - maybe you are a professional which would explain that - great sound quality all around, lead guitars a standout, were they recorded live with real players and intruments or with virual instrments, certainly sound real to me especially in the initial attack of pick to strings at the beginning of a solo, i expected lyrics but didnt get any and that was ok as it left me to try and figure out its meaning from sounds alone; not at all like Schoenberg as that would been beyond ridiculous ;-). some little things, that bass sound a bit after 3:14, quick synth run around 7 secs in, bells(?) at :32, incredible guitar solo middle of it at 3:25 or so, nice modulation at 2:20 to 2:23, did i detect a bit of volume drop at 1:22? I think. ASK FOR DESCRIPTION OF THE CREATION PROCESS IN STUDIO AND/OR DAW. now that i have a copy of this on my hard drive, put into heavy rotation? yep/

1 hour ago, Advanced Blowhard said:

were they recorded live with real players and intruments

Hey, thanks for your review, man.

The guitars are all live — played them myself.

I can definitely see it as background music for a side-scrolling adventure game.  Well done especially with performing the guitar parts yourself!

On 4/11/2021 at 3:07 PM, bkho said:

I can definitely see it as background music for a side-scrolling adventure game.  Well done especially with performing the guitar parts yourself!

Hey, thanks a lot!

Ey yo

Dig the music, makes me think of some 80's fantasy type stuff. Probably from the piano reverb and synths haha. I love the high energy bass line too, riveting throughout and a piece that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

The music is great, but your guitar tone is unbelievably sick. Would you care to share some insight on how you get your tone. Mic'd up your amp? Tone from the DAW? I'm really curious because I'm currently self recording a bunch of songs and I suck at getting a proper tone. Any advice would be great mane. Love the slight pinch harmonics 

Speaking of guitar, if I had to critique anything it would be the guitar parts themselves. For one I think it would be cool to give the guitar more prominent parts. For instance, you had some killer runs in the synth that imo would sound better with the beefy guitar tone (like at :15 and 2:15). I know you maybe were just mixing up tambre for freshness, but I think having such powerful tone in the guitar could have benefited taking some of those spots. 

More importantly, your bends really stuck out to me. It wasn't everytime, but say at 1:15, 1:56, 2:36, 3:08 the bends are a little too slow to get to the note you're bending to. Just remember that when you're bending you're going through all those micro tones in between so they can sometimes sound a bit harsh. Also, I'd keep practicing really hitting the note you're bending to perfectly. Some bends sounded a little flat, like 1:18, 1:56, 2:25, 2:55. Of course, it doesn't ALWAYS have to be perfect, sometimes you don't want that. 

All in all, nice work here. You shred dude! I'll keep you in mine when I get some music recorded and scored out; it's always good to hear from a fellow guitarist in my playing.

On 4/3/2022 at 5:34 PM, Thatguy v2.0 said:

The music is great, but your guitar tone is unbelievably sick. Would you care to share some insight on how you get your tone. Mic'd up your amp? Tone from the DAW? I'm really curious because I'm currently self recording a bunch of songs and I suck at getting a proper tone. Any advice would be great mane. Love the slight pinch harmonics 

Thanks for checking it out, man.

The guitar tone is a Jackson DKT Hardtail I got probably 15 years ago run through all free stuff.

The TSE808 Tubescreamer > TSeX50 5150 II sim > NadIR running Glenn Fricker's Revv Fredman V30 Cabinet impulse, and that's it.

One thing that's important is not using too much gain. Just enough so you can get a pinch harmonic and the distortion gets noticeably more intense the harder you pick. Everything on the amp sim was pretty much left neutral except the gain was dialed back to like 2 or so on the distortion channel.

The cab impulse is important because a lot of cabinet impulses are honestly pretty bad. That Fredman one is the best I've found.

On 4/6/2022 at 8:34 PM, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Thanks for checking it out, man.

The guitar tone is a Jackson DKT Hardtail I got probably 15 years ago run through all free stuff.

The TSE808 Tubescreamer > TSeX50 5150 II sim > NadIR running Glenn Fricker's Revv Fredman V30 Cabinet impulse, and that's it.

One thing that's important is not using too much gain. Just enough so you can get a pinch harmonic and the distortion gets noticeably more intense the harder you pick. Everything on the amp sim was pretty much left neutral except the gain was dialed back to like 2 or so on the distortion channel.

The cab impulse is important because a lot of cabinet impulses are honestly pretty bad. That Fredman one is the best I've found.

 

Awesome, thanks for being so detailed. I'm really curious with what type of tones are capable with DI. It's funny how my live experience is only minimal help with creating a great tone. I've heard lots of advice with saturation, compression, EQ, etc., so it's cool to hear your take. I won't bog up your thread with more questions lol, but if you'd be down I'd like to PM you some stuff in the near future to hear your thoughts on the production. I'd for sure return the favor and check more of your stuff out.

Oh and by the way, I was just being nitpicky about bends and stuff haha. I play with arguably one of the best guitarists in my state and although he's awesome and a good friend, he's constantly on my donkey about any little imperfections in my playing whether it's live or when I took lessons with him. 

That's cool you play Jacksons, I've been thinking of getting one of their 7 strings. 

1 hour ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

Awesome, thanks for being so detailed. I'm really curious with what type of tones are capable with DI. It's funny how my live experience is only minimal help with creating a great tone. I've heard lots of advice with saturation, compression, EQ, etc., so it's cool to hear your take. I won't bog up your thread with more questions lol, but if you'd be down I'd like to PM you some stuff in the near future to hear your thoughts on the production. I'd for sure return the favor and check more of your stuff out.

Oh and by the way, I was just being nitpicky about bends and stuff haha. I play with arguably one of the best guitarists in my state and although he's awesome and a good friend, he's constantly on my donkey about any little imperfections in my playing whether it's live or when I took lessons with him. 

That's cool you play Jacksons, I've been thinking of getting one of their 7 strings. 

Nah man, questions are always welcome. Feel free to PM

Maybe also do discord or telegram or something as well, since I don't know that I'll post here anymore.