Show us your Magnum Opus !

[dante]

Have you created big mixes with large track counts that tax your system ? Both Scope and Native preferably both at the same time.

Here's mine- 11 minutes with a track count of 60. That is 30 native romper/rack extensions and 30 audio ( guitar / vocal). https://soundcloud.com/hitfoundry/moving-hearts-finale

For ScopeRise, and just for entertainment, what are your adventures with big music (both good and bad) ?

I'm also interested in experiences with full orchestral libraries and whether they are worth it just to have more articulations and velocity layers. For example, PeojectSAM have just released a 2GB subset of Symphobia as a Rack Extension
https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/ ... l-sampler/ for $150. Apparantly the first release has a few bum loop points.

But even so, it seems like the value is at the low end of town.

[kensuguro]

I think I end up doing large mixes. Not hundreds of tracks, but more like they just don't fit in my screen. So that's probably like 20-30 tracks. I'm also fully native now.

One of the things that tax the system is the amp modeling. I put in preamped for every track or bus, since I'm a huge fan of the sound and its anti aliasing. It probably can be done by other means, I know I was doing it differently back in Scope. I also occasionally use console emulators like sknote's strip/bus just to get a different kind of sound. Those types of things (that affect every single track) are very unscalable, and stress the system.

I think with bigger mixes, I tend to just group them into buses or groups and deal with them in groups. Bus comps, and reverb routing at the bus level. Sometimes I consciously use different reverbs for different buses to enhance intelligibility or to make things stand. That's especially true for strings, since their entire chain needs to be tuned just right to get a particular sound, and that's usually not compatible with everything else in the mix. I think this stuff is fairly common practice though, regardless of size of the mix.

With full orchestral mixes, (which I'm in the middle of) I tend to just set one up and use it throughout a project. I'd do like a pilot / theme sort of piece to kick start the process, and whatever base setup come from that, I just use for the subsequent pieces, adding as needed. It helps keep sonic continuity throughout and less things to worry about. Once I've established a particular strings sound, and brass section sound, I just stick with it to the end. (I don't use woodwinds because that's one more thing to think about) Percussion is where you can be a bit more creative since for me, it's a cross between maintaining sonic/spatial consistency and sound design. The "template" then gets reused as a starting point over and over. I do that for games, theater pieces, and any other suite that needs sonic continuity. Not all tracks get used all the time, but the tracks pile up quickly and before long, you end up with a 40 track project that's half empty. I think that's very common.

Orchestral libraries.. I tend to not like worrying about libraries too much. I use Synful orchestra for strings, a whole bunch of instances of Samplemodeling's trumpet, trombones, and horns for brass, and percussion from Yellowtool's Independence. I recently added Cinematic Strings to the arsenal, and using it as the strings section for the current project. I also use a bit of EWQLSO at work. For me, rather than a patchwork of bits and pieces of articulations, I'm more concerned with the overall phrasing and flow of the passage.. so those are the types of parts I write. I also need the instrument to be inherently playable, so I can get a good performance out of it, rather than spend time cutting and pasting MIDI dots all over the place. I can't really get a good "feel" that way, and get very aggravated. Of course, you do need a minimal set of articulations and layering to create a convincing performance, but beyond that I think it's all just bells and whistles. If you don't have a bartok pizzicato articulation but wrote a piece that revolved around it, then you've made a very poor choice as a professional. If your entire career hinges on flutter tongue flutes, you may want to rethink your career plan. Good writing's good writing. Develop that, and you shouldn't need all the bells and whistles.

I'd say whether it's mixing or composing a piece with many moving parts, the most important thing is to have a system for managing all those parts. An orchestra has many people, but they form distinctive groups that each accomplish very specific goals. This strategic use of grouping / regrouping becomes more and more important the more things you have going on. The end result shouldn't be the showcase of just how many tracks you've got going on. (unless that is the point) In the end everything should organically meld together to form 1 result, your composition. Long time ago, I asked a friend of mine to add more parts to a seed of a composition I started, and he goes "I can't add to this.. all the parts are interlocked and I can't take it apart". I took that as a huge compliment, and still to this day strive to write music that is so tightly locked that it comes as 1 huge clump.

[SilverScoper]

Your arrangements are tight Ken, so your friend would need to rip out a lot to allow addition, then it can morph too much. You can do what I've done - swap composing - send him one track - he adds another and sends it back and so forth. What tends to happen though is after 3 or 4 swaps one dude takes control and finishes it of so the other dude does likewise and you end up with 2 totally different tracks

EWQL is an awesome tool but I'm with Dante - too much happening at lower end now. You can subscribe to 7 EWQL libraries for like $30 a month - but you gotta commit to a year which is like $360 !! Prefer to jump on ProjectSAM RE once they fix the artifacts.

As for big mixes, 60 not unusual doing soundtrack stuff with EWQL but now doing mainly EDM I would be lucky to tip 30.

[kensuguro]

I do think the quality of symphonic libraries is increasing at an astounding pace, and the price is dropping faster than ever. I think that if the quality ones become more accessible, it will provide more people with tools to dig deeper and explore compositional skills. The libraries that come with more or less canned orchestrations I think are detrimental, but still may serve as a good way to learn. Any orchestral lib, beyond a certain quality bar will press the composer to write more critically and efficiently (in a musical sense), which I think is a great challenge, and an opportunity to grow.

I mean, try getting a basic set of string ensembles with just good legato. Nevermind solo strings or first chairs, exotic articulations or anything like that. Just with legato and volume (mod crossfade layers or whatever), see how much color you can create out of the harmony and phrasing. Not just high or low tension, but the full gradient inbetween. Being able to practice just that, can be an eye opener that reaps benefits that can be applied to other sections, or even non orchestral music. Compared to when EWQLSO or VSL were the only believable strings choices, the selection nowadays are plenty and much cheaper. Results are par if not better than where things were back then. So I think that sort of change will have sweeping positive effect on how people write music. I think when one is able to write properly, then what he seeks from the libraries will become more defined, making the range of tonalities offered by the different (more expensive) libraries more meaningful. A go to strings lib is a must for a starting point I think. If you can't write for strings section, I think it'd be hard to write for any other section.

The only regret is that movie scores, which are held as the holy grail for these libs, seem to be declining in quality and integrity at an increasing rate. Not so much the production, but the musical content. I don't think it will be long before for 90% of the scores, you would not be able to tell one from the other. I don't think the stylistic change is quite as bad as the homogenization of musical content... It's hard to say whether the vocabulary is shrinking, or if I'm just becoming tired of the limited vocabulary.. Of course, I don't work in that field so I can't criticize from first hand experience... but I do think a very concrete change is happening in that field.

[dante]

I will confess - I like the background music in MasterChef. Not sure how close it is to the U.S. Version, but it's like a canned string section and some electronica. It's effective though because I am under ruling from mrs to mute the sound in the last 10 seconds of the countdown because of the hyper stress caused by the mayhem of struggling cooks and orchestral stabs.

I think I could do that kind of music quicker with ProjectSAM than with individual samples, they particularly advertise that they sample sections as a whole - which I'm sure is common practice anyway. I like to combine ensemble samples with solo, to get that bit of extra resin on the bow. Having played brass and strings in school orchestras helps to write music for them. But being bombarded with soundtracks at movies is probably a bigger influence. I'm sure like many here we tend to de-construct parts as we hear them as opposed to general public who hears the soundtrack as a whole.

Speaking of the Yellow tool orchestra though reminds me of George Martin. One of my biggest influences was buying the soundtrack to Yellow Submarine which had the Beatles tracks on side one and George Martins Orchestral pieces on side two. His arrangements, in some ways were dare I say more imaginative than Zimmers, which no doubt fit the bill, but George Martins could stand as pieces on their own as well as a backdrop to the cartoon world of The Beatles.

That guy knew how to orchestrate. And I'm pretty sure 'Penny Lane', 'All You Need Is Love' and 'Eleanor Rigby' wouldn't have been as big a hit without his added orchestral bits.

But your stuff here and in your Scoring post I think would make great content for later this year edition of ScopeRise featuring big scoring and production

[kensuguro]

I'm surprised other haven't chimed in. There are others here that do big arrangements. I know Nestor does, braincell has done arrangements with choirs or something.. and dunno if Paul's still around but paulmartin does some insanely humongous arrangements. I also think Jimmy (scope4live) plays a few hundred tracks live for his gigs. (hence his DARPA worthy rig)

Another sobering reminder from work.. I get applications from younger composers that have the right tools and the production knowledge that produce things that sound "like" huge epic orchestral scores. To be honest, I don't think I do. I don't think I make my stuff sound like a movie. There's a particular epic sound I like, and I just make that. Ideally, it's not the bread and butter hollywood sound because that's just plain ass boring. But anyway, for most of the applicants, the notes are not right. I won't be the one to red pen in all the music theory mistakes people make, but I'm a strong supporter of proper voice leading and clever inner voice motion. That stuff is the ingredients of an orchestral arrangement that sings and soars. Without it, the piece won't hold together, much less stir up any emotion in the listener. It's not the library man, the NOTES have to be right for the section to sound right, and the whole orchestra to sound right.

It's one area where I feel formal education does have its benefits. I hated voice leading classes. I actually just wrote some bullshit tune that took all the easiest harmonic structures that required very simple resolutions and flew past the class.. It wasn't 'till I started arranging for voice (harmony) that I had to really sit down and try to figure out how to apply the knowledge. Then through arranging for voice, horn section, strings section, then the orchestra the skill slowly matured. Can't say it's at a satisfactory level yet, and still am learning... but I'm really glad I took the 2 voice leading classes and 1 counterpoint class and had the professor constantly laugh at me, saying "your stuff sounds like it's all fine, but your technique is all about deception. You should really learn this stuff so you don't have to learn extra technique to deceive". Well, I'll hand it to prof Toru Iwatake, he was goddamn right.

[Nestor]

I have done many big mixes in the past and quite a few lately that would definitely make my system go to its limits, using both scope and VST. The maximum length has been 71 minutes of uninterrupted music, and the maximum I have gone in track count was about 100 tracks. Now, they never play together, as Ken explains it is a natural flow with big orchestrations for most people.

My approaches, nevertheless, are unusual or even completely unexpected weird. I appreciate compositions techniques and agree with everything that could help achieving a good final piece, but for me personally EMOTION commands every operation when composing something authentic (meaning not commercial, and if it is commercial, it must be something I really love for me to actually feel a bound with that music).

The creative flow in my case it is not necessarily piloted by my mind, but by my heart. It might sound romantic but it is true, it is the way it happens by itself. I will explain myself the best I can: I start by feeling some sort of strong emotions that would lead me to instantly hear music in my head, the more compressed it is the emotion coming from within myself, the stronger is the drive what awakes from it. The stronger is the drive, the clearer is the number of instruments I know I will use, the timbre I want them to have, the length of the piece, etc. If I have the luck of having a very strong drive I can hear the full song within myself before even playing a single note, so it is eventually possible for me to record a complex full arrangement in a single day working about 10 to 12 hours.

Now, if I don’t start composition through this emotional process, I will end up with a total failure, that is, I will come up with really silly music that do not worth a penny that I will soon delete out of frustration. Failure happens to me, eventually, when the project is commercial and I don’t agree with the content because it contradicts the way I understand life, and it is something drained of interesting content, like an advert for a group of lawyers, for instance, and you know they are a bunch of abusers, thinks like that, I personally cannot detach from the content of what I do. I would eventually say “no” to projects that I know hide fraudulent intentions, like selling an organic product that I found out, it is not organic at all.

Apparently, I am not answering the questions of the thread, but I am. I achieve amazing results when I am strongly hooked with a piece of music I really, really love. I will not eat, will not talk to anybody, will not accept a phone call, anything at all when I am in that state of drive, my wife knows she must let me alone. Sometimes it has happened to me that I would open then window, and will not understand why it is dark, or why there is already light, and this is because I have been about 20 hours composing without stop, and would lose the sense of time. Nowadays this would happen less and less, because back pain will speak louder than my drive telling me: “Man, you have been too many hours there, get your ass out of the chair and have a rest”.

Imagine a place that demands respect like a temple or something like that, a place you cannot speak loud or use your cell phone, etc., well, if you were to speak loud or make noises while walking, you would brake the atmosphere… I experience this kind of recollection and thinking about anything would distract me, so I don’t think. This state of inner concentration brings something which is beyond intellect and its capabilities, it is sort of an intuition that allows you to use tools in a way you don’t actually need to be expert at, you only need to know beforehand how they work, that’s it, and the rest is pure creativity.

In this process there are no comparisons to other music, composers, thoughts, sound achieved by a particular band, or about how to write the music, or any technical concern or scholarship, it will be only the fluidity of emotions going from somewhere within myself to the scoring. When the piece is well defined after a few hours of creating, rehearsing, playing the parts and recording, it comes the mind with all sort of concerns and thoughts, and there I think about it and how it could sound better what I could add or take out, etc. The mix is the most technical moment of them all in the long run of a full arrangement, so the opposite to composing.

I may bounce several tracks sometimes to a single audio file, once I have a clear idea of how they may sound. Of course, this is not something I want, I would like instate having everything free and always be able to change any EQ or compression etc., but this is the price of big arrangements and not having a super computer... Nevertheless I do not complain, I can achieve even with this method pretty good final results. If I want to do something different after a while, as many tracks have been bounced to one, I would have a saved copy as a different project in Cubase already. So if I really need to modify something within it, I can go back and do the job, then bounce it again as a single track and include it with the changes I wanted, to the whole. The only problem with it is that you need a good memory of what you have heard and the timbers you want to modify, because you have not an instant access to the other parts of the song in which you are working. It is not the most comfortable way of working, but you can do what you need to do.

In some super huge and large arrangements of classical instruments, I may trick some conventional modern instruments to sound a bit like a background classical orchestra and make them part of the whole as if they were, for instance, strings or voices or woodings, etc., being in fact, distorted guitars, synths, or anything recorded as a sample through my microphone… Eventually, I may use some natural sounds to add texture to some of the string samples if I find them too cold, like a bite of aple or other fruits that I bite slowly and with care so I get a smooth sample from beginning to end. I use in an insane but subtle way some unusual VST chains of plugins that would give me unexpectedly silky, kind of glassy results for strings, solo instruments or wooding enhancing realism. Sometimes you look for like crazy for a reverb that would give you exactly what you want, but none will… so I use multiple nuances of delays and you would swear it is a special kind of reverb, who knows… so many solutions that are exclusively for such and such particular song. I do my job out of this particular state of drive, I if get to think instate of being impulsively creative, I would not achieve anything. I have to respect this energy that demands spontaneity and artlessness, so it becomes finally art by itself.

I studied composition, harmony, counterpoint, orchestration, etc., for many years, but after studying so much I prefer forgetting everything and feel.

[JoPo]

I studied composition, harmony, counterpoint, orchestration, etc., for many years, but after studying so much I prefer forgetting everything and feel.

Yes... But would you feel the same if you wouldn't study for many years... Mmm ? Impossible to have an answer to that kind of question but I would be inclined to favor after a lot of study, one's feeling is better sharpened ; even if one rejects the studing years.

I don't think you may 'forget everything'..!

And I believe studing years helps to materialize the feeling, the "thing" you have inside your brain for sharing it. I think any music experience are good and it is like anything else : one has got to learn in a way or the other.

My definition of 'studing' is absolutely not necessarily in a music school or whatever : it can also be 'studing' on his own. But surely, it takes a lot of time.

[kensuguro]

I do think there is a difference between the process of skill acquisition (studying) and the process of application, and then later on, the process of expert application. The way I understand it, it is the degree in which a particular skill requires conscious manipulation and monitoring. Much like how we relate "riding a bicycle" to muscle memory and other subconscious motor control, skills and their building blocks get grouped, and move from the conscious realm (while acquisition), to the subconscious realm. (at expert level) And so as you delve deeper and deeper into the art of composition, the building blocks (harmony, structure, modulations, counterpoint, etc) become less and less the focal point of the task, and make way for the focus on other topics, such as emotions, marketability, production priorities, etc. Basically, once higher concepts have been decided on, the lower level actions are more or less automatic, or can be done with minimal conscious effort. This is also similar in the conceptual realm, where once we have learned the building blocks of arithmetic, we are able to manipulate the concept of arithmetic as a chunk, rather than working at the atomic level of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and their order of operation every time the topic is brought up. This "chunking up" was what I was taught as an aspect of cognitive science. (although that was some 15 years ago, and judging from how fast the field was developing at the time, new findings may have already changed this paradigm)

That process may be expressed as "forgetting", but to me, not in so much a literal sense, as in loss of the skill, but more so in shift from conscious into the subconscious. Of course, understanding that this is going far beyond the original topic. Still very interesting.

[Nestor]

JoPo, Ken, I think you understood it exactly as I ment to tell about it

[Nestor]

Something I have forgotten to mention here is about the training of listening at music in full attention. I did it (as I said it before in another thread in the Z), for many, many years, as an exercise to get into the music of the world and learn from other musicians. If studying composition is important, listening at the best classical composers and at the best bands is too an irreplaceable tool, nobody can teach to anybody else the experience of listening to music, or you take your time to sit down and pay absolute attention to music, or you lose it.

You may go through the heavy books of voicing a la Johann Sebastian Bach, but this will always be something pretty cold compared to listening to Bach absorbing his way of music directly thorough his own emotions.

For instance, I have listened at Stravinsky through the best directors in the world for years. I went to the extent of learning by heart every detail of his work, I would go instrument by instrument and piece by piece. So as you can guess I spent many thousands of hours of fly… (talking like a pilot), listening to records and going concerts. Listening to groups like Yes the whole day over and over and over again until I learned by heart every instrument, gave me a totally new vision of music and in a sense, instate of getting so theoretical about it, I was more and more inclined to compose what I felt without even making a check about how “right or wrong” my procedures were in terms of not contradicting the rules of harmony, voicing, timbre, position of the instrument within the orchestra, etc.

The only problem with this training, instrument by instrument and then the whole song, band, orchestra, etc., is TIME… You will need at least from 6 to 8 hours a day for several years to really learn every instrument in detail, if you want to be uncompromising about it. I am talking about a serious, professional approach; I am not talking about listening to one of the great masters like Aram Jachaturián or Maurice Ravel while you talk with a friend, read a book or are driving a car, no way, I am talking about detailed dedication, willpower, analysis and effort in scrutinizing and understanding the music you are interested at, with respect and even reverence.

This sole process would teach you more than anything you could study or even practice, it is the best way to absorb quickly the musical history of the peoples of the world, getting ready to carry on and be one of its chain links.

I did it with classical music, rock, jazz and folk music from many countries of the world. Many modern music and styles do not deserve my attention to the least (do not take it as an insult, I am talking about my personal experience, that’s all, we are all free to go wherever we want to go, just as I am free of doing so too. You cannot pretend to get this freedom yourself, and not giving it to the rest of the mortals)

About 16 years ago, when I started to master my own music, I decided to go through the same process as it gave me so much fulfillment with music composition, I thought it could give me the same realization in regard to mastering too, listening at how the best engineers out there do their job, so to learn and understand. Of course, in this case, I did it just a few hours per week only, as I started this second process as a grown up person already. The first process, the process of listening to so many hours of music for such a long time was possible while I was young of course because I did not need to work. I had only to study in the conservatory, play music with groups and go to concerts. I was living at my family home so I had all the time of the world for me, even like this, I would get up very early every morning to start my listening experience.

Listening at finished perfectly mastered songs does not guarantee for you to be a genius doing masters ( I definitely am not), but it will give you a deep inside of what it is and how it is made, it will help you much, I did it, and I can master for what is needed in my multimedia works.

I ended up listening to music today as a director watches a movie, I cannot separate myself from the process of scrutinizing how a particular piece of music have been conceived, how it was exactly build, the instruments that the song has, the mix and master quality and its details and differences, what the composer have favored in terms of frequency and amplitude instate of such and such voice or instrument, etc. Nevertheless, this way of listening to music has not bothered me at all, I mean, I can listen to music and enjoy it, and on top, enjoy also all the rest of the director perspective, so I have not lost the ingenuity of listening music just like anyone else because of these exercises.

As a conclusion, I would say I have found my way and decided to return to the original bases of music, the “raison d'être” of music itself. I believe in modernity to a certain extent only. By the way, I don’t believe music has progressed forward, but in some exceptional ways and through a few composers only (even if they amount to several hundred in all, against millions of really totally immaterial neither here nor there totally confused people out there). To me, firmly, music has degenerated and gone to a state of simplicity (using the word “simplicity” here in the worst possible way and meaning): square ideas, square harmonies, square wordings and eternally repeated chord progressions that for sure, you will get again and again next year, with a few sequences that come already cooked in a box, and some new drums, etc., that are farther and farther away from the real nature of what music is all about. To me, music moves between two realms: the first is within ourselves and the second is outside ourselves. The first is our “essence” and the second is “nature” (not the green of the countryside, but nature as the nature of existence, the nature of everything). Every essence resonates in a different way facing up nature, and this inner mood, this resonance with the whole, is what makes music such an incredible infinite horizon through which two different souls go through the same experience and come up with totally different songs that, nevertheless, brings you a single particular truth of life. I have, at the end of it all, simplified everything. I give up technology (as being the queen and the centre of the music composing process), techniques, do and don’ts in harmony and composition, perfection as a means to impress others in detriment of a great deal much more important things like the inner meaning of your music.

For me music is something extremely serious, and not only a toy to have fun, it is rather a process to find myself, to touch my own soul. I think of music as a sacred means to infinity.

[hubird]

nice read, Nestor, as for the other's

yet, let me be the irritating one to bring back the topic: Show us your Magnum Opus !
Whish I had one

[dante]

You have a longest one though dont you hybrid ? Going off topic is not an issue as I can just broaden the scope of the article .

I am interested in all the material here.

But - if anyone has some magnum opus on soundcloud or even coming up in the next few months let me know and I'll showcase them in article as well.

[Nestor]

These are tracks that have put my system to perspire. there are many different jobs in here, an intro for a TV show, banners, dvd music, movies, a woman parfume presentation, etc., etc. I don't have the time to get into details, even if I am very passionate about it all:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... i%20La.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... /Intro.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... 281%29.mp3

[Nestor]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... ro-DVD.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... 0-%201.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... llamas.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... lefant.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... C3%B3n.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... te%201.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... te%202.mp3

[Nestor]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... malaya.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... BCedad.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... 0night.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... 0dolor.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... lassic.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... uentro.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... tralis.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... Dciles.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/255 ... k%2007.mp3

[Nestor]

there are some big ones but they don't longer belong to me, you know, contractual stuff and the so...

[dante]

Awesome thanks Ill grab a few. Can you recommend a top five ?

[Nestor]

Ups..., don't know, I don't remember... there are pieces from 15 years back, 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2 years ago, you will have to sort them out yourself, please forgive me, I don't have the time for that

[dante]

Ok I'll pick a few. But if you remember any special facts about any in the middle of the nite - eg inspiration or Scope usage - write them to here or PM !