Japan Earthquake anniversary track

[kensuguro]

A friend of mine is working on a 1 year earthquake anniversary (are these things called anniversaries?) project. I did a tune for a short video. It's a simple but smart idea of having people send in photos of themselves with their arms stretched out, and the images get processed so everyone's hands connect to create a huge band of people. The result displays on a website I think. The actual anniversary is in March so I guess we'll see the final results then.

The tune is a simple piano + strings arrangement. I played in the piano part without click, an then played in all the strings parts later. The point was to only "build" in one particular section to sync with the video. It was kind of challenging to build within such a short section of the song. But overall, I think the dynamics of the strings section went pretty well. There are several places where the looping on synful orchestra's violin stands out, but can't seem to be able to do anything about it... (unless I decouple vibrato from expression, and go back in and edit every track.. ughh)

In my mind, the solo strings should be playing with a more relaxed portamento.. maybe I'll go back in and try to put the controls into make that happen, but seems like too much trouble. Harmony wise, you can hear clearly how I'm influenced strongly by Debussy and other romantic composers. My rubato is mostly based on breath (for phrasing) and also a bit of "swallowing" the breath for pauses and to create emotional momentum.

Emotionally, I was going for very gentle, kindness. And then there's a lot of complex emotions I have for Japan's situation which I can't put into words that unconsciously transferred into the tune.

Piano: Pianoteq C3 close mic
Strings: Synful Orchestra (solo violin, solo violin, violin 2 sect, viola sect, solo cello, bass sect)
Drum: Independence 3 soundtrack drum kit

Voxengo Pristine Space reverb + impulse from voxengo impulse modeler. Tho believe it or not, the piano is nearly dry. The long tail is all sustain and body resonance. I rediscovered how beautiful Pianoteq's C3 piano sounds.

I also used Satson on all tracks and busses. It's subtle, but cleared up the sound.

[Nestor]

A friend of mine is working on a 1 year earthquake anniversary (are these things called anniversaries?) project. I did a tune for a short video. It's a simple but smart idea of having people send in photos of themselves with their arms stretched out, and the images get processed so everyone's hands connect to create a huge band of people. The result displays on a website I think. The actual anniversary is in March so I guess we'll see the final results then.

Beyond the technical details you are talking about Ken, which for me are irrelevant, the beauty and pain at the same time that this short piece makes me feel, is relly nice. Probably, what you have said there if expressed with words, (this is what I understood), it is: "I love my people and I understand them". The chords are really nice chained, love them.

The piano sounds really inspiring and in the right tone, rev, Eq, I think, I would not touch it as it is. The strings are a bit too clear for me, I would like them to be a bit more dark in their sound, more "melancholy-like" if you want.

Great work overal Ken Seen in a movie would really touch people's hearts.

Thank you for sharing

[kensuguro]

thanks for the feedback nestor.. congrats with the revival of your bass btw.

Agree about the tech details. For this tune, the workflow was nice because the tune was pretty much written with inspiration from the piano sound only, and then everything else was added on later. I felt like I was writing much more than engineering. With these types of tunes I try to keep that part the main focus of the work.

I was really surprised at how well Pianoteq worked for this passage. It's a particular piano within pianoteq... other pianos in pianoteq didn't fit quite as well. I looked back at the documentation, and the c3 piano I used here was "suitable for debussy and other romantic compositions", so it makes sense. No EQ, just slight reverb and a loose comp and that's it for piano.