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  4. A Symphonic Adventure - Tales of the Thorns

  • A Symphonic Adventure - Tales of the Thorns

    H
    H
    last edited
    last edited

    Hey All,

    Been a while since I posted anything .. especially music so I thought I'd put this new piece of mine out there so you can see what I've been doing with myself.

    Take a listen to this:

    Thorns to the Rescue

    And

    Medley Suite

    This is a piece from my latest project "Tales of the Thorns". This is a new thing I've been getting into that I call a Symphonic adventure. It's aimed at Role Players and people who like gaming, and those that like a good helping of drama in their music. The piece I'm showing here is part of the finale of the story where basically the 'heroes' of the story win (Guess I've given it all away now :P). There are also slower parts to the music and romantic parts. But I wanted the show you this because I rather think I did well with it.

    If you're interested to hear the whole thing, or just demos of the tracks it's now up for sale on the iTunes store, also on CD Baby.com to which you can find the link from my website www.hetoreyn.com

    I made the whole album on my 17inch MacBook Pro using Logic to create and Pro-tools to mix. And it's about 97% VSL instruments .. and a few Logic Synths thrown in. I'm rather proud of my brass work on this as it's usually the one element that I have a hell of a time getting to sound anywhere near real. Well I guess that's all subject to opinion, but even so I'm rather proud of it and I hope you all enjoy. I'm open to comments and if anyone decides to buy it from iTunes or the like I'd very much appreciate you leaving an honest review of your thoughts.

    As I say it's intended as an adventure. It's pretty much a film score .. without the film, but I still think that it's enjoyable away from an visual media .. indeed not having any visual to go by allows your imagination full reign to fill in the blanks. This music was all inspired by my current guild on World or Warcraft 'Vile Thorn', and is basically a roleplay symphony describing the adventures of my own character as he joins the Thorns and helps to save the world ... well why not eh!

    In any case I worked very hard on this album and hope you enjoy. Thanks.

    Hetoreyn
  • E
    E

    Very nice and refreshing to hear someone who does not need to open Hans' manual to put a track down and doesn't need to use those pre-cooked lego-land chunks for ideas.

    I can tell you did a lot of work on this, I would say the two main things (not much else) that I felt sounded a little anaemic, were the strings - for which I would expect more intensity for the good material (so more Xfade and automation, and maybe more variety of samples?), and the "signature" accents at the beginning of all brass lines; I think they sounded quite subdued - I don't know whether it is your reverb setting that is responsible, cutting the transients. I think both pieces are made up of good material, maybe lacking overall intensity in the performance. One funny thing that stuck out in my opinion is Goldsmith's V'ger guitar bit, I would think twice about using it without doubling it with the bells because of the association.

    Otherwise, I was impressed with the amount of secondary material and the way it was delegated; just the right amount, no clutter, good instinct.
  • M
    M
    Hi, I'm just starting out with VSL instruments and I have to say, to my ear (possibly not as well tuned as some in the audience) that is some fine work!!!!! That you did it on a laptop and with mostly VSL libraries is an excellent reason to spend the kids inheritance on acquiring the VSL collective libraries :-) Can I ask which brass library you used? I'm toying between dimension brass and Project Sam Orchestral brass... Anyway, great work!!!
  • H
    H

    Hey Errikos,

    Yeah I had a hard battle with the strings and the overall impression is perhaps a bit on the 'wanting' side of things. Same old battle of clarity vs. perceived reality. I learned a lot from doing this project though so next time I'm going to be processing things differently.

    It also helps that I just got a new i7 iMac to host my VSL libraries on which should allow for much better processing (8 Cores as opposed to my usual 2 :P).

    Thanks for the kind comments at any rate and I'm glad you feel my style shows through and that it doesn't feel like the' Hans Zimmer effect'. I don't swear this is the greatest work ever written .. but it is fun, and adventurous.

    MacDude,

    All the orchestral libraries are VSL. The brass is mostly from the Vienna Special Edition, and the Epic Horns. I did also use the Bb Trumpet. I would love to get my hands on the Dimension Brass next but I've just spent a load of money on equipment so that will have to wait .. besides which I'm still quite happy with my current brass.

    Project SAM have some nice sounds and its a good buy to make, but you'll be able to do more, long term, with the Dimension, or just regular, VSL brass. If you have the money get both and mix and match till it sounds right to you :P As Jerry Goldsmith had once said .. 'Do whatever works!' Only thing with using VSL is it does require a bit more time to fine tune your preferred sound .. but once you have it you can do anything with it.

    After finishing 'Tales of the Thorns' this convinced me that I REALLY need more power. So I've just got a nice new iMac with a Pro-Tools 9 + Mbox Pro unit which I have to say I love the sounds coming out of it. So now all I need is to think about what I want to do next. More Tales of Thorns perhaps :P

    Again thanks for the nice comments guys.
  • W
    W

     That sounds great.  I bought a copy.  I like the idea of a film score without a film - your imagination will probably create a better one!

  • E
    E

    Hetoreyn, I'd appreciate a more detailed account of your new iMac specs and setup; cpu/RAM/video card, where you store/stream the samples from, whether the iMac will be stand-alone or networked, etc. if you have some time, thanks.
  • H
    H

    Hey William,

    Seriously a huge thanks to you for buying the CD .. I saw your nice comment that you left on CD Baby and I'm very flattered that you enjoyed my music. I would have expected you to be one of the hardest to please for modern orchestral music :P. I hope you continue to enjoy it.

    Errikos:

    Sure, my new iMac has the following spec:

    Intel i7 (Quad Core - with Hyperthreading) 3.4 ghz

    6 Gigs RAM (I'm expanding this soon to 8) of 1333mhz DDR3

    1 TB HD (7200 rpm)

    27 inch LED Screen with AMD Radeon HD 6970M (1G RAM)

    My samples are stored on a 1TB External Drive connected on the USB chain. Oddly enough the iMac itself is more than powerful enough to run my Logic and Pro-Tools sessions, even the heaviest duty sessions that I have, without touching more than 25% of the CPU capacity. But still I intend to use my current 17 Inch Macbook Pro as the Main computer for running Logic and using only Logic for the master bus plugins, and all other instruments and plugs will run on VE Pro on the iMac.

    That way the virtual orchestra is hosted and processed all on the iMac, which has the better chance to handle all of the processing that I intend to use. My Laptop is a pretty powerful machine but it has struggled for a while now on my latest sessions as I continue to demand more of it. The new run of Intel processors i3, i5 and i7 are really quite a leap ahead of the core 2 duo's and I can say from having bought the latest iMac that you'll not go too far wrong with one of these.

    Okay if you have the money then it's good to invest in a big tower, but for the money the iMac offers a lot and as far as I can tell after a day of testing, it easily meets my demands for music production. And my new Pro-Tools Mbox Pro rig more than meets my desired audio quality level for future productions. Plus ... it looks f**king awesome :P I still can't get over the size of the iMac .. and even with it's massive screen it still appears to take up no room at all because it's so thin. 

    Hope that answers your technical questions. In short .. iMac = Hosting of all VI's (VI Pro) and Processing Plugs (Vienna Suite), MacBook Pro = Logic and Pro-tools for music creation linked via Ethernet and VE Pro.

    Hot damn I LOVE new toys.
  • E
    E

    Thanks for the breakdown, I offer a guess that you planned this setup looking forward to load the imminent MIR Pro on the new iMac (if you're not a beta tester already[;)]), while leaving the sequence to the networked laptop. Good luck with everything and happy sales!
  • J
    J

     Very nice work, shows you just how far I have to go with my production skills... Also, congrats on the new album release...
  • H
    H

    Heh .. I wouldn't mind being a beta tester for Mac MIR (Hope you're reading this Dietz :P), but sadly I'm not. However I am rather enjoying the Vienna Suite Convolution Reverb and the new Hybrid Reverb which is one of the best reverbs I've ever seen. Funny thing is that VSL came out with this not a few days after I figured out that I need to use two reverbs .. one for early convolution reflections .. one of artificial tail. You can imagine my delight when they announced the Hybrid Reverb.

    At the moment I've been using Pro-Tools 9 and VE Pro with instances of VI Pro .. awesome combination. Got off to a shaky start but once I realized that in Pro-Tools I needed to limit the playback engine to 1 CPU core (out of the 2) and push it to 99% it works like a charm. And the iMac runs VE Pro like a dream. Would be interesting to see if MIR would improve things for me .. but I'm content for the moment with my new toys.

    So I'm a happy camper.
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