Hello everybody,
I would like to share my first approach composing and orchestrating with VLS.
I started using virtual instruments and a daw earlier this year, so I'm not that experienced with virtual orchestration. This pice of music is my first attempt arranging and composing for a full size film music orchestra. So this particular cue is the main theme of a wild west themed soundtrack, so I was trying to get this huge film music sound out of it. 90% of the instruments are VSL Special Edition samples.
I'm pretty happy with the theme and the orchestration the way it is, but I also tried to do the mixing and mastering all by myself. So I used the MIRx reverb with natural volume and the humanize function of VI Pro to get a natural orchestra sound for writing the music. Since I don't know much about mixing and mastering, I used a lot of the factory presets for EQ, compressor & limiter to fatten up the sound and balance it. At the end I added reverb again on the complete master output, to get this huge and distant film music sound. I guess that was a little bit too much, because the single instruments merge with others. But I actually do like how the brass/woodwind sections as a whole play now against each other. So what do you think about this wild west theme?
v.1 (very long recording hall, long reverb):
Dropbox - Wild West Landsides v.1
v.2 (smaller recording stage, less reflection):
Dropbox - Wild West Landsides v.2
v.3 (close recording, small reverb tails):
Dropbox - Wild West Landsides v.3
I'm happy about every kind of comments, help & criticism, so feel free to let me know!
Andrew