You are most welcome and thank you for your nice comments about my music.

Concerning the audio stems VS MIDI, it's just about what you find more convenient.

I can talk about these things literally forever and never get tired, which is why I try to make blog posts like this whenever possible: Orchestral Mixing, these are mostly general considerations on one of the possible strategies for mixing sample based orchestral music. I found that this approach tends to work on most projects.

Please feel free to drop me a DM if you find anything interesting about the article that you'd like to discuss. 

Francesco

Hi Steve, thank you very much for your feedback, I am glad you like the mix. :-)

That's a very good question: it depends, and I'll explain why....

I prefer audio stems because they allow me to mix more creatively, I find it easier to splice the audio, do automation of all sorts, duplicate tracks and do weird tricks (such as parallel distortion, parallel compression, parallel reverb or even naughtier stuff) that way.

With that being said I only do it when the music is in its final form, so for example if I am mixing one of my bespoke compositions for a client I know that at any point they may come back and say "change this bit, extend that bit" and so on......so in that case I leave it all MIDI and mix that way.

Personally I just use reference tracks and trust my ears rather than LUFS, I have references that I like the sound of so I use them to set a listening level on my monitoring system and then master the music so that it's in the same ballpark, sometimes slightly louder, sometimes slightly quieter*.

Dark Castle was mastered by Justin Colletti at JLM, you might find his Sonic Scoop podcasts on YouTube, and I gave him two reference tracks:

Descent Into Mystery from Danny Elfman
DDay from Christian Kardeis

He used them as a gauge for loudness so that my album would sit somewhere in between.


*I find myself liking the quieter versions of pretty much everything these days if you ask me: when I started I was obsessed with loudness because it looked hard to achieve and I thought it was part of being 'competitive', obviously if you hear Two Steps From Hell they make very loud stuff and it stands out a lot initially......but then that type of audio becomes tiring to listen to....at least to an extent.....I want to be able to hear the nuances, the transients and I don't feel the need to bring up the room so much at the mastering stage.....beside all limiters, even the more transparent ones tend to introduce some kind of harshness when you push them and I can hear that a lot with the strings so I don't go for that anymore when I am mastering orchestral music, obviously if I am doing heavy metal I still do.... XD so I found that older reference material, such as Jurarric Park 1993, Batman 1989, sounds crispy and detailed and it has beautiful stereo work going on and it would be only a tad too quiet for a 2021 release so I use that as a starting point and then I try not too exceed the DDay level, I never get close to Two Steps From Hell in terms of volume because it wouldn't do any good to my music. Sometimes I push it a little harder like on this one Quantum Rift but only because I think it'd fit the style.

I hope that helps.

All the best

Francesco

Hi everyone,

sorry I am not really active on this platorm as I used to be.

I wanted to share with you one of the tracks from my upcoming album:

Francesco Pirrone - Dark Castle

I composed this tracks a few years ago (probably four or five) and I was happy with the simple melody/idea but not so much with the sound, there were several issues with the mix at the time....the organ sounded harsh, the strings were dry and the percussion was too roomy, washy, it really lacked the focus.

I wanted to give it justice and put it in the album, so I recently mixed it from scratch: I didn't change one single sound....it's the good ole special edition, which never fails to amaze me if I have to be honest.....strings sounded bad before only because they were lacking the right eq, stereo placement and reverb level. 

Having this mastered at JLM New York did help because they added a little extra texture and stereo width, controlled lows and all that.

Please let me know what you think.

Francesco

Hello VSL Community,

I wrote a blog post about reverbs and I wanted to share it with you. 

Francesco Pirrone - Types of Reverb

I am aware that many of you either use MIR or the BBO/Synchron series nowadays, which is great, yet I love the good old Vienna Suite, not just the Converb, I use the whole bundle a lot for non-orchestral productions too.

Also I remember that when I first came across people using two reverbs I was confused as to how to set them up......I was like: "do I have to mix with one reverb and then bounce everything and add the algo at the mastering stage? Or do I put it on the stereo out directly? Or just set another send? How? Why?......"

I came up with my own solution in the long run and overall I use the second reverb sparingly, but I would love to hear what you do especially when adding reverb to wet samples or mixes that were done in MIR.

All the best

Francesco

Hello William,

your composition is beautiful as usual.

I like the mix, which I find very creative, also I haven't heard anything with a similar dynamic range in a long time.....which makes me wonder what I'm doing with my life ahahahahah.....

It's excellent., seriously.

yes the collaboration side of music for media can be a downside, in my little experience with games and ads I was very lucky but one can always bump into the client who doesn't really know how long it takes to make things or sometimes it's just communication issues (see the book "No Minor Chords")......

the best clients hire you because they like you and they trust you, and then give you freedom: it doesn't happen every day.

Also on the general matter of film/game music, I think the taiko/ostinato is slowly being replaced buy a new more minimal and "intimate" trend.....where "intimate" means 3 piano notes drowned in reverb..... I sense that we're gonna hear more and more of that....but it's okay and I don't blame HZ or anybody else, there's no blame in my opinion: in that context, the film is the medium and music is an element of it, the director has a view and the audience has a preference......

But anyway I agree that both William's and Guy's music would be very interesting and enjoyable to hear in the context of other media as well.

All the best

Francesco

Hi Dave,

it's a great piece, thanks for sharing it! 

May I ask which piano library is it?

All the best

Francesco

Thank you William, I am really glad you like it. 

I credit my client for that: they needed something soothing for their sci-fi VR project, which forced me to make something much quieter than I normally would and, surprisingly, I was happy with it.

Best regards

Francesco

Hello Dave,

it's been awhile! 

Thank you for your kind words and I noticed that the forum is much quieter than 5 years ago (when I was much more active as well)..... I guess the shift towards social media and mobile platforms might be playing a role as well.....this forum is beautiful but it's best enjoyed on a laptop/desktop and nowadays over 85% of media consumption happens on mobile..... I am just guessing, but I agree that it's a shame because this community is a great source of inspiration, advice, great music and all. I blame myself as well for being less active on the forum.

Thank you muchly for your comment. 

All the best

Francesco

Hello VSL Community,

I just wanted to share with you the Cubase playthrough for one of my latest compositions:

Multiverse OST - Rocky Planets

It's all VSL apart from the piano (which plays a few notes anyway).

I hope you like it. 

Best regards

Francesco

Hello everyone,

I hope it's okay to post this here: if not please let me know and I'll take it down straight away.

I made an article about how to mix sample based orchestral works, there are many professionals on this forum, but also new people joining all the time and maybe they struggle getting their mock-ups sound good, just as I was struggling 5 - 6 years ago.

The article: Orchestral Mixing

It mainly (but not only) revolves around mixing dry samples with traditional mixing tools that are available to anyone.

It also mentions the VSL PowerPan because it's a very helpful plug-in and I use it all the time for other genres as well.

I explain what I do with wet samples as well, but later on when I can finally put my fingers on the awesome BBO I will write a more specific article about that.

I hope you like it, I hope someone finds it useful.

Thanks

Francesco

Thank you kindly for your nice feedback, sir. 

This is the good old Special Edition (mostly 1 and 2 but also some 1 plus and 2 plus), which is probably known as VI series these days.

The reverb is the Convolution Reverb in Vienna Suite (again, there might be more than one Vienna Suite now....I bought it before the advent of Vienna Suite Pro/non-Pro etc....) XD

Just one Converb, with the different sends, and panning via Vienna Ensemble.

First time I hear this.......very interesting..... 

not that I would mind, I am in fact a brand evangelist and I am happy to help promoting VSL, I mention VSL on my website too..... 

.....but as far as I am aware the sort of license I got is free from such obligation......hopefully one of the admins can clarify that.... 

Thank you very much Paolo for your kind words. 

Francesco

Hello VSL Community,

I hope you are well and safe.

Please let me share with you one of my recent works: a soundtrack that I made last year for Multiverse, a social VR app that runs on Oculus Rift/Quest. The app came out in January and I've just released the music on its own.

Multiverse "The Planetarium" Original Soundtrack

It's all SE, apart from the piano, there are also cymbals from a 3rd party library here and there, in combination with the VSL ones.

I would be pleased to hear your feedback, thank you.

Best regards

Francesco

Thanks Ben!

That's very helpful.

So you never had this problem where the Cubase cursor (progress bar, however it's called the vertical line moving across the measures) doesn't get captured in the OBS video?

If it's only me having this problem then it must be a glitch, perhaps it's to do with my graphic card....IDK...

All the best

Francesco

Dear all,

for the first time in years I tried capturing my VSL template in action and I miserably failed.....

I tried OBS, Snagit, the X Box bar...

I get glitches with all of them and mainly the progress bar not showing in the video or leaving a "tail"????

I presume Mac OS users will just use quicktime, not an option for me.

On the tube I only found lots of people explaining how to route audio outside Cubase but non of them shows how to actually capture a decent quality playthrough.

Any suggestions?

Many thanks

Francesco

Hi Paul,

thank you kindly for your reply.

All the best

Francesco

So in other words, should I upgrade from the SE Harp , I would have each semitone sampled and of course all the nice articulations but the dynamic layers are the same.

What about round robin?

Sorry for being such a nuisance 

Thank you, Ben.

All the best 

Francesco

Hello Ben,

thanks for your reply.

So does the full library one have 3 layers only as well?

Thanks again

Francesco

Hello wonderful VSL Community,

I missed this forum.

Could you please tell me how many dynamic layers our harps feature in the full library VS the Special Edition?

I think it's only 3 layers in the SE but I'm not sure.

Many thanks

Francesco

Thank you for checking that out!  No worries at all. I hope you will enjoy that bass library, it is really cheap as well. I know it's not fair to talk other companies in here but Vienna doesn't do rock bass guitars at the moment then hopefully I can get away with it for once. XD

All the best

Francesco

Hello Crusoe,

thanks for your comment! I am glad to hear that the differnt themes work. 

I don't mind you asking at all, it's a pleasure, nevertheless I hope that you won't be disappointed about the answers:

- bass guitar, that's NI Scarbee Rickenbacker, highly playable VST instrument

- drums are definitely too perfect, I come from years and years of power-metal, hence drums are never "too timed" or "too tight" for me,  they do sound weird, that's mainly because I don't have a dedicated VST-i for drums at the moment, they are mainly from NI Damage, which is a cinematic percussion VST-i with some studio drumkit samples included as well.......it doesn't feature any separate Room and Overhead channel and it hasn't got any built in mixers, I have to find ways around this issue but I like the samples. I only dislike its featured Ride Cymbal and Kick, therefore I get those from one of my Steinberg Acoustic Agent SE kits......maybe the strange Kick sound comes from that? 

- all I used for the Beggar and the Accountant is a mix bus compressor, there's no compression on the drum bus and little on individual drums, I have used two limiters in the mastering chain, each one doing a few dbs of gain reduction, but no multiband at all.....

Thanks again, regards

Francesco

Hello Jos,

thank you very much for your positive comment, I am glad you enjoyed it! 

Francesco

Hello VSL Community,

I have been to a game jam last weekend and did the music for a short videogame, all the orchestral stuff is obviously VSL and although the game is very small, music plays a huge part in it as there's 5 carachters with different endings hence different themes.

You can play the game here if you wish or simply listen to the soundtrack here.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Regards

Francesco

Hi Littleweirdo,

I really like your piece.

Just curious: have you tried it with different IRs?

Cheers

Francesco