Annnnd just like that my interest in coming back to this forum dies.

Okay ... byeeeeeee!

Hey folks ... been a while (Like over 10 years I think).

Firstly .. apologies for all those who were hoping for more of the VSL Podcast. I did fully intend to do more, and even tried to restart it a few times but in moving to BC Canada, and struggling with jobs, money .. marriage .. all the usual stuff (all of which kinda fell apart on me), a lot of things got buried and I ended up doing regular day job work to keep myself going.

I pretty much stopped making music after 2014, with the occasional exception. I turned instead to creating 3D art and using that for making comics .. and also editing film and TV shows. Music got put on the back burner.

But recently I got into photographing luxury watches for a local shop and creating some nice videos to go along with them. And in this case I got to use my editing skills .. but also my music skills again. And my latest review video was for a knock-off version of the new 'James Bond: No time to die' watch .. which I call the 'No Dime to buy' watch (because the real thing costs $14,000 CAD :O). Anyways .. I made a bit of a James Bond Gunbarrel opening for the video and couldn't help myself but to recreate the entire bond theme.

Those old hands here will maybe remember that I performed a version of the Bond theme using the First Edition of the VSL. At the time I was pretty proud of it but listening to it recently I figured I could do much better.

So .. without further ado .. here's my new version of the Bond theme:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rlxtzhzctbvg4s9/No%20Dime%20to%20Buy%20-%20Gunbarrel%20and%20Theme%20Final%20Long%20Version.mp3?dl=0

And also the Video version. This is a final draft and will have some differences to the release version. I animated the figure doing the Bond walk. This guy is not Bond .. but he is the Bad guy from my comic stories. I gave him and custom Black and gold Omega Seamaster to wear so he seemed the right fit for the intro. He's also the avatar for my youtube channel. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y1fyb153cmdh9bz/No%20Dime%20to%20buy%20-%20Intro.mp4?dl=0

And those interested to see what I'm upto .. here's my youtube channel of watch porn:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNR32NowGqC_R7QRZSq9tsA

Music was made with VSL Special Edition. Dimension Strings, Chamber Strings, Double Bass, Epic Horns, Epic Trumpets, IK Multimedia Basses and vibes, Steve Slate Drums, Logic instruments, and my good buddy Richard Scorgie performing the guitar stuff.

Thanks for enjoying ... if you didn't enjoy it ... well .. scroll on by :P

Hetoreyn

Hey all,

Been super busy with stuff and things (and that's all I'm gonna say about that :P), and just lately been working as editor / composer on the latest episode of Vancouver B Movie factory. In this episode we went to the Red Colt Ranch of Academie Duello .. a sword fighting / martial arts school. We had the use of their archers, swordsmen and horses for the day and made our short film.

Of course as editor I get the ultimate luxury of shaping the film to my composers whims .. leaving lots of space to establish themes and really enjoy the hell out of composing. Though this is a film challenge so we never get everything we want out of shoot. But the film looks pretty good.

Here's the music score I wrote for it:

The Flower of Battle

Yeah I admit I went a bit Hans Zimmer on this .. but what can I say .. I enjoyed the shit out of writing this and it was the chance to do this kind of epic heroic stuff. I like to think it's very much a 'Hetoreyn' score .. but I'll let you be the judge. I had only 3 days to write and record this so it's definitely not quite as polished as I would like .. I usually like to spend more time massaging the reverb / EQ .. but there just isn't the time for it. In fact it's very rare we get to have orchestral scores because of the immense time pressure. (These get shown on TV .. so we really have to have them ready .. or we don't have a show!).

I used for this. VSL - Special Edition, Dimension Strings, Flute 1, Epic Horns, Flugel Horn, English Horn, Soprano Choir, Piano, Harp 1, and some built in Logic Pro percussion. As well as omnipshere for the ambient pads.

Written in Logic and mixed with Pro-tools 11

Hope you like.

That's about how I felt with the VSL-HMW competition .. (swear loudly!), always good to find new and better uses for stuff you pour effort into. Great vid (even though I'm not sure what you're saying :P) and an interesting combination .. I think I'll try some of this myself. Sorry to hear your song didn't make it, but at least it's serving a good and useful purpose eh. I thought it was pretty good, though I'll admit I'm not quite sure what the current Swiss Anthem is.

I'm not sure what space this was though there's a good possiblity it is Teldex as that's my default venue. I do sometimes switch to the Mozart Saal (wide/far) but often Teldex has the right sound for me.

I do also tend to use some of the built in Algo-reverb from the VI itself, so that helps with space. The finished version of this track .. which was extensively re-written .. ended up using a slightly deeper sound but I rather liked how this one is by itself. I really should give this a MIR mix at some point, just haven't had much time to play with that. Anyways, glad you liked it, it's always great to hear nice feedback.

I posted my 'Weaponry EP' before now .. which was met by largely nice comments and mummurs of ascent and approval :P But I don't think I ever showed this alternate version of 'Blades Theme'.

This theme was made first but when I showed it to the author that I'm working for we both ageed it's just a little too depressed and sad to be right for the character. I eventually reworked the theme into a much happier version but I rather liked this version.

I really should write some more themes on these guys. Actually I owe the author a symphony .. writing that based on her new fantasy trilogy series. It's good fun to write for and I feel this orchestral music has been some of my best. Definitely some of my deepest.

Anyways, hope you like.

Blades Theme (Alternative Version)

Utilizing pretty much my entire VSL library :P and mixed in PT10 with VSL suite. Omnisphere used here and there for atmospheric pads.

I had a similar problem recently with an older VSL plug. I think it was the hybrid reverb that was causing popping noises. That's been uptdated since .. but you might want to try isolating the various plugs you're using and see if you can find which one causes the pops to start when the tempo changes.

It's not likely a disc speed problem as PT 11 is pretty good for dealing with RAM and CPU.

Hey Giles, Aye it's a been a long time eh! Yup I'm working on a lot of stuff these days. At some point I really must get on with a symphony that I've been sitting on for about a year now. It has the potential to be ome of my best work. Other than that I've been enjoying the challenge of scoring Vancouer B movie Factory .. it's fast paced and never dull.

Not entirely sure what you mean by 'effect' on the strings. These are just staccato repetitions using the entire string ensemble playing slightly different syncopations and riffs. I guess what you're referring to is the overall 'bigness' of the sound. Which is largely achieved by the fact that that's probably a really big string section playing this, recorded in an awesome hall with a top engineer balancing out the reverb and processing it all through analogue circuits that cost more than a million bucks.

If you're looking to get thi kind of sound quality in your recordings that's definitely a worthy goal, sonically. It can be achieved by a combination of layering up different string libraries to try to gain more 'thickness' .. but mot of it is in the processing. I reccomend buying the steve slate Virtual console collection, Virtual Tape machine and Virtual mix bus plugs which will all liven, thicken and spice up your virtual orchestra.

You'll probably find that Mr. Zimmer also layered some VI's over the real strings for thickness. A good reverb is also needed for depth and realism but try not to make things too echoey. Set your instruments back in your virtual room .. then use some compression and limiting to bring there levels up .. (and do try not to crush the life out of the dynamic range if you can help it).

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks man :D I appreciate the nice comments.

I totally agree that in todays world there's way too much 'Generic Epic' and so few big fantasy film scores that actually excite. Other than being 'BIG' most scores for films are done in e-flat and consist of string and horn chugging. One major thing I like about working with the Vancouver B movie Factory is that for the music score I get to do whatever the hell I want with no executive veto screwing with me. As a result I think I've made some of my more interesting and exciting music scores with them.

I guess my point is that music .. film or classical .. doesn't have to be a magnificent exercise in applied mathematics, and frankly that kind of music does nothing to excite me. But film music should have integrity life and dignity. If all it is a just a bunch of staccatto hits with no sense of emotional connection then it's most likely just going to be crap that services a film.

Personally I've always tried to write my music to be of the highest emotional value. I'm no mozart .. but I'm not trying to be .. but that doesn't mean it's not worthy. My recent effort (listed under the thread 'kick ass film music') is very satisfying for me because it was a chance to write something warm and loving, yet with mystery and high octane action with some kick ass beats, bass and synths complimenting the orchestra. Does that make it low brow rubbish? .. some would say so ... but I dare anyone to listen to the track and not find themselves excited, and above all leaving that track feeling all warm and fuzzy at the end.

At the end of it all .. isn't music all about how it affects you? There's lots of great film music out there .. I dearly love the music that Jerry Goldsmith wrote .. and not everything he did was gold .. but damn I learned so much from him, and I'm glad he's an influence for me. I feel that I've really found my voice in music lately and I find it worthy .. worthy of being heard. Assuming all the music snobs .. who think that unless you're schooled in the complete works of every legend that you obviously can't write anything good .. give me a chance!

I suspect I'll be famous about 200 years after I'm dead :P

Dunno guys, I completely understand the gripe about modern film music being less than the classical greats .. but I think that's because no one's bothering to listen to the younger, and practically unknown composers who never get a chance to be heard.

Just my $0.02 worth :P

Nice job on this. That's some serious programming for sure.

Reverb actually sounds fine to me, if anything I would say it'd be better to have the beginning come in quieter and build up the volume. The timpani at the beginning might sound better played a little softer at the beginning. Generally I do like a nice big hall sound but I find these days I use less reverb than I used to and instead just take more control with the volumes, velocities etc of my instruments. And I work up a nice fat sound by using Steve slates plugs that give a nice analogue sound.

You might want to increase the release time on you instruments a little just to give them that extra bleed time. And certainly using a little of the VIs built in reverb (around 25-30) can give just that right feeling of space without setting the instrument back to far.

Just think of where your instruments sit in your virtual room. If your timpani is sounding close and full, then it won't sound like its at the rear of the room .. Where it should be 😜 same goes for all instruments.

Damn nice piece.

You know I'm still alive and post my film music here .. In fact right now there's one of my latest pieces just below this thread! Do a living composer a favour and go take a listen. Judge if you must .. Hell that's what we live for. I'm told by many my music isn't half bad. I'm definitely not one of the many mentioned here but I've made some worthy contributions to the world of film. FSM rated my 'Starship Farragut: Price of anything" as a 3.5 star (beating some a-list movies). So, whilst you guys debate whether or not modern composers suck do please remember there are new compositions here that deserve to be heard. Go ahead .. Take the risk!

Hey Guys,

Well .. here's another score that I did for the most recent Vancouver B movie factory TV Show episode. This one is episode 18 - Your Move. It's a bit hard to describe as it goes into surrealism but the basics of it is a 10 year old martial arts student learns valuable life lessons in strange visions that see him become a teenager and an adult. It's a story of enlightenment with some kick ass fight scenes and, I think, some really nice warm and dignified scenes.

VBMF EP18 - Your Move (Music Score)

The music really gets to run a huge gamot of Serene, exciting, tense, Hard edge action, and glowing love. Music track made with Logic Pro X using:

Vienna Symphonic Library VI's - Appassionata Strings, Dimension Violins, Chamber Violins, Flute 1, 8 Horns, 6 Trumpets, Soprano Choir, Special Edition 1&2, VSL Electric Guitar and VSL First Edition Percussion.

Also used was Omnisphere and Logic built in Drum & Percussions Patches. Processed with Vienna Suite and Steve Slate Plugs.

I was also the film editor on this episode which is again a huge boon as I get to really setup the scenes as I want for when I write the music. In this case I had 4 days to edit the film (a short film at 6mins 30sec), and only 1 day to write the music, and 1 day for sound design.  It's a nerve wracking challenge to say the least but I'm very happy with how this music came out. Anyways, I hope you enjoy .. it may not be Mozart .. but I reckon you'll like it.

- Hetoreyn

 

P.S. If it bugs anyone that I dared to put drums. bass and synth in this piece .. please be assured that NONE of it is loops. All of the beats, basslines and such are written from scratch and played using Logics built in modules.

Hey guys .. been a while since I posted anything here so here's something I did recently for the Vancouver B Movie Factory TV Show (Episdoe 16). I also was the film editor on that show so I had the supreme luxury of being able to cut the film, the way I wanted to and then score it .. and then to make changes to the film after I'd written the music :D

I can tell you ... being an editor is like having super powers :P

At B Movie Factory what we do is essentially a short film challenge and the TV Program documents our progress is we spend a week making a short film. We have typically 6-8 hours to shoot, and a week of post production. This particular short film is called 'The Damnation' and was inspired by our guest star who is a creature FX make up designer. He came to use with some 'creepy monster clown' prosthetics that he could wear and become our 'monster' for the show. And so in short .. we made a very atmospheric horror episode (just in time for xmas :P), and here's the music that I wrote for it.

The Damnation - Music score (Soundcloud) 

The music is all written with VSL and a few hits of Omnisphere here and there for the weirder noises. Mixed with Vienna Suite and Steve Slate Plugs. I would have done this with MIR but sadly there's so little time to get the film done that I couldn't spend time wrestling with MIR.

And for those who are interested .. here's the film .. if you search the B movie factories youtube channel you can watch the whole TV program too.

Vancouver B Movie Factory - Episode 16 (The Damnation)

Anyways, a bit of fun and it was very satisfying to make this film. It's not perfect by any means .. but then it wouldn't be a film challenge if it was all perfect. Funny enough I had the film editted within 1 day .. but It took me 6 days to write the music ?!? Hope you like!

Hetoreyn

Okay, well I guess from the rather underwhelming response that no one is really all that fussed eh! Fair enough, just thought it'd be nice and useful for you all. Chances are that I'm going to be doing this vlog anyways as I'm getting ready to teach a music composition workshop in tandem with the video podcast so if anyone does look at this post in the future and thinks it'd be a great idea the chances are you'll find info about it on my website.

Hey guys,
It's been a while since I did a show .. yes I know I said I'd try to be back within a month .. and that was about 3 years ago now .. got side tracked I guess. Anyways, through my friends at Vancouver B movie factory I've been tossing around the idea of doing a video show with a similar format to the old pocast. So basically it'd still be a tech show, with me bringing you ideas for composition, mix, reverbing, mastering etc.

Since the original show I have obtained a LOT more VSL stuff, such as Dimension Strings, MIR and Steven Slate plugin's. I also have some cool new gear (Mac Pro 2013) to which some of you may be interested to see how it performs with the workflow of a full orchestra and MIR.

But in this new show I would actually be able to 'show' you stuff too. And I would make this more 'my' show so I would be giving my thoughts and critique on new virtual instruments and tools as well as showing some of my latest work. Since becoming an entire post production studio I would also be able to provide some useful information on how I use my workflows when making films, creating music scores, and then matching music scores to films I work on. I hope this would prove useful and inciteful to those who wish to learn more about this.

So, please let me know what you think, if you would like to see a ressurection of the VSL Podcast but as a youtube embedded video stream with emphasis on ultizing VSL's product. At this time the Vancouver B movie Factory (to which I do a lot of work for with thier local TV show) is in the process of establishing a 'club house' which would be our own studio space to which we can shoot whatever we like. I had suggested the idea of doing my tech show to the producer and he was very happy to help me bring it together as we need to fulfill a certain number of shows per month in order to keep the cub house .. so everyone wins :D

Please do let me know your thoughts, if you'd be interested in such a show, and if you have any suggestions on segments that you would like to see.
Hetoreyn

Well .. EW VI's are designed to give you an immediate sound stage, or concert hall sound right out of the box .. no reverb necessary. Which is great if you don't wanna spend time setting up room sound .. as you've notived it is f**king tedious .. but necessary to learn at some point. Anyways, EW has 3 mic positions .. Close, Far and Wide (Or something like that) The point being that you can choose closer recorded sounds if you want a little moe up front sound from EW.

VSL was recorded to be as versatile as possible so it only matters how big you want it to be. To match the EW overall reverb I'd suggest you just use the built in reverb on the VSL VI's and turn it up until it matches that of EW. Without seeing your setup it's impossible to tell you how's best to use MIRx, as those reverbs are particular to VSL and it's VERY hard to describe how you would match it to EW. Basically you've got to use your ears and decide for yourself what sounds best. I'm trying to do the same with MIR these days .. nothing is ever as simple as loading up a new reverb and having it perfect first time.

The most obvious thing you need to do is only process VSL through your reverbs. So that means only using the MIRx, or built in reverbs on the VSL VI's. So don't process the whole song through an altiverb plugin on the master channel or something like that .. you'll just make it obnoxiously big. And as I say .. try using the close mic's sound version of the EW instruments .. which will sound a little clearer. Remember that the MIRx Presets .. and any preset really .. is just a guide .. you're mean't to adjust to fit your requirements. 

Beat Kaufmann has some great tutorials on mixing, reverbing, specializtion etc .. I'd suggest you take a look at his site.

http://www.beat-kaufmann.com

Erm ... sorry what was the question??

Re-read your post 3 times and I'm still not sure what you're asking about?

You want more reverb on your VSL instruments to match EW VI's? It's REALLY not clear what you want to know

I understand the desire to see a test in 5.1 .. but as I say I don't have any way to monitor and know pretty much nothing about how one sets that up. Surround is just one of those things that no one has ever satisfactorily described how to use properly, and how it all helps in the world of stereo headphones (which is where most of our music ultimately will end up!). I assume yes, it uses much more CPU power .. but I can imagine my 6-core mac pro being able to handle a good sized orchestra in MIR.

Mind you, because of my desire to have a nice swift workflow and not so much arsing around inside of VE Pro, I prefer to run MIR as a plugin within Pro-Tools, and utilize MIR's capabilites in a straight forward audio mode. This is largely due to the constraints of my studio .. only having the one license means MIR is bound to only one computer. When (and I do say when!) I have acquired a much bigger, and way more expensive studio setup .. and a hollywood film that'll pay for it all :P .. then you can be sure I'll be working in Surround .. with about 6 high end Mac Pro's doing all the work!

As I've previously stated I use my Mac Pro for not only music, but video editing, and 3D rendering as I've just gotten into 3D art and animation. The demands of editing 4K footage (or higher), or for rendering an animated scene in hi-def are considerable. If you've ever tried to render an animated scene, even short, you'll know that even a 5 second scene can take a whole day to render .. even on a good computer. The question most people are asking is .. 'Will a Mac Pro speed up my workflow and allow me to do more?' .. to which the answer is definitely yes.

Is it worth the money? .. hard to say since the more advanced computer users will no doubt prefer to build their own hot-rod system and it's quite possible you can make a similar spec system for less than the cost of the Mac. Mind you, Apple REALLY threw in every high end thing they could. The data throughput in the Mac Pro system has very few, if any, bottlenecks and gets things done pretty damned fast. The only real bottleneck you'll come across is when you attach storage to the unit .. I'd suggest investing an a Thunderbolt 2 SSD drive since that will offer the greatest amount of workflow satisfaction. But even with a decent USB 3 drive things work nicely.

At the time I'm writing this, it's become apparent to me that the Mac Pro must run everything .. the idea of using slave devices is nice .. but not very practical in my studio. For the reason that a lot of my projects utilized different setups and so every time I want to open up an old session it requires me to transfer key licenses, and to reconfigure the setup in Logic to keep up with it all .. which takes ages. I'd rather have it all accessed through one machine. And frankly the Mac Pro handles any and all of the music sessions I have any of my previous computers through.

So what of the iMac slaves?? Well .. they make excellent monitors for my Mac :D (2 x 27 inch LED screens aint' no bad thing). And my i7 iMac is also now my main 3D rendering machine .. since it's going to sit there and do bugger all for most of the time.

And of course there's the main reason to buy a Mac Pro .. cos it looks f***ing awesome :P. Why buy a Honda Accord .. when you can buy an Aston Martin :D

Not much point doing 5.1 .. as I don't have a surround setup .. and have absolutely no idea how mixing in 5.1 then bouncing down to stereo is any better or worse than simply mixing in stereo. And like I said .. I can't monitor surround so it's a pointless thing for me.

Strictly speaking no .. You can do audio production (Mixing, tracking, mastering etc) with just about any decent computer these days. The Mac Pro is very expensive and should really only be considered for jobs that require very intensive CPU, RAM and Hard drive usage. If you intend to run tonnes of VI's and processor plugin's it makes sense to consider it as 1 Mac Pro will probably suffice for all your needs (as oppose to using several computers linked together).

As I've said above I'm also using mine for Video editing and now also 3D art rendering so my Mac Pro is getting a good workout. Just using it for things that any good iMac could handle would be a waste of it's time and of your money.

Hey folks .. sorry this review took so long .. been up to my ears in work so it's been hard to find time to actually test the Mac Pro for the music stuff we want to see it do.

The most taxing session I've tried to put my Mac Pro (Spec can be found in above posts), through is having Logic open with 4 instances of VE Pro, each of those running part of the VSL library .. all on the Mac Proo .. no other slave devices. I wanted to see just how much it would handle. And on each of those VE Pro's, MIR is running for all instruments. So as you can imagine that's some serious processing going on there with around 50 VI's all told and all going through MIR. Didn't really work flawlessly at first .. it went through that process of having to play and replay in order to cache the library sounds but after a while I found it worked pretty well. It's probably a bit much to expect this kind of setup to work flawlessly from any high end computer as it's really a lot of calculation going on but it proved that it could do it if needed. Perhaps if one were running two intances of VE Pro you'd have absolute smooth performance.

I have the 6 core mac so I can't speak for the really REALLY high end macs which no doubt could run this kind of big orchestra set up with no real hiccups. I had intended to use my iMac's as slave devices so for me that just showed that if I had to get rid of my iMacs .. I could make do with just the one machine .. but I'd rather run VE Pro over the thunderbolt network (nice to have one of those now) and save all the main power for plugin's in logic, or Pro-tools. I didn't encounter any problems with ADC, or with timing issues .. which I had expected but didn't see. I have had my Mac Pro running sessions of Logic with VE Pro without using MIR and this is so smooth it's safe to say that it's jsut perfect to work with a big orchestral template. If you simply plan to use MIR at the recording stage (Pro-Tools or other) then for sure you'd save yourself some hassle. Of course if you can afford to buy MIR for all your slave devices and room packs then you won't have this problem :P

So, the main thing is that VSL sessions with a regular complement of plugins' (Reverb, processing etc.) will work extremely well. Big sessions with MIR are going to tax the system but it still ran at a level which I found comfortable to work with after the initial memory caching thing had been done.

Performance in Pro-Tools is as yet unknown with VE Pro etc .. gonna have to look into that at some point. I've been meaning to get rid of logic for a long time now and Pro-Tools 11 is beckoning me along. (I'm just pissed with the stupid glitches that Logic keeps having .. on any of my machines that Apple haven't yet addressed.)

It works, and works well. Definitely the right machine for me in any of my music projects. Coupled with my two iMacs I've got a killer combination here :D (Slave music stuff on one side ... and Doom 3 running on the other :P).

P.S.

Just as a side note .. the Mac Pro will not run windows 7 on boot camp. It can only run Windows 8 and above. Which sucks or me becuse I have 7. Okay I was only using it to play games but I was really looking forward to loading up Skyrim on this baby and maxing out all the settings. So just be warned if you plan to run Windows in Boot camp for any reason, you will need Windows 8.

Currently I'm running a mixing project using MIR Pro 24 on the new Mac Pro, so I haven't had the chance to really test this using Logic with VI's etc. But I'll let you in on what I've found about using Pro-Tools 11 and MIR Pro. (Notice how everything has the word "Pro" built in these days :P).

So far running Pro-Tools with MIR running in plugin mode using about 20 instrument spots has made a CPU impact of around 35-40% .. which is just awesome :P, means I cnould potenially throw in a LOT more plugin's and even way more spots on MIR. I have the 24 track version of MIR so there's a limit in plugin mode but when I test this on Logic I'll be using VE Pro and I'll be able to have a lot more instruments running via seperate instances of MIR. That review will come shortly.

It's hard to really pin down anything to say about the new Mac .. it runs amazingly, and performance for audio mixing so far has been flawless. I haven't really had that much experience of running MIR on other computers so it'd be hard for me to say whether or not it's faster, punchier than on other systems, but it runs very well. Any changes to the mic positions, settings etc are rendered within a few seconds if not instantly and one is left with the distinct impression of being able to get on with the work, rather than having to wait for the computer to do it's thing while you go make some coffee to pass the time:P

I'm also running a bunch of Steve Slate Plugin's .. Virtual Tape Machine, Master Bus Compressor, (I would be running Console collection and FG-X but both of those are not yet available for AAX 64), as well as Vienna Suites EQ, Multiband compressor, Exciter and Limiter. And of course running some of the AVID plug's like Channel Strip. On the iMac I could not really run too many instances of Virtual Tape Machine without red lining the CPU's (Without running MIR), whereas on the Mc Pro, even with a full session I'm barely touching at 45-50% power .. and that's with MIR running. Making changes in MIR, even loading new room packs while music is still playing works nicely, there's hardly any performance drop, no clicks and pops an the instruments under MIRx make their positional changes with no effort at all.

Summing up this short review, running MIR under Pro-Tools just works exceptionally well. Nice workflow .. no sense of having to wait or to have to read a book while you wait for stuff to load, you can just get in there and get on with your work within a minute of opening up the pro-tools session. Personally I need that, If I get an idea I wanna try out I don't wanna wait 5 minutes for the computer to boot up, Pro-Tools to load and all the data to find it's place. The Mac Pro boots up within 15-20 seconds, Pro-tools and a full session can load within a minute (loading MIR and positions) and I'm off to the races. Under my old system loading the same session, from deciding to turn the computer on, could take upto 5 minutes.

Note: I found that my Pro-Tools was having hanging issues when i first started using it .. I later found that this was because I had one of my Hard Drives (USB3.0) hooked up to a USB2.0 interface .. this will cause severe speed problems, so make sure any external media is connected via USB3.0 or thunderbolt devices only! Kinda obvious I guess .. but sometimes these things happen and we don't know why .. it's awesome when you find out though cos everything works then :P

I realize you all want to know, how this system performs running VI's, VE Pro, MIR and everything all at once .. and I'll be doing that next, in fact later today I'm loading up my film score template (for the project I'm working on) in order to make changes now that it's all on my new Mac .. so stay tuned .. I'll have a performance review of that shortly. But it's safe to say that if you're interested to mixing audio only, with CPU intensive plugs, the new Mac will ace this! No question .. workflow is flawless!

Hehe .. well this was done in a bit of a hurry. And I just recently bought MIR .. so I may end up remixing this whole piece, when I've learned how to use MIR properly.

Glad you liked it though.

Hey everyone,

If you can cast you memory back to around 2006 you may remember one of our own 'Ben Jasmine' posted some music from the, then, still filming Starship Exeter: Tressaurian Intersection. It was this post that led me to seek out new fan films, and new film makers and to boldy go and make my mark on low budget fan films :P

Ben's work was really quite exceptional in that it really felt like original series music. The right kind of orchestration for the 60's TV orchestra, even the right kind of reverbs (spring) and mix. And I remember being utterly jealous of someone else working on a Trek inspired film that wasn't a joke or a parody. Still, I watched the film and was even more impressed at what these crazy people had done. Building a full bridge set, uniforms and everything.

Well, sadly the production got slower and slower and eventually stopped around 2007. In 2008 we saw Act 3 released and hoped it wouldn't be too long before the episode was finished. Well basically the producers gave up, after a long and bitter struggle to get Act 4 to work. Years later the Director (Scott Cummins) decided he'd had enough of waiting and took it upon himself to finish it. Fortunately his energy to finish this thing was infectious and it was long before many others helped out to finish the show. But what of Ben Jasmine? Sadly no one has been ableto reach him for a long time now.

Scott Cummins, who had heard of me, asked if I would be available to complete this episode. I felt pretty good that I should be writing the music to the final part of the episode that launched me into Trek fanfilm. And so here it is, Act 4 of Starship Exeter's second episode. A real roller coaster of an act that see's the USS Exeter plummeting through weirdspace (not an official name, but it was used to describe things pretty well) to save the universe from being ripped apart (yeah ... that old chestnut! :D). All music performed with VSL.

Music to Starship Exeter Act 4

If you're interested to watch the epsiode it can be viewed here on youtube in it's entirety. All music is performed with VSL. Ben Jasmine composed all the music except for Act 4 (Which starts around 39 mins 15 second). Enjoy.

Starship Exeter: The Tressaurian Intersection - Movie