Hi Thomas,
Interesting music... I've got a long standing "date" with a friend to start on making some electronica... what precisely the scope will be I don't know yet...
Are all the "acoustical" instruments in these two piece from the EWQL library?
Hi Corno, and thanks for your comprehensive review =)
To answer the question..
No, some of them are soundfonts. In Forsaken, the oboe, the piccolo flute, the marimba et al are soundfonts, and in sugarplum the celesta is a soundfont, the rest is EWQL SO Silver.
The Sugar Plum sounds nice... in the passage from 0.40-1.00 the repeated low notes are a bit muffled not really providing any effect to the piece... maybe it's just the patch? - is the celeste "ending" at 1:26 really in a minor key? - I can't remember the original, but this place stuck a bit out to me.
Thanks =)
I don't have an original here right now, so I can't tell, I just used a score I picked up on the net.
Overall I think the piece is nice, but I could use some more "imagination" in the "performance" - to me it's a little "stale/rigid"... the last fp has a little to long a "reverb" on it compared to the rest of the, and it doesn't disappear completely before it's cut away... like seeing some lights flashing and the last one just "hanging" in the "picture" while fading out... not a bad effect as such, but it seems to require to continuation to have it's "rightfull" places here...
Well, I think it lacks imagination because it's a MIDI score, the only way to change that is to adjust every note by hand, I did that to a few of them to add my own fingerprint surely, but it doesn't cut the loop completely. I agree that it lacks imagination on that behalf. Hard and
very time consuming to solve. However, the last fp does in fact stop as supposed to, and it has the same reverb as the rest of the way, only now it is easier to hear it because a lot of the "noise" is gone. The way to sovle this would be to give it a seperate FX track and turn the Send reverb down some, but since no one else has mentioned it, and I don't really notice it myself, then I don't think I will do anything 'bout it =)
Thanks for pointing this out though =)
"Forsaken"... a little repetitive... but hey that's electronica...
It's got a nice catchy theme...
I really like the panning synth sounds at the end and think you could really use it a lot more throughout the piece... the "instruments", to me, seems very centered in the "sound"... some kind of "Knight Rider" car-light-flashing effect from one side to the other could be used as a good effect here I think.
I could also use a little more variation (even though I know that this type of music is rather monotomous) - maybe a longer contrasting midsection and/or some *counterpoint themes to the "main theme" (not that the layering of parts, one at a time, isn't good, it works nicely) at the end.
The version that Sjölund mentioned earlier, the previous one, was full of counterpoints, but I thought it to sound downright out of tune, although the counterpoints were just right. I shall try again in the future, because you're not the first one to mention this.
The string section - from 1:05-1:19 seems to be "dragging" a bit behind (offbeat) the rest, like the timing isn't quite right.
Well, it's hand-adjusted, I think it follows the arps rather well, but perhaps not the rythm as such =)
With regards to the snare drum - hmm... perhaps the reverb is too much... or maybe it's just a matter of adding (or rather subtracting in this case) some EQ to get it out of the frequency of the hihat.
Here the fadeout could also go further... it seems too abrupt (hearing it on headphones)... the piece should (in my mind) seem to "go on and on and on" and it's only because we can't hear it it's ended. If you get my point?
A critique I recieved for another electronica piece was that I just faded it out, that was the former piece to this one, so I try to vary how I end it =)
All in all some very nice renditions, but since you asked for feedback I thought I'd share some of my thoughts.
What patches/libraries did you use for these pieces?
EWQL SO Silver as you know, the Vanguard (my fav), the Sytrus, the FM7, several soundfonts and just regular wave files.
*with counterpoint I mean something like the attached file (especially the accomp. to the 3rd verse) - not that this is in way meant as a comparison to your pieces here - not at all... this is a 7 year old rendition I did in Musicator with some patches from my old Roland SoundCanvas module.
It's also in no way ment to hi-jack your thread here... just to illustrate a point... while not finding this particular piece that ingenious, the "counterpoint" did actually did come out fairly well (maybe a bit contrieved)... or at least I think so...
It's very monotomous, and dynamics are nowhere to be found... the patches are... well... 7 years old and at that time I was really more interested in the music engraving aspects of music rather than the sound of the computer... the piece did fulfill it's purpose though (as an "upbeat" version of "Sancta Lucia" for a performance/an event at a x-mas concert)... but as you can hear for yourself, it really isn't that polished nor that elegantly made... but still... I did have a little fun with it...
I heard your Sankta Lucia, and I have actually made one myself once =)
Anyway, I know what you mean by counterpoints, it's just easy to make it sound sort of out of tune when you mix several vst'ers and libs - for some reason =)
Thanks again for the review Corno, that was quite a review =)