# My first ever mockup of a piece by someone else ... Hiroyuki Sawano



## MSutherlandComp (Nov 11, 2020)

Hey everyone! This took me about 5 days, so I thought I'd share this mockup I did of the first part of "7Tsuno:the1" by Hiroyuki Sawano.
I've never transcribed or mocked up a piece by anyone other than myself before, so it was an interesting experience, to say the least. Different experience than Score Study for sure. 

There's a lot going on in the piece, so I make have made some assumptions, and/or embellished a line or two .

Notes:
- For strings, I used primarily Con Moto and Fluid Shorts, which I thought would be relevant to a lot of threads in here around now. (I also have the Wolfenstein and Finkenstein strings patches from MA1 in there, and some shorts from 8DIO Adagio/Anthology in one section.)
- Another interesting (to me) thing that I did was run an EWHO Gold 6-Horn patch through a really janky impulse response I made from some perc in CinePerc, which actually helped spatialize it / blend it with CineBrass a surprising amount.
- Embertone's Recorders and Shire Whistle are still the bomb
- The sound at 1:10 was made by placing OTT on my Les Paul's dry DI, emphasizing a lot of the high end, and then sending it back out through a DS-1 in my pedalboard.
- Guitars are tracked
- Tambourines in CinePerc are surprisingly nimble
- Still loving CineBrass
- 7th Heaven is ... Heavenly


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## jason3.14 (Nov 11, 2020)

Wow, great job Michael! What a coincidence too, as I had just started a thread 2 days ago to try to pool people's experiences on understanding Hiroyuki Sawano's music! Would you be willing to share more of your thoughts, either on this thread or mine? Please feel free to post your video on that thread as well.

1) It's great to hear that you used CineBrass/CinePerc in this mockup, as I'm thinking of picking those up. I've also come across several sites claiming that Sawano uses CineBrass as well.
2) Good to see MArk1's strings being put to good use as well. Thoughts on something like CSS?
3) Really great shire whistle! I'll probably look into that too, as I've heard him use a similar sound on tracks such as Promare Theme.

I think I could go on forever, but I'll leave it at that for now, haha. So excited to see more Sawano mockups!

- Jason


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## MSutherlandComp (Nov 12, 2020)

Hey Jason,

I'll give some specifics tomorrow! Very happy to know that there are others on VI who love Sawano's music.

In the meantime, feel free to put any questions that you may have here in this thread, I'll get around to all of them in the daylight!


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## Crowe (Nov 12, 2020)

Love it!


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## Piotrek K. (Nov 12, 2020)

With Sawano I'm in love AND hate relationship. He can write beautiful music (On your mark from Gundam Unicorn for example) but most of his scores are like garbage bin. While I can always find something cool in there, listening those for too long is not the coolest thing I can imagine ;D

But your mockup sounds frickin great (and that piece is actually pretty cool). Could easily mistake it for real thing. Great job man!


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## ummon (Nov 12, 2020)

Piotrek K. said:


> With Sawano I'm in love AND hate relationship. He can write beautiful music (On your mark from Gundam Unicorn for example) but most of his scores are like garbage bin. While I can always find something cool in there, listening those for too long is not the coolest thing I can imagine ;D



I agree, his music is sometimes a bit too intense and loud (He often fills the whole spectrum and you can hear how compressed it is). Still, his catalogue is full of goodness as well! Maybe he's so profilic that duds are inevitable (IMO a bit like Yoko Kanno in her heyday).


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## David Han (Nov 12, 2020)

Wow! A great mockup you have there! Really nice quality!

How did you record the acoustic guitar in the beginning? I really like those percussive guitar strums!


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## MSutherlandComp (Nov 12, 2020)

David Han said:


> Wow! A great mockup you have there! Really nice quality!
> 
> How did you record the acoustic guitar in the beginning? I really like those percussive guitar strums!


Hey David,

Thanks!

As far as the percussive guitar effect in the beginning goes, that was a Peavey DW-3, miked at the 12th fret with a Neumann TLM102. I recorded two separate parts, both with my fretting hand muting the strings in a barre-chord position, and then panned them hard left and right. I then hard-quantized the audio in Logic’s Flex environment (that’s why the parts lock together nicely). As far as processing goes, I did some parallel compression, and then did some EQ to get it closer to the original recording. It’s not 100% there yet, but it was fun to do!


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## Johnny (Nov 13, 2020)

Piotrek K. said:


> With Sawano I'm in love AND hate relationship. He can write beautiful music (On your mark from Gundam Unicorn for example) but most of his scores are like garbage bin. While I can always find something cool in there, listening those for too long is not the coolest thing I can imagine ;D
> 
> But your mockup sounds frickin great (and that piece is actually pretty cool). Could easily mistake it for real thing. Great job man!


One thing that I try to justify to myself when wondering why some tracks are just fillers as well? Is from a professional standpoint? I can almost guarantee, the poor guy is just so busy and strapped for deadlines that he just simply runs out of time on a cue or piece.  I often wondered that too, why some mixes are very well done and others sound like demo reel takes. I'm sure it's just because he runs out of time, or is onboarded onto a project very last minute, which is usually always the case for us composers Haahaaha, I think they gave Masashi, three to four months if I'm not mistaken, to score all of FFXIII  Intense deadlines to produce your best work ever under : )


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## Johnny (Nov 13, 2020)

MSutherlandComp said:


> Hey everyone! This took me about 5 days, so I thought I'd share this mockup I did of the first part of "7Tsuno:the1" by Hiroyuki Sawano.
> I've never transcribed or mocked up a piece by anyone other than myself before, so it was an interesting experience, to say the least. Different experience than Score Study for sure.
> 
> There's a lot going on in the piece, so I make have made some assumptions, and/or embellished a line or two .
> ...



Cineperc is always the best to suck your instruments onto a sound stage! Very nice work!


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## MSutherlandComp (Nov 13, 2020)

Johnny said:


> One thing that I try to justify to myself when wondering why some tracks are just fillers as well? Is from a professional standpoint? I can almost guarantee, the poor guy is just so busy and strapped for deadlines that he just simply runs out of time on a cue or piece.  I often wondered that too, why some mixes are very well done and others sound like demo reel takes. I'm sure it's just because he runs out of time, or is onboarded onto a project very last minute, which is usually always the case for us composers Haahaaha, I think they gave Masashi, three to four months if I'm not mistaken, to score all of FFXIII  Intense deadlines to produce your best work ever under : )


There is an interview with Sawano where he says he writes ~40 demo tracks in about 2 months, then goes straight to recording, mixing, etc.

So at an average of ~1.33 tracks every 2 days, I’m sure he has to crank out some filler tracks,  sounds stressful.


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## jason3.14 (Nov 14, 2020)

Thoughts on Cinematic Studio Brass as an alternative to CineBrass for Sawano? Mainly since CSB seems a lot easier to use (not split amongst Core/Pro, and less patches, other). But probably comes back to tone vs ease of use that I see discussed on other thread(s).


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