# "The Queen's Palaces" - BBC series



## ChrisAxia (Aug 22, 2011)

Hi everyone,

After a very busy summer, I finally completed work on two BBC series. The main one, "Empire" (5 episodes) for which I wrote close to 4 hours of music, and "The Queen's Palaces" (3 episodes) for which I wrote about an hour of music, but also adapted cues from previous series I had scored that the director chose to use, due to time and budget constraints. "The Queen's palaces" will air from 12 Sept on BBC1 at 9:00pm, with Empire due for broadcast either in October or February! Scheduling problems, I believe...

I plan to release both soundtracks, starting with "The Queen's palaces", and I thought some of you might like to hear a montage I put together, which begins with the short title music followed by the main theme. It's mostly regal and warm as you would expect, though there are of course 'dark' moments during the excellent story-telling by Fiona Bruce. Anyway, you can download the montage here https://www.sugarsync.com/pf/D6102102_9938095_85683

I understand a DVD deal for the USA was done well in advance. It appears Americans still like to see Royal related offerings!

The newest cues feature Hollywood Strings, Spitfire Perc etc whereas older 'tweaked' cues use QLSO/VSL for strings and percussion. A montage of "Empire" will be available soon, which is a much more epic sounding 'cinematic' score. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy some of the themes from "The Queen's palaces".

~Chris


----------



## Simon Ravn (Aug 22, 2011)

Awesome, Chris! I always regarded the BBC series highly - and they really do an effort (and have a budget I guess) to put good music and good composers on their series. Congratulations - this is a huge one! Haven't listened yet but I will for sure.


----------



## ChrisAxia (Aug 22, 2011)

Thanks Simon! I'm honoured to hear from you, especially as I recently visited your website and was blown away by your recent work. Your compositions and orchestrations are impeccable, and the sense of space, depth and positioning of the instruments is excellent. I'm about to redo my whole template, so any advice on how you do what you do, would be greatly appreciated!

~Chris


----------



## Simon Ravn (Aug 22, 2011)

Chris - oh thanks I have been reworking my template a lot during the past months, going from a 4 GigaStudio PC's setup to a 2 GS + 2 Vienna Ensemble Pro one, considering all the new libraries coming out for Kontakt/PLAY only. So right now I am in the middle of testing and deciding on a template myself, trying not to end up with a monster 500 track template in Logic...  Generally my philosophy is to get it sounding right with MIDI in the first place without much EQ'ing and just a hall reverb added - and then do some minor tweaks in the mixing phase at the end, that also helps to enhance clarity. If you have any specific questions just PM me, but I really mostly go by a "keep it simple" rule, regarding EQ/reverb/mix


----------



## ChrisAxia (Aug 22, 2011)

Hey Simon,

Yes, I know we are both having slight issues with Play 3 in our templates. I too have been 'keeping it simple' recently and realise that any shortcomings are more likely due to poor arrangement/orchestration. You get a really nice sense of depth/space though. What are you doing reverb wise? Are you using the Altiverb TODD AO approach or similar with different impulses for different sections (of dry VSL type samples)? I've just ordered Spaces in the hope it will be better than my present Altiverb setup, which I will use in conjunction with the UAD Lex 224 for the 'fairy dust'.


----------



## Rob (Aug 22, 2011)

congratulations, Chris, well deserved!


----------



## Stephen Baysted (Aug 22, 2011)

Lovely writing Chris! Great stuff.


----------



## ChrisAxia (Aug 22, 2011)

Thank you both!

~C


----------

