# The Plot Thickens



## AlexanderSchiborr (Jul 17, 2018)

Hey Folks,
A bit longer piece this time..I try to follow a narrative arc which in short words follows:
*
Introduction, Conflict, Rising Action, Climax ,Falling Action, Finale and Twist. 
*
It tried to follow these points not dogmatic but as a guideline.

The track took me countless hours and started in early May and this is the first complete version which I finalized yesterday. Still I think about consolidating some parts because the piece is a bit long. However, I hope to bring some storytelling drama to you guys here. :D Soundwise I aimed a bit of a medium scoring stage sound.



Holy vanilla ice shake and beers, Aaron is a good friend of mine and that is when somebody masters your stuff like Aaron Venture (he is also a member here on ViC)..and he is a professional mastering engineer, holy fuck that sounds good to my ears: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqvz6ka9eklvb2f/Alexander%20Schiborr%20-%20The%20Plot%20Thickens%20%28AVmaster1%29.wav?dl=0 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqvz6ka9e...borr - The Plot Thickens (AVmaster1).wav?dl=0)

If you need a great mastering engineer, please throw some money at him and please hire him: 

https://www.aaronventure.com/


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## dciurlizza (Jul 17, 2018)

What an adventure! That intro gave me major Jurassic Park vibes - I liked it!

Way to go on such a long/engaging piece. Thanks for sharing!


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## shawnsingh (Jul 17, 2018)

Yeah I love dramatic arcs like this in music!

Any chance you're willing to disclose anything about what libraries, and mix techniques you used for this? Would be nice to learn from a nice mix like this. And the expressiveness of the programming alone, much less the sheer number of notes and complex orchestration, very cool and not unnoticed.

The recording seems to have something funky going on around 2:43-2:50, it almost sounds like pitch shifting or time stretching artifacts. Did you need to automate time streching to get tempo changes after it was mixed down already?  Still, doesn't detract from the achievement.


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## enyawg (Jul 17, 2018)

Love the Thlot Pickens.
I think you nailed the medium scoring stage sound, like the orchestration, particularly the tempo, movement and dynamic variations. The length is fine for me... I wanted more!

Would be interested to know your groups and master bus workflow/ FX?
What perc libs did you use?


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## AlexanderSchiborr (Jul 17, 2018)

dciurlizza said:


> What an adventure! That intro gave me major Jurassic Park vibes - I liked it!
> 
> Way to go on such a long/engaging piece. Thanks for sharing!



Cool! Yes, I took some orchestrational presets from Journey to the Island, but mostly in the opening bars. 


shawnsingh said:


> Yeah I love dramatic arcs like this in music!
> 
> Any chance you're willing to disclose anything about what libraries, and mix techniques you used for this? Would be nice to learn from a nice mix like this. And the expressiveness of the programming alone, much less the sheer number of notes and complex orchestration, very cool and not unnoticed.
> 
> The recording seems to have something funky going on around 2:43-2:50, it almost sounds like pitch shifting or time stretching artifacts. Did you need to automate time streching to get tempo changes after it was mixed down already?  Still, doesn't detract from the achievement.



Yes, sure. I used Orchestral Tools here, besides a few of the percussions which are from Spitfire. So in detail:

Strings are Berlin Strings
Brass is Berlin Brass
Woodwinds is Berlin Woodwinds (a bit revive)

Some few stuff comes also from Metropolis ARK I and III, like some Low Strings 8va (Cellos /Basses) or some loud trumpets Marc.
Melodic Percussion is from Spitfire, like the Harp, Celesta, Glockenspiel, Timpani, Bassdrum and the Piatti from their percussion library. For the Piano I used the Cinematic Studio Piano. 

Mixing wise there is nothing complicated ongoing. Every midichannel is grouped, so the trumpets, horns, Trombones have all their group buss. And the groupchannel goes then to a masterchannel. 

Prior the groupbusses I equed the instruments in kontakt with the build in kontakt eq but only corrective eq, so I didn´t pushed any frequencies there.

On every group channel there is only one plugin in this case a uad studer A800. 
And on the masterbuss is a chain of a manley EQ, then a shadowhill compressor and for the limiting a EL 8 Distressor from uad.


enyawg said:


> Love the Thlot Pickens.
> I think you nailed the medium scoring stage sound, like the orchestration, particularly the tempo, movement and dynamic variations. The length is fine for me... I wanted more!
> 
> Would be interested to know your groups and master bus workflow/ FX?
> What perc libs did you use?



I answered that questions above.


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## AlexanderSchiborr (Jul 17, 2018)

Before I forget: Does someobody experiences problems with the playback on soundcloud. David (he is also here on ViC) but he commented on fb that he mentioned the following:"The upload sounds weird- pitch is very wobbly"
I am not sure. Maybe it is the pitch fluctuations he is referring to? In that regards I did spent some time to add pitch fluctuations to the samples because I am of the opinion that samples tend to be recorded with too perfect pitch which often sounds too sterile imo. When I listen to older soundtracks they are often not perfect in tune, sometimes even very of tune which I like because it has charme. However maybe my ears are impaired, or maybe..we are used all the time to those sample sound? What do you think?


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## SimonCharlesHanna (Jul 17, 2018)

awesome work!

Since getting my new rig I have been using OT stuff - It's so comprehensive and great to use (the double basses sound odd every now and then though)


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## Jdiggity1 (Jul 17, 2018)

The pitch-wobble on the strings is really over the top. You know how when you play a vinyl at a higher speed, and it sounds like the chipmunks? That's what's happening here... Like vibrato set to 300%


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## AlexanderSchiborr (Jul 17, 2018)

Jdiggity1 said:


> The pitch-wobble on the strings is really over the top. You know how when you play a vinyl at a higher speed, and it sounds like the chipmunks? That's what's happening here... Like vibrato set to 300%



I see, thanks for the input.  Anything else you observed?


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## Jdiggity1 (Jul 17, 2018)

AlexanderSchiborr said:


> I see, thanks for the input. Anything else you observed?


For somebody who used to listen to the Jurassic park soundtrack a lot, the opening was much too close for comfort.
But after that, I really enjoyed the piece. JW techniques all the way through, which i love. Fantastic colours, textures, and orchestration, and effective story-telling.
Though at 2:41 it sounded like a bomb went off in my ears. Might wanna tone it down on the "super bass drums" there.
5:06 - 5:09 there's some close low brass (i think) in the centre that sounds like crackles and too up-front compared to the other brass out wide.
Possibly some distortion at 8:29-8:30 in the right channel

Overall, a valiant effort. Clearly a tonne of work gone into this. Well done!


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## AlexanderSchiborr (Jul 18, 2018)

Jdiggity1 said:


> For somebody who used to listen to the Jurassic park soundtrack a lot, the opening was much too close for comfort.
> But after that, I really enjoyed the piece. JW techniques all the way through, which i love. Fantastic colours, textures, and orchestration, and effective story-telling.
> Though at 2:41 it sounded like a bomb went off in my ears. Might wanna tone it down on the "super bass drums" there.
> 5:06 - 5:09 there's some close low brass (i think) in the centre that sounds like crackles and too up-front compared to the other brass out wide.
> ...



Thank you, yes the beginning but was done a little on purpose because I was interested in the orchestrational presets so of course I tried to test that with VIs. 
I will look at that few spots you mentioned. The Bassdrum has indeed a lot of Bomb Lowend, but has also to do with the compressors I used here, especially the Shadowhill one. 

Thanks again, much appreciated, Jayden!


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## Alex Fraser (Jul 18, 2018)

Such inspiring work, Alexander. Another great track! Major JW vibes with this one, uncanny in places. You've captured it so well.


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## Will Wilson (Jul 18, 2018)

Great job, very Williams-esque.

Actually forgot I wasn't listening to one of my Spotify playlists!


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## Kas (Jul 18, 2018)

That was amazing. Great composition, orchestration, mix everything's great. If I could offer something constructive, with my limited knowledge, is during the first minute or so there is this bass plucked sound (harp?. pizzicato doublebasses?) that I found somewhat busy and/or boomy and it ended up distracting me from the enjoyment of the melodies above, yet this vanishes at 1:07 and it's not heard again and it's not really a big deal. Anyway, another great work from you!


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## AlexanderSchiborr (Jul 18, 2018)

Jdiggity1 said:


> The pitch-wobble on the strings is really over the top. You know how when you play a vinyl at a higher speed, and it sounds like the chipmunks? That's what's happening here... Like vibrato set to 300%


I am very sorry - I probably found out what the problem was, which is a kind modulation flutter effect which was accidently activated. but the fix is pretty quickly done.


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## AlexanderSchiborr (Jul 18, 2018)

Holy vanilla ice shake and beers, Aaron is a good friend of mine and that is when somebody masters your stuff like Aaron Venture (he is also a member here on ViC)..and he is a professional mastering engineer, holy fuck that sounds good to my ears: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqvz6ka9eklvb2f/Alexander%20Schiborr%20-%20The%20Plot%20Thickens%20%28AVmaster1%29.wav?dl=0

If you need a great mastering engineer, please throw some money at him and please hire him: 

https://www.aaronventure.com/


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## Ben E (Jul 18, 2018)

This is a super-amazing piece and I'm super-excited to listen to it. But the warbly string Soundcloud playback is ruining the listening for me. I want to hear it in its true glory. As it is, it plays back as though the strings were recorded at 1/5 speed but with regular vibrato and then sped up to the right BPM, and so the vibrato is off-the-charts fast.


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## AlexanderSchiborr (Jul 18, 2018)

Ben E said:


> This is a super-amazing piece and I'm super-excited to listen to it. But the warbly string Soundcloud playback is ruining the listening for me. I want to hear it in its true glory. As it is, it plays back as though the strings were recorded at 1/5 speed but with regular vibrato and then sped up to the right BPM, and so the vibrato is off-the-charts fast.



Ben, thank you for the comment. Just go and listen to Aaron Master there, I have corrected that string issue in that version which I oberserved was a missplaced modulation filter, hope that helps.


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## Saxer (Jul 18, 2018)

Great piece and sound! Texture orchestration and realizing them in sample world are top notch! I have no problem with the 'orchestration presets'. Sure it's obvious where it comes from (JW meets Beatuy & the Beast) but at the end this is the way to approach the vertex of a learning curve (I had to google a dictionary several times to frame that sentence).
Extremely well done!


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## Paul Cardon (Jul 18, 2018)

AlexanderSchiborr said:


> Ben, thank you for the comment. Just go and listen to Aaron Master there, I have corrected that string issue in that version which I oberserved was a missplaced modulation filter, hope that helps.



It's still definitely there on the strings in the Aaron master. o.o


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## AlexanderSchiborr (Jul 18, 2018)

Paul Cardon said:


> It's still definitely there on the strings in the Aaron master. o.o



But its not the modulation filter. The only thing which can get the impression might be: I used for the berlin Violins the heavy vibrato setting very often. Maybe it is that thing? But there is no speed up or something else anymore. Probably the guys from OT used for the heavy vibrato a script and not recorded them really? Not sure..might be.Thanks for the comment, Paul.


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## TGV (Jul 21, 2018)

Great track. You certainly met your goal.


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## mcalis (Jul 21, 2018)

Just gonna hope in real quick to tell @Paul Cardon that he's not going crazy, the warble is definitely still there, even in Aaron's mix.

It _definitely_ sounds like a wow&flutter effect, not a heavy vibrato setting. The comparison with vinyl is spot on, it sounds exactly like that: like a vinyl record that's randomly speeding up and slowing down (but only on the strings).

It's really a great piece, so I hope we'll get to hear a fixed version soon because the warble is a little distracting, unforunately. I honestly could go on for quite some time laying praise on this piece, but I think you know my opinion @AlexanderSchiborr. You pretty much erased all the "issues" I had in an earlier rendition of this piece so yeah, I really don't know what else to tell you than to keep rocking!

Hopefully the warble issue is just something you can fix by re-exporting the violins stem.

EDIT: I should that add that whilst the warble is most noticeable in the opening section, it's actually on the violins throughout the piece, which leads me to believe it's something that went wrong in your initial export of all the stems, before you sent it over to Aaron?


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## Wolf68 (Jul 22, 2018)

excellent! sounds like the real Thing. it _is_ the real Thing!


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## BenG (Jul 22, 2018)

Really enjoyed Alex and would love to hear it live!

Liked the transition to the 'conflict' and the only thing I would suggest is maybe add in a small 'rhythmic' element to give the pulse after the dramatic tempo change. Something like a repeated harp pedal (Quarters or Eighths) on the tonic, or perhaps light snare accents on downbeats.

Kind of reminds of Mike's 'The Race' which is a personal favorite, so good job!


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## AlexanderSchiborr (Jul 23, 2018)

Hey Guys, I am going to try to fix that. Fingers crossed.


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