# New and Old Cues ( On Soundcloud)



## José Herring (Jun 4, 2010)

Have at it boys and girls. Probably won't stick around for the carnage, but I put a few pieces on soundcloud for your enjoyment...or not.

http://soundcloud.com/jherringmusic/sets


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## hbuus (Jun 4, 2010)

*Re: Testing Soundcloud*

Jose, I'm listening to your music just now and am impressed (have heard Creation, Finale and now Grimm Tales). To my ears it sounds awesome, both composing-wise and from a technical view. Wish I could do stuff like that!

Anyway, I am really enjoying myself listening to this. Especially Grimm Tales, so far at least.

Is it possible to download the tracks from Soundcloud somehow?

Best,
Henrik


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## José Herring (Jun 4, 2010)

Thanks Hbuus. It's good to get a little love now and again.

I'm new to soundcloud so I don't know about downloads. But I can send you the tracks you like if you pm me with your email.

best,

Jose


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## Gerd Kaeding (Jun 4, 2010)

Hi ,

"Creation" is really a wonderful piece . Love that one . My favourite. No doubt.

"Magic Coffin" & "Old Lady in Black" are both very cool , 
and although "Old Lady" sounds good to me with all the samples you used, 
I hope you'll get a chance to do a live recording of that string section.

Best wishes

Gerd


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## Guy Bacos (Jun 4, 2010)

Good stuff José. Some of it is obviously not samples. I was looking forward hearing something in the style of "creation" but with samples only, since that was the point of my request, wanted to see how you handle that.

But in anyhow, I can appreciate your music now and it is very nice. Thanks for posting it!


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## José Herring (Jun 4, 2010)

Thanks Guy.

Creation isn't samples but everything else is. In all honesty I don't have the sample chops to do anything like Creation with samples nor would I even try. Which is kind of the point I was trying to make in the other thread, but feel like I didn't express myself in a way that could be understood easily.

My point being that Creation was written for a live ensemble that I knew well and knew what they were capable of. I feel the same way with samples. Grimm Tales has its sample faults that frustrated me to no end and I had to sacrifice a lot of music to pass it off, but I wrote that with the understanding that I was using just samples and I tried to make it as musical as possible within the limitations of my libraries.

Perhaps when I finally do get HS or another library with good strong legato patches I'll try something like Creation with samples.

Like I said no hard feelings and I didn't intend to hurt anybody.


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## José Herring (Jun 4, 2010)

Gerd Kaeding @ Fri Jun 04 said:


> Hi ,
> 
> "Creation" is really a wonderful piece . Love that one . My favourite. No doubt.
> 
> ...



Sorry I missed your post some how and responded to Guy first. I usually try to get to everybody's comments as they come.

Thanks for the compliments. Magic Coffin and Old Lady in Black are being done for a film that unfortunately doesn't have the budget for live players, but the film makers are impressed with these pieces. I know it would sound a whole lot better with live players, but I'll just need to suck it up for this project. Also, these pieces I'm being asked to follow the picture to the letter so the music hardly stands alone, but there are some nice moments in there so I decided to put them up for now.


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## Guy Bacos (Jun 4, 2010)

José, you obviously know what you're doing. I guess this is where my point comes in, since you haven't yet attempted major projects with samples. HS is a good string lib, as LASS, as VSL and many more. I think from experience you will see that sometimes there is a big margin between admiring a flamboyant demo from a library and integrating those samples in your own compositions with its own style, and achieving the same expression as real instruments. After a while you become a bit more tolerant and can let a few things go while admiring all the other great results. I can tell you that currently there are no JW mockups out there at the level of what Jay did. If there are please show them to me. 
Anyway, I like your music, especially "Creation", and that's what I'll remember.

I'm not going to say anymore about this, and Jay's mockups cause I have my own music to worry about now.


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## synergy543 (Jun 4, 2010)

Jose, if I had anything to do with your putting up your site, I'm glad. You can paypal me the regular sum. :wink: 

Creation is very interesting and I was going to ask about that 'baton' click at 1m15s and how you did this with SISS and EW but I just read your above post. Well regardless, samples or not, its a very nice piece. Can you tell a bit about the recording and conducting of it?

I understand your point about phrasing and expression although I think it has more to do with the performance than the media of the instrument. Those live players put in expression, and phrasing. And they have years of experience playing with each other. This is something few sample users have much experience with. They also have a conductor who is inspiring and leading them and keeping them all together in time. And each live player is a master of his own instrument whereas one-man-band sample users have to learn to move their hands, elbows and feet all at the same time and wear many different hats. Yes its a bit crazy, but its also fun to have orchestral instruments to play with for those of us that don't have access to an orchestra.

Well, its fun to pursue the holy grail and its the journey that makes it interesting. I don't think we'll ever completely achieve it - one guy can't really achieve the expression and emotion of 100 players. Yet, I think we've come a long distance in the past few years and there is still much to explore and discover.

Thanks for posting.


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## José Herring (Jun 4, 2010)

synergy543 @ Fri Jun 04 said:


> Jose, if I had anything to do with your putting up your site, I'm glad. You can paypal me the regular sum. :wink:
> 
> Creation is very interesting and I was going to ask about that 'baton' click at 1m15s and how you did this with SISS and EW but I just read your above post. Well regardless, samples or not, its a very nice piece. Can you tell a bit about the recording and conducting of it?
> 
> ...



All your points are well taken. And I freely admit that I cry myself to sleep every night that I'm forced to use orchestral samples on a project. I wish I could embrace the medium for what it is, someday I hope I'll get there but for now every time I use samples I can't help but to think that it would sound better with real players.

Creation was done with a small orchestra about 40 pieces. The trick to making a small orchestra sound big is to write a lot of inner moving harmonic parts that give it motion and space. I got the technique from listening to Tchaikovsky's string serenade written for six strings.

The recording is very, very basic. We basically had a left and a right mic (U87) in front of the orchestra recorded in a largish room. Then I ran the recording through a Lexicon reverb for the hall sound to give the recording more space and depth.

I conducted the piece myself and I just conducted in a manner that would draw out more individual expression for each of the players. I was close friends with all the players so it was easy to get them to respond to my conducting. I also conducted the phrasing and the dynamics I wanted or gave them verbal instructions on how to interpret the piece. I used no click so that I wasn't restricted in taking a little time here or there to complete a phrase and to start a new one, so everything came out organic sounding. I do this almost by instinct so I can't say that I thought about it then or since until you asked.  

As far as posting my pieces on the internet, yes I felt challenged to do so, but I was planning to do it all along. I'm just in a phase right now that I hate everything I'm doing so it's been hard to share stuff online lately. Hopefully I'll snap out of it and start promoting myself again, bringing in more jobs before my wife leaves me. :cry:


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## José Herring (Jun 4, 2010)

Guy Bacos @ Fri Jun 04 said:


> José, you obviously know what you're doing. I guess this is where my point comes in, since you haven't yet attempted major projects with samples. HS is a good string lib, as LASS, as VSL and many more. I think from experience you will see that there is a huge margin between, admiring a demo from a library and integrating those samples in your own compositions with its own style, and achieving the same expression as real instruments. After a while you become a bit more tolerant and can let a few things go while admiring all the other great results. I can tell you that currently there are no JW mockups out there at the level of what Jay did. If there are please show them to me.
> Anyway, I like your music, especially "Creation", and that's what I'll remember.
> 
> I'm not going to say anymore about this, and Jay's mockups cause I have my own music to worry about now.



I keep missing post as they come up.

I hear what you're saying. I have tried larger works with samples and it just didn't sound good. So I've accustomed myself to coming up with convincing works that use samples rather than realistic works. Maybe in the next year or two I'll develop TJ style chops as I get stronger libraries, but in all honesty I have very little desire to do that. Perhaps out of necessity I'll learn to do it. I've often thought about going through the orchestration books and learning how to recreate all the techniques with samples. I may do a study of it over the next few months.

Now get back to your music. Original stuff please. :lol: 

best,

Jose


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## Guy Bacos (Jun 4, 2010)

Just one final thing.

You know TJ style is very impressive and works great for him. Some people love that and others prefer stuff like "Creation", what is important is to remain true to yourself.


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## sadatayy (Jun 4, 2010)

wow amazing stuff. since you said you don't have HS yet what strings are you using is that lass??

2. can you talk a little bit about your reverb setup and how you set it up etc ....thanks

3. great job, professional top notch work!


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## jonathanparham (Jun 4, 2010)

Enjoyed the expression of Creation. Great work with live orchestra.
liked the creepiness of old lady in Black. What was the context for that?


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## José Herring (Jun 4, 2010)

sadatayy @ Fri Jun 04 said:


> wow amazing stuff. since you said you don't have HS yet what strings are you using is that lass??
> 
> 2. can you talk a little bit about your reverb setup and how you set it up etc ....thanks
> 
> 3. great job, professional top notch work!



Thank you.

The strings are a combination of Sonic Implants for the higher strings and EWQLSO for the lower strings. I do intend to get the better string libraries like LASS and HS and CS but I've been spending all my money in the last year trying to upgrade my sound design tools so I haven't had much left for samples.

I use samplicity IR's for everything with Voxengo's Pristine Space Convolution reverb. ( That's a plug because I think Emmanual Roos work is outstanding in this area). I use two instances one to enhance the room (short reverb of about 2 secones) and one for thee hall ( about 5 to 8 seconds), but I try to get the music to sound good before I put on reverb and use reverb very sparingly.


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## José Herring (Jun 4, 2010)

jonathanparham @ Fri Jun 04 said:


> Enjoyed the expression of Creation. Great work with live orchestra.
> liked the creepiness of old lady in Black. What was the context for that?



Thanks Jonathan.

Old Lady in Black is from a film I'm scoring you can find out about here:

http://www.boxofshadowsthemovie.com/


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## sadatayy (Jun 4, 2010)

josejherring @ Fri Jun 04 said:


> jonathanparham @ Fri Jun 04 said:
> 
> 
> > Enjoyed the expression of Creation. Great work with live orchestra.
> ...



holy crap that looks like a pretty good movie


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## José Herring (Jun 4, 2010)

sadatayy @ Fri Jun 04 said:


> josejherring @ Fri Jun 04 said:
> 
> 
> > jonathanparham @ Fri Jun 04 said:
> ...



It's really good. That trailer is an old trailer so all the fx are from the rough cut. But it's turning out to be a really, really good film. I hope that it turns out to be somewhat of a break through film. There's a lot of people interested in it.


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## José Herring (Jun 4, 2010)

They're finalizing the CGI now. But when they showed me the rough cut I thought the CGI already looked better than anything I had done before. But they don't want the reaper to look so cartoony and they're looking to get more depth in the ghost fx ect.... I can't wait to see it when we're all done.


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## sadatayy (Jun 4, 2010)

josejherring @ Fri Jun 04 said:


> They're finalizing the CGI now. But when they showed me the rough cut I thought the CGI already looked better than anything I had done before. But they don't want the reaper to look so cartoony and they're looking to get more depth in the ghost fx ect.... I can't wait to see it when we're all done.



i see what you mean the ghost effects can be made a little less cartoony in the sense they remind me of doctor manhattan from watchmen but still look absolutely amazing for what i'm assuming is a relatively low budget film. 

but anyways...back to your music. another question if you don't mind, do you set the reverb up like the short 1 or 2 second one is your 'early reflections' and each instrument group gets them then they are all bussed to a 'master' reverb that has the longer tail or how do you do it?

thanks appreciate the help from such top notch composer


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## JBacal (Jun 4, 2010)

Enjoyed listening to your cues. Creation was lovely. I'll be the first to admit you can't beat talented live players that play beautifully.

Best,
Jay


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## José Herring (Jun 4, 2010)

sadatayy @ Fri Jun 04 said:


> josejherring @ Fri Jun 04 said:
> 
> 
> > They're finalizing the CGI now. But when they showed me the rough cut I thought the CGI already looked better than anything I had done before. But they don't want the reaper to look so cartoony and they're looking to get more depth in the ghost fx ect.... I can't wait to see it when we're all done.
> ...



One of two ways. I either set them both up as separate sends or I put both in a chain on one send and send instruments to it as needed. I don't really have a method. Sometimes I just put it as an insert fx. Just depends on the need. I just do it by ear.

@ Jay,

Thank you. I don't know if i would be as kind given some of the harsh words I've said about some of your mockups. But if I can leave with a kind word it would be this, while I haven't been a fan of some of them, your rendition of the Firebird was regular listening for me for about a year. You do good work.

Jose


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## Guy Bacos (Jun 4, 2010)

JBacal @ Fri Jun 04 said:


> Enjoyed listening to your cues. Creation was lovely. I'll be the first to admit you can't beat talented live players that play beautifully.
> 
> Best,
> Jay



Class act jay.


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## sadatayy (Jun 4, 2010)

i gotta be honest i do find it amusing sometimes watching you guys argue because it's only a testament to your individual passions for music but what's most interesting is taht you guys are the creme de la creme, the mozarts and haydns of the mockup/vi world. you do realize that all of you jay bacal, guy bacos, jose herring etc are probably in the top small handful of mock up artists, v.i. experts, composers etc in the world. 
so my point is that sometiems you just have to take a step back for a second and take a new perspective and just realize that a little criticism here or there is water under the bridge because let's be honest all of you guys are in the top 99% percentile of the entire human population and at the forefront of sampling/mockup technology. everyone has a few stinkers here or there ocmposition wise or mock up wise or both but in the end, not many people in the world compare to all of you lot so sometimes these bickerings are pretty moot! o-[][]-o


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## sadatayy (Jun 4, 2010)

and for the record i wish i had 3/5 the talent the 3 of you got in both composing and mocking up :?


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## synthetic (Jun 4, 2010)

Wow, great stuff Jose! 

I heard on the radio today that Felix Mendelsson's parents had an orchestra at his disposal from ages 12-16. Let's dig up the spoiled bastard!!

OK maybe I drank too much wine, But I also enjoyed your music very much.


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## Narval (Jun 4, 2010)

sadatayy @ Fri Jun 04 said:


> you guys are the creme de la creme, the mozarts and haydns of the mockup/vi world. you do realize that all of you jay bacal, guy bacos, jose herring ... are in the top 99% percentile of the entire human population and at the forefront of sampling/mockup technology.


I agree, they've made the lower 1% percentile of us possible.

Just one small detail, allow me to humbly complete the holy trinity: the bacal, the bacos, and the herring are the mozarts, the haydns, and the mendelssohns of the mockup/vi world.


Totally loved the Creation! "In the beginning, there was the orchestra..."


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## germancomponist (Jun 5, 2010)

Very cool pieces, Jose! 

I had downloaded your "Creation" and listend to it in my studio today and am very impressed. Your mixing is very nice! You know what you have to do! 

Thanks a lot for sharing!

Best,

Gunther


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## Vision (Jun 5, 2010)

Great writing Jose. :D


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## LiquidSonics (Jun 5, 2010)

josejherring @ Fri Jun 04 said:


> I use two instances one to enhance the room (short reverb of about 2 secones) and one for thee hall ( about 5 to 8 seconds), but I try to get the music to sound good before I put on reverb and use reverb very sparingly.


If you like layering IR reverbs you might like http://www.liquidsonics.com/software_reverberate.htm (Reverberate)as it also allows you to modulate the mix of IRs, modulate panning and EQ to get a little movement into convolution reverbs.


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## José Herring (Jun 5, 2010)

Thanks for listening guys. Your compliments are much appreciated.

Also, I'll check out REverberate. Sounds like a useful tool for not only reverbs but for sound design.


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## C M Dess (Jun 6, 2010)

Enjoyed the tracks. Magic Coffin, Creation and Grimm Tales were my favorites of this set. Yes Creation really stands out btw...


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## José Herring (Jun 6, 2010)

Thanks. I appreciate the listen.

best,

Jose


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