# A Mystical Christmas (Medley) - Blakus



## Blakus (Dec 11, 2016)

Hi fellow midi massagers 

I thought I'd just share this little Christmas Medley I put together for a carols fireworks show last night in my home town. It was such a cool experience!


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## Mithrandir (Dec 11, 2016)

Great piece, Blake, and astonishing mockup as always. Some questions:

1) The string spiccatos at the beginning of your piece - are those _Berlin Strings_ like (most of?) the legatos?

2) Did you use a tape saturation plugin? What about compression/limiting and EQ - what are some general decisions you'll make, and what are some of your default template settings, if I may ask?

3) I assume you're using pre-delay and other effects to further separate the individual sections of your orchestra? Your percussion (aside from the "epic drums" kind) always seems quite far back in the room.


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## Richard Wilkinson (Dec 11, 2016)

Really nice - both the writing and the production. Did you have to hit any sync points or was the brief just 'write something awesome, Christmassy and cinematic'? I hope they were happy with it, you did a fab job.


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## patrick76 (Dec 11, 2016)

Blakus said:


> Hi fellow midi massagers
> 
> I thought I'd just share this little Christmas Medley I put together for a carols fireworks show last night in my home town. It was such a cool experience!



Nice work! It made me think of "Soaring over California" by Jerry Goldsmith and "Reflections of Earth" by Gavin Greenaway.


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## ScarletJerry (Dec 11, 2016)

Is this the theme for 'Raiders of the Lost Ornament"...Ha Ha! Nice job!

-Scarlet Jerry


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## Blakus (Dec 12, 2016)

Mithrandir said:


> Great piece, Blake, and astonishing mockup as always. Some questions:
> 
> 1) The string spiccatos at the beginning of your piece - are those _Berlin Strings_ like (most of?) the legatos?
> 
> ...


Thank you!
No Berlin Strings in this  No tape saturation either actually, minimal compression only on the percussion. Limiter on master is only taking off 1db max - quite a bit of EQ all over. Most of the decisions are balance related. It's surprising how many issues this solves. The percussion feels further back because I've made the volume intentionally lower, no real tricks here, sorry!! :D


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## IoannisGutevas (Dec 12, 2016)

Very nice! Good work Blakus!


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## Mithrandir (Dec 12, 2016)

Blakus said:


> Thank you!
> No Berlin Strings in this  No tape saturation either actually, minimal compression only on the percussion. Limiter on master is only taking off 1db max - quite a bit of EQ all over. Most of the decisions are balance related. It's surprising how many issues this solves. The percussion feels further back because I've made the volume intentionally lower, no real tricks here, sorry!! :D



What strings are you using, then? Might I be hearing Soaring Strings near the beginning?


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## Blakus (Dec 12, 2016)

wilx said:


> Really nice - both the writing and the production. Did you have to hit any sync points or was the brief just 'write something awesome, Christmassy and cinematic'? I hope they were happy with it, you did a fab job.


Thanks! Ha! This was an interesting brief. "The fireworks will be *around *8 minutes, go for it". LOL! Surprisingly it lined up better than I thought it might have :D I was pretty much just sitting there the whole time just hoping that the music wouldn't end too early or too stupidly late! Everyone received it really well, the feedback has been pretty overwhelming! I'll see if I can post a video with the fireworks later!


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## Blakus (Dec 12, 2016)

Thanks guys! Here's a video of the last few minutes. :D
 Sorry about the quality!


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## Kent (Dec 12, 2016)

Blakus said:


> Hi fellow midi massagers
> 
> I thought I'd just share this little Christmas Medley I put together for a carols fireworks show last night in my home town. It was such a cool experience!



Whenever I think I'm starting to sound good....


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## Batrawi (Dec 12, 2016)

An incredibly brilliant mockup! 

I wish (and that's a Christmas wish) if you can make a "behind the scene" video for this track...There is so much to learn from the amout of well-thought-orchestration that went into this piece


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## Blakus (Dec 13, 2016)

Batrawi said:


> An incredibly brilliant mockup!
> 
> I wish (and that's a Christmas wish) if you can make a "behind the scene" video for this track...There is so much to learn from the amout of well-thought-orchestration that went into this piece


Haha! I shudder at the thought of how long a walkthrough on this could be :D Will see what I can do.


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## Saxer (Dec 13, 2016)

Great show music! They really made an efford to produce footage for your video!


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## Blakus (Dec 13, 2016)

Saxer said:


> Great show music! They really made an efford to produce footage for your video!


Gotta love the dodgy phone video, from a friend :D


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## ctsai89 (Dec 13, 2016)

After having seen what your template looks like on youtube, blakus i'm really surprised that you listed your spec as 32GB RAM.. how's that even possible?


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## Fab (Dec 13, 2016)

that track deserves bigger fireworks lol


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## Blakus (Dec 13, 2016)

ctsai89 said:


> After having seen what your template looks like on youtube, blakus i'm really surprised that you listed your spec as 32GB RAM.. how's that even possible?


The wonders of disabled tracks in Cubase I think! SSDs with low buffer in Kontakt, cpu efficient plugins. I think that's about it!
Granted, I am using 90% of my cpu/ram every project though  But things seem to run smoothly for me.


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## swjun (Dec 13, 2016)

Batrawi said:


> An incredibly brilliant mockup!
> 
> I wish (and that's a Christmas wish) if you can make a "behind the scene" video for this track...There is so much to learn from the amout of well-thought-orchestration that went into this piece



I was listening to the piece again and again, thinking the same thing!! great work!!


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## Blakus (Dec 13, 2016)

Fab said:


> that track deserves bigger fireworks lol


Haha! For my small town, they were actually pretty impressive. Appreciate the compliment! :D


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## Blakus (Dec 14, 2016)

ScarletJerry said:


> Is this the theme for 'Raiders of the Lost Ornament"...Ha Ha! Nice job!
> 
> -Scarlet Jerry


Bahahah, oh man, that would have been a perfect title :D



swjun said:


> I was listening to the piece again and again, thinking the same thing!! great work!!


Cheers! I might try and do one sometime in the next few weeks!


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## Musicam (Dec 14, 2016)

What kind of reverb? Meery Christmas! ._)


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## Blakus (Dec 15, 2016)

Musicam said:


> What kind of reverb? Meery Christmas! ._)


Hahah! You really are obsessed with verb aren't you 
There's not a whole lot of verb in here actually, but what little you can hear is VRoom


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## Musicam (Dec 15, 2016)

Well I have poor money and I dont know how verb is perfect for OST. The money fly! :_) Thanks for your comment and support me Blakus! You are a great reference!


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