# Using OrchestralTools to Mock-up Danny Elfman’s The Batman Theme



## JW (Nov 7, 2017)

Hi guys,
I thought I would be brave and share what I’ve worked on over the past three days. I’ve been wanting to get a better grip with my sample libraries, and further develop my mock-up skills. I decided to try and mock-up Danny Elfman’s Batman title sequence from the Tim Burton film. I’m just using my ears to try and figure out his orchestration. I always loved this track of his. Anyways, here’s my attempt...it’s not done, and this is just a quick mix...a work in progress. I’m using only OrchestralTools libraries...all the Berlin Series. Thanks for listening!


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## South Thames (Nov 7, 2017)

Great job here -- particularly if you did it all ear! Not an easy piece to pick up by ear since the orchestration is pretty dense and the separation of parts is not easy to hear. I think it captures the spirit of the piece really well, if not necessarily all the details. 

It does seem a tad slow once the march starts (at least compared to the original), and the horns/theme don't really cut through as much as they should there -- I would reduce the 'vamp' in the strings a bit at that point, and try to give melody a harder edge, though this is always a pain with 'slow-to-speak' brass and wind samples.

I invested in the Omni score for this last year -- it's a masterclass in orchestration for large forces, and it looks like you can download it here -- might help you polish up the details a bit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CinemaScores/new/?count=26&before=t3_6v0fwm

The original recording for Batman was one of the last scores recorded by the great Eric Tomlinson, and it's one of my favourite recordings, period -- it has so much grandeur, depth and dynamic range (particularly compared with Batman Returns) -- and it's an tougher one to mock up for that reason.


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## muk (Nov 7, 2017)

Very well done!


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## JW (Nov 7, 2017)

South Thames said:


> Great job here -- particularly if you did it all ear! Not an easy piece to pick up by ear since the orchestration is pretty dense and the separation of parts is not easy to hear. I think it captures the spirit of the piece really well, if not necessarily all the details.
> 
> It does seem a tad slow once the march starts (at least compared to the original), and the horns/theme don't really cut through as much as they should there -- I would reduce the 'vamp' in the strings a bit at that point, and try to give melody a harder edge, though this is always a pain with 'slow-to-speak' brass and wind samples.
> 
> ...



Hey! Thanks for listening! I appreciate that. Yes, my mockup could definitely use some work, although it was FUN to do. Thanks for posting that link! Awesome! I'll look into it. There are certainly parts in my mockup that could use some tightening up, and mix fixes as well... Just a work in progress. I bit the bullet and decided to share because I had fun with it, and it was a hell of good ear training exercise. 

I completely agree about the recording...love the sound. LOVE IT. And thanks again for listening, as well as the helpful critique!

Cheers,
JW


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## JW (Nov 7, 2017)

muk said:


> Very well done!


Thanks! Appreciate you listening to it!


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## Paul T McGraw (Nov 9, 2017)

Congratulations! I own Berlin Brass and I love the sound, but it is not an easy library with which to work. I hope you will not object if I ask a couple of questions.

1) Did you use the same mic positions on all of the instruments?
2) Did you have enough RAM to do the entire thing at once, or did you have to render tracks or sections and then mix the audio?

OT is a great library, but requires a lot of resources. Thanks for showcasing it's potential.


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## JW (Nov 9, 2017)

Paul T McGraw said:


> Congratulations! I own Berlin Brass and I love the sound, but it is not an easy library with which to work. I hope you will not object if I ask a couple of questions.
> 
> 1) Did you use the same mic positions on all of the instruments?
> 2) Did you have enough RAM to do the entire thing at once, or did you have to render tracks or sections and then mix the audio?
> ...



Hi Paul! Thanks for listening! I really appreciate it.

I love OT libraries! I bought into their philosophy a while back. That’s not to say that I don’t also enjoy using libraries from other developers. I love Spitfire too and have a number of their libraries as well, but for me , I just find OT works best for my workflow, and i’m Just a huge fan of their approach and sound. Again, just a personal preference.

You’re right though...OT does however require some serious horsepower. I have an iMac 2013 model i7 quad with 32 gb as my host. I’m using cubase 9. I have 2 pc slaves. One is an i7 5820k with 64gb ram, and I just built another pc slave using i7 6850k with 128gb ram. Both loaded with ssd’s And m.2 drives. Building my own pc’s saved a lot of money in the long run...I slowly built up my studio to fit my needs.

Other than the horsepower, I really haven’t had problems with any of the OT libraries...knock on wood.  No library is perfect that’s for sure. I’ve had to work at balancing some volume for articulations here and there, but generally nothing too frustrating. Oh, I do get a tad frustrated with some of the tuning in the Bass samples in BST, but not a deal breaker for me.

I use single articulations in a very large template. And for this cue, I primarily used the tree mics with some of the close mics added on a few articulations...a couple of surround mics on a few articulations if memory serves correct. I’m not at my studio right now. What helped me was reading the guides on OT’s ‘helpdesk’ to get a better understanding of capsule and on the handling of reverberation and placement. Oh, I also reached out to Sascha via soundcloud, and he was very friendly and generous revealing his approach to using OT libraries. That helped a ton. Tobias has been great helping me too! Really, I find each library like learning a new instrument...and that goes for libraries from any developer. It takes time. I’m still trying to get better at it.

Sorry for rambling on...to answer your questions...1) for the most part I used the same mic positions...with a few articulations using a combination of other mics...for the trumpets I did push the close mics a bit more...the mock-up is still a work in progress. It can be a lot better...i’ll definitely make some corrections and work on overall mix.

2) With the addition of the new pc slave I have enough memory to run it all. I have the brass loaded on that machine...and honestly my ram usage hasn’t been as large as what I thought it would be. I probably would have been perfectly fine with 64gb ram on it.

Alright, I hope that answers your question. Thanks again for listening!


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## Paul T McGraw (Nov 9, 2017)

Thank you @JW and once again, great work on Batman. I look forward to hearing more of your work.


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## JW (Nov 9, 2017)

Paul T McGraw said:


> Thank you @JW and once again, great work on Batman. I look forward to hearing more of your work.


You bet! Thank you!


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## lucky909091 (Nov 10, 2017)

Great orchestration you did here. Awesome.

I always work with just one PC and I would like to know how you return the audio from the slave PCs?
I mean, do you work with one single soundcard and import the audio signal of the slave into this one or how does this work?
Thank you in advance.


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## JW (Nov 10, 2017)

lucky909091 said:


> Great orchestration you did here. Awesome.
> 
> I always work with just one PC and I would like to know how you return the audio from the slave PCs?
> I mean, do you work with one single soundcard and import the audio signal of the slave into this one or how does this work?
> Thank you in advance.



Hey! Thanks very much. There’s a lot of room for improvement here, but i’m happy based on the time I spent on it. When I have a free moment i’ll fix some glaring mistakes. 

I use Vienna ensemble pro...it’s really as simple as that. I have a gigabit switch dedicated to my host and pc slaves. ...all sound running through ethernet cables back to the host. There’s been some good tutorials lately discussing how to incorporate it with multiple pc slaves..check those out...good information. 

Thanks again for listening!

JW


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## re-peat (Nov 10, 2017)

I don't have access to the best monitoring equipment at the moment — complete house renovation, so no studio —, but doesn't this sound excessively compressed, over-saturated and even badly distorted, particularly between 0'38" and 1'22"? And that string-arpeggio towards the end sounds noticeable worse, to my ears, than all the strings which preceded it.

But again: my listening conditions are far from ideal these days.

_


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## JW (Nov 10, 2017)

re-peat said:


> I don't have access to the best monitoring equipment at the moment — complete house renovation, so no studio —, but doesn't this sound excessively compressed, over-saturated and even badly distorted, particularly between 0'38" and 1'22"? And that string-arpeggio towards the end sounds noticeable worse, to my ears, than all the strings which preceded it.
> 
> But again: my listening conditions are far from ideal these days.
> 
> _


Hey, it could be a lot of things. Perhaps it’s mp3 compression from SoundCloud, or more likely a poor quick mix on my part. As mentioned before many times, there’s lots of room for improvement. It’s a work in progress.

This is by no means a final mix, and it could also be that it’s generally not to your liking which is okay too. I do appreciate you listening and reaching out with critiques. It will make me scrutinize myself more as I work on it. My desire is to get a better grip on creating well done mockups, so this will help me. Appreciate it. 

JW


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