# New orchestral fanfare, "The Adventurer"



## Alex Temple (Jan 9, 2011)

Hello everyone,

I just finished a new piece for orchestra. My aim was to create a straightforward heroic fanfare in the classic Hollywood style. Lots of big I-V-I progressions, blaring trumpets, shrieking runs etc. There is a tremendous John Williams influence on the piece, while the quieter parts are more influenced by Copland. I'm also giving my Hollywood Strings it's first complete go at a piece since I bought it.

I think there's plenty of room for improvement. You can listen to it here: http://www.alexandertemple.com/_music/org_sm_theadventurer.mp3 (http://www.alexandertemple.com/_music/o ... nturer.mp3)


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## TGV (Jan 9, 2011)

Worthy of a hero, and a great soaring sound. Perhaps a bit too clever at some points for a blockbuster. Great.


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## Frederick Russ (Jan 9, 2011)

Really nice work Alex! Mock up is very nice. Its definitely more movie music rather than trailer but absolutely cool. Very interesting writing throughout. I do hear strains of Williams in there throughout some of the phrasing. Tell us what libraries were employed.


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## Tanuj Tiku (Jan 9, 2011)

Alex, 


This is just fantastic! Are the strings Hollywood Strings? Man, I need to get a copy!


But really good work and excellent orchestration! 



Tanuj.


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## germancomponist (Jan 9, 2011)

Very fine music, Alex! And, as always, you have arranged you good composition very well too!

Thanks for sharing!

Gunther


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## sherief83 (Jan 9, 2011)

Brilliant as always Alex. Thanks for sharing this great piece with us!


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## Dave Connor (Jan 9, 2011)

Terrific! Yes by all means what libraries are we hearing - particularly brass.


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## Alex Temple (Jan 9, 2011)

Thanks for listening everyone! The libraries used are: 

Winds: mix of about 80% VSL, 20% HWW. The VSL solo winds are all mono signals (left or right channel only, never a collapsed stereo) run through a variety of reverb placements.
Brass: Horns: SAM ensemble and solo + VSL Epic Horns + VSL triple and viennese horns. Never all at the same time, but I usually combine two or three depending on the passage.
Trumpets: Mostly The Trumpet (for solo and ensemble), layered with either the a6 VSL trumpets, the VSL C Trumpet, or the SAM solo trumpet (for the pp stuff).
Trombones: SAM solo + compressed VSL ensemble for the loud stuff, VSL solo for the quieter passages.
Tuba: SAM/VSL interchangeably
Percussion and harp is all VSL. Strings are all Hollywood Strings. I used only the main mics because it's all I have room for on my SSD.


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## Rob (Jan 10, 2011)

That's fantastic, Alex!


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## IFM (Jan 10, 2011)

I enjoyed this piece, thank you for sharing! I'm more of a fan of the VSL brass and woodwinds everything and this made good use of their Fanefare trumpets.


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## bryla (Jan 10, 2011)

Remarkable Alex, thanks for posting!


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## handz (Jan 10, 2011)

Great one of teh best pieces over period of time here for me!
I hear bit of Jurrasic Park here but this is more compliment than negative.
Great Brass! Im very surprised that it is mainly VSL - you made it sound very nice!
Also HS sooo rulez


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## IvanP (Jan 10, 2011)

Awesome writing, Alex...it would really be worth recording it live...


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## Mr Greg G (Jan 10, 2011)

Nice piece, even though some brass parts sound synthy at times, like at the very beginning.


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## Mahlon (Jan 10, 2011)

Fantastic!

Mahlon


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## Allegra (Jan 10, 2011)

Well, Williams definitely jumped right out at me. Copland fanfare style also prevalent and very much present in the writing...wonderful by the way!

So many layers to listen to and nothing gets in the way to my ears. Really like the way you used the various instruments (variations) at 2:30 to 3:00. Lot of color there for listening interest. Writing, Orchestration, Mix, and flow of the piece are music to my ears!!!! :wink: 

Wonderful...

Allegra


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## Ed (Jan 10, 2011)

This is seriously freakin good, and Hollywood Strings sounds AMAZING.


I do miss a strong theme though but thats my only criticism, Williams really knows how to do that.


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## Lunatique (Jan 11, 2011)

Really nice stuff. It's sad though, as I'm listening to it, I keep thinking it's probably considered outdated by many, even though it's certainly more sophisticated than majority of today's scores.


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## hbuus (Jan 11, 2011)

handz @ Mon Jan 10 said:


> Great one of teh best pieces over period of time here for me!
> I hear bit of Jurrasic Park here but this is more compliment than negative.



+1! Awesome piece - thanks for sharing.

Best,
Henrik


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## Garlu (Jan 12, 2011)

Alex Temple @ Mon Jan 10 said:


> ...run through a variety of reverb placements.



Alex, congrats! It sounds amazing! Very well done!. 

One question about your template, could you elaborate a little bit more your treatment with the reverbs?  

Thanks!


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## Steve Martin (Jan 13, 2011)

Hi Alex,

congratulations on a great piece of music! 

Can I ask, did you play all the parts in in real time from a pre-created written score, or did you start with a score in your DAW or notation program, and then export it as a midi file and then add the instruments?

Also, your Hollywood strings - what kind of drive did you use for these?
Were you also able to get all of your orchestral sample parts playing at the same time in your DAW?

Thanks if you can fill me in here.

best regards,

Steve


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## Mr. Anxiety (Jan 13, 2011)

Very nice writings Alex! Your synth orchestra is really good as well.

Bravo!

Mr. A


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## Guy Bacos (Jan 14, 2011)

Hi Alex,

I always enjoys listening to your music, and everything you put out is equal to your amazing talent, and this piece is no exception. I really appreciate at 2 min when you go into the light woodwind section, really charming. Is this for anything special? Certainly see this as a soundtrack for a movie.


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## synergy543 (Jan 14, 2011)

Alex, wonderful piece and some excellent orchestration!

Did you write this all out first? (sounds like it)

Greg


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## Alex Temple (Jan 15, 2011)

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Lunatique: I hear you about the outdated thing. I was actually thinking about running the whole mix through some analog tube saturation plugins to make the mix sound old too.

Garlu: Thanks! The rundown of the reverb, starting with the bottom: 

Strings use one instance with tail only, no ER or direct signal. Harp uses one instance. Percussion uses three instances, one for "deep" tail-rich sounds like cymbals, one for normal percussion, and one for detailed (but still not *close* sounding) percussion like mallets. 

SAM Brass gets a tiny bit of a tail aux send, which is the same tail the woodwinds use. VSL brass get six separate instances, one for ensemble horns, one for solo horns, one for ensemble trumpets, one for solo trumpets, one for all trombones, and one for tuba. This may seem unnecessary in theory but it just sounded bad when I tried using the same stage positioning on the solo trumpets as ensemble trumpets, etc. The Trumpet gets two instances, one for the first two chairs and a very different one for the third. 

Winds, as I mentioned earlier, are mono on all of the solo winds. They use the left or right channel only, because I really dislike the sound of a collapsed stereo image when it contains details about the space the samples were originally recorded in. This is taken care of within VE pro. Each mono wind is panned slightly differently and then they are sent, in groupings, as stereo outputs to Sonar. Flute 1 might be panned -3, 2 might be -7, and 3 might be -15, and so on. This all appears as one dedicated "flute" audio input in Sonar. Sonar receives two of these inputs per wind family. The first is treated with various eqs appropriate for the specific instrument and then sent, as an ouput (not as an aux send) through a dedicated Woodwinds bus. This uses a stage impulse that has the direct/dry signal mixture and the early reflections but not the tail. So all four wind families winds go through each of their respective inputs and Sonar and are then all routed through the same bus. This process is repeated, so that each wind family within Sonar has two track inputs receiving data from VE pro, except these second tracks are routed through a hall tail-only output. This is the same tail that the SAM Brass uses as an aux send. The ensemble winds are run through a similar setup except they are not reduced to mono signals, so they need a different stage impulse. All ensemble winds are grouped as one audio output from VE Pro - not ideal, but they are not the high-use samples that I want to dedicate too much of my computer's available resources to. Hollywoodwinds just get a tiny bit of aux tail.

So a simpler explanation would be to say that winds use normal panning methods and then are grouped under a stage and tail impulse together, that dry brass do not use normal panning methods but instead get dedicated reverb instances that let me use altiverb's stage positioning feature instead, that percussion and harp use stage positioning, and that all naturally ambient samples just have a bit of tail (or a lot in the case of HS) to put them all in the same space. A lot of this setup, especially with the winds, is a compromise between what I want (giving every single dry instrument a separate instance and leave panning exclusively to altiverb's stage positioning) and what is going to bring the computer to its knees. This gives me a solid sound with enough headroom to work and add more resources if I need to. This setup will also be drastically simplified if I do end up jumping ship from Altiverb and getting the new Spaces plugin because a lot of this complicated bussing can be eliminated if I can move some of the reverb out of Sonar and into the VE pro instances. Audio ease has stalled for a long time about releasing a 64-bit version...

Steve: I did not play the parts in realtime. It's a combination of step and manual entry. The sequence can play back in realtime in the DAW without any bouncing or sample optimization necessary, but there's enough latency (buffer is set to 1024) that trying to do play parts at the keyboard any degree of accuracy is very difficult. I did a lot of the composing in Sibelius on a three-stave piano sketch and then did all the orchestrating directly in Sonar. For HS I use a 60 GB OCZ Vertex II SSD, which can fit the main mics for all instruments but unfortunately only has space for one of the divisis. It's not ideal but it works and I happened to have the drive available. Until I have faster drives that can fit the rest of the mic positions I'm not going to bother with them, especially since Play only lets you add extra mics one patch at a time (times 50+ patches plus loading times... you get the idea).

Guy: Thanks! This piece wasn't for anything specifically so the wind passage wasn't meant to accompany anything. If I was going to work on it more I would definitely extend that part to be more fully developed.

Greg: I wrote parts of it out but not the entire thing. The parts that flow better are almost always the parts that I did a piano sketch of first.


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## Steve Martin (Jan 15, 2011)

Hi Alex,

thanks very much for your answer. Your answer is very helpful to me. I'm also have been working with scores that start I create in Sibelius.

thanks again,

best,

Steve :D


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## Tanuj Tiku (Jan 17, 2011)

Alex,

I am posting again because this is just amazing! The composition, orchestration and the programming are top-notch.


Yours is the first demo that has sealed the deal for me for Hollywood Strings. Its just beautiful. I was always doubtful of the Violins but they sound amazing in this demo. And it helps to know that they can be made to sound like this. 

Where can I listen to more of your music?


Fantastic!


Best,

Tanuj.


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## tumeninote (Jan 17, 2011)

Yes this really is a fantastic work! Thank you for sharing some of your detailed response to others. I appreciate your insight.


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