# Agitato Sordino Legatos - "Let It Fall"



## John Busby (Sep 24, 2018)

Let if Fall

So, this one took a little longer than expected lol.
i was aiming to have this release out by the first day of winter but oh well, here it is nonetheless…

Instruments:
several patches from Albion V Tundra
Brass Hi and Low "Wind" patches for the wind FX
Hollywood Brass 6 Horn Legato
8dio Agitato Sordino Legatos
Olafur Arnalds Chamber Evos
Heavyocity Intimate Textures (i friggin love this library)
Live Electric Guitars
Studio Drummer
Drone patch and Sub from Project Chaos (i know right!?)
EXS24 Sub Bass
Woodchester Felt layered with Una Corda

Happy New Year!



completely scraped the second track a couple of weeks ago because i felt it didn't fully capture the tone and feel of Prelude.
I hope you enjoy this one!

Instruments:
several patches from Albion V Tundra for ambience namely the Brass Hi and Low "Wind" patches for the wind FX
8dio Agitato Sordino Legatos and arcs
Heavyocity Intimate Textures (i friggin love this library)
EXS24 Sub Bass
and of course, Spitfire's soft piano



Featuring all legatos from 8dio's Agitato Sordinos.
An older library, but man did they nail these strings!

Hope you like the arrangement.
i will be featuring these strings in more music underneath a short EP called "Autumn" over the next several weeks, completely free on SoundCloud.

Leave any thoughts below, Thanks!
Blessings,
-JB


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## mediumaevum (Sep 24, 2018)

I like it.

May I suggest:
Perhaps with some more strings - like a regular violin section (not sordino), or maybe a solo viola playing a melody/countermelody. But I also do know that sometimes, less is more. 

You have some interesting harmonies. Very inspiring.


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## John Busby (Sep 24, 2018)

great feedback medium, thank you!


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## ism (Sep 25, 2018)

Lovely piece. I really like the almost ambient string texture in the beginning - how to you accomplish this?


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## John Busby (Sep 25, 2018)

Thanks ism,
the ambient strings in the beginning are a blend of Heavyocity's Intimate Textures (Novo Exp 1) and a couple of Albion V patches.
The Intimate Textures are probably my favorite string sounds to layer with other libraries right now.
and it's at a great price, if you don't have this one it's highly recommended!


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## ism (Sep 25, 2018)

johnbusbymusic said:


> Thanks ism,
> the ambient strings in the beginning are a blend of Heavyocity's Intimate Textures (Novo Exp 1) and a couple of Albion V patches.
> The Intimate Textures are probably my favorite string sounds to layer with other libraries right now.
> and it's at a great price, if you don't have this one it's highly recommended!



Thanks. And damn, I had convinced myself I didn’t need Intimate textures, but this makes me rethink that. The Heavocity demos (predictably) hadn’t suggested it was capable of quite this much subtlety. 


Also - I think think might be my favorite use of agitato sordino in action, i much prefer it to all the hybrid leaning 8dio example. Look forward to the rest of you ep.


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## ism (Oct 24, 2018)

Was just listening to this again, and thinking (again) that it's really quite striking in how it mixes not-quite-convntional sonority with a conventionally beautiful counterpoint. 

Any word of the rest of your EP?


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## John Busby (Oct 24, 2018)

ism said:


> Was just listening to this again, and thinking (again) that it's really quite striking in how it mixes not-quite-convntional sonority with a conventionally beautiful counterpoint.
> 
> Any word of the rest of your EP?


thanks ism
i'm working on finalizing the second track, it's coming!
i really appreciate your support and feedback


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## ism (Oct 24, 2018)

johnbusbymusic said:


> thanks ism
> i'm working on finalizing the second track, it's coming!
> i really appreciate your support and feedback




Great - looking forward to it!

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it is about a certain type of composition that's emerged in recent years that feels somehow really new, despite not being able to point to any individual single element that's actually new. There's words like 'neo-classical' and 'nuanced-classical' and 'indy-classical' bouncing around, except that no one seem to know what they mean.

And while I agree with the above comment that there are elements of this composition that draw on the cinematic, it has this quality of newness that's so hard to define, and it isn't covered by simply calling it cinematic music. It's one of a handful of pieces I keep coming back to in that they seem really emblematic in their distillation of this newness, whatever it is.


So both excited to listen to and theorizing about the next piece on the EP.


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## midiman (Oct 24, 2018)

johnbusbymusic said:


> Featuring all legatos from 8dio's Agitato Sordinos.
> An older library, but man did they nail these strings!
> 
> Hope you like the arrangement.
> ...




Nice piece indeed. The Piano is live, correct? Not a library. Can you confirm. Thanks.


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## richardt4520 (Oct 24, 2018)

Beautiful piece, John!


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## John Busby (Oct 24, 2018)

midiman said:


> Nice piece indeed. The Piano is live, correct? Not a library. Can you confirm. Thanks.


piano is Spitfire's soft piano layered with Una Corda's pianist noises (it's witchcraft! lol)


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## John Busby (Oct 24, 2018)

ism said:


> Great - looking forward to it!
> 
> I've been thinking a lot lately about what it is about a certain type of composition that's emerged in recent years that feels somehow really new, despite not being able to point to any individual single element that's actually new. There's words like 'neo-classical' and 'nuanced-classical' and 'indy-classical' bouncing around, except that no one seem to know what they mean.
> 
> ...


wow! man this a huge compliment.

i definitely know what you mean tho, i can't fully describe it either.
Olafur Arnalds has this unique style about him where he allows the intonation of a sound to not just reverberate, it kind of tells it's own story. i can't fully articulate it...
He offers just enough of the "familiar" and then gives us a sound or the harmonics or even sub harmonics of a sound that can be so hauntingly beautiful.


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## Ifness (Oct 27, 2018)

Very nice piece. Have listened twice. My only criticism would be that the interweaving lines of the strings that start around halfway through are so lovely and interesting that the piano part becomes superfluous and not necessary. But excellent work regardless. Thanks for sharing.


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## John Busby (Nov 12, 2018)

as mentioned above, i scrapped the second track entirely and wrote something else, that something else is November.
I hope you enjoy


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## NathanTiemeyer (Nov 12, 2018)

johnbusbymusic said:


> as mentioned above, i scrapped the second track entirely and wrote something else, that something else is November.
> I hope you enjoy



Incredible work! Beautiful composition, man.

If you don't mind me asking, how do you get the Logic sub bass to sound so good? I use it all the time but it sticks out like a sore thumb sometimes, do you have any tips or tricks to get it to sit well, especially under strings?


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## John Busby (Nov 12, 2018)

NathanTiemeyer said:


> Incredible work! Beautiful composition, man.
> 
> If you don't mind me asking, how do you get the Logic sub bass to sound so good? I use it all the time but it sticks out like a sore thumb sometimes, do you have any tips or tricks to get it to sit well, especially under strings?


Nathan, i appreciate that man thanks! i'm glad you liked it

And yea the EXS Sub has a strong attack so what i usually do along with using it an octave beneath the basses is use either the expression or track volume to automate and swell the sub in to match the expressiveness of the bassline.
this helps to attenuate the attack while also giving it some "breath"


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Nov 12, 2018)

Beautiful, haunting track! Great idea to use the wind fx at the outset.
Personally, I love 8Dio's strings, warts and all; they just have such a lovely sound.
My only suggestion would be to reconsider (more than one note?) the pedal under the piano: I just find that the tonic sustain steals from the power of the chord progression when the later moves away from the former, when there is tension in the piano - the resolution is always present in the strings.


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## John Busby (Nov 12, 2018)

@Ned Bouhalassa thanks for the feedback!


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## Alex Niedt (Nov 12, 2018)

This is very pretty! My only real critique is that the strings seem absolutely drenched in reverb. They're sitting in an entirely different world from the piano, mix-wise. And that reverb actually makes them sound less realistic.


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## MOMA (Nov 13, 2018)

Both pieces are absolutely top notch. If I would say anything, it would be interesting to replace the dark piano with a harp in the second part of the Prelude. At 1.08 I think. This would leave the beautiful string arrangement more room, but this is yet again just a humble thought
Congrats to the great work!!


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## ism (Nov 29, 2018)

Another very lovely piece, that really does recreate the feel of the first piece without repeating itself.


A very minor niggle though - I'm going to agree with Alex on the reverb, although for maybe a slightly different reasons. 

For one thing, whatever you've done to the sordino strings in the first piece is very, very nice. For another, in the context of listening to these piece in sequence, I think that the consistency would give it a sort of conceptual coherence. 

And I think the biggest reason (that I'm going to struggle to ariculate, so apologies in advance for the vagueness of this point) is that the definition of the relatively dry sordino strings as it lifts out of the slightly more ambient - or maybe the ambiguously ambient - intro is an important part of how this works as an orchestral piece. Maybe this 'neo-classical' topos that no one seems able to define is somehow related to how it dangles on the edge of the ambient, but always remains firmly footed in the orchestral. Not saying that the wetter strings in the second piece aren't nice, but I think that the 'lifting' effect, out of the not-quite-but-maybe-a-litle-ambient soundscape of the intro is itself part of the overall impact of what you're doing here. 


Yea, kind of vague. But beautiful piece regardless of whether that makes any sense.


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## John Busby (Nov 29, 2018)

ism said:


> Another very lovely piece, that really does recreate the feel of the first piece without repeating itself.
> 
> 
> A very minor niggle though - I'm going to agree with Alex on the reverb, although for maybe a slightly different reasons.
> ...


very good point and yes i get what you're saying, you have a way with works 
i agree, the reverb processing is a bit too much in November.


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## John Busby (Jan 1, 2019)

This concludes Autumn, and i really wish i could've had this done sooner but it's all good here it is and now off to the next thing.



One of my course corrections for future stuff will be to find a good mastering solution.
i really think another set of ears with no bias and a different room and system will probably be in the cards for me on something else, we'll see.

Happy New Year!


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## tebling (Jan 2, 2019)

Absolutely gorgeous track! I'll caveat my comments though by saying that this narrow genre is totally my cup of tea. For a moment I thought I was listening to something off the new Tony Anderson album.


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## HardyP (Jan 8, 2019)

Aaah, what a pleasure... that´s exactly the style of music/listening experience I was allways looking for ...
My favorite BTW is the last piece, really well done!

Nice thoughts by @ism and yourself about the general "neo-classical" thing, too.


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