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"Dark Crystal Overture" Mockup ! (aka Soaring Strings Crash Test)

Emmanuel Rousseau

Senior Member
Hi everyone,

Having recently acquired Musical Sampling's Soaring Strings during their latest sale, I wanted to try them in a new Mockup.

I am a huge fan of Trevor Jone's score for Dark Crystal, so I thought it would be a perfect candidate. Here is my Mockup for the "Overture" piece (well... not the whole piece, but the biggest part !)

With the exception of a very few runs, trems and stuff, 99% of the strings are Soaring Strings. Brass is Berlin Brass with a few touches of Metropolis Arks & the excellent Majestic Horn from Organic Samples. Woodwinds are from VSL SE, + the sweet Clarinet from Embertone.

Hope you'll enjoy the result !

 
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Great work, and may I say great taste as well... it's a gorgeous score.

A major letdown with sampled strings, for me, is the inability to capture that (soaring) quality that high strings in octaves/unison have when performed live... but they sound pretty good in your mockup, soaring strings doing their job!

Orchestral balance is really good for the most part.. brass may be a bit underrepresented in a few places. At around 2:00, it would be nice to hear that beautiful cello line come through a bit more... although I'm probably only noticing that due to my familiarity with the original recording..

Well done!

Ryan
 
@ryans : Thank you so much ! I think Soaring Strings did very well in this situation. Very happy with it !

You're probably right about the balance issues you mentionned, but I spent so much energy on the transcribing/playing/programming process I may have lost focus on the mixing stage. I guess I'll find out in a few days :)

@Land of Missing Parts : Glad you liked it ! No Drum Fury on this one, it is very well recorded, but too clean/modern for this particular mockup.

I usually use a lot of close mics in my mockups, but here I sticked to only using decca trees for all instruments (or ORTF for Berlin Brass).

The Gran Casa is from Ark 3, and the Timpani is from HZ01 (even if I told @NoamL I didn't like them a few days ago, lol).

Also, is that Gelfling I smell? :emoji_gem:
<3
 
Beautiful Mockup Emmanuel! Quality work!
Do you write notes by ear or do you have access to scores or midi?

Thank you for sharing!
 
Love the score, love your mockup. These old scores have very special sound - lots of air in them and you nailed it nicely with Soaring Strings - they are so nice sounding.

Would you mind sharing the midi file?

thank you
 
@whitewasteland a very believable mockup. I am sorry to say that I thought the strings sound was the weakest area. I wish you had Spitfire Symphonic Strings for this project. Your skills are great, but I just do not like the sound of soaring strings.
 
@whitewasteland a very believable mockup. I am sorry to say that I thought the strings sound was the weakest area. I wish you had Spitfire Symphonic Strings for this project. Your skills are great, but I just do not like the sound of soaring strings.

Thank you @Paul T McGraw , always like to know what you think :)

To be fair with Soaring Strings, it's a small and light library compared to big guys like Spitfire Chamber Strings or OT Berlin Strings. I think they did really good for that exercice, but clearly there are parts in this mockup where other libraries would be more appropriate. I'm thinking especially about the parts with lots of divisi, where the Molto Vibrato of Soaring Strings creates a slightly "shaking" and unstable sound with so many voices together.
 
Thank you @Paul T McGraw , always like to know what you think :)

To be fair with Soaring Strings, it's a small and light library compared to big guys like Spitfire Chamber Strings or OT Berlin Strings. I think they did really good for that exercice, but clearly there are parts in this mockup where other libraries would be more appropriate. I'm thinking especially about the parts with lots of divisi, where the Molto Vibrato of Soaring Strings creates a slightly "shaking" and unstable sound with so many voices together.

Exactly!
 
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