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Lord of the Rings | Rivendell Midi Mockup | Howard Shore

Kyle Preston

Kyle Preston

I Think, Therefore I Ambient
Howard Shore has been an intimidating musical presence in my life. I’ve always loved his work and transcribing it has been a tremendous joy. I can’t encourage you enough to spend the time transcribing the music you love. You’ll discover how your champions think. And it'll enrich your understanding of the world in profound and fruitful ways.


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Some Observations:

Shore loves to vary his tempos and time signatures constantly (probably to address film needs). You can also tell he loves the freedom of composing on paper. Knowing this makes me insanely jealous as I spend too much time composing in front of screens. It inspires me to sit down, study and learn the methods of someone I’ve come to believe is in every sense of the (over-used) word, a genius.

Cleaning up sweeping legato strings and midi cc’ing everything was the bulk of the work. I had no idea how much time/effort would be needed to get sweeping strings to sound as real as I could. I think I pulled off the illusion okay, but there’s definitely a market for a VI company to build a library capable of smoothly doing this...
Click to read more...
 
Kyle Preston said:
Howard Shore has been an intimidating musical presence in my life. I’ve always loved his work and transcribing it has been a tremendous joy. I can’t encourage you enough to spend the time transcribing the music you love. You’ll discover how your champions think. And it'll enrich your understanding of the world in profound and fruitful ways.


​

Some Observations:

Shore loves to vary his tempos and time signatures constantly (probably to address film needs). You can also tell he loves the freedom of composing on paper. Knowing this makes me insanely jealous as I spend too much time composing in front of screens. It inspires me to sit down, study and learn the methods of someone I’ve come to believe is in every sense of the (over-used) word, a genius.

Cleaning up sweeping legato strings and midi cc’ing everything was the bulk of the work. I had no idea how much time/effort would be needed to get sweeping strings to sound as real as I could. I think I pulled off the illusion okay, but there’s definitely a market for a VI company to build a library capable of smoothly doing this...
Click to expand...


That was beautiful! I love that piece and really enjoyed listening to your mock-up of it.
 
Really lovely work. Great blending of different libraries and you really captured the feeling and musicality of the original cue.

One thought, FWIW, the space around the solo WW sounds a little too complex and modulated to my ear. A bit too far pushed back and a little boxy to the point where the flute at the end ALMOST sounds like an oboe? I would have loved a more transparent, cleaner ambience to bring the solo woodwinds forward. just my two cents.

Also, I didn't even realize this was Logic until the end. Where did you get that skin??
 
Impressive! Great overall feel and a top notch mix. If there is anything I would take a closer look at it would be the clarinet. Is it to strong? To heavy? But that is just a note in the margin to this amazing piece of yours.

MOMA
 
Hey thanks @Saxer! And thank you all for the feedback. The skins are from https://logicproxthemes.blogspot.com/, Matthew did awesome design work with these and I'm sure I'll buy more in the future. The one in the video is the Moog Sub 37 theme :whistling:.

As for libraries and reverbs:

Main String Legato & Sustain Sections:
  • 8dio Adagios
  • 8dio Agitattos (violas and cellos)
  • Cinesamples Legato
  • Spitfire Tundra Legato
  • TONS of cc programming
  • Even MORE programming
  • Tundra (Sul Tasto I think? can't remember)
  • OA Chamber Waves during elvish parts
  • Cinestrings for the string harmonics
Woodwinds & Brass:
  • All Cinewinds (one of my favorite libs)
  • All Cinebrass, solo horn and a few trombone sustain swells
Percussion:
  • Spitfire Harp
  • Hans Zimmer Timpani
  • Tubular Bells that came with Kontakt 4 but pitched down to make em meaty
Choirs:
  • 8dio Insolidus
  • Spitfire Eric Whitacre (not evos but the main one)
  • Jaeger Solvedt
I think that's everything, I'm away from me DAW at the moment...

Oh and reverbs are all East West Spaces (the first one):
  • Dortmund Hall
  • Hamburg Cathedral
  • Northwest (Benaroya Hall) on choir, though I may have had this muted during the recording, can't remember.
Should also mention that I EQ'd the hell out of everything. Tried to create some physical sense of proper room acoustics but I'm not a purist about it - I like having a bit of hyper-realness in there.
 
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