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Bartholomew's Demise

1millionJason's

1millionJason's

New Member
Hi all, my first track to share with you. Of course it is a huge epic piece! This is called Bartholomew's Demise and is inspired by the death of the famous pirate Bartholomew Roberts aka. Black Bart. Watching Pirates of the Caribbean with my daughter last summer I decided to go for the the big Zimmer epic. Apparently Bartholomew was killed by the British warship "Swallow" in 1722 while anchored in Cape Lopez. His crew threw his breathless body in the sea according to his wishes in the event of his demise. This should be like scenes in a movie and hopefully you hear some rolling waves, big action, drunk pirates and a fulfilling death.
Eventhough I have a degree in music, I am fairly new to composing and do not have a ton of libraries yet. I simply use the East West composer cloud for now.
Thanks for listening.
Jason
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Nice track! I've think you've done very well for the first track you are sharing. There's some limitations of the samples and the production, but still, it is interesting to listen to.
 
Thanks for your comment Mark, I definitely have more things to learn. It has been super tempting to spend $$$ on more libraries and plug-ins giving me more options. However my philosophy at the moment is to get better at composing and production with what I currently have as there is room for me to grow on both fronts. I suppose the other thing to mention outside of my own mixing and mastering abilities is this track is MP3 quality as I only have a free SoundCloud account.
Again, thsnks for taking the time to listen and comment.
 
That's a good focus, yes. There's a huge amount to learn before looking at alternative samples than EW provide. It's really just the woodwinds and solo strings where things suffer a bit with the CC products, and even then you should be able to get them sounding pretty good with practice. You don't need lots of libraries to get good results, so stick with that attitude.

My advice with composing is to stick mostly to shorter tracks. The composition and structure is easier then, and it allows you to focus better on the orchestration, mixing, etc. Around 2 to 3 mins works for me. Not to say longer doesn't work too, but I've found it is quicker to learn things on shorter tracks.

One suggestion I have is to double the section strings in with the solos a bit, while still keeping the solo audible. Not necessarily all the time, but at least some of the time. It masks some of the limitations of the solo instruments.

Another suggestion is to work on the reverb/room a bit. Some of the instruments you have are not quite working in with the rest. What reverbs are you using? Things sound a bit "small room-ish". Spaces?

Also some of your string chords sound a bit thick, possibly voiced too close in the lower/mid range. Either that or it's the samples giving that side-effect. Your brass players are performing very flat (no dynamics) in some places, and have iron lungs. You could improve on inner movement in your chords also... you should try giving more of your players an interesting part if you can (so long as it's complimentary and nto distracting of course).

Hope that helps. I'm hardly an expert at this myself, just commenting on what I hear.
 
Oh wow you actually nailed several of the issues I was having. Matter of fact I spent a few hours trying to tweak the solo string parts and my wind instruments before I originally posted this. I actually tried doubling the string part but I could not get it to where I wanted it. Instead I tried warming it up with some EQ. As I am getting more familiar with everyone else libraries I am beginning to notice the difference in these subtleties. Reverb is Spaces II.
As for shorter pieces I definitely have some but most of my stuff has live guitar added. I guess I was not sure if anyone really cared to hear a live instrument w/VI on this forum. At any rate I will post something else soon but as a new member I did not want to bombard this forum with my music. Again, thanks for the feedback.
 
Yeah, the EW solo strings are not the best. You're always gonna struggle with them I think.

The length of the piece is really just about having easier pieces that take less time, so you can get feedback on them quicker, and people are more likely to listen to them. I wouldn't worry about putting more tracks up... it's fine, just put them up, but one at a time maybe. Guitar may not be my style, but plenty of people post live instruments, including guitar.

For the reverb, there are two approaches I use... 1. Make sure you are using one of the better halls (such as I think it is California hall?) and set it up as a send on each Kontakt instance so you can dial in the amount on each to get some good hall presence on each. Then add a small amount of reverb to the overall bus. Sometimes I add a bit of delay also.

Or... 2. The same but use a smaller room for the instrument sends and don't add so much of it, and turn up the reverb on the overall bus to add the longer tail.

I find in both cases that for the longer tail I prefer it coming from an algorithmic reverb like Valhalla nowdays, and the smaller reverb (the room, or just the light touch of longer tail) from a Spaces large hall. In other words, it's good to use a mix of both.

And make sure you give less reverb to the bass instruments, otherwise you get mud.

I know other people have different approaches, but this works for me.
 
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