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Making Music like Hiroyuki Sawano

This is awesome! Will try to take a look at it this week or next. Still been backing up my computer and redownloading VSTs on my new comp lol. Fortunately I'm on Reaper too. Also, I got Iris 2 free through plugin boutique not long ago, so although I haven't used it, this'll give me a good reason to check it out. Thanks, and I'll get back to you once I've taken a look!
 
constaneum said:
i think something about the Japanese orchestral setup which sounds different from the usual Hollywood sounds.
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So, I love Sawano's Gundam Unicorn music, but my holy grail has always been Kow Otani's score for Gundam Wing. My 'still pretty holy but slightly less so' grail is Toshihiko Sahashi's Gundam SEED Destiny score. Ok, fine, my holiest of all grails is Yoko Kanno's Turn-A Gundam score but that's a straight up concert hall symphonic sound for the orchestral parts even if it has the compositional flair for adventurous melodic romanticism that I equate to the Japanese sound.

Anyway, the Wing score particularly has that sound of lively, agile small sections. The brass leans towards big band a lot of the time. Plus, rock drums, wild electric guitar, and sax noodling. I've always wanted to compose music like that but never quite had the right sounds to get there.

When Strezov put out the Afflatus 1.3 updates, it was like handing me a toolbox for this kind of music. The marcatos, chamber spiccatos, and 'mysterious' legatos are all small sections. Layering the chamber spiccatos and the marcatos produces a very agile and expressive string sound, especially for the violins and violas. Crucially (to me) the marcato patches also have a very nice expressive vibrato. It's not consistent on every note but it's there on most of them. Oh, and the 'scene d'amour' articulations are also great in this context, and again are small sections.

I set up my Gundam Wing-ish orchestra using Afflatus for strings. Brass is OT Glory Days, 8dio Fire Trumpet and Fire Sax, Realitone Screaming Trumpet. ISW Shreddage guitar. MODO bass. Superior 3 drums. I'm pretty happy with the sound:



I'm really interested to hear what Andrew and ISW come up with for their string library. If it has beautiful expressive marcatos, or sforzandos or whatever you want to call a nice selection of short articulations with different attacks and pretty vibrato that enables lively romantic expression... I'm in. For now, I'm really happy with Afflatus.
 
Thanks for your track, nice job! Yea, Afflatus seems quite nice from what I'd heard from demos and streams I've seen so far. I'd also been looking into Yoko Shimomura's work (Xenoblade Chronicles), when I found out that she'd also composed the music for Super Mario RPG, one of my favorite games of all time. Small music world!
 
Hmm, not really the same, but regarding video game music and ISW Shreddage - I transcribed RichaadEB's youtube guitar cover of Deltarune - Field of Hopes and Dreams and inputted all notes and MIDI (pitch bend, modulation, etc) manually with mouse and computer keyboard as I did not have a midi controller at this time, haha. I used Shreddage 3 Serpent for all guitar parts, and Shreddage 3 Abyss for bass.

Happy to provide project files if anyone happens to be interested! Just glad to see people posting their tracks so maybe we can learn from each other (not that this one is particularly cinematic, but hopefully captures the rock genre).
 

Attachments

  • Deltarune - Field of Hopes and Dreams (cover).mp3
    2.6 MB · Views: 154
jason3.14 said:
Hmm, not really the same, but regarding video game music and ISW Shreddage - I transcribed RichaadEB's youtube guitar cover of Deltarune - Field of Hopes and Dreams and inputted all notes and MIDI (pitch bend, modulation, etc) manually with mouse and computer keyboard as I did not have a midi controller at this time, haha. I used Shreddage 3 Serpent for all guitar parts, and Shreddage 3 Abyss for bass.

Happy to provide project files if anyone happens to be interested! Just glad to see people posting their tracks so maybe we can learn from each other (not that this one is particularly cinematic, but hopefully captures the rock genre).
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Sounds pretty good!
Regarding project files, I'm ALWAYS interested!

Oh, by the way, most of the music from Xenoblade Chronicles was actually composed by ACE+ and Manami Kiyota. Yoko Shimomura is responsible for a couple iconic tracks though, such as the title theme and Colony 9. And did you know that Yasunori Mitsuda composed the ending theme, Beyond the Sky? The same Yasunori Mitsuda who wrote the Chrono Trigger OST? A small world indeed.
 
ToadsworthLP said:
Sounds pretty good!
Regarding project files, I'm ALWAYS interested!

Oh, by the way, most of the music from Xenoblade Chronicles was actually composed by ACE+ and Manami Kiyota. Yoko Shimomura is responsible for a couple iconic tracks though, such as the title theme and Colony 9. And did you know that Yasunori Mitsuda composed the ending theme, Beyond the Sky? The same Yasunori Mitsuda who wrote the Chrono Trigger OST? A small world indeed.
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Yasunori Mitsuda returned and composed a few tracks for Xenoblade Chronicles 2
 
ToadsworthLP said:
Sounds pretty good!
Regarding project files, I'm ALWAYS interested!

Oh, by the way, most of the music from Xenoblade Chronicles was actually composed by ACE+ and Manami Kiyota. Yoko Shimomura is responsible for a couple iconic tracks though, such as the title theme and Colony 9. And did you know that Yasunori Mitsuda composed the ending theme, Beyond the Sky? The same Yasunori Mitsuda who wrote the Chrono Trigger OST? A small world indeed.
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Thanks for your interest! Here are the wav, Reaper project file, and multitrack midi file for my Deltarune cover. Hope you find them interesting/helpful in some way!

- Jason
 

Attachments

  • Deltarune - Field of Hopes and Dreams (project share).zip
    10.4 MB · Views: 28
Here's the current state of my Promare Theme cover! Guess it took me awhile as I'm not particularly efficient with my workflow, tweaking everything all the time lol. Inspired by @MSutherlandComp's shire whistle work on his "7Tsuno:the1" cover as well. :)

Appreciate comments, and hope you like it! Can provide project file/MIDI/video if anyone is interested. I might continue extending the track, but probably will take a break from this project for now as I'm itching to check out @Trash Panda's Xenoblade Theme X project file, haha.
 

Attachments

  • Promare Theme.mp3
    1.6 MB · Views: 210
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jason3.14 said:
Here's the current state of my Promare Theme cover! Guess it took me awhile as I'm not particularly efficient with my workflow, tweaking everything all the time lol. Inspired by @constaneum's shire whistle work on his "7Tsuno:the1" cover as well. :)

Appreciate comments, and hope you like it! Can provide project file/MIDI/video if anyone is interested. I might continue extending the track, but probably will take a break from this project for now as I'm itching to check out @Trash Panda's Xenoblade Theme X project file, haha.
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ha??? not my work.
 
Been wondering if anyone who owns Hyperion Strings has done any work with Sawano cues? Seems like it is closer to the Japanese string section size and has that hyped modern sound that works well for hybrid cues.
 
Man, I really want to love the Xenoblade Chronicles X OST but there's just so much overuse of vocals on that OST.

Any recommendations on albums that don't?
 
Shiirai said:
Man, I really want to love the Xenoblade Chronicles X OST but there's just so much overuse of vocals on that OST.

Any recommendations on albums that don't?
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Fair point haha, there are some vocal tracks there that don't sit well with me either. <_<' I guess Attack on Titan OST might be the 'obvious' choice? I'm also a fan of the Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress and Thunderbolt Fantasy soundtracks, but I'm sure there are other good options. 🤔
 
Trash Panda said:
Been wondering if anyone who owns Hyperion Strings has done any work with Sawano cues? Seems like it is closer to the Japanese string section size and has that hyped modern sound that works well for hybrid cues.
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Sorry I've never used - but I think I'll be satisfied waiting to see what ISW comes out with next year haha
 
jezjez said:
So I've got a Japanese magazine where he did an interview and talks about making the Attack on titan soundtrack. I can try translate the interview if ppl are interested but here's the shot of some of the plugins he uses
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Pretty cool! If you are able to that'd be great, but the pictures probably capture the point. I've also come across these couple sites reporting what Sawano (and other composers) apparently use.


docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JJBlHHDc65fhZmKUGLrDTLCm6rfUU83-kbuD8Y0zU0o/edit?usp=sharing

https://www.soundprest.com/post/composer-bgm

Not that I can confirm their accuracy, but still interesting I think!
 
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Awesome!!!! I am very much into Japanese composer's and one of the greatest surprises of my AAA career was when I found out that Masashi Hamauzu used EWSO Brass on Final Fantasy XIII. (Also one of my favorite scores of all time) That being said, now here we are in 2020 and when I listen to the first demo track of FFXIII, "Blinded by Light", you can totally tell it's not your sweeping Hollywood brass that came out one year after the game's release : P (Driving the point home that a great sample will always be a great sample)
 
Johnny said:
Awesome!!!! I am very much into Japanese composer's and one of the greatest surprises of my AAA career was when I found out that Masashi Hamauzu used EWSO Brass on Final Fantasy XIII. (Also one of my favorite scores of all time) That being said, now here we are in 2020 and when I listen to the first demo track of FFXIII, "Blinded by Light", you can totally tell it's not your sweeping Hollywood brass that came out one year after the game's release : P (Driving the point home that a great sample will always be a great sample)
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yes. EWQL SO Brass. He still uses them. Even in FF7 Remake soundtrack if i'm not mistaken. Just strings tends to be either purely live recordings or just a layering of live and samples.
 
Johnny said:
Awesome!!!! I am very much into Japanese composer's and one of the greatest surprises of my AAA career was when I found out that Masashi Hamauzu used EWSO Brass on Final Fantasy XIII. (Also one of my favorite scores of all time) That being said, now here we are in 2020 and when I listen to the first demo track of FFXIII, "Blinded by Light", you can totally tell it's not your sweeping Hollywood brass that came out one year after the game's release : P (Driving the point home that a great sample will always be a great sample)
Click to expand...
I was super surprised to learn that as well. I wasn‘t very involved in music when that game was first released (I was 11) - I remember believing that that track was totally live, and absolutely loved it (still love it). Great example!
 
That's totally one of my favorite tracks too! I used to always love playing the piano version. I'd never heard the demo track before though, nice. Sorry that my earlier link post came across embedded - I edited it to include the original google docs link if you wanted to view it more easily.
 
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