redtails

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl turned out to be quite a famous film and media franchise, scoring positive reviews in numerous countries. The storyline is quite cliché, if you ask me. Character development is slow and doesn't actually gain speed until the 2nd film. Also, the backstory doesn't really get told until the 2nd and 3rd film (like his compass). Though, the big scoring point for me is its rather strong musical score, composed by Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer back in 2003. It's the perfect soundtrack to practice orchestration (arranging) on; the sheetmusic is unofficially available, the main motif is catchy and many have heard about it. I do advice those who are interested in arranging symphony to take a look at the (unofficial) score! Original music (playlist): http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=D1A3E067DC4F428E&feature=mh_lolz Arrange: http://soundcloud.com/ravensjig/reiuyi-pirates-of-the-black Advice and general tips are always welcome～！

Thanks for the feedback. Do you perhaps have advice on improvement?

thank you kindly for taking a look at this arrangement！ And thanks for the advice, I'll certainly look into it at some point

It really is better without the guitar (in my opinion), though the strings and trumpet make the sound crack Oh and it'd be awesome if you put links to all your versions of this song in the first post , the person above me here is so mad for no reason

That's some crazy panning. I can't say I like the drum (so much compression) but it's all right really

Nightwish is one of my all-time favourite bands (I'm okay with them changing their vocals), so I tried my best to produce a symphonic tribute to . I didn't really introduce much variation, it's an arrange of an arrange after all. It's just me hobbying with my imaginary ensemble. Reproducing the drumlines took forever. As always, commentary, tips and hints are more than welcome！Original: Original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBTIoL5vaOM (from about 2:00) Original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsUf0FuiPr4 (from about 3:40) Arrange: http://soundcloud.com/ravensjig/deep-blue-sea-wip

@Tensei you've now stated several points that are all true. Without vision, there will be no product, without means there will be no perfection. The thing I was thinking of was that there's no real difference between choosing from a near infinite amount of possibilities (very few limitations) and not being able to pick a favourite at all (a lot of limitations). Yet in the case of limited choices, a choice will be made timely. Henceforth, limited possibilities forces the artist to focus more on making the best of his means And that's not what inferior means here. A bike is inferior to a car on the motorway, but superior in the city. Likewise, synthesizers are superior to symphonic instruments when it comes to versatility. Does that automatically mean electronic music is superior to symphonic music? of course not

I'd love this feature as well, I currently must ctrl+drag to select notes and then alt+c to change colours.. While they're at it I'd also like bigger differences in colour as I really can't tell the difference without actually listening where it's sending it to

@Rozovian To answer your questions; a very advanced piano synth might account for stuff like resonance, damper pedal, sustain pedal, hammer noise, key noise, differences in velocity etc. Yet up until now I have not yet seen such an advanced synth, they're all sampled (Synthogy Ivory, Alicia's Keys). So in a way, a sampled piano will generally be more realistic than a synthesizer piano not using samples. I mentioned violin because I thought it'd sound good being played by a violin , piano + violin is a very good combination @neblix I am sorry to hear that, I was merely answering questions that arose @Tensei Okay you're right about my prejudice about synth-lovers, it's not really related. May I ask where you got the info from that limitations only boost creativity during composition and not during sound design? I don't think I said synths are inferior to non-synths, lack of beauty is not equivalent to inferiority

I upgraded from fruityloops 6 to 9 a while back, and it was suddenly in there. So I guess it got introduced somewhere in between. That's not very informative of me, though lol. I discovered it by chance because my favourite colour suddenly didn't send signals to kontakt. A quick google search reveals this: http://flstudio.image-line.com/help/html/pianoroll.htm#Pianoroll_ColorGroups

This thread was originally about using samples. To answer your question, yes I do believe your arranged song would sound a lot better being played on an actual piano (or sample) and an actual violin (or sample). I'll greatly admit it's a very advanced piano VST you have there, though if you please, do compare to a sampled piano. The striking difference is the perfection of a VST (which can be a good thing at times) and the lack of artefacts (which can also be a good thing). With VSTs you can also go beyond reality and creativity is supposedly less bottle-necked. Sometimes it's said that limitations boost creativity This is all leading to the fact that it's a matter of taste. It was also my opinion to say a synth can't be as beautiful as a recording. And you synth-lovers are certainly better presented at this forum than the haters

A tip to beginners wanting to use plugins that support multiple midi channels like kontakt or EWQL.. the colours in pianoroll represent the midi port the data is sent to. Left-top is midi port 1, right from that is midi port 2, etc, the second row starts at midi port 5, all the way up to 16. Midi-routing is limited to that channel, so you can have two or more channels each with 16 separate midi ports, without them interfering with one another. One Fruity Wrapper can this way work as 16 separate VSTs. Using "processing -> connections", the audio made from each midi port can be sent to separate outputs, so you can still apply individual effects using the mixer. That way, I don't have to have several instances of big RAM-eating plugins open and the magic of kontakt as a big sample-host actually works like it does in Cubase, with all the plus-points of FL

I cannot recall I said traktor and reaktor are synths, perhaps you read it somewhere else? I haven't heard a lot of synthesizers, no. And it's safe to say not everyone has heard many instruments being played live, either. There really is a difference between hearing a recording of an instrument and hearing the instrument itself Saying all sound is sine-wave is like saying all wood is made from cellulose. There really is more to sound than just sinewaves. Why else would so many rely on samples, instead of physical modelling? If you believe emulating instruments is something to belittle, you can either become very rich by writing your own synthesizer software, or you're unknown to the territory

Depends on the library. Smaller soundfonts usually re-use samples for multiple notes, you wouldn't even notice it if the instrument is layered As for OP's question; I really hate synths. Even after all those decades of development they're still sine/square/triangle/noise being inserted into effects and layered upon one another to generate a sound. I'm talking about realism here, if anyone bothered to read that. Synths can be amazing at what they do, but it's hard to come by a synth that's "beautiful" in the way you'd call a harp, a sitar or a very-well crafted acoustic guitar beautiful. Native-Instruments is making great progress with their traktor and reaktor range, though..

The Castlevania franchise seems to be incredibly popular in the world of arrangers. Well, I won't deny the music is amazing, especially due to its consistent amazingness over all those years despite multiple different composers working on its OSTs. I kind of disapprove of the new 3D castlevania, though. I mean if you've seen Touhou Castlevania 2 ( ), it puts a very modern touch to the way Castlevania works, without endlessly dragging the player into a strange 3d world where the dynamics of Castlevania don't work. Anyway, I liked the Clock Tower Theme from Castlevania 4, it's a bit like the main theme from Simon's Quest, I think.Original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQc-pZv7Dlo Arrange: http://soundcloud.com/ravensjig/clock-tower-wip General commentary and tips are always welcome!！

Thank you kindly for the commentary and for listening to the arrange. Were you talking about this thread http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=34536 ? And it's true favourite songs will be stuck to closely, it's not just you. The original Conquest of Paradise had this "epic" feel to it, though it was an "ancient epic" feeling. I'm greatly amazed by all music from Two Steps From Hell and their entire concept of how trailer music has to sound like. Peony Cage arranged by Morrigan ( ) embodies the entire concept of that modern style of arranging. What I thrive to arrange is intenseness. Your tips of heading a direction with a song was very helpful. Thank you again for the commentary～

Touhou Hisoutensoku (and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody) mainly contained music not composed or arranged by ZUN, which is somewhat unique considering it's still considered an official part of the Touhou series due to its original story written by zun himself. Read more about Hisoutensoku here. I liked the music and thus arranged one of my favourite songs from this game. Original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hd_5jrOkYY&hd=1 Arrange: http://soundcloud.com/ravensjig/the-eternal-steam-engine-wip General tips/advice are always welcome！

1492: Conquest of Paradise is a terrible film from 1992, celebrating 500 years of discovering of America by Christopher Columbus. Despite the very negative reviews and low viewer counts, I liked the film. It's most likely the musical score that attracted me into the story. The melodies featured in the film were composed by Vangelis, though terribly arranged with all sorts of electronic synthesizer keyboards. Being one of my favourite films, I tried to arrange the main theme in an authentic symphonic way with a hint of percussion, without using synthesizers. I'd love to hear commentary on the arrange. Original: Arrange: Sorry, no longer have this on my soundcloud, you can enjoy the original instead General hints and tips are always welcome～！

Thanks for the kind commentary~. I will certainly use your advice to improve upon this song and look into how instruments can be pushed backwards by using more reverb on them. The guitar sound you mean is a double bass played in pizzicato. I guess it's a bit too loud, I thought a pizzicato strings instrument would be great as a background instrument for once Thanks again

Personal opinion left aside, I'm thankful for your reply. It's good to know people check out the original if they have not yet heard of it Though, I am actually glad you commented on the piano. It's indeed a free soundfont I found, I'm not really a big fan of FL-keys because they lack velocity expression. I thought it was a rather nice patch, though it must lack detail to be used as a guiding instrument instead of a background instrument. I will be on the look-out for a more detailed soundfont, though your offer to render it is very generous. The idea of variable tempo is kind of advanced. I know what you mean and how it's often used in piano solos, and it really does bring life into a song. My main concern is how it often ends of sounding messy, especially when it's not just a piano solo. That's from personal experience anyway, I'm not a trained piano player. I will of course try it and judge for myself how will it ends up, thanks for the kind advice ！!

The piano is a film directed by Jane Campion back in 2000. The main attraction point to me is its musical score, written by Michael Nyman. I finally got ahold on a paper version of the sheet music a while back. It was refreshing to review the music and to go over its main melody. As a tribute to the amazing music, I tried to arrange the main song of The Piano, namely The Heart Asks Pleasure First as realistic as possible. Velocity keys do help so much. Though, I must admit toggling reverb settings to acquire a realistic wet sound without engulfing the dry really is something. The arrange is Work In Progress (WIP) and all suggestions or reactions are welcome TL;DR : I copypasted The Heart Asks Pleasure First from sheet music. I wish to have feedback on its realism and general tips on improving my musics Original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dPS-EHl-FE Arrange (WIP3, used suggestions posted below): Sorry no longer have this on my soundcloud account. I will finish this song in the future and republish it. If anyone is interested, here is a zip-file containing 3 individual midi-files which form the piano, vocals and strings. You can use them in any way you see fit, just keep in mind of the original copyright (Michael Nyman) that is still on this song: http://www.mediafire.com/?dt3tor2v51n0ps8

Here I have a really short Caribbean-like arrange of the Main theme from the Secret of Monkey Island 3, one of my personal favourite old games. The below version is in an early stage as typing out marimba sheets takes incredibly long with all the chord bouncing. In any case, I hope to hear some inspiring feedback！ Original song: My arrange: Sorry, no longer have this on my soundcloud account. I will finish this song in the future and rerelease it. General tips and advice are also always welcome！

Thanks for the feedback on my arrange, I'll review the song as soon as I can to look at the drumming and the excessive usage of hats (lol touhou). I'm glad you experienced it as relaxing

Person above me has no clue about dynamic entries XD, the intro is fitting and I've seen it done like that in many other Castlevania arranges. This is surprisingly good and it's a real quality arrange. Keep the Castlevania spirit alive! Oh and do you have this up for download somewhere, Youtube quality sucks and the kongregate website doesn't seem to have a download option

It's an all-right track I think.. The phasing background synth makes it sound somewhat amateur-ish, though I will admit I'm not a big fan of synths to begin with. Gives off an ambient feel. Though you can make it much more relaxed if the main instrument has a longer attack time and doesn't have the distinctive "click" at the beginning of each note