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I had a busy week, but finally got around to an orchestratoin. This time It's 'Wind Scene' from Chrono Trigger. It's far more piano-ey than the original with some orchestra backing it up a little. | SoundCloudAs per normal, any criticism/opinions/feedback on the realism (or the mastering/mix) is welcome so that I can improve my future pieces. I wasn't happy with the strings, though this kind of lyrical passage is always a bit hard to write. Other than that I'm pretty happy with it.

Thanks for the feedback! The fwhoof sounds are actually just part of the video (they go with the text appearing/disappearing). The Soundcloud version won't have those. I think I should maybe make them more subtle as people do mention them a lot. I sort of agree with the choir. Really a choir should be more in the background unless it's a choral piece, but it feels like it needs to be a little bit louder listening back. It's one of those things I find hard to balance. I did stick very close to the original - I tend to do that. Mostly it's a time thing - I get an hour or two here and there to work on an orchestration so I tend to go the safe route to make sure it's finished in time. I really want to sit down and maybe extend this piece with something new when I have more time though. Thanks again for taking the time to listen and give feedback - I really appreciate it.

This was an orchestration I worked on today. It's from the old Gremlins 2 : The New Batch video game tie in. It's very Goldsmithy, though I think I added a touch of Elfman and myself. | SoundCloudAs usual, any opinions/crits/feedback on the realism (or the mastering/mix) is welcome so that I can improve my future pieces. The percussion feels a bit messy to me now that I listen back to it - I think it could do with the lows being cut a touch. Other than that I'm pretty happy with how it came out.

Thanks, glad you liked! Listening back now I do wish I'd added a little bit more high woodwinds to the foreground. Like you'd said, maybe a piccolo or alto flute around 1:00 in.

Another little Banjoo-Kazooie piece I made today while waiting for dropbox to sync so I could start work. It actually synced before I finished so I had to hurry the ending a little - apologies if it sounds a bit rushed but I had to get back to work. | SoundCloudAs always, any comments/crits/etc on the realism/mix/mastering are more than welcome. I use these remixes both to test the products I'm developing and to improve my orchestration so be as brutal as you want. A few things I noticed listening back is that the marimba is a little too close mic'd - should be further back in the room. I also wasn't so happy with the string runs that come in 1:14ish though this kind of writing is very hard to pull off with samples. Also, as I mentioned before, the ending is a little quick, but I just ran out of time. Just so I'm not a negative nancy, I'm really happy with how the woodwinds turned out. I used Berlin Woodwinds for the lead Bassoon/Clarinets and it sounds pretty good. I'm also mostly happy with the realism and mixing - there's some odd bits in there but hopefully not too noticable.

Most of the time I don't need to normalise - It's usually the pieces with quieter pianos, or the times I use the Spitfire Bespoke libraries (they're kinda quiet by default and throw me off if I start out a piece writing with them). I need to learn to keep an eye on the meters more. I also don't tend to do much mastering. With a lot of orchestra stuff I haven't needed to as I'm making sure the levels of each instrument are right as I'm composing. I've also not found a real need for any kind of compressor or limiter and I rarely touch the EQ unless it's something like a Marimba and I need to cut out the bass a little. Obviously if I was composing a different style of orchestra (epic trailer music, hybrid stuff, etc.) I might need these, though. Basically I just get it sounding okay in FL Studio, then export to wav and bring it into a project in Adobe Audition. Sometimes if I have written a piece that has a quieter piano solo in the middle, I'll boost just that part with envelopes. I get the volumes as consistent as they need to be, add my custom noise/hall sound track and envelope it to fit the volume throughout the song, then bounce down and normalise it to make sure it's not too quiet or loud.

Thanks, glad to hear you liked. I get a lot of stick about the lengths of my orchestrations so it's definitely something I'm looking to improve somehow.

Thanks guys, glad you liked. I think I forgot to normalise the final wav, which could explain the quietness. Looking forward to hearing your take on the starting cave theme, Nutritious. Thanks! Glad to hear the violin/brass aren't as bad as what I hear - I'm super critical of the stuff I do. I do need to work on the legth - I want to get them something closer to 3 minutes or so.

Thanks! I think FL Studio gets a lot of stick and is seen as a toy, but it's definitely capable of doing anything the more commonly used DAWs can do. I think the only weakness I have with it is scoring to video. It's still a pain in the butt playing back video if you're changing tempos, but apparently they are working on a solution to this. I don't even tend to use a template - I just drag in the instruments as I need them. I think it helps that I know the libraries inside out so know in my head how each patch/articulations sounds

This was my orchestration posted today. I tackled an older obscure game, Cave Story, and orchestrated the main theme. I freestyled a little more than usual with the tune so hopefully it still fits the feel of the game still. | SoundCloudAny opinions/crits/feedback on the realism (or the master/mix) is more than welcome so I can improve my future pieces. Feel free to be as brutal as you want. To my ears some of the brass is a little hit and miss in parts (a bit unavoidable as it's just a limitation with sampling). I'm not too keen on the solo violin either, but again I don't feel any sample libraries can deliver a completely flexible and authentic solo violin performance yet.

Thanks! Glad everyone's liking it! Oops - I fixed the description on the site. Must have forgotten to copy-paste the description over from Youtube. Thanks for letting me know. I'm hoping for a 64bit FL Studio too, though I'm not sure it's very likely Bridged mode is a bit unstable - that's why I don't use it when I don't need to. I also wish the Patcher plugin worked a little better. It could be really cool for creating orchestral templates if it worked a little better. I've gotten pretty efficient at creating remixes. I can compose 1-2 minutes per hour in general. Making my own music takes a little longer but not by too much. FL Studio just gives a really awesome workflow and I know my sounds really well from developing most of them.

Thanks! I think this piece is as finished as I'll be getting it. The trouble I have nowadays is that I only have an hour or so to sit down and work on these things and I am terrible at picking stuff back up later, so I try to finish the pieces in a single sitting. I might take a look at writing a little piano solo to beef up the ending a little and maybe submitting that. I do have issues with FL if I'm using Kontakt 64. Sometimes it just flakes out and crashes on me - I've just learned to turn on autosave to every 5 minutes and put up with it. I also find that Kontakt is a little more cpu hungry when running the bit bridge and so I get crackling with lower buffer sizes (I have to crank it up from 256 samples to about 1024). Most of the time I just avoid this though by using 32bit Kontakt. I took the plunge a while back and ordered 2x128gb and 2x256gb SSD drives and so I can easily load instruments into Kontakt and set the buffer to 6kb rather than 60kb with no problems. It's nice as it means a patch that may usually take up 300mb or so just takes up 30mb and lets me load a lot more into 4gb. Also, sometimes if I'm working in 32bit and a project does get too big I bounce it down at key parts. So if I have the first section of a remix done that transitions into a different style I'll work with two projects (using rendered wavs of each as reference). Sorry for my waffling, hopefully that makes sense.

Thanks. Glad that you both enjoyed it! Thanks for the kind words, Kuolema. It's taken quite a few years to create/collect up my sample collection to the state it's in now, so glad to hear it's authentic. Hopefully didn't blow your mind too badly, Chris. What monitors did you get?

I've been wanting to tackle a Final Fantasy IV piece for a while and picked this as my first. It's the main theme reorchestrated. | SoundCloudAs with my usual posts, I do consider it finished but I'd love any thoughts/criticisms/opinions on the realism that I can take forward to future pieces I work on. Thanks in advance for listening and any comments!

Thanks so much, I really appreciate it and I'm glad you enjoyed! Definitely would be cool to work with you on some kind of vocal project (I'm hopping to start a more vocally-musical album soon!) Thanks again.

Thanks Alex - I really appreciate your thoughts and I'm glad you enjoyed it. Floating Away was one of my favourite to compose on there as it's so laid back and a different to what I usually do. Glad you get a John Barry/Ennio Morricone feel from it - two awesome composers I'm honoured to be mentioned alongside!

Thanks, Neblix. I intend to do more walk-through videos, and I'm also looking to live-stream my composing process on a weekly basis (I actually did one yesterday - I'll work out some kind of schedule on my facebook page soon). Glad to hear you find it useful. Thanks so much, Detective Tuesday! Glad you're enjoying it, and glad to hear your thoughts on the realism. I'm a sample library developer, so a lot of the sounds I use are private recordings, or from projects I work on - this album in particular has quite a bit of Spitfire Audio and Cinesample's sounds scattered around it.

Thanks man! I still consider myself largely a hobbyist so 'tis an awesome honour to be on there with the likes of so many other amazing musicians and composers.

Hey guys - I spend most of my music-making-time tinkering with video game remixes and orchestrations on YouTube. I recently took some time out to collect some of my original music together and lovingly smush it into an album. I saw that you could post your original stuff in here if you've contributed to OCR, so I'd love it if anyone could take a listen to some of the tracks and let me know what they think. It consists of thirteen songs that are predominantly Orchestral music but with little nods to other genres. You can take a listen to the album on my SoundCloud or pick up a copy from Bandcamp if you enjoy my music and want to support me. (with a few extra tracks and some wallpapers as a massive thanks). Album on SoundCloud Album on Bandcamp Thanks in advance to anyone who checks it out and thanks so much to anyone who has bought a copy already - everyone who listens makes all the hours slugging away at the piano roll with headphones on worth it!

I recently had the opportunity to work with Brent "Brentalfloss" Black. He pitched me the awesome idea of Bioshock themed 30s/40s rag/big band/showtune style piece and pinged me a piano track and I diddled about and came up with this from scratch. | SoundCloudI used some Big Band library instruments to get the authentic sound. I mostly stuck to the reeds and brass and tried to keep everything sounding small and intimate as if it's in a small club. It's finished and I won't be going back to it, but any comments or criticism on the realism and sound for future productions is more than welcome!

Thanks for everyone's kind words! I enjoyed making it so I'm really glad people are enjoying listening. I used some brush drum loops for these pieces. Those in particular are private recordings I have, though you can find some extremely similar sounding stuff in Big Fish Audio's 'Brush Artistry' Thanks, I was intending to do a few more of these as I go along. I always find it fascinating watching other people's workflows, so hopefully mine are interesting in some way.

It is definitely a bit too conservative for OCR - I tend to stay pretty true to the originals in my orchestrations unless I'm planning to submit to this site. Thanks for the kind words, glad you liked it!

I wanted to experiment with a new purchase and really liked the Animal Crossing soundtrack. This is an orchestration of 1pm. | SoundCloudAs usual, I consider it finished but I'd love any thoughts/crits/opinions on the realism that I can take forward to future pieces I work on. Thanks in advance for listening and any comments!

Thanks! Glad you liked it. I actually use FL Studio so it's definitely capable of making this kind of music with the right plugins/samples. This piece was all samples running through Kontakt 5. Quite a few libraries were used (video description has the full list) and also custom recordings chucked in to add a bit more realism. Thanks again for the kind words! Really appreciate it.

I was just playing around with some samples to get them sounding okay and testing things when I made this. I get told a lot that my style sounds very Danny Elfmanish, so I went full out and shamelessly ripped him off for this piece - It's not meant to be taken seriously. | SoundCloudIt's Haunted Graveyard from Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts. I've not played in years so I went from ear by watching a YouTube playthrough video. I consider it finished but I'd definitely be interested in thoughts/opinions/crits in regards to the samples and the realism of the piece. One problem I already have with it is that the tuba doesn't sit well in the mix - it sounds too close as if the tuba dude is sitting on the cello dude's lap. Anything other observations/ideas are welcome!