Sil

It's a very good start. I can give feedback based on my experience with music theory and orchestration: 0:22 not sure about the gong here, maybe some softer suspended cymbals (very soft) with bell tree might suit this part better 0:34 the timpani is also out of place for this texture. from 0:00 to 0:34 you should use soft pizzicato basses to help the bass line, and you can even do pizz bass + legato cellos/basses together from 0:34 to 0:50. just some single plucks on the root of each harmony at the beginning of each chord change is enough. 0:50 the melody was established by oboe earlier, so this is a good opportunity to add a counter theme (using counterpoint, or call-and-response) 1:20 i'm hearing some harmonic motion but the chord voices are not correct according to 4 part harmony. it would be good to write out the 4 part chorale using piano first then orchestrate it for organ/strings/trumpet. the piano helps you to hear the voicing better, and makes sure you are following the rules (no parallel unisons, 5ths, or octaves, no doubling leading tone, using cadential chords, etc.) For the overall instrumentation, strings can be doubled by soft horns/winds, harp arpeggios are always nice, and cellos/basses should always play in octaves unless you have a good reason for them not to.

At 1:30 instead of just staccato flutes playing the ostinato you could double them with oboes, and then clarinets and bassoons doubled down the octave. If you're brave enough you can try some other intervals here (3rds and 6ths). One thing I like to do is double winds with light harp plucks for added definition and color. Might be an option here. The horn here (or is it a trombone) is kind of lonely. You could double it down the octave with tuba. The timpani hits could be doubled with cellos and basses playing staccatos in octaves (I often use spiccato patches for this.) You might start to notice a pattern in my suggestions. While the structure and composition are good, the main focus of orchestration should be on color, in which case unison/octave doublings are your friend. At 1:50 you will want more of a build to the next part. You could do a brassy swell here in C minor. At 1:53 the violins are too light. You'll want a marcato patch with a strong attack here. Here you can also thicken the brass harmonies with some 3rds. Think of these as Bach-like organ chords. At 2:05 you will likely want this quick melody to be doubled across all the strings and winds, and piccolo as high as it can go. At 2:25 the doubling here is good, again piccolo should be doubling at the high extreme. If you have bass trombone it could double at the bottom. For definition you can add xylophone strikes. Another possibility is brassier trumpet "stabs" if you have the samples. At 2:40 the violins should be doubled down the octave in the 2nd violins and violas, maybe even cellos. They can be additionally doubled by winds and/or horns. The trombone at 2:44 sounds like a solo patch. Do you have ensemble patches? If not I would recommend octave doublings. An instrument often overlooked in orchestration is the piano. Low piano octaves can really enhance your bass instruments for pretty much the entire piece. They double low strings, low brass, and sound great doubling timpani hits. Another color you could add is the harp glissando. They work especially well to fill in gaps. For example, at 2:25 you could have A minor glissandos filling in the spaces between the rhythms. Let me know if you would like more suggestions.

For those long trombone notes you will want to add shape to them. You can usually accomplish this by drawing a velocity curve. For these notes you will want to start at 100 and draw a U shape. In regular notation this would be marked fp cresc. The start of the note will curve downward steeply, but gradually rise up to the end. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but you stumbled upon the opening of Prokofiev's October Revolution Cantata, so I'd say download that score and do what he does with the trombones.

Is it too late for me to "upgrade" my track? I've made significant improvements in both the arrangement and sample quality, so it would definitely be worth it.

It was never posted here. I just had it available on my website.

I made that back in January of 2004.

I can do Rumbling if you're looking for a simple orchestral arrangement.

Isn't the chord in question Gb7/Fb? (Gb7 with an Fb in the bass?) This sounds like it's the first half of the common pop progression that would go: Fb Gb7/Fb Ebm7 Abm Because that's a lot of flats, transposed to A minor it would go: F G7/F Em7 Am The two chords in the DT song at 12:04 sounds like the first two chords of this progression.

Are there any plans for a soundcloud-like ability to upload WIPs directly to the site in order to springboard ideas off of the community? Perhaps something with version control to make project WIPs more manageable (ideally with private and public settings.) I always thought it would be neat to tag timestamps in the waveform with constructive criticism. I think it would motivate people to give more feedback and finish more remixes. It would give newbies more opportunity for learning while letting experienced remixers show off what they're currently working on. At the very least it would help me remember if I committed to any projects that have been in the works for the last few years.

I'm really loving the ELP influence in Demon, Fiend & Goddess. That and the Queen-style rock opera in The Impresario and the Morricone-style spaghetti western influence in A Fistful of Nickels make me think if Uematsu ever hears this he's going to be like "Yeah, that's what I was going for all along." It's crazy how he had this all figured out 20 years ago back when many of us were in grade school. That to me is true genius.

wut

I'm interested to know what happened there. Is there some backstory?

Lol, we wanted to show off two of the faster bits, so I guess it's easy to conclude the entirety of the 12 or so minutes might be similar, but it's not. There are plenty of tempo changes and I can assure you that the first part of the piece is very much the march we all know and love, and then it undergoes several variations and transformations.

Instead of long sustained notes for the harmonies, you should have all the instruments play the same rhythm as the snare. There's really no reason to have sustained notes in a march. If this is a piece for beginners have all the low brass (trombones, euphonium, tuba) and bari and tenor saxophones and other low winds (bass clarinet, bassoons) play the same rhythm in two octaves. This will give the performers the confidence to really get into their parts and make the piece sound great. The timpani can play the tonic in the same rhythm until the harmony reaches the dominant. Once you've established a strong rhyhtm you can play around with the notes and start to add counterpoint (if you want.)

I got the abrupt transition idea from listening to the 3x3 Eyes OST. I wanted to get a soundtrack-ish feel without having to make two separate tracks, but that's kind of what it is in the end.