Cave Story - Theme Orchestra

[dummy]

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.

| SoundCloud

Any 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.

[Chimpazilla]

The violin and brass are plenty realistic within the context of the mix, neither sticks out enough to cause the average ear (or, even a pretty good ear) to say "hey, that's fake!" This is of course expert level work. My big complaint that applies to all your pieces is that they are just too short!!!

[Mr. Bottle Rocket]

This sounds just plain good, very realistic sounding in my opinion...if maybe a bit low on the main volume.

[Nutritious]

Great stuff here. For a minute, I was worried this was going to be a mix of the starting cave theme - for which I've had a remix in my head for a while now and been wanting to do. Fantastic samples too; much better than what I can put other there. Well done.

[dummy]

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.

The violin and brass are plenty realistic within the context of the mix, neither sticks out enough to cause the average ear (or, even a pretty good ear) to say "hey, that's fake!" This is of course expert level work. My big complaint that applies to all your pieces is that they are just too short!!!

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.

[Chimpazilla]

Normalize? Now you've got me curious... how do you master your tracks? For example, I try to mix my tracks as high in volume as possible overall (of course without any clipping anywhere), then on the master I add an instance of The Glue for gentle compression (gr no more than 1db), then raise the makeup gain by about 1-2 db, then I use NoLimits limiter to bring the whole track up to about -15 to no more than -12 rms (with no limiting at all if possible). Generally normalization is not required after this. So I'm just really curious!

[dummy]

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.