Brass City - F-Zero Orchestral Remix (Mute City)

[soundyg]

Mute City - F-Zero Orchestral Remix

OCRemix newbie here. I recently got into putting bits of music together and it's quite a lot of fun. I submitted this piece already but figured I'd drop it in the forum as well. Let me know what you think!

Edited March 25, 2019 by soundyg

[JohnStacy]

So as an orchestral musician and and a brass player myself I really just wait around this forum for people to send orchestral stuff.

So this hits both of the areas of things I do. The first thing I notice is that the mixing is actually pretty good, everything is really clear, and it's for the most part orchestrated well. That said, I do have some objections to the use of samples here.

It seems like you're using cinebrass (or another similar sounding brass library), which is just fine. Cinebrass is awesome. I think you could do a little bit different job of using the articulations patch. In this case, using 2 layers, an articulation patch, and the legato patch under it. That gives you the sustain and power of the brass, but without the "pretty" articulation that that patch normally has. Let's take a timestamped journey:

Beginning - Your use of the Captain Falcon samples throughout are hilarious, in a very good way.
Beginning - This brass figure where you're repeating the note over and over, I can tell by listening that the velocities are either very similar or the same and you're just relying on the round robin articulations of the patch. I would suggest using the repeated notes in the strings, and letting the brass just hit accents. This is my orchestral brass player side talking. I have had to play many parts written just like this. They're tiring and really tedious to rehearse, for not much musical reward.
I also think that doubling the horns and trumpets in octaves like this would be more effective with just the hits rather than every note. You can hear that this adds some mud to an otherwise clean mix.

:21 - I'm listening with headphones now. I think you actually are using the sustain+articulation thing I mentioned, but the sustain is so much quieter than the attack that it just sounds like attack to me, and it ends up doing that car horn, honky kind of sound. Balance out articulation+sustain and it'll work really well.

Actually that covers most of the things I'm hearing here.

[soundyg]

3 minutes ago, JohnStacy said:

So as an orchestral musician and and a brass player myself I really just wait around this forum for people to send orchestral stuff.

So this hits both of the areas of things I do. The first thing I notice is that the mixing is actually pretty good, everything is really clear, and it's for the most part orchestrated well. That said, I do have some objections to the use of samples here.

It seems like you're using cinebrass (or another similar sounding brass library), which is just fine. Cinebrass is awesome. I think you could do a little bit different job of using the articulations patch. In this case, using 2 layers, an articulation patch, and the legato patch under it. That gives you the sustain and power of the brass, but without the "pretty" articulation that that patch normally has. Let's take a timestamped journey:

Beginning - Your use of the Captain Falcon samples throughout are hilarious, in a very good way.
Beginning - This brass figure where you're repeating the note over and over, I can tell by listening that the velocities are either very similar or the same and you're just relying on the round robin articulations of the patch. I would suggest using the repeated notes in the strings, and letting the brass just hit accents. This is my orchestral brass player side talking. I have had to play many parts written just like this. They're tiring and really tedious to rehearse, for not much musical reward.
I also think that doubling the horns and trumpets in octaves like this would be more effective with just the hits rather than every note. You can hear that this adds some mud to an otherwise clean mix.

:21 - I'm listening with headphones now. I think you actually are using the sustain+articulation thing I mentioned, but the sustain is so much quieter than the attack that it just sounds like attack to me, and it ends up doing that car horn, honky kind of sound. Balance out articulation+sustain and it'll work really well.

Actually that covers most of the things I'm hearing here.

Cheers mate, this is great stuff to take onboard. The instrument libraries all come from Eastwest. You're on the money regarding the velocities, they generally remain the same between notes for each part (equal parts laziness and relying on the Eastwest plugins to try add some variance). Regarding your other feedback, I'm not familiar with all the musical terms so this is a useful point to start learning some more. Thanks again!

[soundyg]

I recreated this piece following feedback from the judges, mainly to try make it sound more natural/believable. Enjoy! 
 

https://youtu.be/uiIPCeWdBd8