*NO* Myth 1 & 2 "Victory at Madrigal" *RESUB*

[prophetik music ⚖️]

original vote

second vote

there's a story in the submission notes of past votes, i recommend reading them since this is kind of a story piece but they're very long so i didn't copy them here - proph

Third times a charm? :)

Thank you all for your feedback on the first two drafts of this piece. This is an interesting hobby because you need to be competent in both the creative skills of writing music and in the very technical skills of mixing, mastering, and otherwise massaging the sound. I appreciate the help you’ve given me on both aspects, especially the technical side, which is a brand new world to me.

I was a bit confused about the feedback on the solo cello. Some praised the tone, others criticized it. Chipzilla seemed to think that the cello used only a single articulation. In fact it used no articulations. It was a SWAM instrument, and entirely procedural, based on how I played it on the EWI. I honestly thought that was a strength of the piece, a really expressive solo cello that you don’t usually get with samples. But I guess that didn’t come across, perhaps because I played it with a wind instrument, ha. Anyway, rather than try to massage what was already there, I tossed it out and brought in the Apocalyptica solo cello from Musio instead. This turned out to be a perfect match for this piece, as the samples are performed by the Finnish cello metal group (!) Apocalyptica, and it has both a wonderfully expressive legato patch and an aggressive, grinding rhythm patch. So although I had to throw out my own performance, once I reworked the solo cello parts to “write to the samples,” I ended up much happier with the result.

Other things I did:

• Remixed and remastered everything. Pretty sure the volume should be good now. 
• Removed the master volume automation tweaking identified by Prophetik. Seeing that in the waveform was illuminating.
• Evened out the balance of octaves at the 2:57 mark, in response to Prophetik. Did this by:
  • Doubling the strings with their common woodwind pairings at 2:57, to thicken the melody and harmony lines
  • Tweaked which lines were played in which octaves.
  • Adding the full cello section in unison with the solo cello, thickening the low end
• Added more humanization to the piano

I hope this is finally up to par!

Games & Sources

Myth: The Fallen Lords

• The Siege of Madrigal, by Michael Salvatori
• The Fallen Lords, by Marty O'Donnell

Myth II: Soulblighter

• The Great Library, by Marty O'Donnell 
  

Edited March 28 by XPRTNovice

[prophetik music ⚖️]

my original vote loved the arrangement but had concerns over the instrumentation effectiveness. my second vote called out some execution elements but really liked the improvement in the instrumentation. 

piano opens with some sustained strings. cello is a new tone but has a lot more personalization to it, which is neat. there's a flip in the first line that's a little unnatural, but what's here is fine. if you've got the ability to vary vibrato, consider doing that more on the start of sustained lines or in moving sections. you vary rhythm a lot to make it feel more real and less quantized, and i think it's a little on the far side of that now to where the rhythm seems a touch off. the note at 1:16 sounds wrong (second descending tone).

i really like the choir entrance. it's spooky and has a cool sound to the vocals. cello here sounds great too, really rough and mean. the string drops sound a little weird but aren't wrong, just don't sound real. there's some clipping in this section, notably at 2:23 and 2:55 - this just needs an actual limiter put on it. i think you're not EQing what's going to your reverb and that might be what's causing some of the boominess, alongside the bodhran or whatever the main drum that's in this section being very fundamental-focused and right in the front left (so it's very loud). consider backing it off a bit.

2:55 feels better than before, i think, but the lightness of the strings themselves shows here as compared to the cello part. the brass coming in at 3:22 is a big help and gives the partwriting some balls which it really needed. this is a triumphant section and i like it a lot, just needs to not clip.

there's one more recap and it's done.

i think what's here would be enough to pass if that middle section didn't clip like mad. the main issue is, i think, the bodhan you're using. it sounds dull and lifeless, and it occupies a lot of frequency range down low. you've got a few ways to address that:

• scoop the heck out of everything else in that frequency range so it speaks through easier without having to crank the volume
• choose a different percussion instrument to that speaks higher to let it cut through easier
• turn it down and live with it not being so far forward

either way you need a limiter that's going to prevent clipping implemented at the end of your mastering chain so that it's not hitting 0.0.

i think, for me, if you did that, this'd be enough. if you wanted to go farther, i think that making the section at 2:55 shorter (maybe only running through half the theme) and then fleshing it out sooner will help with the depth of that section from a part-writing perspective, and i think that reining in the overly-dynamic rhythms on the solo cello would be a good choice. but this is real close, zanezooked! we just had an accepted track go through eight revisions, and i certainly don't see this needing that many changes to make it.

 

 

NO

[Chimpazilla ⚖️]

This is definitely much closer to the passing zone.  That new cello sample sounds divine..... but the vibrato on it is too fast.  There shouldn't be vibrato starting up on the short notes, this gives the effect of having vibrato on *every* note which sounds really fake.  If you have an attack parameter for the vibrato, I suggest lengthening it enough so the shorter notes get zero vibrato while the longer notes get some vibrato at the end.  Example:  at 0:30, those first three notes should be vibrato-less, and the fourth note should get some vibrato at the end.  Otherwise though, yeah I dig this sample.

Also, proph is right about the boominess on the cello's reverb.  Cut the reverb off around 500Hz, there is no need to hear reverb lower than that, and it makes it sound unnatural and boomy and loud when the lowest notes play.

The last two submissions of this had way too much headroom even though the waveform looked smashed.  In this resub, there is no headroom, and the peaks are completely cut off starting at 2:01 when the big bass drum comes in.  That drum is hitting at the same time and same frequency as everything else in the lower frequencies, and during those hits the lows pile up and cause a spike, and then when you master the track the spikes get overcompressed, causing clipped-off, mangled peaks and overcompression artifacts.  Two things should happen:  use EQ to make sure the bass, other drums, other low elements have a small cut at the frequency of that big drum (actually you might want to make sure your midrange elements don't have stray lows either, this adds to the pile-up), and on the mastering side, don't set your ceiling to 0db, set it to -0.5 as that will ensure nothing actually clips.  Either way, reduce your final limiter gain so it's not smashing so hard against whatever ceiling you set.  You can look at your waveform after mastering and see if anything has been bricked, if it looks like this it is too heavy-handed:

Do you see how the peaks in that section are squared off?  That's overcompression, and it happens whenever all those lows hit at the same time.

All that being said, I still dig this arrangement!  It's so emotional and I agree with proph about the choir, it's cool and spooky.  This one's close, just get the vibrato on the cello dialed back a bit, EQ the cello's reverb to remove lows, and get the mastering in the right zone to avoid clipping/overcompression, and this one's a YES from me.

NO (resubmit)

[XPRTNovice ⚖️]

I think it's absolutely fantastic how clear the improvements are here. I judged this last Sep and loved the arrangement but there were mixing issues and humanization issues with the samples. 

I'm not going to go over the bodhran  issues, but I will say that I agree with them. That needs to back off and chill out and sit better in the mix. I do think there are still issues with particularly the attacks of the strings. If you found a cello player in our INCREDIBLE COMMUNITY I think this piece would really benefit from it, especially since it comes out so far in the mix. And it would solve a lot of the other problems you have with the samples. That's just a shortcut suggestion from me - get a human to do this. Humans are better at it.  

So. Fix the clipping, smooth out these attacks just a bit more (the best example I can give you is actually the violins in the beginning - do you hear how we have to wait in a slight moment of silence for them to come back in because it sounds like you're just using the basic attack setting on the arco? THAT's the kind of stuff that makes our brain go "fake" because humans don't play like that. Because these strings are so exposed, they take extra work to get right. It's ambitious, but you can do it. 

We're almost there. This piece is wonderful, I want you to understand that all 3 of us that just NOed this have said that with every vote we've given. We're giving you this feedback not because we don't like the piece, but because all of us can see its potential, and, by proxy, YOUR potential to really bring this piece to a new level with just a few more tweaks. 

NO (resubmit)