Editing and Customization > Community Content

[WIP] Statue Park music

<< < (2/4) > >>

marinedalek:
Wow! Some fantastic comments, all of which are very helpful! The frenetic multiplayer feel is what I was going for, rather than the more stately ambience you'd want from single player. The drum beat is something of a weak area, largely because I've never played drums or had very much experience programming them so I tend to go "bum tish, that'll do, move on to something else"  ;)

The controversial guitar riff  :) I agree, it is shoehorned and was something of an indulgence because I already had the guitar out to do the lead over the second repeat of the first Statue theme. One thing I've just noticed in Statue X however is that it does actually have that whole riff on marimba/glock so there was a certain amount of "throw a bit of the theme in" among the composers.

I may split that off into a pure "Bond Theme" piece and do my own take on that rather than force it into this piece.

jjmusicnotes, your suggestions about chord voicing have given me quite a bit to consider; at first I just copied the existing phrases verbatim then layered my additions over the top, I suppose out of fear that messing with the inversions, octave doubling or whatever would either make it sound overblown or weaken the harmony. I'll just go for it and see what happens :)
Dynamics are a good idea... for some reason I got stuck in the mindset of having every "lifted" element from the original track being a carbon copy rather than taking the chance to give it more feeling. There are dynamics there in some places already, such as the held chord lead-in to the first theme.

As far as the pure mix goes, I haven't done an awful lot of EQ yet so there's some mushiness that can be pulled out and a lot of it is centre-panned (a habit I've picked up to mix in mono first then expand to stereo to avoid phase problems or muddiness in a mono downmix).

Here's the version of the track I've been using as a reference btw - the original track produced which was then reconstructed and sequenced from instrument samples in-game.

jjmusicnotes:
I am very glad that we can have a good discussion about this!

I think that even if you left everything else the same, and only changed the drum beat, you would hear an interesting difference.  My advice would be to listen to some techno, listen to some drum 'n bass, and (especially) listen to the tracks already done for this mod - basstronix and sole signal both do a great job with percussive balance.

I don't blame you about the riff - especially if you've got your equipment out already.  Whenever I record, I do the same thing. 

You are also right about the composers alluding to the theme and putting in thematic motifs.  One of the great things about the bond theme is that it is so well known that you really only need to just imply it and people will understand what you're doing.

You can do that through transposition, augmentation, dimunition, inversion, retrograde, etc etc etc.

Arrangements are usually unique.  People know the original track - it's old.  With the voicings, it depends on how tactful you are.  Obviously if you make them dense in the low register it's just going to sound like crap, but the nice thing about brass instruments is that you don't really have to worry about octave displacement.

My suggestion for something to try for those opening chords:  double the tuba at the octave for those low pedal notes, bring the trombones down to the mid-bass clef, and bring the horns down as well - horns can go surprisingly low, and have a very unique sound in that register.  If you're not dealing with actual instruments but just a brass patch in a piano roll, then my suggestion would be like:

Low voices = C0-C1 range
Mid voices = C1-C2
High voices = C2-C3

Alternatively, what might give you a different sort of ominous / ethereal sound would be to have the strings in the low register like that doubled with low clarinets or something and horns for a really warm and smooth texture.

You could also thicken the chords with suspensions to create some more dissonance, like a Em7add9 chord.  Low to high a nice voicing would be: E, E, B, G, D, F# for example.  Don't be afraid to play with inversions - experiment is how you decide what you want!

It will be overblown if you:

1.) Too many instruments
2.) Too loud
3.) Chord too thick

It will be weak if you:

1.) double improperly
2.) too quiet
3.) uncommon instrument groupings

Changing chord inversions will really only determine the the stability of your chord.



Yes, you're right about having some dynamics already - and I like how you have that swell with that held chord before all that brass comes in; all the more reason to put more dynamics in!

Don't get me wrong, EQ can always help, but I think if you also did some simple panning techniques, you'd see a marked difference in your mix as well.

My suggestion would be to look at your instrumentation for your mix, then imagine all those instruments / sounds as a live group on stage.  Position them where you would imagine them to be.  If you need help with that, let me know and we can go into much further detail.

Mixing into mono is a good habit to check for distortion, muddiness, or phasing, but when you're dealing also with professional samples, that isn't much of an issue.  Also following the rule of 3 when recording will help with that as well.

marinedalek:
Well I've done some more work on the track. There's no drumbeat at all at the moment until I can work out something that fits. I've removed the Bond riff and replaced it with the short light section in the original track. I've done a lot of work on dynamics and the track now builds slowly to the fanfare. In terms of the bass synth, I've replaced it with a more conservative basic sound, but with a hollow FM emphasis over the first theme section.

I'm actually quite liking the track without a drumbeat, so I may just add some conservative rhythmic clangs and hits to push the track along. You'll probably notice that I couldn't resist adding the trademark "Eric Serra Clang" ;)

For the rest of the track I'm considering working in some of the elements of the movie soundtrack from the Statue Park scenes but I need to listen through that a few more times to get a feel for what might go well.

There are lots of twiddly bits I've not mentioned but that's pretty much all the major changes. Enjoy!

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/69960/Statue%20Park%20-%20Unfinished2.mp3

markpeterjameslegg:
This is great, a really cool beat should come in on the second time round to up the pace.

Emilia:
I actually prefer the older version.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page