?
Yes, I did! :)
_Mike
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@mverta said:
On a recent visit to ILM, I saw Star Trek 11 being worked on. In it, all the original characters (Kirk, Spock, etc.) are young and fresh out of the academy. I wondered if it was possible to reimagine the "club lounge," dated sound of the original theme for a modern palette, while sounding youthful, energized, and giving a nod to the great Star Trek music legacy.
Here it is:
Enjoy.
_Mike
Very good Mike. Very busy. I sometimes wonder if it's possible for Hollywood to imagine anything - as opposed to re-imagine.
Apart from John Williams, which other score writers do you admire?
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@William said:
This is fantastic - a really skillful blend of extremely different genres. James Horner ought to be listening to you!
Hahaha! Knew it was coming. Didn't have the heart to say it myself. :))))))))))))))))))))))))
To be honest, if you listen to Mike's website (apart from the sales spiel) :))) - some great orchestral live sounds going on there. Very nice writing in that particular genre.
You need to reach out for your dark side Mike - and get Herrmann into your life. :))) Next time you run into Bruce Broughton, ask him to tell you stories about Herrmann.
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@mverta said:
Wait, I'm confused...!
I wrote/orchestrated it on paper Wednesday, and then yesterday I played it into Digital Performer, triggering Gigas. So it's all virtual, yes. Is that what you're asking?
_Mike
Care to share any more details? Was it VSL? Which sets? Reverb, etc. Sounds quite real.
Great arrangement and production Mike!
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@PaulR said:
You need to reach out for your dark side Mike - and get Herrmann into your life. :)))You assume I don't have a life-long love of Hermann's work; that I don't listen daily - almost obsessively - to Hermann film scores. And you know what they say about assumptions 😊 😊
Truth is, some day I'm going to get a chance to use all the cluster tricks I've learned and then you'll be sorry. 😊
By the way, at a concert dedicated to Williams and Hermann film music (conducted by Williams and hosted by Spielberg and Scorcese), Hermann's stuff sounded better live than Williams' did. Just an interesting little tidbit there...
_Mike
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@cug said:
Care to share any more details? Was it VSL? Which sets? Reverb, etc. Sounds quite real.Thanks, Carlos; Thanks Jay...
Instrument-wise, honestly, it would take forever to sort it all out - you can't tell just by looking at the instrument names (at least I can't) which library they come from, but I can tell you the strings are all Sonic Implants. Brass and Woodwinds are a combination of VSL, SI, and SAM stuff. Brass looks mostly like SAM and SI, and Percussion is a lot of SAM and True Strike, with some LOP and VSL thrown in from time to time. I have 5 Gigastudio PC's absolutely packed to the gills. I have some thread on here from probably a couple years ago when I was just staggeringly frustrated with the sound, and I've basically tweaked it to some degree every day since. TONS of custom patches in there, too... almost no stock instrument performed the way I wanted it to for one reason or another.
The Giga's all feed digitally into a couple of 192 interfaces for my Pro Tools rig. Digital Performer and Pro Tools run live at the same time on my Mac - Pro Tools just stays in monitor mode all the time in the background while I work. When the sequence is ready, I just kick Pro Tools into record, pop back into DP and start the sequence. Works flawlessly; I've never had a hiccup or crash.
I can't stress enough how long it took to get those profiles to work together - I find the settings extremely sensitive, and I still tweak things from time to time. Some of them use stage positioning, others not. Just depends on the sound. And in all cases, each section has an additional EQ plug-in on it, with some seriously wacky and extreme curves, which go a long way towards helping place things together in the "room." Though interestingly, each of the sections sounds good on its own. I'm not really sure how I got all this to work, beyond some insane number of hours of experimentation.
The Altiverbs provide the room, and then like a real recording, there is an outboard reverb on the whole thing, which is handled by another plug-in: a modeled Lexicon 300. I dial that up or down globally depending on the cue. I watched Shawn Murphy do this many times, so I just tried that.
I think, overall, my group works well together, but I also think it lacks the real presence and air that is possible, and that I've heard from other people in small doses, but never as a whole group. An honestly, I don't care enough to re-do the whole thing anyway. As mock-ups, these seem to get the job done.
Thanks again for such kind words!
Best,
_Mike
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@mverta said:
You assume I don't have a life-long love of Hermann's work; that I don't listen daily - almost obsessively - to Hermann film scores. And you know what they say about assumptions 😊 😊
Truth is, some day I'm going to get a chance to use all the cluster tricks I've learned and then you'll be sorry. 😊
By the way, at a concert dedicated to Williams and Hermann film music (conducted by Williams and hosted by Spielberg and Scorcese), Hermann's stuff sounded better live than Williams' did. Just an interesting little tidbit there...
_Mike
Heheh - in that case I'm hoping to become your biggest fan. Herrmann couldn't do the Williams thing and visa versa - it's just the way the score cards fall. These guys know their strengths - that's why they're the best in the business.
Oh Yes - I'll be sorry alright. Clusters - we had some fun recently with clusters and scoring them out for an orchestra in the USA. The loudness of them is frightening when you're not ready for it. But Herrmann was a bit more than clusters of course.
I would very much like to hear you do a Herrmann style piece Mike - say about 30 seconds to a minute long - that would be a lot of fun. In fact, VSL should do a competition asking for specific styles just for the hell of it. Short pieces so it's not too taxing on the time element.
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WoW! That has to be one of the most realistic renderings I've heard of sample libraries. It's terrific orchestration no doubt .. but the room sound is what's selling it for me. I wouldn't know where to begin with such arrangements :P, perhaps it just takes time. Damned nice job .. can I play this on the VSL podcast show?
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Which IR's are you using on the string sections. And an you post pics of your Altiverb settings .. I'd love to try these out. . TODD -AO is a nice room but I'm having trouble getting it to sound lke a nice good room .. can get it to sound real .. but not good real :P@mverta said:
I have 6 instances of Altiverb running, one for each section, with an additional for Percussion. My first instinct was to use the same profile room for each section but time and time again I found that mixing different profiles seemed to yield results more like what I had on live sessions. Currently, my Woodwinds use the Trackdown Scoring Stage, my Horns and Brass use the Brugge Concertgebouw, one of my Percussion uses the Sydney Opera house, and one of them uses Trackdown.
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I can post them, but you have to understand that my room and settings choices are dependent upon a lot of things, most importantly the fact that I use different libraries, with different ambiences inherently in the recordings. I can't use the same room on everything, because not every instrument comes out of the giga with the same default "air" around it; they're not pure, dry samples. I have to compensate for each library's natural quality in various ways to put them all in the same space. So using my settings will not replicate my sound unless you happen to choose the identical instruments, which is highly unlikely, especially given how many blends and custom patches I use.
_Mike
