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  4. Short piece for cello and orchestra

  • Short piece for cello and orchestra

    P
    P
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    This was meant to be an exercise to try out some orchestration ideas, but I ended up spending quite a bit of time on it, so I thought I'd share it here. All instruments are VSL, and everything was written and performed in Sibelius + VSL software.

    Wooden Bench Odyssey

    (I'm having trouble with Soundcloud, so this is a YouTube link)

    I'm a novice hobbiest in all respects, and I would greatly appreciate any feedback/criticism with regard to composition, mix, orchestration, etc.

    Thank you for listening!

    Best regards,

    Brian
  • R
    R

     Beautiful piece I got to say. It really captures the mood of an odyssey. Really eery and touching at the same time. I got to love these type of music.
  • P
    P

    Thanks for listening, Ricardo!
  • W
    W

    That doesn't sound novice or hobbyist - very professional and skillful, and the music and expressiveness are excellent.  It would be good to know exactly what instruments were used and the mix.  Maybe the cello should be a little more prominent or center stage?  Overall though it sounds great. 

  • P
    P

    William, thank you for the words of encouragement. It means a lot to me that you'd enjoy it.

    The cello is from the full library of the solo strings. The rest of the strings are a combination of Appassionata and Dimension Strings. The woodwinds are a mix of SE woodwinds and some full VSL woodwinds (piccolo, two flutes, oboe, clarinets (Bb and Eb), bass clarinet, bassoons, contrabassoon). The brass is Dimension Brass.

    Thanks for the suggestion about the cello position. I'll give that a try. I'm using MIR for the mix (Sage Hall), but I can never seem to make it sound right. When I try to place the instruments where I think they should be on the stage, the mix ends up sounding like it was performed in a tunnel or something, so I end up placing all the instruments much closer to the mic than they probably should be. In this case, I have the cello basically positioned right in front of the mic, but it still seems to sound distant. I've tried reducing the wet/dry ratio and the reverb time of the hall, but I don't yet have a good sense of what's the best combination of those parameters. I'd be interested to hear any general tips you and others may have for getting a better sound out of MIR.

    Thanks again for listening!

    Brian
  • Beat KaufmannB
    Beat KaufmannB
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    @Popslaw said:

    ...I'm using MIR for the mix (Sage Hall), but I can never seem to make it sound right. When I try to place the instruments where I think they should be on the stage, the mix ends up sounding like it was performed in a tunnel or something, so I end up placing all the instruments much closer to the mic than they probably should be. In this case, I have the cello basically positioned right in front of the mic, but it still seems to sound distant. I've tried reducing the wet/dry ratio and the reverb time of the hall, but I don't yet have a good sense of what's the best combination of those parameters. I'd be interested to hear any general tips you and others may have for getting a better sound out of MIR...

    If you are not happy in general with the sound of MIR you could try to use another microphone setup. I aways like the Blumlein-recording system (even if I wouldn't record an orchestra with it) because it sound more airy than others.

    But it only counts how it sounds. So try out all the possibilities until you have found the one you like most.

    If the cello sould sound a bit more prominent you could turn its wet/dry ratio a bit more towards dry.

    Use the monitors for adjusting this matter until you are happy with the soloist-position and its "prominent sound".

    Solving the tunnel-sound

    A) Try other microphone setups.

    B) As a common setting the main dry/wet-ratio (at the output section) is 50%/50%. This is often too much room. So why don't you try 60%dry /40%wet? 

    All the best

    Beat

    - Tips & Tricks while using Samples of VSL.. see at: https://www.beat-kaufmann.com/vitutorials/ - Tutorial "Mixing an Orchestra": https://www.beat-kaufmann.com/mixing-an-orchestra/
  • P
    P

    Beat,

    Thank you for your advice. I will try out each of your suggestions in this piece and in future work. I think it will do me a lot of good to experiment with the microphone setups and dry/wet ratios for the output.

    Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts.

    Best,

    Brian
  • Fabio BiolcatiF
    Fabio BiolcatiF
    What a beautiful piece of music! It deserves to be completed. (If I could only be an "hobbyst" like you!)
    VI Special Edition 1-3, Reaper, MuseScore 3, Notion 3 (collecting dust), vst flotsam and jetsam
  • muziksculpM
    muziksculpM
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    Hello Popslaw.

    Thanks for sharing this wonderful piece.

    I enjoyed listening to it a lot. Very well done, and I loved the overall mood, and the various nuances you have going on in this composition.

    Cheers,

    Muziksculp

  • PaulP Paul moved this topic from Orchestration & Composition on