Thanks Jay and Miklos!

The story of "The Soulful Bell" is the idea of a bell literally in it's making until it has finally its own soul, the sax at the end represent that side.

That's a nice concept - cool!

Miklos. [:D]

Gentlemen, another fine selection of work, and i continue to be surprised at the growing expertise from those using VSL. It's one thing to ponitificate about our favourite subjects here, but i have to offer my respects to all three of you for the polish on these 4 pieces. (To borrow Miklos's word!) I admit to being a bit of a demos 'hound' listening intently for the tone of the samples in many different contexts (often going over the same demos frequently), and how versatile they are, and in the process listened and learned as each of you journey forward in your skills, which were already formidable, and mature even further. So a hearty well done to all three of you, from Pauls' wonderful rendition of 'A screaming across the sky' (Great use of dynamics), to Guy's constantly surprising breadth of imagination with 'The soulful bell' (how to tell a story in music), to Miklos's elegant 'World Song.' (Miklos, i enjoyed your piece stting in a comfortable chair with a whiff of decent cognac and a smooth cigar, so you effectively captured the 'mood!' [H] )

Excellent work, and enjoyable listening.

Regards,

Alex.

Hi all,

Guy, I must say that this new piece of yours is really fantastic!

While listening I had the sense that the piece was performed on one
VERY large, REAL instrument that could play all those sounds.

Everything felt really connected and organic. Like a tree trunk growing branches and the branches growing leaves and the whole thing just getting taller and taller.

I believe its a real challenge to compose a piece that has no discernable rhythm (tempo), melody, and harmony, no traditional elements in general, yet keep the listener interested and convey message and meaning.

Its all upto your choice of color, texture, and dynamics...to express the ideas in this kind of piece. Its breaking music down to its basic, raw elements.

While listening I forgot about the fact that these were samples and I was just listening like I was listening to a CD.

That is the ultimate goal that we all have and you have achieved it, for me at least, in this piece.

I listen to a lot of late romantic and 20th/21th century music mainly and thats the style I compose. When composing similar pieces as this I find myself re-composing, de-composing, re-composing until all the textures are right and the way I want them. I also try to always do something new that I have never done before.

I can say that because the wide variety of choices that can be made in color, range, dynamics, texture,...it can take a long time to work it all out and feel like you have actually expressed an idea worth listening to. It is very difficult to keep the ideas fresh and keep the piece moving forward.

I'm impressed and inspired by this piece, thank you for sharing it!

BTW, can you point me to where you describe your studio gear or if you have never talked about that herecan you elaborate regarding how many computers you use, software, hardware...?

Thanks,
David Mikautadze

PS - I was at work when I wrote the above and did not have a chance to say
how much I liked the other works.

I thought Miklos' work was beautiful and very well done. It was not boring at all. Other works I have heard in a similar style generally lose my interest
pretty fast. I really liked how the arrangement unfolded and built up to a nice climax.

The mock up by Paul Smith is a great piece. I like all the polyrhythms and the orchestration is well thought out. Its a good example of the diversity of the VSL VI and what can be done with it.

I think the Goldsmith mock up did a great job of capturing the irieness of the cue.

I'm happy to hear how well the demos sound and can't wait to dive in to library and offer some examples of my work.

Thanks David!

That was quite enjoyable to read I must say. It's always nice to see that what you worked hard doing receives the kind of response you'd be hoping for. Yes, connecting every element was crucial especially in a piece like this where it could easily turn out more intellectual than musical. At school I always did poorly in music analysis even though I did well in other areas, so just to say that I hardly know what I'm doing and could not explain either what I'm doing right, if so... [[;)]] But I like to think I have a good sense of balance, handy for larger works. The great thing about writing for percussion is that you have so much to choose from and so that helps to give it credibility. When I did the 1st AS demo "Sunset,Dream and Nightmare"! it was a challenge because I did not want to use anything else but strings ONLY which is a huge task when working with sample sound, so as Peter Alexander says, "it sounds synthy here and there". But when you're piece is 5 min of strings only you're bound to get that kind of result.

I digress, sorry, what was interesting for me was to force myself to express some feelings through percussion and I wanted the orchestra to add something to the perc rather than the other way around. One instrument I used was the "Steel Rails" I compared that a bit to the siren for its oddity which I avoided to not fall into clichés. Also another very interesting instrument I used found in "Elements" is the Tam XXL, I really like Elements and would recommended to anyone, especially for film music.


I use one G5, that's it, but I still haven't got a sound card! [:O]ops: and my speakers are like $200.00-$300.00 for both, I guess I get by. I have a LOT of GB though, which I need.

Hope that answered a bit you're question.

Hi Guy,

Thanks for the reply.

Only 1 G5??!

Do you compose first a sketch on paper and then orchestrate in the computer or are you composing and orchestrating at the computer from the begining?

I'm finding it hard to keep everything loaded as I compose at the computer so its easier and quicker if I have some short-hand sketch on paper to work from.

Then, since I know what articualtions I will need, I don't have to load the super-sized
presets or I will create a matrix specific to the piece.

So, how do you work?

Where did you go to school?

I studied film scoring and composition at Berklee in Boston, and yes I graduated [:)]

Thanks,
David

@Christian Marcussen said:

Agreed - the main strings could be improved (they are a bit too loud at times, and with a bit to hard attacks in places for my tastes)

The low volume arp strings in the begining sound good tough. How were these done? I always have a hard time making 1,2,1,2,1,2 parts sound good.

First, the strings were supposed to kind of poke out a bit ... to sound scary. Well, at least this was an artistic decision and not a limitation of the instruments. You could easily perform the strings differently, of course. Although, obviously, as with any performance, there's room for improvement! Yes, some of those attacks are too rough, for example. (BTW, I used only the dynamics in the samples themselves; there is no cross-fading between cells, and no midi diminuendos ... although I did use Volume to soften some of the attacks.)

I had really wanted to use the perf. trill for the arp strings ... which are violas that only oscillate between two pitchs, not really arpeggios ... so the trill instrument would have worked, BUT ... they are muted violas, and there is no viola perf. trill instrument with mutes. Alas. Time to get creative again.

Actually, it was not really that creative. I just used the muted sustained violas' fast legato patch. The tricky part was to keep it from sounding too mechanical with all those repeated notes. So, the velocity layers vary a lot. And, the orchestration (with harp, and sometimes xylophone and piano) helps to mask the kind of midi-sounding viola parts.

If I had more time, I would have cleaned up those violins a bit more. I just noticed there's a spot where someone comes in about a beat too soon! If I find out who it was, they're moving back to last desk [:@]

- Paul

An interesting note about the creation of this original cue. When Jerry did this cue he took the strings and ran them back (real strings that is) through a set of speakers set up in the main room in the studio and then recorded the sound coming out of the speakers. This was done to create a "hyped" string sound. If you listen carefully, you'll hear that the strings sound a little odd, kinda a little cold and somewhat more edgy than a conventional string section recording.
Kinda of ironic really - here he has real strings recorded and he mangles them to make them sound a little synthetic - kinda of like what you might get with a sample library.
Appearantly, he was trying to get a more modern Hollywood sound at that time. Funny isn't it?

@Another User said:

I studied film scoring and composition at Berklee in Boston, and yes I graduated [:)]

Wow, that sounds good, I wish I had taken film scoring when I studied.

Hi Guy,

Yeah, I have 8 HD's in my computer and almost each VSL VI volume is on it own drive.

I have a P4 3.0ghz with 1.5gb of RAM.

Probably will upgrade to a more powerful system soon.

Keep up the great work.

David

when i listen to that music ( The Soulful Bell ) i realy feel like i am in a concert
hall in Baden-Baden at a contemporary music festival !
Bravo Guy you can handle so many style with the VI

Mephisto [6]