Fairlight

[Infamous]

heh not a problem, always nice to have a decent discussion ^^.

ive tried "expressive" synth noises, string playing subtely in the background but panned heavily left and right and then fiddled with filters so they have a sort of heart beat effect (quiet.. loud.. loud.. quiet.. etc) so that you can hear its there but not sure what it is, Usually all ive ever got as feedback for stuff like that is "what was a nice noise"... NOISE?! >cue sound of someone being hurt< when they come back out of hospital they dont tend to make comments anymore lol.

Madness aside, Im enjoying working with the instruments ive got at the moment so much so im thinking of turning into a mini rob dougan and mixing the 2 styles together more often, always liked the orchestral sound I think its an inbuilt thing inside all of us to respect the whole "played" instrument ethos (how else could you explain the rise of emo music? :p).

Anyway's will stick the 2nd section up here soon for you all to listen too and give feedback on. cheers for making my thread more interesting than it could have been

[xo]

Physical modelling and expressive controllers, yes please, I've always craved that.

But I happen to love orchestral music in movies. Not that it's always mastered to my liking. Someone like John Powell has a nice style of mixing orchestral sound with synthetic sound.

To me it's only orchestral music has a first place. But I'm open to synth sound, as I'm sure everyone here is. As an example of something I really like is the soundtrack for Solaris. It is very minimalistic but extremely well suited for the movie. (I think it's mainly synthetic, but not too sure.) Its beginning and end theme is just so excellent in setting the mood with the images. It can send chills down my spine. Excellent.

Then there's Man on Fire. Some of that track I can't listen to in isolation, it's too painful, but I'm sure it was excellent in the movie. Great movie as well. It's very manipulated and synthetic. There are also tracks with a moody guitar playing aesthetically as a contrast.

But orchestral music will be the king in my eyes. Star Trek, Star Wars, Saving Private Ryan... all these great orchestral scores, I wouldn't want it any other way...

[Razmo]

Exoskeleton:

Well, thank god the human race has different taste on things otherwise it would be quite boring a world, and if I'm right, a lot more wars, since everyone would want the same Woman etc etc..

I'm in on the orchestral scores when it comes to films that are suposed to tell of the past... this is because as I said before, humans have been raised with the fact that orchestral instruments belong to this category... as soon as anyone says "baroque" everyone think of a harpsichord... but when we talk futuristic films like Star Wars and such as modern film about the "now", I cannot see why it HAS to be orchestral... especially in futuristic films, synthetic sounds could be used for title music etc. I would 10 times rather have heard Jarre as title music on Star Wars than that orchestral piece... even fantasy movies could use elements of synth sounds, as they invovle magic and the supernatural... big battles... orchestral scores, YES PLEASE!!!... but why orchestral the whole movie through!?

I think it's just a "written rule" that if you want to be cool making music for a big hollywood movie, you have to do orchestral music... I find that a pity...

[xo]

Orchestral music just has lots of depth. To me it isn't antiquated, it's not only for WW2 movies. I collect movie music and it's mostly orchestral. It seems to work well.

If you think about Star Wars, it has some aggressive orchestral music which fits the war-theme of the series well. I'm not sure how you'd mimic that effect with synth music. Maybe it's because military music is orchestral to begin with.

Then Star Trek. I suppose you could (in a fantasy world) dump Goldsmith's work and put in some synthetic music, but much of it tends to lack depth somehow. I'm generalizing but I just got a memory of the horror experience that is Alias; it suites the series though - flat unzy sound for a series with nothing to offer but rediculous plots.

I'd like to see the synth score that could offset major scores by John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, et al. In my eyes that's not going to be an easy task.

Orchestral music the whole movie through? No, not necessarily, and there must be plenty of examples of mixed tracks...

I'm not the best to express this...

PS Star Wars is mideval I think. It's like a knights movie dressed up in sci-fi. Star Trek is more pure sci-fi...

[Razmo]

... but still... the reason we want orchestral music in movies for it to seem "real" is because we are used to it.... we have all been raised with it in movies... we had no choice since it's always been used in movies to this extent it's become a part of what we asociate film scores with... and it's pretty impossible to "run away" from that... i mean, people don't even think about it when they go to the moovies!... it's just something they expect in their subconciousness... they won't even notive it if it's there, but will if it's not!

.. though, I'd like to see some change in that path, but it's bloody not likely to happen I guess I guess I'm just that type of person that cannot stand when things get conservative and "stiff".... I want to see change, I want to experience new things... just like I feel that commercial record business is outright boring and dominant and dictating about what "people wanna hear"...

rebellious?... me?.... maybe!

[xo]

The future will tell.

I think you're right about the "danger" of conservatism. On the other hand, orchestral music has been around far longer than synthetic music. So in five or ten decades time, it'll probably have matured and be using realistic physical modelling of classic orchestral instruments.

By the way, I sort of like your avatar. It reminds me of Kefrens and Desert Dream - the wobbly cube.

[Razmo]

well, even when physical modelling have evolved, still I'll find it a shame that it should be only real accoustic instruments... it's the constant use of the same instruments that I find conservative...

now for example; the Yamaha VL tone generator allows you to sculpt other timbres than just real orchestral instruments... you can actually "blow a Violin" or "bow a flute"... it allows for connections of various "parts" of instruments... you could in reality play a pipe that "grow physicaly larger" when you blow it harder! (no snickering in the back please!)... or you could generate "other worldly" instruments, but still have the dynamic and expressive sound of a real instrument... I'd like to see inventiveness in this field, creating new timbres, but still have an organic sound to it. make it sound like the instrument is "real", and not something generated in a computer, but something you could actually take and play.... now THAT's interresting to me, and very exiting

And about the Kefrens demo, I'm not sure what demo you mean... I'm a little rusty in this field these days ... in fact my avatar is a photo i took of a plaster skull I've got, and I twisted it in paint shop, and gave it some red eyes

[Instant Remedy]

A little for your initial post.
I agree with you in feeling a bit out of depth when trying orchetral, this is the case for me too and is quite different to the styles we usually do. Me myself is sometimes mixing some orchestral with some electronic sounds like drums, bass etc. This way you get a little "classic" feel and mood without banging your head to the wall making it sound "authenic". Kind of like in movies, you set the mood with some simpler arrangements and then kick some of your better know areas in music. I have made a cross-genre tune for an online game for Swedish television. Ok, I made the music some years ago and they bought rights to use it. Will put a link up as soon as launched.

And as Rzmo pointed out, it helps a lot to know how the intruments are played IRL and what place all intruments have in an orchestra. Electronic instruments can be played as you like and may just sound cool when used in an unusual way.

Your tunes is quite nice actually. The samples are pretty nice but again, some instruments could have been used a bit better, especially the violin/viola/cello in the first part where the attack/release seems too be slow so notes flow together. I'm not sure if this is intended.
The middle part is better and sounds pretty powerful.
This is just my opinion and my ears.

[Razmo]

Yeah... actually it takes quite a bit of research to understand how an orchestra works and plays together... I've had the temptation to try it several times, but I always find that the samples sound too static... if I just had a nice 128MB orchestra setup for my hardware sampler, I'd be tempted to try it in the future maybe....

well, actually I did make a little bit myself back in 1996, when I participated in the Creative Open MIDI Contest... I've uploaded that tune here: Click here to watch The-Bloodwar

It was made without any orchestral knowledge at all ... and also made on a Creative AWE64 with 4MB of sample RAM.... and as usual with me, I cannot hold a piece without ending up in some sort of techno in the end... bad EQ'ing also... made on a simple home stereo speaker system. from my time before catching gearlust

My only try ever on Orchestral, and probably also my last one.

[xo]

I just had a revelation yesterday. I visited the production facilities of a danish loudspeaker company. I was given a full 3+ hour demo in their dedicated listening room. Several speakers were demoed, but the one that blew me away was a new model that hasn't even been tested by the press or even heard by many. It was a medium sized 2-way "bookshelf" (stands) speaker with a band tweeter and a new custom mid/bass driver surrounded by powerful neodymium magnets. Now that experience blew me away. Never ever have I heard such a reproduction of an orchestra. The treble was truly excellent and there was no smearing of it. The band tweeter was, if I remember correctly, 1/100 of a mm thick; I could be remembering wrong though.

To fully appreciate acoustic music, you really have to hear it live or though such a system.

Anyway, I get your motivation for hearing new instruments. I guess the current palette is what composers feel comfortable with...

[ShiTZOiD]

To be honest, I'm not too crazy about Orchestral versions of C64 Tunes or remixes for that matter.

Me neither but nice work. If remixing an c64 song i think it should be samples from the original tune,
or atleast 64sounding stuff or similar synthizizers or whatever.

The sid got loved becouse of its characteristic sound not only the melodies of the tunes

[mixer]

Disclaimer: I did not read through all the posts in this thread in detail, but browsing through the discussion got me interested and here are my few thoughts about orchestral stuff with computers.

I believe that music intended to be played with acoustic instruments should be played with acoustic instruments. However I personally cannot play any nor have any, therefore I use computers and instruments that imitate acoustic instuments. The instruments are sampled or they are physically modeled and they'll never sound real.

The limitation is that the sample needs to be used the way it is recorded to sound believeable. It is very difficult to create a realistic room acoustics around a sample based instrument, so it will sound different than real orchestral hall. At best there is an illusion of orchestra and if it fools the listener it suffices. There is a great example of this trick. The C-64 only has 3 voices and limited number of waveforms to work with, however even with that limitation sometimes the music sounds really big. Hearing really takes place inside the brain. We imagine most of the music. A fine example is a simple c-64 one-channel arpeggio 3-chord. We accept it as a chord where really it is not.

Because of that I would argue that a good arrangement even with a limited sample set or limited number of instruments can support whatever illusion needs to be delivered. It is of course easier with fitting good quality sounds than bad. I guess that also makes a difference between a good arrangement and a bad one. Do I believe this or not? Does it convince me? "This tune fooled me to think that it is real".

[Razmo]

Mixer: yes, that's what I've been saying also... if you want it to sound like the real thing, play it on the real thing... that's why I'm building a SID synth with the real SID chip... because I want it to sound like SID 100%....

One "problem" with today's orchestral scores being done so much on computers via sample libraries and physical modelling is, that people who are not specialist listeners will get easily fooled with time, since they get used to hearing more "fake" symphonic music than the real thing.... I wonder if some day, someone will end up being fooled so bad, that they'd point a sample based score to be original, in contrast to the real thing because of this

anyway, I'm not that great a fan of orchestral music. I only see it's use (for me) in cinematic situations, as we have been raised and brainwashed into feeling that orchestral music is the only way to go when setting moods in films etc... an example:

If you made a movie about the stone age... what sounds would you use? ... I bet that it would not be convincing if the instruments used are not old reneisance instruments mixed with symphonic music or something like that... if electronic music was used, it would sound weird and out of time right? ... but why would symphonic instruments not? these were also not developed in the stone-age were they? ... it's musical brainwashing when it's best

[Razmo]

...it is as if symphonic instruments are considdered to be TIMELESS ... they can be used in anything from neandertal movies to the most spacey science fiction movie without anyone lifting as much as an eyebrow in distrust...