Hi Everyone, not for entertainment, pure film music to create atmosphere of loss, destruction, heartbreak, tragedy etc. Don’t expect it to play on the radio or become a hit 
Any comments welcome.
Thank you, and if you could not sit through it, I won’t blame you
Hi Michael this is very beautiful ,if i was n`t feeling so happy within myself ,this would definitely turn on the water works , lovely.
A very beautiful piece of music, liked it very much, seemed a bit dry though and the orchestra, piano and harp all sounded like they were in different rooms…the harp had obvious ambiance on it while the orchestra and piano didn’t…to my ears anyway…but a really moving piece of music, I think more “space” around it would lift it considerably.
well done, Kevin
I see a view from an airplane… over the ocean, heading north, late afternoon. We come to a place where the tops of skyscrapers are protruding from the ocean, casting long shadows on the water. I see a giant statue of a woman’s head, and an arm sticking out of the sea, holding a torch, and suspension cables of old bridges arching gracefully into the sea. Far in the distance, a barren desert shoreline runs from the west to the northeast.
OK, you guys write the rest of the script. The music worked! Agree with Kevin’s comments about the ambiance.
Thank you guys, Early 21 - that is exactly the kind of scenery this was intended for. Thank you Kevin, friends of mine said exactly the same thing about the ambiance. I’ll adjust that. Thank you for your kind words. It’s only the second time I posted something on this forum. I’m still in my baby shoes when it comes to mixing and finalizing productions.
Nice piece oozing lots of ambiance and atmosphere which really could be further enhanced as others have eluded to.
I’d look at long-ish reverbs with perhaps a generous predelay in elements like the piano for example.
Nice 
Aloha M
The words in your title scared the jacksh!t out of me!
When I read it I thought, Oh No!
This person has just lost some precious work never to get it back!
Then I read further. Whew!
The music is delightful
and no. 4-5 mins is not too long. Nice work.
A lil ‘wetness’ might help.
Mahalo
{‘-’}
Hey Michael, the atmosphere created is certainly there. Though you definitely need a good amount of reverb on a piece like that on strings, piano and harp.
The main problem with the strings is that they sound very lifeless overall. even at low dynamics string players have a lot of expression with the bow. I can hear at some points there are changes in expression, but most of the time it doesn’t rise and fall during notes/phrases and also doesn’t peak and taper off as actual string players would perform the notes. If you upload a screenshot of the expression values to dropbox or something and link it I can probably draw over in another colour more how the curving/shaping of the expression should look like for those chords/notes, or I could do the same with a MIDI file of a few of the strings chords.The samples themselves sound quite nice anyway, with the correct expression I’m sure it’d sound even better.
The actual notes work fine though, very emotional, so well done!
Hi Jonathan, thank you for your good advice! I knew someone would notice my expression problems, thing is I don’t know much about it and the little bit I know is just from watching Youtube videos. I would really appreciate it if you can help me with it. I use EastWest Symphony and add expression by adding CC11 expression and drawing curves on that. I don’t know where can I post the dropbox file, just don’t know how to do it, but let me try and see what I can do.
Thank you so much for your help !
Michael
Oh Jonathan, another question, what do you recommend, should I add reverb on each channel separately or a reverb insert on the Stereo Out channel ?
Well you can hit printscreen, open paint and then ctrl+v to paste the screenshot, save it and upload to any number of sites such as imageshack, facebook (not a good idea since I don’t use it and some others don’t also,) imgur, dropbox. I use dropbox.com to share files because it isn’t limited to images only and there are no crappy adverts plastered all over the site.
Anyway, as for reverb, whichever you use it should be used as a send and not as an insert.
First thing to ask I guess is which reverb are you using? The reverb that comes with Play, Cubase REV reverb or third-party like QL Spaces? The reverb included with Play gets used as a send by default I think, but it doesn’t sound anywhere near as realistic or nice as QL Spaces. If you do use that themn you’ll want to use only a few instances of Play (one or two for each section) and then use the master button to apply the same reverb to all loaded patches in that instance of Play to save on CPU usage.
I don’t know what the optimal set up for being lightest on the CPU is, but this works for me without issues on an i7 920 OC’d to 3.9ghz. The setup that I use is to run a separate instance of Play for each instrument (I’ve consolidated as a test from my 70 approx. instances of play down to just 7 before only to find that my CPU usage was exactly the same because of the way I have the reverb setup, and RAM usage is obviously going to be no different whichever way you do it.
First I create a Group Track for each section that I have which for me is Strings, Woodwind, Brass, Ethnic, Synth, Percussion, Choir (in order of front stage to back.) Depending on the kind of piece it is I set the piano to either Strings or Synth as synth is deep stage between brass and percussion. The reverb is then used as a send on each corresponding group track.
I then click on each instrument track and send it to the corresponding group track; Dropbox - Error
Dropbox - Error and then the group track goes to the stereo out.
The types of reverb I use are really specific to QL Spaces. If I were using REVerence I’d probably just use one reverb over everything as a send effect because it isn’t impulses recorded in the specific positions that the orchestra would be seated in the hall/stage like QL Spaces is.
I use a rear mic soundstage at 0.8s 10ms pre-delay to imitate a soundstage and fatten the lifeless and somewhat thin sounding samples up. I use rear mics for both Berlin Church and Hamburg Cathedral to create a lush sounding longer tail to the reverb. Dropbox - Error
And then I’ll use both front and rear mics simultaneously for every section of the orchestra. Dropbox - Error
The reason you can do this with QL Spaces is because impulses were recorded in the correct orchestra positions in true stereo. So strings have 40ms pre-delay, woodwinds 50ms, brass 60ms, choir 90ms. I really can’t stress enough how fantastic this reverb is for orchestral stuff and it’s at -50% sale price atm at soundsonline.com. Even if you just use 3 instances of the reverb (soundstage and the general full orchestra front/rear mics) it’d still add a great quality to the sound. There is a 10 day free trial of it anyway so I guess you can download it and hear how fantastic it sounds first-hand.
You mean “the rest” as in the entire beginning? As in “The Planet of the Apes?” 
I like the work. Others have noted the expression and ambiance issues. I need to check out QL Spaces it seems
