Hope - Piano/Symphonic, and my 1st Cubase Project

I’ve been using Cubase 6 for quite exactly 1 week now - and I’m rather impressed. I was afraid I’d be facing a huge learning curve, having used a different DAW before, but… I’m amazed how quickly one can get into this.

So, here’s my first project done with Cubase 6:
Hope (Listen to it on SoundCloud)

A Piano/Orchestral Symphony - and pretty much a “playground” for me to get familiar with Cubase.

To be honest, there’s almost 0 Effort in Mixing/Mastering this in there. That’s the next thing I’ll tackle - but if you’d like to comment on where I could improve, I’d be most happy to hear your feedback!

~Dominik

Well that was quite amazing, very authentic in sound and dynamics.
I couldn’t do that in a million years.

Mix-wise, I think it’s over-warmed and missing too much top end.
I also think the piano could be clearer throughout its range and
performance rather than just its top end.

I found the cymbal swells too loud throughout.

But excellent stuff in general.

To my armature ear it sounded beautiful. Very moving. I could almost see the credits rolling up the big screen just after the movie had ended.

Is this a written music piece or do you work by ear?

Very nice.

Thank you kindly for the encouraging words.

This was indeed an experiment; I usually prefer having the strings crystal clear with some exciter added to bring out the harmonics, but ended up doing quite the opposite here, trying to give them a silky touch without too much crisp.

The piano I didn’t touch; I’d probably have to process that to achieve that effect, as the actual velocity is really very low for most parts, so there’s not much “boom” in the low end to work with.

As for the cymbals… I agree. :confused: - Orchestral Percussion is my Kryptonite. I’ve yet not found the proper way to mix that in. The lower I go with the dry ratio for the reverb, the muddier it sounds, losing the crisp it should have. I’ve seen some examples about using a “double-reverb” for percussion like that, but I haven’t managed to find a way that works for me which doesn’t sound outright artificial or excessively muddy.

I certainly do have to improve there.

Thank you very much.

I work by ear. I’m comfortable with sheet music, and one of the reasons I switched to Cubase is so that I don’t have to take the extra turn over “Feed Midi Data to Sibelius and make it look pretty” so get some actual note sheets out.

The piano is a 1:1 recording from my Roland FP-7, sampled over Kontakt; the clarinet & horns are recorded with the piano, too, and some quantization applied. The strings I usually do on the piano roll, depending on the complexity with or without step editor.

Regards,

~Dominik

Pretty good composition. Easily OK for a film score/TV series. Dunno if that’s what you want to do but it’s definitely worth considering :sunglasses:

Cheers
Phil

Yes, a very nice ‘soundtrack’ piece. Very good arrangement. :sunglasses:
The cymbals swells, as mentioned are indeed too loud. The piano, I think you just need to narrow that down. At the moment it seems to occupy full stereo width and therefore sounds far to ‘big’ to me relative to the orchestra. I’d almost be tempted to reduce it to mono in fact - or close to it, and pan it at around L25.

Nice. :sunglasses:

Very nice piece, great composition! Mix could use some work but that’s all been mentioned.
I hit follow :wink:

Hi Dominik,

Welcome to the forum!

I don’t have much to add, other that that I’m impressed with what you did here.
It’s a beautiful piece of music, sounds great! :sunglasses:

Cheers,
Wim

impressive piece of music well orchestrated has a ton of heart. I am sure as you move forward w/Cubase you will iron out the eq stuff. I personally am not a big fan of Roland Pianos sounds although I haven’t tried any of the new ones. I saw you use the VI stuff. Check out the Vienna Imperial Grand, best money I ever spent you will love it and it is perfect for your writing style. I also have Ivory but the vienna is much better for me. If you get the vienna send me a PM and I will forward my EQ filter settings which will save you a lot of experimentation

Funny, I personally miss the Roland piano samples on my old keyboard. My Yamaha wins on every other front though, so it’s allright :slight_smile: