me and my shadow

Hmm, they are different kinds of genres so not everything applies as the same but I think some things are the same. When all instruments are playing with max expression/velocity then I end up having to turn the master volume down to around -25dB and this makes zero negative difference to the sound quality or volume in the final product after mastering.

You’d have to ask someone like Sherz about using compressors for drums/bass/guitars. But for orchestra, live recorded or samples you don’t use compression on individual instruments at all. In the mastering stage there is some sort of limiting or compression, but it just makes it sound punchier/tighter (or whatever the correct word is and prevents the highest intensity points in the track from clipping without sacrificing any of the sound quality or dynamics.) Pushing up the maximizer too much will crush those dynamics but staying just under where it’s going to stay at 0.0dB is really enough volume. My volume isn’t quite as much as the professional modern orchestra music, but it’s within a few dB, and that’s just because I do not know mastering in-depth so increasing the volume as much as possible in the mixing stage to me is not needed for the reasons above. On my old crappy headphones this would be a problem, but the professional mixing/composing headphones have 3x the max volume of normal headphones specifically for the reason of having to turn down the volume so low in the composing/mixing stage in order to get the correct velocities for timbre.

You could always try turning the volume down in the mixing stage low enough so it’s like the recommended -3dB below clipping and give me or Kevin the .wav to see what an Ozone rock kinda mastering template would make it sound like and how far the volume can be pushed without getting the volume stuck on 0.0dB. I meanI wouldn’t be able to get the best sound or even close but the template for the appropriate genre will sound good and you could compare the two mastering suites.

As for the pirate tune, even the intro needs work, it sounds less human atm because the repeating parts were recorded in via midi keyboard and then copy pasted so the velocities are identical every time a part repeats as are the start times of when each note is played. But manually altering every note in those ways is something I do as the very last stage. I just get the rough volume rises/accents for rhythmic purposes when writing. It’s tougher because it’s in 6/8 and I’m using the Cubase blocks so not seeing the music notation is really tough and the Cubase music notation is a joke, it’s just unreadable.

Haha, that video is so awesome, so many views and no one has ever shown me it before xD