Well, I haven’t managed to finalize any pieces since last February. Finally, here’s one that I like, I hope you will like it too.
This piece was originally a Cubase file containing only an 8 bar piano track that I had improvised with 2 chords and a melody that I saved months ago. Listening to this file again, I told myself I had to do something with this and here it is. Several months later I arrived at a finished product.
What is special about this piece is that for the first time I made the melody which was originally on the piano using a library from the Image Sounds company from which I made the acquisition, “Muted Trumpet”. The melody was largely embellished with this one.
To summarize, I used 34 of the 465 sequences which I cut into 90 slices in order to obtain the original melody and an improvisation. Only one sequence is used in full. I really liked the experience and I think I will repeat it for another piece that is in development.
Very clean mix, how did you do the bass, is it played live, it does remind me of Trilian?
I do like the muted trumpet sound and the laid back guitar, pretty good piano too.
Good job, I don’t really know what I would do differently.
Thank you very much for your good comments @Mauri.
I can give you a little more detail regarding the instruments used in the piece.
I don’t have any Spectrasonics products and I don’t plan to have any either despite the very high quality of these.
I used the EZbass trial version (10 days). The bass line is mine and shaped the sound only with the stock Cubase plugins. I plan to purchase this product very soon. In my opinion, this is the best virtual bass on the market.
You already know where the trumpet comes from.
The piano comes from HALion 7 that I own, I used the “Soulfoul Stack 2” preset, I really like the sound of this piano which combines the sound of a Grand Piano and a DX EP.
The distorted guitar of the Chorus also comes from HALion; This is the “Lightly Distorted Strat” preset.
The guitar that doubles the melody on the trumpet is my Fender Telecaster and the acoustic guitar is my Larrivee.
Drums and Congas uses the “Metronomic Cinema”, “Percussion Agent” libraries from Groove Agent 5. The presets used are “Synchronous Orbit”, “Disco Jamz” and “Alien Cowgirls”.
The mixes and masters were made only with the Cubase plugins and those from Native Instruments (Komplete Ultimate) which I own.
This is nice, and I’m impressed that so many softsynths here sound so real. I agree with Mauri that given the melodic and harmonic structure you’re working with, I don’t think there’s anything more to suggest with the mix or performances. Good work with this.
John
Thank you John for these good comments. I’m glad you liked the whole work.
I really liked some of the new C13 plugins, particularly EQP1A which I used on almost all the instruments for Mixing and Mastering, and Vocal Chain which is the only plugin I used for the trumpet.
Its really nice, it sounds very much like live instruments. One thing, for me, the piano should be more dominant, its a bit low level on that, thats my only negative. And I love vocals, it would be great to hear a singer but thats not critic, thats something else
It’s true the piano could have been slightly more present and I don’t believe that this would have harmed the presence of the trumpet. The idea of having a singer didn’t even cross my mind. Having no text at my disposal, I just tried to have an instrument sound that I would be comfortable working with and that would support the musical genre well. This is the result we hear.
Unfortunately, writing a text doesn’t come very naturally to me either. So, I mostly opt for instrumental music.