Action Contest - NIGHT IN FINLAND | Mistral unizion

This song was inspired from a sound named “Finlandia” (hence the name of the song) found in a FREE synth called Zebralette from U-he.
After that I wanted to compose a track made with Musical sampling’s Boutique Drums Renegade, which I just bought a month ago but still had not used in any composition.
So there it is, kind of a metal / hybrid track that reflects my personality. I like action, guitars, loud noise and speed, haha.

Thanks Mikael for this nice community and opportunity to practice. By the way I suggest to all members, especially for this contest, to buy the course from Mikael about basics of percussion and also “How to write cinematic petcussion”. Great stuff and really not expensive when on sale on Udemy at about $15.

https://soundcloud.com/user-920745624-874833016/night-in-finland-mistral-unizion-composer-jonathan-bougie-lauzon.

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Whoa! Cool speed. This track is lots of fun!

Some of the verb, although sounding cool, may be too much and may be diminishing some of the “action” aspect of it. I’d be curious to hear this track with very little verb and more of an “in your face” mix. Something for thought at least. Great work!

Brandon

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Very nice sounds and a very good idea to give action music a feel of metal.

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Great work you did.Synth sounds are awesome

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Hi Brandon,

Thanks a lot for your feedback!
I will try to see where there is reverb and test it with less reverb. Contrary to an orchestral track, I did not send any sound to a reverb bus like I use to do to place all the instruments in the same room. Some synth sound may have it “baked in”.
But I think I added Valhalah Shimmer to the guitars to get that long tail for the solos, which I like. Might be a good test to see how it sound whitout it.

Thanks Klaus!

Yeah at first I was thinking about an orchestral track but when I realised I had not tried this library yet (Boutique Drums Renegade), I thought I will make a track with it just for fun and when I heard that synth sound (in the free Zebralette) I just played with it and suddenly this riff came out.

I knew right away that would be a good starting point to put those drums over it and add layers of other instruments included in the Renegade library (guitar, bass and synths).

Thanks again!

Hi Bala,

Thanks a lot for your comment! Yeah those synths sounds are so cool! I did not made the presets though, but I started to make some… not an easy task to understand how all those knobs work! I love to try new ones and find some amazing sounds.

I just bought some new libraries for Omnisphere too from Tom Wolfe and there are so incredible sounds in there too. Can’t wait to put those in a new track! Possibilities are endless with synths. Lots of fun!

Thanks!

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Hi,
I like the flow of the piece. Gloomy and strong feeling. Very square use of the heavy_rock feel.

Jorge

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Thanks so much! Happy you like it!:smiley:

Thank you so much You did a great work of giving amazing tones .Congrats

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Very cool sounds Jonathan! I loved the guitar (being a guitar player of course :smiley:) Maybe you could have used some chugging riffs to give it more of an action feel, as I got more of a “spacey” sci-fi feel to it. Just me though. Otherwise, great work! Adding it to my playlist haha!

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Hi Matt!

Very kind of you, thanks lot! Good idea about the chugging guitars. Yeah my first intention was to keep a cinematic aspect so that whole reverbish / sustained notes are in this regard but I’m always open to suggestions from other conposers.

I want to make a version 2 where I play a guitar solo myself, since I play guitar too but got lazy doing the parts myself here… haha! I don’t sweep very good though… :smirk::grin:

I also wanted to test Alex Pfifer’s Infinuitar which I had just bought. It is basicaly sustained power chords in a loop so I layered this plus the guitar of Boutique Drums Renegade. But this one can play chuggs when you play a slow velocity. So I could definetly modify some parts easily with this.

Thanks again and looking forward to hear your take on this action theme!:smiley:

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My pleasure. Please listen to mine (Impossible Scape) and tell me what you think.

Sounds like a million dollars. Hey, I’d have placed this in the top 6 of the Spitfire Westworld competition. Would’ve worked very well for that scene.

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WOW! That is a great compliment my friend! Thanks so much, very kind!

I did participate in the Westworld with another track that I made at the very last minute. There was like 8 hours left so I am pretty pleased with the result and everything went well and flowing like I was guided or something. I had never scored any movie or video before so just learning how to do it was soooooo much fun I was like: “I want to do this as my day job!!” :smiley: If you ever want to hear it you can go check it out on my You Tube Channel at Jonathan Bougie-Lauzon.

Thanks again!

Best regards

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Went and watched your west world entry. It’s a perfect fit, slick, pro, supports the action.

I like it better than the winner, and better than at least a couple of the runners up.

Not surprised it didn’t win—with 12,000 entries, and many of them using a similar modern hybrid sound palette, it’s hard to stand out when you’re “merely” writing music that’s appropriate to the scene. But that’s the problem with a contest that big: they almost feel compelled to choose a winner that’s NOT appropriate, just so it stands out.

Yours strikes me less as a “winning entry” than as the work of a professional doing his job well.

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Thanks!

I had a blast doing this and consider myself as a winner in the sense that I have made progress and done something new that I am proud of.

I knew I would not win but I don’t care. I learned a new thing that I liked so at the end of the day I just had lots of fun doing it with pro grade video footage, which is cool.

You are right with that many entries, it is hard to stand out but I did it the way I felt it. Like Alex Pfeffer said, you could make that score many days in a row and get a different result each time. So to please the juges that day, very hard…

Thanks a lot for taking the time to go listen to it and your kind works. Awesome! :slightly_smiling_face:

Best regards,

I’ll have to check out those libraries if they have guitar. Even if I’m a guitarist myself, I can get lazy and not want to spend the time dialing in the exact sound I want, plus, I can’t play in every style anyway :grinning: I’m naturally a Neo-calssical/symphonic metal player. Yeah, keep up the great work. I’d definitely like to hear more!

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I love this. You did a great job. Everything fits really well, well mixed and executed. I agree that the reverb could be shaped a little more. Perhaps just take the top end out of the EQ and it’s a good’n!

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Oh nice Matt! I like and play Metal guitar too! Did not took many lessons and lots of improvement possible but I like to come up with some new solos or riffs. I will definetly try to record some of those and use it in my MIDI compositions. It adds that touch of realism to a CPU made song. I have been wanting to record my guitar compositions since a long time but now I finaly can and will do it. Even if it is just bits of sound design or solos or short riff on a bigger song, it will still be cool to have played it myself.

This is another tip (to add your own musical part in a MIDI song) from Alex Pfiffer’s YouTube channel, which I really like. You can see his take on it with Boutique Drums Renegade demo song he made:

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