Genre/Style: Cinematic style epic track for intended use in media.
Creative Vision for the Track: I wanted to continue my exploration into writing themes using barebones material; orchestrating and arranging on top of the simple ideas, exploring layering and thickening and deepening the sound experience. I set the music to some scenes from Akira to give an idea of how the music could translate to big screen.
Composition Details (Tempo, Key, Main Chords etc): The time signature is 5/4 to give that exciting cinematic pump. All of the music is derived from the opening melodic sequence of four notes. There are only 3 chords really; G-, C- and D, a typical i - iv - V, exploring inversions rather than new material.
Main Instruments used: All made in Logic Pro X using East West Quantum Leap Stromdrum 3, Silk and Ra for the eastern sounds and Symphonic Orchestra for the strings. An Arturia DX7 (one of my favs) mskes an appearance along with teh awesome Alchemy synth for the electronic sounding parts.
Ah, Akira, a classic! Pretty well composed and I liked the idea of doing different inversions of the same harmony. Good theme as well. To my ears, I would have added a little more bass frequency and just cut the very high freqs a tiny bit more as the woodwinds sounded a bit too bright to me. I’m assuming that was an oboe or English horn there, which I know are brighter sounding to begin with. Overall, great job!
Hey! Great to listen to your work. I enjoyed your piece. I have a bit of feedback for you if that is ok
Firstly, I really enjoyed the themes and I think you did a great job in telling a story with the music. Your orchestration did most of the iWork in this aspect. Really well done as I personally think that’s the hardest bit of orchestration. There’s lots of ways you can orchestrate big very few that hold to a specific narrative.
A few things I noticed that you may be able to improve on, I’ll bullet point them so that it is easier for you to read.
The mix was a bit off… it seemed to weight more towards the huge drums which were quite impactful but didn’t have much weight (sub). Pulling them down in the mix and adding an 808 would really beef it up and help your drums fit better.
your melodic writing and instrument choices were really good but overall the melody wasn’t really supported by the orchestra as much as it could have been. Doubling more parts and focusing on the 3rd or 7th degree of the chord in areas would really bring this piece to life.
I can hear that your realism isn’t too bad but it could do with being more expressive… this was due to the lack of dynamic variation in the track… or at least within the parts themselves.
There were a few other things I noticed but these were the things I thought you could focus on in your next pieces
I hope these scribbling help you.
I really enjoyed listening to your piece. Well done!
Hey man thanks for the comments; a nice juicy list for me to consider and get better over. Thank you so much!
In response to the 3rd and 7th issue; I actually deliberately avoided all 7ths to force myself to think triadically. I play jazz so I’m always crawling around the extensions. I wanted to get out of it for this composition; a hard task may I add.
Really cool you are into jazz, keep that up I’d try not to avoid using extensions though… extensions are the flavour you add to your piece. I would also hesitate in viewing 7ths as extensions. Obviously they are and it’s good to know that, but the mindset for 7ths is healthier when you view them like a third degree of the chord. The third degree of a chord gives identity to the chord, it determines weather the triad is a major or minor. Well the 7th does that too to a degree. So it’s good to use them but understand when and how to use them.
In classical harmony the 7th is viewed as a leading tone also. Often it rises up to the tonic creating tension, followed by resolution. This is the most important aspect of modern Neo classical writing strategies. There are obviously other extensions you can use but the emphasis is on counterpoint and part writing. This is what separates classical from big band, simply the way we use the tools given to us (notes).
Really looking forward to seeing what you do next!
I completely understand your point however; my intention was to deliberately avoid anything above the root triad to explore simple triadic sounds rather than the usual improvisational axis reharmonisation I do on the spot when Improvising on something like ‘Darn that Dream,’ or ‘Tangerine.’ (Victor Young not Led Zepplin.)
Deliberately simple; deliberately in a new way for me. Deliberately avoided the colours to explore only the root triads.
