<Original> Rarity Battle Theme - Big City Underground

[Pashoo]

Okay, so I'm pretty much done with it this time around! I'm still up for som balancing/soundfont suggestions/last minute changes, and general critique. Hopefully, I made the piano part jazzy enough, cause that's what I was going for and if it doesn't sound jazzy enough I'm probably gonna cry okay anyway

http://soundcloud.com/tallgrass/big-city-underground-1

Also, learning to reverb is hard ._.

[Whitetail]

Around 4 seconds that bass roll seems a bit unnatural, maybe do an arpeggio instead? It's much easier to do a quick succession with an arpeggio on piano then it is to hit a single note multiple times

The piano is a little thin but it doesn't sound too bad (it's lacking in the mid and low end, but that's pretty normal for free pianos as far as I've seen), when the other instruments start coming in though.....
Yeah you should really look into some sound improvements.

I don't know what you're using but from what I hear (I don't use soundfonts myself) these are pretty good orchestral sounds:
http://the-filmmusic-group.deviantart.c ... -224143947

-When the Flute comes in it's really, really weak and hard to hear - also it's articulation sounds rather unnatural
-Honestly I'd suggest changing the electric guitar to something else, fake electric guitar never tends to sound very good.
-The string sounds aren't too bad really, they're not amazing but they are workable - same with the brass.
-The drums could use a lot of work. If you need some better Drum and Bass samples I could send you some, but most drum samples come in Wav format - from what I've seen most soundfont drums are very weak in general, if you have a drum sampler like Battery or something it's much easier to work directly with the audio files, I tend to just work things with the audio directly using audio tracks when it comes to drums. The drums just feel almost nonexistant aside from the snare through most of the song, they should be a bit more in your face, a bit more driving - for the jazzy effect you don't need them like RIGHT in your face like DnB drums normally would (I've noticed a lot of DnB and Breakbeat influence in the drums, it's really neat and goes pretty well with the sound) but some more presence to drive the song could definitely help.


But man the composition on this is done really well, all the attention to detail is done really well (as a bassist someone who pays attention to writing a good bass line is me gusta, so much). You've definitely hit the mark on jazziness. Really the only complaint I have on the piece is the mixing, which honestly a lot of it isn't your fault if this is mainly free resources, since they tend to be a bit thin in general.



As for Reverb:

Effect loops man, they work wonders.
Basically in whatever your music program is you set up an Auxiliary track, put EQ on it and EQ out the low ends and then put your reverb plugin with the mix at 100% wet after that.

Now from here take the tracks that need reverb (generally the higher something is, the more reverb it'll need - most of the time the bass or the kick drum have very, very little reverb since low frequencies muddy up the sound) and using FX sends bus them to the auxiliary track.

So what does this do?

Well for one it has your whole track running on one Reverb plugin, thus saving processing (really nice if you're using some fancy reverb like convulsion reverb which tends to use more CPU).

But the real benefit is that because the reverb is an FX send, the clean sound of the un-reverbed instrument is still coming through as it would before with the wet reverb sound playing behind it. This way it doesn't sacrifice clarity like using reverb normally does (the more you turn up the mix, the less clear it becomes if you just put the reverb directly on the instrument track - because it's on a separate channel entirely we don't need the clean signal coming through it, hence the 100% mix).

[Matthew N.]

Battle Theme? Wait... is this going to be sent to Mane6 for Fighting is Magic?

[Whitetail]

Battle Theme? Wait... is this going to be sent to Mane6 for Fighting is Magic?

No - I can tell you that directly myself haha

Though I really do like the vibe going on here and I am taking notes from other people hehe

[Matthew N.]

Battle Theme? Wait... is this going to be sent to Mane6 for Fighting is Magic?

No - I can tell you that directly myself haha

Though I really do like the vibe going on here and I am taking notes from other people hehe

Well... I liked it. Didn't hurt to ask.

Anyway, did I mention that I love your creative input into Fighting is Magic? No? Well, now I did! <3 Pull some strings around so we'll get the main 6 chars out before July!

[Pashoo]

So many helpful words.

I'm sure I could work that in I am gonna learn so hard.

Thanks for giving me so much feedback at once! All I'm using at the moment is stuff that came with FruityLoops and what little soundfonts I've scavenged on shady websites across the internet. But it's good I'm not the only one bothered by the flute. I'm definitely in need of some good drums and bass, though, so you'd be the most amazing person in the world if you sent some samples. Also, I'm definitely going to look into Battery if it's going to help.

Anyways, as for reverb, I had about 11 different reverb generators running at once and I couldn't run through the orchestral line without my comp dying every two seconds, so putting it all on one bus would probably help. A lot. I also simply didn't put any reverb on the bass, but I never considered reducing the bass in EQ so that reverb wouldn't sound muddy. Do you think I could adjust Lowcut, instead, though? In any case, I'm definitely going to work this over, and hopefully get a better sound by the end.

btw, do you think the French Horn and Trombones/tuba sound alright? I know the trumpet is kinda trashy. I was gonna record the entire brass section, myself, but my mic pretty terrible.

Fighting is Magic?

And then I realized it was THAT Whitetail.


EDIT: Jesus Christ, I just learned to auxiliary track and what's going on