Shameless Self-Promotion...

[Ken Dickerman]

I'd love to hear some feedback from everyone on what i've been working on so far.

[Palmer G. Pattison]

Great mood pieces. Most would make decent scores. "Honor on the Field" reminds me of Final Fantasy VII. Didn't much like the sax on "Sam." I'd probably end up using some dynamic compression if I were to use one of these, especially "Redemption" and "Score 2."

[Keith Handy]

Compositionally, these sound good. I'd agree with PGP about the sax... it sort of screamed "I am a keyboard". With some effects (reverb, delay) and/or expression (mod/pitch wheel, etc.) you could probably breathe (no pun intended) some more life into it. Similar for brass and strings; unless they're sketches meant to be played by live players, they should be dirtied up a bit.

[Ken Dickerman]

well, this is just ideas that I have for a movie that i'm working on with a friend right now. I have a bunch of friends in the music dept. who are going to be doing live recording with me. (especially the sax! ; I don't care what anyone says, there's no such thing as a "good sax synth"!) Trust me, the only reason they sound like this is because I am currently limited in what I have available for sound and money. I only have what GarageBand gives me and what I can record on a mic and that's it.

[Keith Handy]

I recently saw an ad for a new sax emulation softsynth (don't recall the name of it), boasting about how incredibly real it sounded -- well, I found the demo samples on their site almost insulting, because in every case it was drenched in reverb and buried in a really loud backing track. So they were basically saying, "uh, you might get away with using our product if you hide it well enough." Thanks, move along.

As for strings, I remember reading an interview with John Paul Jones where he said the only way to do a good string section with a keyboard is to do one line at a time -- and I've read other people's recommendation that if you're on a budget, to use one or two real stringed instruments in combination with using a keyboard for the remaining lines -- I suppose it depends on the part. I always use Mellotron samples for strings now, because I love that vintage-y sound. I figure if it's gonna sound fake, I'd rather it sound "vintage fake" than "1980s fake". :)

[Ken Dickerman]

I just started playing around with the mod and pitch wheels on my oxygen 8 keyboard. Hopefully they'll give me a little extra for the strings and woodwinds. I tried it with the sax and it actually sounded a bit more realistic. at least more realistic than playing perfectly smooth notes. :) thanks for the advice.