The Miracle of Life

Wow... very good job. Very nice piece. Really
enjoyed this one. I was in another place while
listening. Very soothing and relaxing and definitely
a change of pace for me anyways.... lol.

Best Regards,
Pluto

Thanks for the flattery guys...

That scale you hear is one that's common in Scottish traditional music - it's similar to Asian scales.

Also, I've just had permission from the author to reproduce the poem (see first post in the thread).

Well done! I think my favorite spot was maybe spring(?), at around 5:30 where the flute combined with the beginning music.

Thank you! I'm proud of that bit; it's meant to be a lark heralding spring. Maybe a bit cliché, but I'm not smart enough to do anything other than cliché

Couple of very small observations as I listened: a chord change just after 2:00 or so had something not quite right to my ears in passing; maybe a wrong note at 1:41 or so (maybe these are just Ed's dissonances, though!);

Ah. It's actually a progression from B flat major 7th, to D minor, then A flat to F major. The A flat to F major thing (and back again) can give a sense of unease (see Star War's Darth Vader theme tune) - which is why I used to it. Perhaps a little to dischordant, though..

At 2:00 though, I think you may be right. Perhaps I should leave the solo violin hanging over the top of the chord change to give a sense of continuity. It'll have to wait a while though - I have, as we say in Scotland 'knocked my pan out' over the couple of days on this piece!

the pauses at 2:30 needed eliding across sooner, maybe -- though you did it not too long after I noticed this, so it might be just fine.

I agree. But tempo rubato is difficult to achieve in Sonar: to my mind at least, injecting lots of tempo changes quickly gets messy. To get a natural feel for the lark's voice (the flute), I had to simply just turn off the metronome, forget about quanitisation and just play it solo out. This works best I find with individual instruments, but very difficult to do with an ensemble, though.

The best way to get a natural feel and timing of course, would be to get a real chamber orchestra. Not that that's terribly likely to happen!

The change in piano timbre and panning at the very end sounded odd to me, and the ending might be a little stronger in general, possibly.

Yes. I feel the harp and the piano out to switch panning positions at the end. However, I haven't worked out how to create envelopes for individual instruments inside GPO yet.

And now I think about it, the last part does need a bit of motion to it. It's about spring; vivacity and reawakening. Perhaps some arpeggiated viola/violin to give a bit of movement?

All these just tiny things that might help if you're still polishing, nothing important; the piece works extremely well just as it is.

Thanks. And I appreciate your criticisms; this kind of thing makes you think about the music you create.

You probably already know this

I didn't

and still feel it's messy

I don't

sonar offers to my mind very good control of tempo changes! Go to the 'tempo window' (view - tempo), turn off the quantization button, zoom in so you are only looking at 4 or 5 measures, then use the pencil tool to draw tempo changes.

I'll bear that in mind. Thanks, Gugliel!

ORIGINAL: Paul Russell

Gee Angus, I wish I could get GPO to sound this good.

Thanks Paul.

I almost never use the ensemble strings; not that there's nothing wrong with them, but I find the solo instruments give the music a nice chamber orchestra feel. And the harps just sound superb.

It's a very beautiful piece of music, worlds away from the dance material that I've heard from you (not that there's anything wrong with the dance stuff, just that this is far more complex, melodic and intriguing.)

I prefer writing this kind of stuff; it feels more natural. I don't have to spend hours and hours on production, the sound is just there - all I need to do is write the notes down. Much simpler, and it allows me to concentrate on what to say.

Cheers

Just streamed your work and listened through WMP w/the classical EQ preset. Amazing sound for software. You certainly can train it to do your bidding. I have dial up and while buffering the piece I was able to review the posts and I must say when I read the Scottish traditional remark I was stoked to hear it. Could hardly wait for the selection to finish buffering. Pure movie soundtrack material, IMO. If you could get a chamber orchestra to do this it would be most excellent. 5 stars out of 5 from someone who isn't that classically oriented, but still has ears to hear.

ORIGINAL: gugliel

Listened to the ending again -- could it be that you've remixed, and messed up your balances slightly?

I tinkered a bit..

I didn't really touch the reverb as such, but that reverb's chained to a delay which I did change, so rather than delay going left->right, now it's more centred.

Now the piano and harp come out clearly, but the flute is a little lost in it all.

I thought long and hard about this.

When introducing Spring at the end, the lark song (flute) is at the fore, and then when the other elements of Spring emerge, the music shifts focus from the lark to the solo violin melody. The solo violin describes the buds of flowers opening, and the green shoots appearing through the ground. So necessarily, the flute does get a little lost in it all, it in effect becomes just 'bird chatter' in the background.

This was especially important to bear in mind when adding the pizzicato contrabass and harp at the end. They're meant to suggest the light rain on the newly unfurled leaves.

With all these things going on, putting all the instruments to the fore would be like several people trying to tell you different things at once - and so everything would just become 'bird chatter' in effect.

Of course, the great thing about Sonar and GPO is you can test your hypotheses out - I did exactly that. And putting the lark closer to the listener was detrimental to the other parts, which have something new to say; the lark song has already made it's opening statement, but still exists to serve as a continuity of thought as well add texture.

Still good music, but maybe, if my equipment is honest, still another mix needed.

[edit] still had the original version on my disk -- and compared them: you have changed the reverb so that it is shorter, but stronger --- the long, quiet reverb worked pretty well without over-coloring anything. The new one, maybe, has become too muddy.

I'll see what others say. I honestly can't hear any muddiness on my own set-up, but it may well be that I'm wrong.