Winter Solstice

Hi Malcolm, this is really impressive stuff!Very nice buildup throughout to keep it interesting.Excellent production with nice choice of instrumentation. Good job.

Greetings , Morenoise

The ethnic/ambient music fit the vid perfectly IMO!

I always enjoy a visual like this to accompany the soundscape.

I'm a big fan of this genre of music and thought it well composed/played!

Larry

Hi Larry and HeavyTRAFFIK - Sincere thanks for watching and so pleased you like it. It took quite a while to scour the net to find photos that fitted and were also free to use. I am definitely indebted to the photographers who were so generous with their talents. Hopefully if they ever see the video, they will not be too disappointed. Hopefully!

HeavyTRAFFIK - I think your observation is absolutely right. Same old problem I always have. I mix in HomeStudio and get the balance and level just as I want it (my Marian Marc 4 Midi soundcard does give me a wonderfully rich sound and my M-Audio Studiophile monitors are not bad at all for the price). I then publish the piece on the net and think that everyone is hearing what I hear. But of course they aren't. Last night I put the .wav file onto a CD in preparation for my annual gift CD to my Druid friends and then played it on my CD player. Dreadful! Oh well, looks like I have some work to do!

Best Regards
Malcolm

Hi Guitarhacker - You are totally right. My speakers are also the cheap end of the market. My Bank Manager won't let me have anything else!
 
And a very happy Saturnelia, Solstice, Yule, Christmas and every other festival of this time of the year to you. We Celts never miss a chance of a good party! The current weather forecast for my little Isle off the southern coast of England for the forthcoming week suggests I will need Snow Shoes to get up the hill to the celebrations. Bet I get down the hill a lot faster than I get up!

Best Regards
Malcolm

lovely peice!....I could forgo the video and just close my eyes and the music painted an awesome picture!!

+1 on the volume...

great job!!!

Merry Christmas!

Nothing wrong here (Event 20/20s) nice spread across the spectrum.  The drum throbs wonderfully.

Thanks for sharing.

This is amazingly perfect. Great job with the textures. Your timing is impaccable too.

hey malcolm
excellent tune dude, as a fan of black/pagan metal, i hear a lot of this type of music on interludes, i wish it was all as good as this though! the tune is recognisably celtic but in almost a RVW way, so it has a more romantic chord base. excellent stuff. as far as the volume goes, once your mix is as you want it, export, then reimport the stereo file to a new project and use eq/compression/limiter to increase the volume as you want. if you have a good Christmas/SOlstice present, and have a bit of cash, the new Steven Slate limiter http://www.slatedigital.com/fgx.php is supposed to be one of the best at increasing volume transparently, which may be just what you need for orchestral music.
however, on a tighter budget http://www.jeroenbreebaart.com/ are free!

Wow...this is very nice.  The pictures are beautiful, but like others have said, the music paints a great picture too.  :-) 

that was nice! I was mesmerized watching the video, music fit perfectly!  6 layers of clothes and it was still cold? Had to be a fun trip anyway.  Thanks for comments on "Abandoned Orphanage"!  mike

Very nice Malcolm, it really is a just a lean back and close your eyes piece! May I ask what Soft Synths you are using? And by the way I tried it both ways, headphones and speakers, still sounded GREAT!

Rick

This is outstanding, Malcolm. I love the way it flows and builds.

The pictures are nice but I get cold just looking at them.

The music, however, is perfect.

Thanks for the Soft Snyth info Malcolm, I have had a tune haunting my brain for a while and it get's a bit out of wack when you load a Snyth and it has 150 not usefull to start with presets, and six that have potential. Thanks again for sharing!

Rick

Hi Daryl - Very many thanks for listening and so pleased you liked it. Michigan? January? Shiver! I have a Jazz singer friend who lives in Michigan so I do know exactly what you mean. Perhaps you might want to watch / listen to my Summer Solstice piece to warm you up (the music has just been used as background for a local environmental charity video)! The only problem with the Solstices is that with one you are looking forward to Spring but shivering and the other enjoying the Summer but knowing winter is not far away! Oh for that tropical island! I see you have just posted a new piece. Must now dash to listen.

Rick - I know exactly what you mean. Wading through all those odd sounds and by the time you have found one that is faintly usable you have forgotten why you were searching! You might also want to try Roland Groovesynth Fantasia, Psycho Pad and Crystal. I use these quite a lot for backing.

Best Regards
Malcolm

Vechung - Sincere thanks and so pleased you like this piece. Your mix description is exact and reflects I suppose the coming together of much of the music I was writing in 2010. Certainly the Irish / Celtic / Druid and Native American reflects a Handfasting I wrote the music for (which also had to include Hare Krishna!) as well as the similarity of beliefs of the two Cultures. As for the Chinese, I love the emotion of the erhu and dizi and just could not resist including them. Fortunately my Druid friends did like it and have asked for more. There are eight Celtic festivals to the Druid Year so it looks like there could be a Suite coming on!

Best Regards
Malcolm