The Captain's Revenge

Hi Benjamin,

I'm stuck in a Hotel in London at the moment, so I could only listen on a portable and rather dubious JBL Bluetooth speaker, so I can't really comment on the samples/mix etc.

However, musically, I liked it - I liked it a lot. I've listened to it three times now. It's very evocative and both your composition and orchestration told me exactly where I was. I started out trying to listen to it critically, and very quickly just gave up because I was enjoying it so much.

From the first bars I was on the high seas chasing after that pillock pirate captain, and then I was being melancholy whilst the sun was setting on the starboard bow - that is until Captain Jack Dickhead turned up to ruin the the evening and we ended up having a bit of a contretemps. Your music told me a story - it might have been a different story from the one you were trying to tell - but it was still a great story.

Some of Mike's classes you can download (others your can't - not sure why) but the ones you can I stuff onto my iPhone and I listen to them whilst travelling. Funnily enough today I was listening to the class on structure - and then listening to this piece reinforced much of what he was saying.

If that were one of my pieces, I would be pretty damned pleased about it. Congratulations.

(P.S. Actually I'm going to ask Mike about the download thing - as I would love to listen to the Horner class whilst travelling - and its one of the ones you can't download.

 

Ok, from the ones I have the following are not downloadable:

Virtuosity
Counterpoint 1
On Horner
The Mod Squad

Cheers, Mike.

 

Nothing wrong here, man. There were certain parts I wished were different but that's personal taste, not a critique on your composition.

Really nice work, sir. I hope to be half this good someday.

 

Think big and apply for the next PoC movie! Your theme has a more upbeat and thrilled feel to it which very well could be used for newer generation pirates last movie introduced. Why not, right?

 

Ha! I saw you talking about "Mike's Masterclasses" and thought of the website "Mike's Masterclasses" - the Jazz Guitar tutorial one. So for a second I was expecting a big epic Howard Roberts tribute.

I really shouldn't discover forums before I've had any coffee.

 

I love this! Composition-wise, I think it's good. I know it's been a year since you wrote this but nonetheless. I was with it from start, you told your story clearly, I can imagine the whole thing. That's great, I personally favor motif-based writing. I felt that the middle part was a bit weak, but it's not the melody that's bad, it's clear, simple and sits nicely, I just don't think you sent it across as strongly as you did the main one, so that could be an orchestration issue. Given how big you go in the finale, I don't think you should be too scared to make a little stronger point here. Unless this is exactly what you aimed for and "what the picture needed"

Technically, I'm finding the horn(s) at 2:20 out of place, it sounds too close and muddy compared to everything else, and then proceeds to move from almost middle to left-middle.

Also, I'm missing the oomph in the finale, some lower end. Either double basses or a tuba, doubled on contrabassoon. I can't find them, they might be buried in the mix, but given their nature, they should be discernible by their lower end. I'm just missing something to carry that finale and to tell me what it is exactly. Is it moving or is it kind of just open and grand and staying in the place? It could be be either of those things given how you wrote the horns and bones there, but I just don't know which one is it, or if it's both and interchanging, and find myself constantly juggling between the two. So bring that lower end out!

So to sum it up, just some technical bits which I'm sure you'd do differently today. Composition-wise, here I am writing this slightly-longer comment and humming the main melody

 

Came out wrong, man....I didn't mean that I'd do anything differently, I'm nowhere near your level. There were some things that just surprised me, was what I meant to say.....I thought it'd go like 'this' and you took it in a different direction.

Not predictable, for me anyway. That's a good thing!

 

No problem! If you want different instrument sections to cut through, you could try automating a +/- 1-2db dips at 1.8 - 3.2 kHz on conflicting ones. Find your "living" region in there and boost it slightly on the horns for the quieter part that you'd like to cut through more, and do the opposite on whatever is sitting in that range. It seems trivial but it helps, and as long as you do both steps, it won't deform the sound too much, and to a layman ear it'll only be "I hear horns better here", since you're effectively giving a 3-4db of space to that region for horns. Then simply mask the automation of the EQ back to normal along the dynamic change, or even leave it if it helps (depends on the mix).

This is also where stereo placement helps a lot, which I wrote about in another thread.

There's a neat plug-in by iZotope, Neutron. While slightly pricey. It's pretty CPU efficient and has crosstalk across the session, and it includes a masking meter which shows conflicting frequencies across tracks to help you EQ away the clutter in dense areas. Of course, it's all a matter of ear training and practice and you don't really need it, but it can be helpful to people who aren't very experienced in mixing, since it'll save you a lot of headaches and time. It's a full channel strip and overall sounds really lovely. Its multiband transient shaper is godlike. It also has its own spectral shaping that you can define which applies across all instances (if On) and will, in that way, add some "glue" to the overall mix.