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Thoth's Amulet

Discussion in 'Critique & Feedback' started by Matthias Calis, Mar 7, 2018.

  1. #1 Matthias Calis, Mar 7, 2018
    Last edited: Mar 8, 2018
    We find ourselves on the shore of a strange, exotic land. Our hero has heard tales of a secret amulet hidden in one of the groves. It is said to be capable of great healing, even bringing back the dead! Our weary hero wishes to resuscitate his dangerously ill father and bravely he enters a dark, hidden cave, unsure of the terrors lurking there.

    He treads carefully, armed with only a torch and his wits. Tall shadows flicker across the rockface and it gets colder and colder as he advances. He notices a foul smell in the air and when he looks down, finds a scattering of bones strewn across the rock surface. His eyes trace the bones and...

    -Oh god! The most horrible monster you could imagine, large, smelly and with big huge teeth rears its ugly head and stares straight in the face of our hero. The hero gulps, retreats a pace, but then mans up and tries to scare off the monster by waving his torch. The monster merely smirks, a thick clod of drool lands on the floor. Looks like lunch has invited itself into his dark abode!

    Our hero bravely turns and flees while the monster gives chase. For just a moment it seems our lightfooted hero manages to outrun the great beast and has managed to hide. The beast paces around, the earth shaking under its feet. It lifts it head to sniff the air and-

    It is now or never! The hero bolts from cover, the monster roars, turns and gives chase, it's hot, primal breath filling the air with raging heat. It's close now. So close!

    Our hero scrambles up a small pile of rocks and leaps through a small hole in the rock, back out into the free, open air. The monster's claw reaches through the hole, but grasps naught but thin air.

    Our hero lives, but his heart is heavy with sorrow. He has failed to retrieve the amulet.

    ---
    This is the old mix, see bottom of post for updated mix


    ---

    I took a bit more of a storytelling approach to this piece and I am fairly pleased with the results. My only real concern is that some transitions might be too jarring and I also want to give the final mix some more love (I made it a bit too mono-ish I think. I was trying to go for a more 60's film score kind of sound... but I'll have to work on that).

    I'd be very happy to hear your thoughts on this piece. I feel like I've broken a bit of new ground for myself with this piece by daring to do a lot more dissonances and "effects" than I usually do. Totally stole the idea of using a tenor sax in an orchestral setting from Mr. Prokofiev (Kije suite), though I am sure he wasn't the first to use a sax in an orchestral setting. It's quite a beautiful instrument. Very warm and fuzzy!

    Anyway, I am rambling! Any and all comments are welcome. Happy listening!

    EDIT: I've spent a little more time on the mix. Here's the second version:

     
    Sylvain Provenzano and Paul T McGraw like this.
  2. #2 Paul T McGraw, Mar 7, 2018
    I liked the story. I was impressed with the emotion and descriptive aspects of the track. I was truly looking forward to listening to your track, and did so several times.

    The mix and sound quality are good, and the track fits your story admirably.

    Please forgive me for expressing a few concerns. I was a bit dismayed by a few things. I wanted a real melody. But I know melody is sort of out of fashion now. But I was also dismayed by the orchestration, particularly the brass. I played trombone from the time I was 9 years old until just a few years ago, but I never heard a real trombonist who would be capable of playing the line at 1:50. There are quite a few ridiculously hard gestures in the brass: horns, trumpets, and trombones. Still, I know you were after an effect, and I congratulate you on achieving some interesting effects. I have not seen a score, but I think the woodwind parts would also be extremely challenging. Since it is obviously just samples, that isn't much of an issue, but if you get the chance to have something performed by a real orchestra, something this challenging would take a lot of expensive rehearsal time.
     
    Matthias Calis likes this.
  3. #3 Matthias Calis, Mar 7, 2018
    Hi @Paul T McGraw, thank you for taking the time to listen. Your comments are extremely valuable to me, not in the least because the brass section is the one I feel the least confident (not just in this piece, but in general). With woods and strings I have passable to fairly intimate knowledge of the instruments (in that order, respectively).

    First things first. Melody. I did a little piano sketching with some melodic ideas and I have the material to possibly expand this composition further and get more into that. That said, melody is certainly an area I need to improve on. I find it incredibly hard to write a decent melody. Heck, I think I can say it is hard (I believe Mike has said so too at least a few times in his masterclasses: writing a solid, memorable melody that people hum to themselves while doing the dishes is one of the hardest things). My explanation for it not being in fashion would be two-fold. Number one: not many people have the chops to write good melodies. Number two: it's not "wanted" in the industry. In both film and games the direction I hear most often is that they kind of want the music to be there, but not really do anything... just some nice noise in the background basically. At any rate, thank you for reminding me to focus on melody. You're not the first to note this with my music by the way, so I am definitely keeping it in mind.

    Now the brass.

    Thanks for pointing out the difficulty of this if you hadn't told me it was insanely hard, I would never have known, so you're genuinely enriching my understanding with that comment. However, I am a bit in the dark as to what about it would make it challenging (talking about the descending figure at 1:50). My guess would be that moving down so fast would be very difficult because you have can't move the slide so fast and hit all the right pitches. If that's the issue, then I'd solve it by doing the descending line in parts. First two notes on muted tenor bones, 3rd and 4th note on muted bass bones, 5th note on a plain tuba. 6th and last note (sutaining) all in unison.

    Just a quick aside: I used the Hollywood Brass patch called "Low Brass Mute Staccato". The choice for the mute was deliberate because I was going for a "mean" sound. I just looked up in the manual what instruments are in the Low Brass ensemble I found this gem of a useful comment:

    Thanks very much East West. Oh well.

    Now of course I am not sure if I guessed correctly what the problem was, nor if my solution would work.

    If you could provide any more specific comments about the hard parts for the brass, that would be greatly appreciated. I have a few guesses (the trumpet playing low at 1:05, the stopped french horns at 0:50 maybe have to do a few too many notes). In the brass I did use quite a few pre-cooked effects (rips, clusters, etc), maybe some of those are arguably very difficult to perform?

    As for the woodwinds, I'd argue that most of it is fairly simple stuff. Just some single trills, some staccatos, a few very short legato lines. I am only a beginning clarinet player myself (like, just for a few weeks now, so I am very noobish), but I did try to take the amount of puff/air required into account. I think some parts might sound harder than they are on the page. When I am doing several bars of staccato low woods, I am alternating between the instruments so they rarely play for more than 2 bars in a row. The timing on that might be slightly difficult in a real performance, but it's just simple eights, so shouldn't be too hard for players to alternate between the even and odd notes.

    One more area where I think the woods might sound deceivingly complicated is at 0:46 with the high strings and flutes. All the flutes are doing is playing a staccato cluster. So if it's three flutes, they all play one note. Sure, it's high, but it's one short note for each player and they don't even have to get it right because it's more of an effect anyway.

    Don't get me wrong here, I totally understand your concerns and your comment is very helpful (and I'd be very happy to hear in greater detail what would make this complicate for the brass players). That said, I think I need to write the score out. Looking at my MIDI data I don't see anything particularly alarming... except for the strings, they have to do some really tough runs!

    Many thanks again for taking the time to listen and comment. I'll try to get a score written out! And you know, maybe I'll tack on the melodic ideas I had at the end :)

    EDIT: thank the lord I am attending Mike's brass class! :p
     
    Paul T McGraw likes this.
  4. #4 Paul T McGraw, Mar 7, 2018
    Yes, you nailed it. Trombones do not have valves, they have the slide, so they can never be as quick as a valved brass instrument. Trombone players practice scales of course, and learn to perform them fairly quickly. When you need something other than motion by scale, you need to give the bones a bit more time, otherwise it is going to just be a mess.

    Brass is very effective at playing fast repeated notes (double or triple tongue) and trumpets can play fairly fast scales. Horns are slightly less nimble than trumpets, and can be very tricky to hit the right pitch, as the overtone series is so close together on the horn. Horn rips sound great, but they hold several dangers. Ending on the correct pitch can sometimes be a challenge for a horn player, and it is very tiring.

    I am also looking forward to Mike's brass extravaganze! It should be fun.
     
  5. #5 Sylvain Provenzano, Mar 8, 2018
    Really nice piece, I love the ambient at the start which remind me this one from World Of Warcraft :



    The only thing that bothers me a little is that I can follow your story until 0:56 where I'm not sure if it's the discovery of the monster or the first flight and chase part. Anyway, after this point I can't really tell what's happening. I think (now I'm hearing @Mike Verta saying "When people start their sentence by 'I think'...") that this is because of a lack of energy and and contrast between suspens and action/chase part.

    Despite this, I love your orchestration and effects, great job.

    (disclaimer : I hope this is clear because I had to do some google translate to find my vocabulary)
     
    Matthias Calis likes this.
  6. #6 Kyle Judkins, Mar 9, 2018
    Glad you confirmed what I thought about trumpets vs horns.

    as far as bones, I've been using them for slower stuff, or when I have a big interval I want to slosh with a gliss-type legato. My rule have thumb(which may still be too quick) is playing with just my index finger - something I do for pitched percussion like glock/xylophone/marimba/ect. Or ofcourse like you said - chords with rhythmic elements to them same thing I use trumpets for.
     
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  7. #7 Matthias Calis, Mar 9, 2018
    Thank you for your feedback Sylvain. You're right, it is a bit difficult to tell. When I started this piece I had the basic story idea down (just to help me guide the music, the story itself is not very serious), but not the details. My idea was basically that a hero entered a cave, found a monster there, and fled. The rest of the story I more or less invented as I went along. The inspiration for doing things this way came from, of course, Mr. Verta and the way he structured the race. Regardless of my results I did find it very helpful to have a little story to help guide me, and I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't tried it yet.

    The translation is fine by the way and yes that opening to WoW is quite similar, good catch!
     
  8. #8 Alexander Schiborr, Mar 12, 2018
    Last edited: Mar 12, 2018
    Hej Matthias,
    Thanks for sharing your track. I also read the story which I quite like while listening to your piece which fits pretty good with the music. I would say the arrangement and this track falls very much into the category of underscore cue for a movie which would work.

    Now I forgot about your story and took a listen to your piece isolated as a standalone track:

    So, actually I don´t have a complain about what Paul said regarding a real melody. I think for such kind of music you did a solid job with the presented ideas there. My only concern sometimes is that the parts feel at times a bit like a collage of ideas. I mean, that is not wrong to do. You can definitely write a track containing like 3 -4 blocks of ideas and make something with it. But there is the point which I would try to work on a bit: According to your story you have a Hero who is facing different situations on his path and adventure, then there is the cave, the monster and his ill Dad. So first I would think really just about the story and its characters and what kind of motifs or bits of little pieces and gestures I would put to them. Sure the biggest part in your story line at that point is your hero exploring the cave finally facing the monster. So my approach would be to create a couple of short bits of melodic or non melodic themes on the piano first:

    1. Hero - A short thing which represents his character (how is the guy?)
    2. The Monster motif
    3. His ill Dad

    So this would be the first step for me to create a couple of short bits and pieces of ideas, needs not to be long.

    Then I would go into the story line trying to find importabt anchor points in the drama. One aspect is surerly his mission to safe his dads life, and so there is the fear and concerns if he will make it or not. I think that this is more important than any action there.
    So this is a burden and at the same time a test for life. So how does the hero feel with that? I think it is an uncomfortable feeling when you don´t if you will make it. And now comes the point to transport this aspect into a musical statement.

    A good analogy would be to see how JW did different themes for the main Hero Luke. There are themes which are heroic, then sad versions of it, and so on. This motif carries throughout the whole SW movie and appears and reflects the different stages of the main character. So in your piece and story you could think about that too and create versions of your main hero motif which battles the situations and drama of the situations of your story lione.

    Now later there is this scene with the monster and the chase. So there you could try to create versions of the hero motif and the monsters motif interacting with each other? I would try that, like a 4 notes of melody which are from the hero..then filling counterpoints bits of pieces coming from the monster, or something.

    Sure you don´t need to highlight every little thing in the story, but you should give yourself a few main achors which is important to the story and therefore you should reflect that musically. So this is not easy at all, but that is my thought which I am not so sure about your piece does that. So my approach would be a bit different in regards of what I musically tell. You know need a bit to decide what you want to "tell" musically, if you want to tell just the action or if you want also apart from the plot to tell the bits of emotions behind the action which imo is the more important factor.

    Hope that helps.
     
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  9. #9 Paul T McGraw, Mar 12, 2018
    @Alexander Schiborr your post seems like good advice in my opinion. And I should have used the words "melody or recurring motive" in my first post in this thread. Your analogy regarding the Luke theme (motive) certainly rang true to me.
     
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