"Dullaby"? That's on soundclick for sure... you should be able to download it from there, too!
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12113217Thank you and greetings to your family!
As for writing an orchestral piece, well...there are several dimensions to this problem, many of which I'm just starting to explore more carefully, but at least I'm aware of them:
- instrument groups and their arrangement on a stage (placement, relative distance to each other and the "audience")
- natural volume balance between instrument groups and solo instruments, for example, to maintain a natural impression. (I'm still sloppy with that, too)
- choice for playing styles, intensities, how strong or soft would one group have to play to give room to another
- natural frequency ranges of groups to figure out which instruments could play together without battling each other
- picking the right instrument groupings to create a certain sound together in case of unisono passages, even using certain percussive sections to control where the perceived melody hovers or lays. (Easy "trick" is to have glockenspiel support the lead melody, for example!)
- understanding chord structures and separation of notes as well as maintaining consistency throughout progressions within movements. (Gregor just taught me "never" to change the amount of notes used for a chord within one movement, for example.)
Although you can get quite far with any decent set of instrument sounds, it's naturally best to have some good ones. I had always been really modest about those things, mostly because I preferred to make electronica, using my own synth sound designs or even my own synths, haha. But lately I've discovered the bigger libraries and am awestruck by their stunning qualities.
I bought Native Instrument's Komplete Audio 6, which comes with Kontakt player amongst other things and the sounds that exist for Kontakt are phenomenal. Some of these libraries, though, are sickeningly expensive, even if it makes perfect sense, considering the amount of work and effort that goes into them, but...eh... unless you do this professionally or have just too much money, they are kind of unreasonable to get. Some, though, are still within reason from vendors like Spitfire or 8dio.
Uh, I'm listening to "Dawn" right now! Very nice, but very, very, very dense! It's a good idea to keep a keen eye on the frequencies saturated by the instruments to figure out where to EQ them into their own space. You have a lot of them on top of each other in the mids to lower mid range, which drowns the mix considerably. Let it breathe a little! This is also about the choice of notes. Sometimes you can shift octaves to make room for each instrument to shine, you know. If you have them all piled up, it just gets muddy. That goes for orchestral pieces as well!
"That's why" is running. You have a very pleasant sense harmonically and melodically. Very enjoyable, even if you tend to push "the wrong" sounds every now and then(0:45 suddenly this bizarre invader hackles the whole song until the break)... you have a thing for mids, don't you!?
I really enjoy a good dream trance, too, by the way! Don't make them much, though...why ever.
"Voice of my soul" very sweet! String sounds are tough, especially if they only come in forte-fortissimo or what ever that is, besides them being...eh...kind of harshly simple. It might've been a little more effective, if you pushed the base stuff into the center and instead take the strings and all to the sides, or pick a side for the strings and a side for the synth base. I can't tell entirely, but I think it suffers mostly from the quality of the string sounds, really...
"Who knows" ...there's a lot of very, very pleasant stuff going on. But your tendency to have this S U P E R W I D E pad synths filling up the stereo really choke any mix to death, no matter how nice the rest may be. By the way, this one I really, really like! Has something of the freedom after a defeat of sorts...I find this kind of scenario quite liberating. (Ouch, there was a little painful slip up, hehe)
Soooo, but before I go through all your tracks with critics, I'll sum it up as in: Y E A H !!! That's so cool to have another passionate musican with us here, too! Coolest!
...I keep listening to your tracks! (need a dancing smily now!)
Wed Feb 18, 2015 11:46 pm 
Always amazed by the musical creation! 
THANK YOU! 
