06-03-2019, 08:58 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-04-2019, 09:46 AM by Mattias Westlund.)
One year later and I'm back to working on this project. Still very much unfinished and full of placeholder guitars and parts that just stop abruptly in places. But I've decided to weave in some more orchestral elements, which is... challenging to say the least. The "metal with orchestra" thing has come up before here on the forum so let me touch on a few observations I've made over the past few days.
- As long as there's distorted guitars, bass and drums playing, basically all orchestral instruments in the low register are useless. At best they contribute barely anything to the overall sound, at worst (and more likely) they'll just be adding a lot of mud and rumble.
- Don't use samples that are too polite. They need a little bite to be able to cut through the mix, otherwise you might as well just use a synth pad.
- Super-detailed instruments are generally a waste of time unless they have a more exposed part. The nuances will just disappear when everything is playing anyway.
- Worrying about realistic reverb for different sections and solo instruments is also pretty much a waste of time. I found that simply slapping a single reverb on the entire orchestra works better than having separate Z-axis busses like I normally do.
- Limiting yourself to a few select instruments to convey the illusion of an orchestra playing in the background makes more sense than piling things on.
