Blending cinematic orchestral cinematic music with metal

[sayan]

Hey everyone,

So, the people I know has been edging me on for a while advising me to share the music I make and I finally decided to comply. I uploaded a couple of tracks and I would love to hear what you guys think.

The first one is dark cinematic orchestral track in the lines of epic music infused with metal. Apart from the guitars and bass, all other instruments are from sample libraries, including the vocals.




 


I did all the mixing and mastering as well, so, any thoughts on how those aspects of production are will be helpful. If you feel there are avenues I can improve upon, please let me know so that I can improve the next time around. If you have ideas for making the videos better, that will be helpful as well.

Thanks,
Sayan



PS. I still am cringing at the 'artist' name but I had to pick one as my real name is too common to use

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This is the second track, more in the lines of hybrid trailer music infused with metal. Synths and weird noises, orchestral strings and epic trailer drums with guitar chugs for good measure






Let me know what you think.

Thanks

[Paul Battersby]

Glad you decided to share these tracks. I like what you've done. Any mix between orchestral and rock instruments tends to interest me I especially like the way your first track develops as the music progresses without being over orchestrated. It builds nicely. Also, I think your artist name suits the style of the music and is memorable.

[sayan]

(07-30-2020, 07:26 PM)Paul Battersby Wrote: Glad you decided to share these tracks. I like what you've done. Any mix between orchestral and rock instruments tends to interest me I especially like the way your first track develops as the music progresses without being over orchestrated. It builds nicely. Also, I think your artist name suits the style of the music and is memorable.

Thank you Paul .

[Chris Spyratos]

Good stuff! I like both of them! They remind me of my dreams as a young metal composer-guitarist! Thanks for sharing them! Care to share which VSTs you used?

Now for my thoughts and suggestions:
The fast string parts tend to sound a little fake, maybe try another patch or a staccato patch for those. Tremolo strings sometimes works too. Combining different patches also helps. (The slow strings are top btw!)

The frequency sweeps on the first track sound a bit sterile to me, especially since they are used more than once. Some distortion effect could help I believe.

The vocal parts sound a bit on the fakey side. I would drench them in reverb or if I am able, fine tune their ADSR.

The epic frame drums although interesting sound a bit out of place. I would try a different reverb.

As for the mixing, I can only comment that through my desktop speakers that I'm using to listen now the result is fairly decent.

[sayan]

(07-31-2020, 11:07 AM)Chris Spyratos Wrote: Good stuff! I like both of them! They remind me of my dreams as a young metal composer-guitarist! Thanks for sharing them! Care to share which VSTs you used?

Now  for my thoughts and suggestions:
The fast string parts tend to sound a little fake, maybe try another patch or a staccato patch for those. Tremolo strings sometimes works too. Combining different patches also helps. (The slow strings are top btw!)

The frequency sweeps on the first track sound a bit sterile to me, especially since they are used more than once. Some distortion effect could help I believe.

The vocal parts sound a bit on the fakey side. I would drench them in reverb or if I am able, fine tune their ADSR.

The epic frame drums although interesting sound a bit out of place. I would try a different reverb.

As for the mixing, I can only comment that through my desktop speakers that I'm using to listen now the result is fairly decent.

Hey,
Thanks for the input. You are right, the short notes should have been spiccatos. They sound slighty sloppy as they are actually staccatissimos.
The vocals are from a Kontakt library, so technically they are a bit fake . I'll try increasing the reverb amount.

Thanks

[Mattias Westlund]

Glad to have you here at last, Sayan!

Production/mixing-wise, I think the A Cradle for the Sleepless would benefit from louder guitars. I kept waiting for this big BRAAAAAAGH moment when the metal part kicks in, but it ends up sounding far too timid. Come What May feels more coherent but it's also less orchestral so there's no big jump between two styles.

From a songwriting perspective, I think both tracks are too short and feel more like intros than proper finished compositions. I would say you have great musical ideas but not enough of them. I suggest sticking with this style of hybrid music (since you obviously have a knack for it!) but exploring your ideas further, adding variations on existing themes as well as completely new parts. Just repeating the same basic idea with increasingly larger instrumentation isn't a composition per se.

Then again, take this with a grain of salt since I'm not super knowledgeable about the whole epic/cinematic thing

[sayan]

(08-05-2020, 11:03 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote: Glad to have you here at last, Sayan!

Production/mixing-wise, I think the A Cradle for the Sleepless would benefit from louder guitars. I kept waiting for this big BRAAAAAAGH moment when the metal part kicks in, but it ends up sounding far too timid. Come What May feels more coherent but it's also less orchestral so there's no big jump between two styles.

From a songwriting perspective, I think both tracks are too short and feel more like intros than proper finished compositions. I would say you have great musical ideas but not enough of them. I suggest sticking with this style of hybrid music (since you obviously have a knack for it!) but exploring your ideas further, adding variations on existing themes as well as completely new parts. Just repeating the same basic idea with increasingly larger instrumentation isn't a composition per se.

Then again, take this with a grain of salt since I'm not super knowledgeable about the whole epic/cinematic thing

Haha.. good to be here. Finally, I got myself to stop procrastinating and signed up.

I actually try to keep the track lengths to about two minutes as that's what I have seen the attention span of most people tend to be, but you are right and I am going work on it more actively. I write variations and then remove them as the tracks tend to become long. At the end I just end up using the 'formula' for cinematic trailer music. I guess I need to find some form of neutral ground between both.

How do I get things to sound huge without muddying everything up? Way too many instruments fighting for the same frequency range. Panning helps to a certain degree but I generally refrain from drastic eq-ing. Taking the route of mixing metal with added orchestral elements doesn't help much either as the strings get lost in the mix and the bass builds up on one side.

[sayan]

So, this is a new one which is more along the lines of traditional epic trailer music with a hint of rock. Let me know what you guys think, specially the mix.

[Mattias Westlund]

(08-06-2020, 09:01 AM)sayan Wrote: I actually try to keep the track lengths to about two minutes as that's what I have seen the attention span of most people tend to be

If you're aiming for the attention span of "most people", you're working in the wrong genre

[Mattias Westlund]

Per Aspera suffers from much the same issue as the other tracks; it starts out very atmospheric, building up to something truly epic, but it never really takes off. All that happens is that more instruments get added while the same basic idea repeats over and over (and then whimpers and comes to a stop). I'd like to hear key changes, modulation, variation!

You have great melodic ideas and much better sample libraries than I have. Use this to your advantage!