The choir has been added to this rough mix. With the exception of the strings, everything is pretty much mono right now. I thought that this might be a good contrast as the piece progresses to hear how much difference panning can make on an orchestral piece. The EW libraries and to some extent the KH library comes “pre-panned”, but for this piece I’m using primarily SAM orchestral brass, SampleModeling Trumpet and Westgate Studios Woodwinds, which aren’t pre-panned.

One thing I like to do is to bus all the individual sections to their own bus, which allows me to add a global amount of reverb via a send to each section individually. I can do detailed balances within each section with automation and then when I’m doing the very final mix, I have just a few faders to deal with. I can always go back in and tweak an individual instrument if necessary. I will do the panning on the individual tracks, but they all end up on the same bus which means if I need more trombones, I just pull up one fader. If I want to move the bones back in the room a bit, I just add a bit more verb send and drop the level down a shade if necessary.

More to come!!

The strings started out as only Kirk Hunter Diamond and have now been doubled with EW Platinum. The KH strings have more “bite” to them, to my ears and the EW have the hall sampled in on the releases which makes the sound “swim” a bit and smooths out some of the mechanical-ness. I’ll do some more “humanizing” on the EW parts to make them even less mechanical.

Of course, on this mix, it’s “ALL STRINGS ALL THE TIME” LOL

You’ll notice that the piece goes all the way to the end now, still minus the intro. I’ve added a string melody, which I didn’t think I was going to do but it just called for it after the string flourish at bar 54. The melody was actually derived from the brass melody that comes in at bar 70, the brass melody there came first and then the string melody was put in at bar 58.

The woodwinds are conspicuously absent from about bar 42 on but they will be coming back, particularly at bar 70 to reinforce the brass melody an octave higher.

The voices will be more prominent in the final mix as well. They will be coming back in off and on.

The percussion will really help to add the drama and support the build. I intend to add Taiko drums as the piece progresses. I’ll start with a fairly sparse part since the strings are doing their part to move things along but by the time bar 70 rolls around, we should have a fairly rockin’ Taiko part going. The trick with percussion is to use it for color and drama, a little goes a long way. I always find myself going back and taking out percussion or really trying to find the perfect spot to add it. It’s tricky to find the right balance. I think if I’m adding too much percussion, I’m trying to make up for some deficiencies in the rest of the orchestration, at least for a piece like this. I love percussion, don’t get me wrong! But for a piece like this, a little goes a long way, and judicious use of the percussion will really heighten the drama and the build.

Enjoy!! More to come.