Idiots on Task Music - turns out I'm the idiot!

OK here we go. I’m hoping one day you’ll only see me here helping others out…!
Until then, here’s my latest reject - any comments will be most welcome.
Thanks
Simon

Hey Simon. The composition is great, and this must have been right on the cusp for the reviewer. Perhaps they felt that the arrangement needs some tightening up. The problem as far as I can guess without seeing the project in the daw, is that the notes on the orchestral sample sets are not well synchronised. This could simply be a quantise issue, but it might not be. Difficult to explain, but I’ll try. Forgive me for the potential profusion of long-windedness :grin::

With short note samples like pizzicato, staccato, spiccato etc, there is a short moment of build-up between when the note begins and when the main ‘hit’ of the note sounds. It’s kind of like a recorded latency and this can vary from different sample sets, and sometimes even between different notes in the same sample set. Often this tiny latency is desirable because it can give a more natural feel to the timing, but in this case, it sounds like there is audible lateness to the pizzicato basses, enough to make the tune sound sort of like an orchestra who need more practice. You could try dragging the entire pizzicato track over to the left by half a hemidemisemiquaver or so.
Some of the staccato passages sound a little bit messy, so dive in and pull together some of those notes, in both the string and wind sections to bring it all together. (Don’t touch the brass though. They are late, but great!) Use the xylophone as a target point because those samples will be the most accurate. Don’t go overboard with it though. Too tight and it can start to sound computerised.
Also, are all the high string parts staccato? If so, try using spiccato samples for some of the semiquaver parts and see if you prefer the results. It may give it a better bounce and help tighten it some more.

When I first listened, some of the string flutters sounded either like they have too short a decay time, or too dry reverb-wise. Particularly the high-velocity ones. 0:09 was most noticeable. Now I’ve gotten used to them and they don’t stick out so much, but I would stand by my initial reaction to them. They don’t quite sound natural, but they are beautiful in terms of composition and give the track a great character.

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You nutty Brits! So proper! :joy: I’d have to think long and hard or even look that up to translate into 'Murican.

That said, I usually use the track delay function in Cubase to synchronize tracks with slow attacks, moving them ahead anywhere from 25-100 ms depending on the samples. (This sometimes necessitates starting the project on bar 2 since notes triggered before 1.1.1.0 disappear.)

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Hahaha! I love it. hemidemisemiquaver is a way cooler word than sixtyfourth in my humble opinion! Great tip about the track delay feature.
I set a bar offset to 1 in the project setup to get the extra bar breathing room without the bar numbers being out of kilter too. (It helps my OCD tendancies, plus I work a lot with scores, so it helps me to know where I am.)

Thanks for the input guys, I’ll give that a shift and tidy, then resubmit (and probably get banned for resubmitting the same material - as they warned me last time - lol).

I was curious what happened after a sixty fourth… a 1/256th apparently is a demisemihemidemisemiquaver. I think that’s the point the nutty scales properly tip over.

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:smile:
interesting that the words demisemihemidemisemiquaver and onetwohundredandfiftysixth have the same ammount of letters. personally, I think demisemihemidemisemiquaver rolls off the tongue better!

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