A Recommended Book For Aspiring Composers!

For those of you that are interested in learning techniques from some of the best composers of the last 50 years – I highly recommend the book ‘On The Track – A Guide To Contemporary Film Scoring.’

It is an excellent book – which I happily dip in and out of from time to time – with score and parts from relevant scenes in film to illustrate the point.

Have Spotify by your side too – as it will mean you can listen along to the piece you are studying – in my case making that all important link between what I am reading on a score and what my ears are telling me.

a priceless combo in my humble opinion.

All the best, NH

Green Shoots…

This is the first version of a piece called The Garden. I have big ideas for this, but so as not to intimidate myself with the massive orchestral arrangement I have in my head – I have started small, on the piano.

I hope you enjoy it.

Green shoots

NH

Written on a boat…

This song ‘Green’ was written on a boat. I was thinking about the summer. I was thinking about how people can close themselves off and wander far – in their minds…

It’s also the first song I played bass on, and really enjoyed the process of writing a bassline.

Originally, the track had some boat noises – creaks and floorboards and water lapping against the boat. They were left out of the final mix.  It was a great effect whilst writing the song though – because it put me back in the boat – even though I was actually recording in a dark windowless studio.

Have a listen below. It’s on my debut CD, The Brave Unknown – available on iTunes or at Amazon.com on CD.

New Cue ‘Believe’

Last week I started work on a new piece, called ‘Believe’

It was a very exciting and challenging day or two – particularly as I was using sordino strings combined with the LA Scoring Strings full library – and I wanted a particular sound (in my head I was thinking of John Barry meets Tron Legacy for some reason). I used VSL for the woodwinds, and VSL and Project Sam for the brass.

I added some basic choir ‘ahs’ from Symphony Of Voices, piano, some synth fx, synth bass (I always feel that a little synth bass or electric bass tucked way under the contrabass strings helps wonders in midi mockups!) and – for the very first time – I recorded some room tone. To my ears at least, having that barely audible sound of hiss/room noise makes all the difference.

Here is the current mix, Mix 10. The stereo mix was a little quiet so it has been boosted by about 11dB – has a touch of the enhance feature on the Oxford Limiter – and it then went through the TC MD3 and Brickwall Limiter – for a little stereo widening – and 0.5-1dB limiting.

I hope you enjoy it. All the best NH

My Orchestral Mix Approach

I wrote this for a forum recently and thought i’d post it here for anyone who might be interested.

Hi all.

I’ve had a few PM’s regarding the mix of the track “Final Approach” – so I thought it might be more beneficial to post it here for all to see. Hopefully some of it makes sense although each person’s workflow is unique so your mileage may vary.

Reverb

For LASS, despite the short amount of time I’ve been using it – I tend to prefer using no convolution at all, and just using a nice algorithmic reverb – in this case – the VSS3 from Powercore. Settings for this took some getting used to – but once I’d gotten the hang of the controls, it’s a lovely powerful reverb with a great tail.

For VSL instruments, I use Cubase’s REVerence, with one of the LASS Impulse Responses – and one of the benefits of this is that I set the aux send to pre-fader – and then create my depth using a combination of this convolution and the same algo reverb I used on the LASS strings. The blend between volume and aux send level in pre-fader mode is the kind of control that in my humble opinion you cannot get by simply sending a signal to a reverb. I also EQ the convolution – sometimes quite bluntly to get what I want.

EQ, Panning, FX

Still learning, but using Oxford EQs on most channels now – and I have switched off the LASS EQ for the Violin patches completely. I’d rather tweak it according to the piece than use the same EQ out of the box. LASS is beautifully recorded and again IMHO needs little EQ. I’ll go back to reverb and try to get it sounding “Abbey Road” ish – which is my favoured soundtrack “sound” at the moment.

The violas I tend to use a plugin from Sonnox called The Inflator – and again – using quite a bit of reverb I’ll try to get them to sit in the soundstage the way I like it.

VSL is power panned to a “instruments on a stage” position which I did entYirely by listening to recordings of scores and trying to match where I thought the instrument should be. Panning is definitely a very helpful plus as not only does it help to approximate where instruments should be – but it gets things out of the way of each other. LASS is as it was recorded except:

The cellos I panned a little left and right for this mix (the staccatos) and created a larger than life – but not entirely realistic soundstage – simply because it sounded better.

Master Effects

I’m using quite a bit on the master channel – firstly to cut the very low frequencies I put a High Pass on using the Oxford EQ which slopes gently down from 20hz (sometimes I go as far as 35hz) – some very mild 1.5:1 compression with a very slow attack and fast release – both of these using the Oxford plugins (EQ and Dynamics) and then I have a stereo enhancer on there too – not doing more than about 10% but again – it just sounds better to my ears (on some projects).

I tend to take out a few db somewhere between 170 and 256hz as there is just TOO much going on in that region and everything starts to sound overbearing and muddy. I may even put a little icing on the cake with a sprinkling of 11khz – but usually I’ll turn that off once I bounce (again depends on the project).

The Oxford limiter then sits at the bottom of the insert chain, where I’ll bring up the level and sometimes use a touch of their enhance function to get a little dirty saturation out of it.

***

Having said all of that – I can’t really reproduce it like that every time and I’m still very, very much learning.

Hope that helps someone. All the best!

Nick

‘The Brave Unknown’ – Album Review

Taken from popculturebeast.com

We’re at the point now in the music industry that the best music isn’t coming from the major labels and in a lot of cases you aren’t hearing it on the radio. It’s coming from independent artists self releasing music they have put everything they have into. American artists have trouble enough getting their music heard by the masses, now imagine being an independent artist from the U.K.

Such is the case with Nick Hinton. His latest album, The Brave Unknown, is as indie as it gets. Hinton wrote, performed, recorded, and mixed the album himself. You wouldn’t know it though as the album sounds as polished as any big label release.

The Brave Unknown is an album full of sweet mellow songs driven by piano, guitar, and in some cases lush strings. It really is a beautiful sounding album. Hinton has done a great job complimenting his wonderful lyrics and voice with great arrangements. The songs are almost dreamlike. They lift you up and carry you along and lull you into that perfect place that only great music can take you.

I’m always happy when I find an album I can listen to from start to finish and just enjoy and not have to worry about skipping tracks. This is one of those albums. I loved hearing it and in fact listened to it a few times before writing this review.

One of my favorite tracks on the album is Try Again. It’s a lovely uplifting song about not giving up on love as it might be the last chance to experience it. It’s just Nick and a piano, which to me is one of the best kinds of songs. It feels like he is sitting right in front of you performing. That’s how the entire album feels. That is a testament to good music. If you forget you are listening to a CD (or an iPod in my case) you really have connected with the songs and that is a fantastic feeling (one I have had a lot this year! 2008 has been great for music, independent especially).

I really enjoyed every song on the album. The opening instrumental track The Boy Who Could is simply gorgeous, if not a little short and the closing track The Station nearly stopped me in my tracks. It’s the kind of song that makes you think about your life and where you are headed. Every song in between beautifully weaves together to make this album into a perfect package.

If Nick Hinton continues to release albums like this he should have no trouble at all breaking into the US.

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