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November Composition Challenge - GET WRITING


Skol303
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Here's mine: https://soundcloud.com/mornats/eleven-eleven

This track contains a dramatic increase in volume as it progresses - watch your speakers and ears.

This is both an entry into the November Basschat composition challenge and a reminder of the loss during world wars.

I went for a representation of the contrast between the dove in the one hand and the tank that the holder of the dove is sitting in. I had in my mind the sound of relative peace between battles and someone humming a melody with a hint of sadness. Ceres from Auddict provides the humming melody (and is a great vocal library).

I went for a sombre slow beat in the background. I did this by taking one of the midi files from Apocalypse Elements and putting it into EZDrummer. I then used the edit play style feature to reduce the number of beats to give it a sparse feel. This was dropped back into Reaper on the Apocalypse Elements track. Later on in the track the full beat returns so this acted as build up to it. Additional shaker percussion was provided by the Latin Percussion EZX.

It's time to mention the chord structure. It's Am Am7 Dm DM7 with an interlude of an Am maj7 then it mixes the chords around into Dm Dm7 and Am7 before ending on an Emsus4. This is quite a departure from my usual basic chords and helps it to sound unsettling and uneasy.

The melody that accompanies the humming is a plucked guitar sound and a piano. The plucked guitar is a £2 Moon Guitar from Spitfire Audio and is part of their Spitfire Labs series. The piano is a mix of The Giant from Native Instruments' Komplete and my favourite piano - Sound Dust Plastic Ghost Piano which fills out the mellow bottom end of the piano sound.

Kirk Hunter's Solo Strings provide a very light orchestral feel and is joined by brass and winds from Miroslav Philharmonik. Good use of the expression slider helps both parts fade in and out.

Later on I added the snare drum to the percussion to give the track a more military feel. These were all played by hand on my midi keyboard on a separate track as a midi send to the main Apocalypse Elements track.

Build ups come from NI's Rise and Hit and lead into synths from Massive and underscore from Evolve Mutations. Evolve Mutations also provide the synth drums at the end of the track and consists of three separate tracks.

NI's Transient Master controls the room sound on the percussion to help the snare sombre. NI's RC48 reverb is used on the master channel to help put everything in the same space and Izotope's Neutron provides the EQ, compression, exciter and limiter to hold everything together.

Reaper, as always is my DAW of choice here. This is the first track that I mixed on my Yamaha HS7 studio monitors.

To enhance the contrast between the peaceful and the wartime themes in the picture the track builds up in volume quite dramatically into a hard-hitting percussive onslaught that ends suddenly with a return of the soft piano as the final few notes play out. It tries to represent soldiers taking a rest in between battles before being ambushed in a a short intense attack. The final few notes happen after the shells stop falling.

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Just uploaded an update to mine. I fixed some "ew" moments in the choir and balanced out the volume at the end. It came in rather heavy originally! Solid Bus Comp replaced the compressor in Neutron as I find it provides nice easy and good sounding results pretty much all of the time.

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Here's a quick one from me - didn't have time to record lyrics or roll it in more than one layer of glitter!
Still, the trusty Wal gets to pretend it's all sorts of other things....
[url="http://soundcloud.com/dredd-and-the-badass-weed/bird-brain"]http://soundcloud.co...weed/bird-brain[/url]

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Im in this month, not very elaborate or exciting but for me it captures the tank drivers last moments before he heads into battle...... Very quick writing and production, an hour in total so a bit rough in places. Anyway enjoy....

https://soundcloud.com/theboysings/this-is-not-surrender

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Ok, here's mine!
I took inspiration from the heaviness of tank against the lightness of the pigeon. So the rhythm section is heavy, melody light. There is a bit of rock guitar versus jazzy/funky guitar. I ain't 100% happy with the mix. i think the melodies might be too loud. Hard to tell on my sh*tty speakers.

https://soundcloud.com/dreaded-ted/heavypidge

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