I haven’t posted anything here in a while so please give this a critical listening. All comments and criticisms are welcome!
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It’s interesting, and sounds nice. Kind of instrumental meandering I think, but nice as background music. Some themes do sound like backing music for TV/film sountracks or something, or like they could be used as intro/outro for media productions like news shows or podcasts.
Curious what virtual instruments you are using and overall production info. The stand-up bass sounds pretty realistic I think, and the drum/percussion ‘brushes’ were a nice twist - which software or VI offers those? I’m assuming the guitar is the only instrument that’s not virtual?
BTW, when I first started listening it seemed really loud, at least compared to other things I had listened to on the computer speakers. I had to turn down the IRD media player quite a bit to a listenable level.
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I’ve been on a experimental jazz kick for the last few weeks and this has some of those elements.
Thanks for posting.
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Nice. It sounds like what you would hear in the aftermath of something tragic happening. A time to reflect. Now at around the two minute mark, it sounds completely different like lounge music. could be two different applications.
Glad you posted this.
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Thanks for commenting @Stan_Halen , it means a lot.
It does meander; it’s a 32 bar chord progression and melody which repeats three times so that’s a stretch. The guitar improvises the middle 32. I think you’re right, it won’t ever be a feature 
The orchestra is the Vienna Symphonic library and the bass and drums are the East West Goliath library. The better sample libraries use live recorded samples so the realism is up to the composer. That whole field is a specialty and I’m not the best for sure. You can go to the VI Control forum and here some real experts.
Trying to blend my Les Paul with the virtual instruments is a problem here and others have pointed that out to me.
That’s interesting and I’m puzzled about that. I downloaded my track and @ColdRoomStudio ‘Anything Less than the Best’ and ran them through Reaper’s ‘JS Loudness meter’ with the following results. I know this is not a good comparison because they are very different styles of music and the frequency spectrum is probably quite different but you must have had to turn down Andrew’s track as well? Andrew’s seems much louder on the meter.
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Thanks for commenting @JayGee . Experimental jazz has some good stuff for sure. You probably saw that Jamie Branch died last week. She was only 39; quite a character.
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I doubt the average listener would pick up on that, nor did I hear any glaring indications, I’m simply deducing from presumptions about your process that the guitar was the only non-VI. I don’t think it’s any kind of impediment really.
Comparing both on the IRD player, yours is definitely much louder, and I was surprised … as I figured your loudness measurements were not real high and the music is quite open and dynamic (vs. compressed/limited). I don’t know if that’s a function of the IRD music player, or if it imposes some kind algorithm like the music streaming services do (turning down louder music). Maybe it happens on the upload? Mysterious indeed.
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Thanks for commenting @feaker , I know you like vocals so I appreciate you taking the time for this. That’s a good take on the mood here, I hadn’t thought of that but you’re right, it does have that sound.
Yeah it takes a left turn there. Sometimes I listen and think, ’ nice change there’ and sometimes its ‘no no no!’
I didn’t hear it as overly loud on my headphones, and I would describe it as not loud. So it is a mystery…
I like all the instrument choices. Those tremelo strings at the intro are a little more menacing than the first part develops into.
Part 2 and the guitar is like a duet with the violin. I don’t know why but it sounds the thinnest of all the instruments, and I wonder if you could apply a little reverb to give it a fuller sound. It is almost an entirely different mood, but still a bit optimistic most of the time.
It does flow into Part 3 nice and menacingly again, and now that I understand the structure I realize each part actually shares the same long chord melody. This actually works for me, but I feel it is missing some finality, some mood dominating ending that wraps up this journey, like the ending of Eleanor Rigby. Maybe begin those tremelo strings again and turn it into a 2-4 bar crescendo ending.
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Hi ingolee,
The guitar playing is wonderful, and actually blended ok with the orchestra playing.
What is the problem you encountered, as I thought it was fine.
Rene
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I can’t resolve this on my own Stan because my hearing is bad. Maybe @holster has an answer to this. What I’m hearing is that Andrew’s ‘Never Less than the Best’ is louder, although his string intro (very nice) is softer.
One possibility is the fact that we all react to frequencies differently. My hearing, while poor overall, is hyper sensitive to certain frequencies produced by woodwinds especially so I tend to turn them down too much and I have been criticized for that by listeners on another forum. So when I listen to this track I think it needs some eq in the hi mids but I don’t do it because I’ve been wrong about that in the past. Still a mystery I guess.
That’s a good point @steban , the violin was supposed to be in a supporting role there so I set the sound level down to where it thins out. But then I gave it some melody which draws attention to it so that’s kind of contradictory, I’ll have to rethink that, thanks for pointing that out and commenting here.
Yes, again a good catch. The ending is unresolved because there is a third movement that closely follows this one. It’s a bit longer and more abstract and I don’t want to ask for too much time from listeners so I didn’t post it or the opening movement which is also more active and involved than this middle movement.
Hi guys, i dont know if you’ve all seen this or not but lately I’ve been running all my 2 tracks through Loudness Penalty Analyzer:
Hope this helps.
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Quite a sonic journey! I enjoyed it - nicely done!
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I used to do something similar to your music. Theres a Pentecostal church locally that uses a snippet of this for one of their intros:
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Thanks I’ll have to try that!
Nice track, thanks for posting.
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Thanks for the kind words Andrew.
The first edition of this track I had the guitar with no accompaniment so it did kind of stand out. This version has the other instruments blending in somewhat and I think that helps as you say. Mixing live and recorded parts can be tricky.
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Nice work on this, Ingo!!!
Warm regards,
Rene
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The orchestration in this song is reminiscent of a 1970’s movie or made for TV movie soundtrack. I picture Laura Ingles’ dog dying and her being depressed or Steve Austin (the 6 million dollar man) breaking his bionic leg and now he’s bed ridden and unable to afford the expensive bionic knee replacement. That part of the music has a somewhat melancholy, sad feeling. The guitar licks was a diversion from that feeling and provided a change in the mood.
I think you did pretty good here. Hope we get a chance to hear you do some aggressive soloing in the future but I do appreciate this laid back stuff too. Keep it up, Ingo!