MOTM

Needs to be played loud and on good quality and detailed headphones or speakers otherwise the sound is muffled and ruined.  Only 15 seconds long, but MOTM does massive sounding symphonic finale with strings, brass, and timpani, across 26 stereo tracks.  Other equipment used was Roland SBF-325 stereo flanger/chorus, ART graphic EQ, and M-ONE reverb.

http://home.att.net/~elhardt/MOTM_Orchestra.mp3

-Elhardt

Man! That's great Elhardt. I have yet to listen to it on my main system, but 
it's very impressive even on my small speakers. It reminds me of Carmina 
Burana. :-) Can you share any more details? Like how you did the strings, or how 
the SBF-325 was used?  

 Anyway, thanks for sharing,
 Andrew Sanchez


In a message dated 6/8/04 12:26:57 PM Central Daylight Time, elhardt@... 
writes:

> Needs to be played loud and on good quality and detailed headphones or 
> speakers otherwise the sound is muffled and ruined.  Only 15 seconds long, 
> but MOTM does massive sounding symphonic finale with strings, brass, and 
> timpani, across 26 stereo tracks.  Other equipment used was Roland SBF-325 
> stereo flanger/chorus, ART graphic EQ, and M-ONE reverb.
>  
>  http://home.att.net/~elhardt/MOTM_Orchestra.mp3

> http://home.att.net/~elhardt/MOTM_Orchestra.mp3

Cool - can I sample that and use it in something?

No - just kidding!


As usual, great job - now give us a full piece to listen to!!


-- 
Les Mizzell
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Do geeks die when exposed to sunlight?
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Andrew Sanchez writes:
>> Man! That's great Elhardt. I have yet to listen to it on my main system, but it's very impressive even on my small speakers. It reminds me of Carmina Burana. :-) Can you share any more details? Like how you did the strings, or how the SBF-325 was used?<<

Hello Andrew.  I'm not ignoring people, I'm just spending almost all my time in synth experimentation and way backed up on e-mail.

The SBF-325 was used for two things. To turn mono sounds into stereo sounds and to alter the tonal quality by using the flanger with some resonance.  That helps take away that buzzy synthetic sawtooth sound and make the instruments sound more real.

The bulk of the sound is the strings.  The last chord in the mp3 is strings only.  Each note consists of 4 detuned oscs, two sawtooth, two pulse width modulated.  Just a lowpass filter was used and the sound was enveloped to give a little emphasis on the beginning of the note.  There is also a fast riff of string grace notes leading into the chord, typical of something an orchestra would do.

Les Mizzell writes:
>>Cool - can I sample that and use it in something?  As usual, great job - now give us a full piece to listen to!!<<

Interesting you mention that.  I was pitching the sound up various semitones in a wave editor and it works well in a number of different keys.  Don't know when I'll have a full tomita-like piece that will use something like that, but I'll post some expirmental non-imitative synth mp3's soon.

Mike Fisher writes:
>>You should think about writing a series of articles on synthesis techniques for realistic sounds like these. You're clearly quite experienced with this, and I'd bet that one of the synth-related music mags would want to publish something like that. You can always write about the basics, and save the best tricks for your material.<<

There's already a series somewhat like that in Sound On Sound magazine.  I'm not sure how many people really benefit from that kind of stuff anymore since samplers and sampled sounds killed the art of synthesis years ago.  Even the great synthesists from the past have reverted to samples.

-Elhardt