Campaign Creations

Made some orchestral arrangements.

Drifting Grasp (Final)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZOJx6KnAZI
This one is planned to be for the brooding/losing grip scene.

Protoss Music Remake (Final/Mastered)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=befl5Cu78DQ

The Nar'Khalani Decision
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dRhlXm5K2E

Unwelcome Guest
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTU-4zy7ORI
This one is supposedly for the intro of a cinematic I'm story boarding. It's where the dark hero comes crashing into a planet and slams right at a Temple where he's supposed to "liberate" something.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrderyHmlvw
This one's for RTW: SPQR

Those are great, how did you make them?

Grad, I'm currently using FL STudio and Edirol Orchestral vsti.

You have to put the notes yourself just like in notation programs. The piano roll is much more convenient than things like sybelius. I have that app too and never gotten to use it.

Thanks for the appreciation man. Needs more work I know.

The level of quality of your music makes me wonder how could the gaming music industry survived to this day.

Can your program load .gig files? I can hook you up with some quality assets if you've got aim.

oh man, I'm out of ISP privileges currently. Actually they cut my hardline. No money no ISP. I shall remember this your offer and take advantage when I get the line back.


In any case, updated the opening post with a new W.I.P. and a final version of the Protoss Theme. I'm not sure if I got the mastering right. It seems to be too hissy. I have no clue how to perfect mastering.

Regardless the music should be brighter and more defined now with bass enough (maybe too much?). I'll check your youtube for one about mastering.

Define "mastering". When I made music the only thing I ever did was add a slight amount of reverb in post-processing.

Also keep in mind I specifically mentioned .gig for the soundfonts. That's the GigaStudio format which typically requires hardware GSIF support. That was a long time ago, though. Make sure your app can actually use those.

Mesk, I've read somewhere that those files are HUGE! I think Fruity loops can link Giga Studio, but the size, they say, is the issue, and may require a powerful machine?

Mastering, I mean, is about equalizing, setting reverb, chorus, compressor, etc. I think I've gotten a hold of what I need to do though.

Yes, my small library is about 40gb or so. I wish I could have gotten more, but short of shelling out potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars... well. 40gb seems like nothing compared to what I could have if I was more resourceful. But I have a lot of nice stuff here. I've clung onto it one day hoping I can return to my former glory. I think I lost some of the most valuable parts though. I burned them to cds for backups and then lost the cds. I've no idea where that stuff is and will probably never get it back.

Fruity can actually handle those? Or do you mean make use of the sampler? I don't recall it requiring a powerful machine (I did all my music on an Athlon X2 6000 3.0 ghz dual core and this i7 is literally 10x as fast as that), but you DO need hardware GSIF support for that application (from your sound card).

My channel has no mastering info on it for music, since I never went out of my way to do anything with music post-processing-wise except for reverb. If you want I may be able to record something for you though.

If you don't mind making one, I'd love to learn from you. What I really want to know is say what each of those knobs do when setting up reverb or chorus effects. I see density, size, predelay, etc., and got no clue. I spend a day tweaking those knobs I think and almost raged my mouse to oblivion.

They say, the only way to learn is to see what those knobs do, but, by God--!

Anyhow, EQ I think is the only thing I've come to understand, and also multiband compressor. Though I wish to learn more about the MultiBand compressor. What I know about it currently is that one needs to choose the range of LOW, MID, and HIGHS, then add gains and such.

In any case, I don't know if I'm going overboard on this stuff since I have no clue what is really necessary.

I'm currently using SoundGooser that comes with FL Studio for now to brighten things up.

All in all, I think what I really want to know is how to setup a Reverb or Chorus so that a sample will sound thicker. If that is even possible. Is it?

40 Gigs? Man, that would take like, a week given the internet connection I had, which got disconnected.

I've heard a score made using giga and the instruments sound really good.

An example of some of the instruments I had (not sure if I have them all anymore).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAgq-puZV0c&feature=plcp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSkED0L9Jhk&feature=plcp

I use Audition for all of my sound editing, so I'll be using that to create my video demo. Not sure when I'll get around to it, I'll post again when I have. Ideally you should only ever have to add a reverb. If the audio is coming out in a way which needs compression or frequency changes I think the soundfonts need to be improved.

I didn't realize you made music too! I thought that one you gave me was just a one time thing.

In any case, I wish someday I could have a hold of those samples.

In the mean time, I've updated the opening post with a final version of Drifting Grasp. For anyone interested.

GnaReffotsirk wrote:I didn't realize you made music too! I thought that one you gave me was just a one time thing.

Lol, I downloaded like 150 mbs of music from Mesk hosted in this forum, which is considerably larger than most game soundtrack I have. Too bad he doesn't make them anymore, dude got some talent!

Hey, I know I'm sort of necro-ing this thread, but it caught my eye and I thought I might offer some useful information to anyone still interested.

First off, GnaReffotsirk, I really enjoyed the music. They're all cool tracks, and I'm impressed at what you wrung out of that Eridol module.

If FLStudio can host VSTs, it can host Kontakt and the free Kontakt Player that comes attached to a number of good sample libraries that won't cost you an arm and a leg. IskatuMesk is a little off on the costs of good orchestral soundsets these days. You can get a lot of mileage and great sounds for under a thousand dollars. In many cases, $500 or less. Here are some examples:

http://www.projectsam.com/Products/Feat ... ducts/1403 - Orchestral Essentials. This is a pretty nice all-in-one offering that covers a lot of ground and doesn't cost much compared to what you're getting. It is really suited for a big cinematic sound, too... perfect for the sort of music you're writing. It runs with the Kontakt Player, so you don't even need a separate sampler. You just have to be able to run VSTs

http://www.spitfireaudio.com/albion.html - Albion. Another all-in-one solution with a ton of great sounds available. It doesn't have quite as aggressive a tone as the Project SAM stuff, but does offer maybe a bit more emotional punch for about the same price depending on the conversion rate. Also runs on the Kontakt Player, so again, no additional software needed to run it.

There are lots of other sample libraries out there, and most have significantly advanced in terms of sonic quality and playability since the days of Gigastudio. You don't have to spend a fortune on them to get great sounding results, but I do urge that you purchase them since it helps the developers keep on making new cool instruments and advancing the state of the art. I know money is tight and it sounds like a lot, but you're writing some really cool music and investing a bit into it sounds like a winning plan to me.

Even a top-of-the-line orchestral sound library setup these days could potentially run you under $3K. That's for professional level quality. Of course you can spend more, since there are a ton of options out there. But you don't have to spend a fortune to achieve very high quality results.

omg its JoelS

$500 is still an insane amount of money for someone like me, but I don't get monetarily involved in anything I do outside of hardware so I have no regrets using other routes. A pity I could never get any sampler or composer to work with each other after the first time and the process became much too confusing and complicated for me to break into. Would have liked to have tried to make music again when I was still modding. Ah well. Good luck to the both of you.