Hi Gary, everyone,
Here's my contribution to this contest. First of, thank you Gary for doing this, it was a pleasure to work with your music. The emotions of the main melodies (and their sound design) perfectly capture your vision of this dystopian disaster setting. I expanded a bit on it and made my own little scenario that goes like this: the scene is set into the future when robots try to take over the world by releasing a lethal virus to destroy humans. However, there's a "rogue" robot that (or who for that matter) developed compassionate AI and tries to save us all by developing a vaccine. When the music starts you can see the lab in an old desolate, concrete and damp building with broken windows (windy) and the friendly robot taking the vaccine vial out of the incubator (choir crescendo). He takes it to the drone and puts it inside. When the main theme 1 starts, the drone takes off and flies over desolate fields (bird's eye view). Theme 1 has a feeling of hopefulness IMO. Then you see more buildings appear (the added synths when theme 1 repeats) and the drone approaches a city. At the end of this theme1 reiteration, you see the drone descend (tape-stop fx on CS 80 1) and enter the destroyed city (theme2 Etheral expressing the pain, anguish, suffering and desperation of the humans) flying in between the buildings. The city is empty and grim. At the end of this theme (string run), the drone soars into the sky again and flies towards an old church on a mountain. You can see tents and what looks like a field hospital set up by the army. People see the drone and start running towards it, waving and hailing it. The frame cuts to the lab and you can see our hero, the good robot smiling. -cut again to the drone camera- You can see the human survivors who suffered a lot rejoicing (theme1 hopefulness, with a hint of the anguish = voice of theme2). The drone lands in front of the old church. The vaccine vial is taken out and carried into the building which serves as a hospital. The door is opened, you see the patients and then a close-up of the vaccine with the altar and the cross in the background (bell tolls). Now tell me, who needs to get out more? :-))))))
As for the technical stuff: There's a lot under the hood, and it's nearly impossible to describe everything, I'll stick to the most important things. I worked with the the audio files and their reverb/intended sound design.
Ambiloop Azure drum loop: transient designer, some eq automation, cutting the lows below 70 Hz in between every BD hit and whenever the two bass synths are playing. This to clean up the low end and give it more definition. I cut out the bass drum and the snare and used them to side-chain all instruments. I also used a copy of the snare to add some reverb to it, and yet another one to compress and EQ rather heavily to give the snare a bit more weight. I compressed the loop a bit the give it more vibe and movement.
CS 80 1: Added some light saturation, a chorused hall reverb and some level automation to make it move and swell a bit more
CS 80 2 & 3: just some light distortion to lift the sound a bit.
Damage Industrial Hats: just as they are, panned a bit to the left
Ethera: Added some airy high end (17K), compression and a delay. I also added some fades after every phrase to make it feel more musical.
Assorted snares: I honestly don't remember which snare is/was which because I bounced some of them and I gave them other names in the process. In any case, I tried to be as close as possible to the snare sound in the Ambiloop. I used one snare sound to created this Vangelis noise fx. For this I used the free NI RAUM reverb plugin with a 1/8th pre-delay.
Field Snare: a huge cut @2.9K and balanced it against the War Drums
Music Box: just as is with an autopanner to give the mix some movement
DoPahTets: I added some highs and panned them over the stereo field LCR.
Omnisphere Bass: I evened it out level wise with Waves bass rider and additional compression. EQ wise I cut out 200 Hz 4 dB and added 3 dB of 2K. I also limited it with Waves L3, mainly some of the low-end. For me this felt like the main bass (adding to the Vangelis feel of the CS80 1 synth). Level wise I made it work together with the Short Noise Bass and tried to fit both together with emphasis on the former. See description below.
Omnisphere Loop: EQ cut out resonances
Retro 1 & 2: just some complimentary EQ to make them fit together. Retro2 got some distortion (PA Phills Cascade), Bass and a narrow cut @83 Hz (resonance)
Short Noise Bass: Some M/S EQ cutting 50-70 Hz in the mid channel to make the Omnisphere Bass fit in the middle. RBass and L3 to make it extra tight.
Strings and Sopranos: M/S EQ cutting 3 dB out of the centre from 170- 2500 Hz - Additional boost @ 100Hz and cut at 2.2 kHz
Symphonic Strings: Basically the same as Strings&Sopranos.
Vocalise C Pad & Harmony: just some EQ to clean it up = cut at 320 Hz and a high shelf @ 15K
Vocalise Intro: an automated LP filter gradually opening up together with the Waves S1 also gradually going from mono to 15% stereo.
War Drums: cutting resonances @ 105, 291, 957, 5400 Hz with a slight shelf boost @4800 Hz, some low-end limiting L3 and a M/S mid cut @ 60 Hz to make room for the basses/BD
Wave Station: just added some chorus to give it a more 80s feel
Wind: I gave it a more eerie feel by adding a dark reverb (subspace)
The master bus has a pultec style EQ with a slight boost @ 60 Hz and 5K, an SSL style compressor (fastest release and 10ms attack, 2:1 ratio), tape saturation.
Overall there is a lot of level automation going on especially in the end where everything comes together. At that point I just took the master bus fader up 1 dB while at the same time lowering certain tracks conflicting with the War Drums. All synths were grouped into an aux that I widened with an M/S tool, the sides were boosted 1 dB.
I struggled a bit to find a good (cinematic) frequency foot print for the mix. It came out pretty even with enough low (controlled rumble) and high end (see screen shot).
Best of luck to everyone!!
Cheers,
Louis
WAV-file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nbvkrqxudzewd ... r.wav?dl=0
Frequency plot:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/t7o1i3d3xt2n4 ... 1.png?dl=0
