This is my contribution to War-Spawn's Black Hand Assasination project.
[EDIT] Almost 1,000 listens! Thank you for all the reviews, though I wish some people would be more critical about where I messed up. Here'sSome more commentary on this track's construction:
1. The pianos and string sounds were made using stock VSTs in FL Studio, which were rinsed down and then put into Ableton Live for sequencing and effects. The perceived "richness" of the sound is accomplished by using filtered/selective reverb and multi-band compression to bring out select frequency ranges.
1a)The plugin I used for reverb on this project is called Native Reverb, it's quite a sexy plugin.
1b)The piano notes also went through a very subtle delay that, coupled with the reverb and stereo offsetting, is what produces that "huge stadium/hall/orchestra performance" ambient in the sound field.
2. The break was originally written at ~140bpm, then pitched down in Ableton to fit within the 4/4 signature at ~100bpm. That's what produces that sorta grimy sound to it, along with the EQing and some subtle compression to distort it for more grime. After all that, it went through a send channel with PSP Nitro on it. PSP Nitro is an excellent plugin for random effects, I used it to bit-crush the break down to a sample rate of just under 22.2kHz.
3. The entire project, rather than being a standard up-the-middle affair, has some stereo offsetting to create a psudo-surround sound type feel. This can be especially noted with the pianos and the warzone ambience at the end of the track. Thanks to War-Spawn for helping with that warzone stuff!
4. Bread and butter mastering with some EQ boosts at 200hz, the snares ranged from 1khz-3.5khz, and a slightly resonant boost at 12kHz to bring out the highs (psychoacoustic effect, mostly).
