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A Bedtime Story

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Author Comments

Story: a child falls asleep while his mom is telling a peaceful bedtime story, and in his dream, his mind meanders to different places.


As usual with NGADM, I had very little time to work on this, so the entire composition is basically a first draft.


I used Izotope's Vinyl plugin and made a -3db EQ cut at 4k hz to give the mix a silky, quaint sound quality. I also tuned all the instruments to 432Hz.


Instruments:

  • Solo Double Bass (8DIO Intimate Strings)
  • Saxophone (8DIO)
  • Flute (CSW)
  • Flute & Piccolo (CSW)
  • Oboe (CSW)
  • Clarinet (CSW)
  • Piano (The Gentleman)
  • Glockenspiel Ensemble (8DIO AGE)
  • Violins I & II (CSS)
  • Violas (CSS)
  • Celli (CSS)
  • Basses (8DIO Ostinato Strings)
  • Pizzicato (Spitfire Intimate Strings)
  • Harp (8DIO Century Harps 2)
  • Tubular Bell (BBC Core)
  • Bass Drum (BBC Core)
  • Snare (BBC Core)
  • Triangle (BBC Core)
  • Piatti (BBC Core)
  • Cymbals (BBC Core)
  • Timpani (BBC Core)
  • Xylophone (BBC Core)
  • Shaker (Rhapsody Orchestral Percussion)
  • FX (Hit and Rise)
  • Trumpets (Caspian)
  • Horns (Caspian)
  • Trombones (Caspian)
  • Choir (8DIO Requiem)

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That was a pretty hardcore bedtime story

Official NGADM review:

As with your previous submission, evocation is key once again - the smooth, lazily drifting tones of first and third sections immediately ring true to the title, with the velvety texture of the woodwinds and strings floating over the more solid, anchoring feel of the glockenspiel and piano working wonderfully with the melody and chord progressions to convey that sense of a warm cozy pillow to sink your head into on a dark evening. For some reason Garance's face springs back to mind; there's a cartoony feel to your piece which would pair well with those soft colours, absent lines and rounded drawings.

Now I don't know exactly what this kid here is up to, but the second section took me quite by surprise - this section I associate with pits opening up in the ground and creatures, hellfire and/or general evil rising up from them - again, with a cartoonish take on the concept, albeit of a significantly different variety. On a conceptual level, they feel like two different songs to me, but I realize that's due to my association and am looking beyond that.

And there you are again delivering an incredibly solid contest entry. The composition embodies your concept very well, choice of instrumentation greatly suits the different sections and the changes in it keep the composition fresh despite its limited palette, and the spatial coherence is once again stunning.

High production values, great writing skills and beautiful storytelling. Hats off.

Love all these ideas, they're all very evocative! It's a shame it's just a first draft, though I can tell you've gotten good at speed mixing because I can barely tell :) The transition in the middle is a quite abrupt and the rest could use some tweaking, but I wouldn't say any are bad.

Very awesome!

Everratic responds:

Thank you for the review! I feel like I've studied orchestral mixing long enough to know what to do in most situations, but every song comes with its unique challenges. In this case it was mixing the dry solo double bass and tenor saxophone with an orchestra recorded stereo in a hall. I spent more time mixing these two instruments than on composing.

I don't even know where to begin here. You really just said PARKOUR and took me from small happy tune to fully immersive orchestral epos to waltz that almost actually made me tear up because it was so beautiful. Especially love the strings in the first section, they are incredibly well executed and sound so damn dynamic that I just choose to not believe you when you say they aren't actual recordings. The ending is maybe a bit too sudden for my taste but it still works incredibly well. Man. Thanks for making this.

Everratic responds:

Thanks for the profuse praise! It means a lot to hear it made you nearly tear up.

Technically I did use actual string recordings because I used a sample library and not modeled instruments. It also helps that I used one of the very best string libraries on the market. To be honest, I don't love the strings myself. The vibrato is not quite right for this type of writing, and some of the legato transitions are too quick. Maybe I'm too picky.

I too would have liked to make this song longer, but this is what I could manage with my severe time limitations.

Loved this, I literally laughed when the choir came in, also really liked the flute trills and xylophone addition to the orchestration. Great stuff

Everratic responds:

Thank you!

Credits & Info

Artist

Listens
3,790
Faves:
21
Votes
40
Score
4.80 / 5.00

Uploaded
Sep 26, 2022
1:21 PM EDT
Genre
Classical
File Info
Song
5.9 MB
2 min 36 sec

Licensing Terms

Please contact me if you would like to use this in a project. We can discuss the details.