i wonder if you had an actual orchestra play this how much different it would sound
Author Comments
"Finally he found the source of malice that haunted the swamp."
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EDIT: (small mastering update as-of October 2023)
Entry for AIM2023. Focused primarially on a very high energy, aggresive orchestral piece. First project I've actively had to expand my system hardware to do. Project utilises 120GB RAM due to the additional mic positions and layering involved with this monstrocity, and multiple sections of it 100%-load my 3700X instantly! Final notecount (including keyswitches & stacking) comes to just over 51k, with almost 140 Playlist Clips crammed full of notation, 115 dedicated Mixer Channels in the project-template (with around 80 of them actively used including routing channels), custom self-recordings dotted around in several parts of the project to blend in etc. Project also took 11 attempts to export! (will be some small things I would like to change later, but I'm not going through that export-nightmare all over again haha)
Track is composed to fit around 'The Boil Of Bogwater Swamp', by HappytoDraw
YT Visualiser: https://youtu.be/lVahFsy--C8
LD-W responds:
Definitely an interesting question!
From the orch-library stacking I'm going with + the choir stacks, the current track is roughly emulating a 600+-person orchestra (if you're interested in the full lib list present, I can DM you a screenshot, since it's too large to put in the comment section haha). Since that's unrealistic outside of unlimited-budget scenario's IRL, a real performance would probably be fine cutting down to around 100, which is enough to run with 20 people a section perhaps (with the choir assisted with dynamic microphones & loudspeakers).
The sheer 'wall-of-death' tonality would be partially lost at only 100 players (albeit that's still pretty large!), but it would bring back some smaller details with more string & brass timbre's being audible, so it may end up being a tangible improvement in a live setting at around that number of players instead, depending on what's important to the end-listener. 600+ players would be a logistical nightmare IRL, which is probably best left to library-based concepts in a DAW-enviroment like this upload
One day I'll get this written down onto a proper orchestral score sheet(s) for sure <3
(disclaimer: AIM judge review here! these are just my opinions and thoughts, you can take from them whatever you like! music is subjective and all that. <3)
when i'm playing dark souls or its related games, i often find that i am so intensely focused on the boss fights that i barely even notice the music that's playing, so when i look it up later, i discover all this depth of detail i would've never picked up while i was playing the game. this feels a whole heck of a lot like what i'd find there - dense, busy orchestration, big stabs and swells, and an epic, cinematic atmosphere. it's killer! super fitting with the art you chose as inspiration. i sense that you've written "multiple phases" into the piece; the transition about halfway through into the second phase does feel a little abrupt and awkward, i think mostly because of how different the tempo and rhythm are there. there's so many moving parts active on both sides of the transition - perhaps this is why the transition into the final theme in the last minute of the song works a lot better, as it pares back to strings and a bit of supporting percussion to bridge the gap. overall, this feels super authentic to me; i would not be the least bit surprised to encounter this track in an action rpg boss fight, and that's 100% the vibe of the artwork too. great stuff.
AIM 2023 Judge Review
The most exciting part about this entry was the hype leading up to it. After reading about the large amounts of computing power and large amount of notes along with the nightmare it took to even export the project successfully, I was definitely anticipating what this composition would sound like. For the most part, it really wasn't what I was expecting, and I don't mean that in either a good or bad way. I just had a completely different vision of what this track was going to be versus what it ended up being while also still feeling like it couldn't have been made by anyone but you.
One thing I love about the track was how it immediately gets into the intensive stuff. There's not really a gradual build; it just sets the scene of the battle with this confusing, terrifying monster right away. The tempo changes and layers on top of the running notes add a sense of structure and flow. I think everything here does a great job at capturing the tension and terror from battling the creature in the image.
When I first heard about the huge note count, my mind pictured stacked, super dense textures and a lot of playing around with tons of instruments with different effects shifting in and out through multiple thick layers. I think the fast rhythms work well for the battle part of the image, however, I feel like I wasn't really getting a sense of the creature itself being portrayed.
Perhaps there were lots of stacked textures going on in this entry, but the faster tempo feels like it might detract from being able to really hear that. I guess I was expecting to hear something more twisted and horrific, and I felt tension and chaos in this entry without the horror. There was a class I once took in uni where we learned to use a tool that morphed the sound of an instrument or sound effect into another in a seamless manner and I think playing around with something like that to an extreme would have worked more effectively to musically convey the amalgamation.
Overall, I still do really enjoy this piece - it certainly stands out and feels unique to your craft. It would be wild to hear this as a performance live - who or how would they do the demon choir? And would the audience be able to withstand their force by the time the piece ends?
(also please judge aim 2024 judging panel next year k thx bruh)
LD-W responds:
Ayy all good, yeah throw me a DM on Discord about judging for AIM2024 ;)
At the very beginning, I did think about how I'd like to approach this project, whether I wanted to do something a tad more avant-garde with some Sonorism influences (like 'Screaming Shadows' which I did for last year's AIM), or if I wanted to lean a tad more towards the 'soulsborne' sound for this one. Ultimately, I decided to do the latter (albeit with my own twist), since I've got confirmed plans for this template to go directly towards my gigantic Symphonic Black Metal project that I'm getting into the swing of things with, late-2023 to early-2024 (just need some more bongbux to drop on a new Guitar & Bass and I'm all good haha). My general mindset is to leave the most potent of horror soundscapes to get dedicated towards abstract topics such as the human mind & illness, dark magics, or entities at a cosmic (or beyond scale) which would get more into 'Sonorism For Elder Gods' kind of territory, hence why this might seem a tad more controlled than some might expect from me.
Stacking side-effects are also a factor of course. With everything stacked up together, it's emulating (on-paper) a 600-person Orchestra + Choir combination, which is a technical nightmare in it's own right to get working, especially when mix&matching libs from different vendors (but at the benefit of getting a very thick wall which sounds like an earthquake going off when untamed!). What would be powerful aleatoric ensemble walls under usual circumstances suddenly become a tad quieter in the face of dealing with almost 166 Brass Players going at it at once etc. So I had to improvise somewhat with some processing tricks and leaning towards certain compositional intentions: like having the massive timpani stack banging away to represent the footsteps of the amalgamation crashing into any solid ground it stomps on, the subtle choir-texturing layers emulating the painful hums and moans of the unfortonate souls conjoined together, the snare ensemble being a tad more 'martial' in it's pattern to emulate a warrior/soldier moving and dodging around it in precise patterns in the more intensive sections etc.
FL reported 175GB RAM usage in the end, with my system only having 128GB Physical, plus with like 4 hours left before the deadline, I just added in the final aleatoric FX I was able to slot in which 'sounded good' and go "aight, this'll do!" (and then only getting an export via Edison after multiple attempts, since it liked to crash alot around the 2:18 to 2:56 region for some unknown reason I still can't figure out lol). Abit of a pattern I go through with entries into contests every time haha. 2nd Hardware-Rack is planned for the end of the year, so a 256GB RAM Pool will get some of the most serious issues instantly sorted.
Ahh yeah the 'Demon/Hell Choir' was myself, recording latin passages in a mixture of power fry & semi-gutteral. Quad-stacked the recordings up, then doubled each side up with some processing trickery to make it seem like 8 voices per side of the hall (or 16 total).
I'm still pretty glad that I did this entry in the end regardless of results, due to a heap of valuable technical knowledge obtained along the way through trial&error, and the template in it's post-contest state being a valuable toolset in it's own right for even bigger projects!
02:15 Amazing transition (all transitions are) 120GB of RAM! gulp! That's a lot (my workaround is to print to audio, I only got 16GB lol). Do you work with the piano roll or do you use notation? You are a genius! Beautiful work!
LD-W responds:
Thanks for checking the track out! Glad you like it
Yeah I'm an FL user and I do everything from a mixture of mouse & MIDI Live Recordings at high speed to get down thousands of notes per hour for these kinds of projects. Lead lines @ all speeds (including Legato's) are all typically done live at a lower buffer size straight from my MIDI Keyboard, and I'll do any manual stuff via mouse at a higher buffer size for extra CPU-overhead when processing everything later on (mouse-notasted stuff is always done after live-leads for me)
I tend to stack as much RAM as physically supported in my system so I can avoid having to bounce audio down to WAV's (one of my pet peeves in audio processing as a whole), to the point that I've got plans to get a second rack built up so I can double-up my total capacity again for some enormous projects in the future which make this AIM track look small ;)
Your orchestral piece captures the essence of the dark and deadly boss battle in the swamp.
Plenty more like this here!
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LD-W 
Licensing Terms
Please contact me if you would like to use this in a project. We can discuss the details.
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