Flying Spider Colony <(FTA)>

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Author Comments

10/23/2011

Happy Halloween!

Full name is "Secret Colony of the Flying Spiders"

This song has a story to it.....

It's a Saturday morning,
something from your ceiling fan above your bed descends upon your head
It's Itsy, from the Itsy Bitsy Spider cartoon series!
Itsy leads you downstairs, wanting to show you something outside.
You open your front door...
You suddenly realize this is really a dream.
You see spiders with wings flying everywhere, and they look beautiful!
You see Itsy crawling on by to a cave in the near distance.
You follow him inside
There are some guardian flying spiders near what appears to be a large stone door, but they don't seem in the mood to attack intruders.
You touch a touch-sensitive switch
The door opens...
There it is...
The absolutely elegant, ginormous queen flying spider
It strums its legs about its web, like...as if it was playing a harp
It approaches you from its web (can't figure out if I should say you're stuck on it yourself)
Greets you with chainsaw like teeth (instead of fangs)
It roars with an abnormal almost choral sound
It beckons you to get onto it
You obey its call
You look above and see a bright opening above the lair
The wings of the queen start to beat hard and fast
The giant queen flies up towards it
You get closer and closer!
You awake (if its night or day, its up to you)
You dismiss whatever happened, and just lay around, perhaps to go back to sleep.
Itsy chuckles and sleeps, too!

Fully classical, over 5 minutes, and has absolutely NO snare drums! How is that possible? Me dunno, but its going in my history books!

Sound FX are courtesy of:

Apple
WavePad
Richard Frolich (thank you so much for providing the cave door sound!) find and hear more of his sounds @ http://www.freesound.org/
people/FreqMan/

This song holds a new record in the number of tracks I used (over 30!) to make a song. The buzzing bass part when the wings of the queen flap, was I believe my most favorite part of making the song. That part had been in my mind since I first thought of the song. I added an effect or two to the Orchestra Deep Bass to give it that buzzy feel.

I wanted to add a panning automation to that track to give the feeling of large spiders flying by originally, but was never really sure where I'd put it, so story-wise, I had made just one use of it (the queen).

The organ solo was the biggest headache. Even after quantizing it just sounds whack. There were some other quantizing ishies here and there I'd love to have ironed out, but there's no time for that now!

This song won 1st Place for the NewGrounds Audio Contest of October 2011.

Greets and congrats to: EoD696, flashmasta12, The-iMortal, XSakuX, OpenLight, joethesouleater, Jimmypig, and all the other contestants and judges that participated in the contest!
-FTA

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Realmguys

2011-11-07 21:18:56

NAC Judge

Flying Spider Colony <(FTA)>
Christopher Shaird (FaeryTaleAdventurer)
I was surprised at the initial quality of some of the sounds used in this piece. Some of the instruments later used however, seemed as if they were of lesser quality and it began to distract me when listening. This sounded as though it were a score to an actual clip of video footage. I could almost envision what was happening along to this music. Many different emotions were played out and illustrated. It definitely had some creepy moments to it, mischief and evil were in the air. Nice bank of sounds and your understanding of music theory shows. Excellent work and good job fitting this month's easy contest criteria. 9.0

FaeryTaleAdventurer responds:

Thanks for the review, Realmguys!

Thanks for noticing the quality at the beginning. Even before I mixed and mastered I actually felt like I was at the helm of a live orchestra. Unfortunately there is perhaps an instrument or two that I kind of want to kick myself for not using instead. I thought about using individual tracks for the plucking, but got lazy about that and instead used a string ensemble pluck, which was perhaps actually lower quality, I didn't even bother to confirm.

I kid you not I "envisioned" waking up to a spider like Itsy for some time, with some music like this, but the flying spider idea, came up just this year, while I was cleaning the pool one day, I kid you not!

I have never scored music for a live video, but in the past, I guess I attribute this kind of work to the fact that I did a lot of AMVs on Youtube, ranging from music synching to pictures, and growing up watching a lot of cartoons.

If I was originally completing this song without hearing about te contest, it most likely would have been a lot less scary.

Don't know a lot about music theory, but I guess I do tend to surprise myself through ear training or piano playing. An honest mix of John Williams, Danny Elfman, and the composers of loads of those classic WB cartoons I watched in the 90s, and many more!

Again, thanks for your review!

-FTA

AudioVision

2011-10-25 18:38:25

NAC Creepy Chronnies Judge

I certainly took enjoyment in the fact that this is much more orchestrated than your average newgrounds track. I like the title as well, found it quite fitting. I could imagine such floating spiders throughout the track.
I was a fan of the orchestration the whole way through the song. Great classical styling, no "soundtrack" style orchestral. I enjoy the "falling"/"floating" feeling your melody exhibited in the beginning.
Good choice of instruments as well, except for one thing, which i'll address later. As for the organ, as you say, it could have been ironed out a bit more, but overall it was a good bit.

I found some of the transitions in your piece a bit lacking. I would have liked to see a bit better fluidity through your transitioning. Also wasn't too big a fan of your rugrats-esque bit from 3:42 to 3:48. The piece could have used a bit more polishing mixing-wise, to make everything a bit more crisp and full sounding, but that didn't much detract from your song. I found that the harmonies you would make in the song sometimes wouldn't fit quite right. Occasionally I'd find a pairing of notes less "creepy" and more "awkward". But this was the minority.

Overall, a great piece, and I'm looking forward to following some more of your work. Simple but enticing orchestration with a minority of flaws, and a welcome break from the usual BZZZZ BZZZZ BWAWAWAWAWAWAWA of dubstep on the 'grounds. Keep up the classical!

FaeryTaleAdventurer responds:

Thank you for reviewing, AudioVision!

It's nice to know someone notices the direction I tend to take on my classical pieces. I assume by "soundtrack", you mean the over-dramatic and/or with-technopop style music, not to say that's all bad, but I guess you could say I am a "traditionalist" in this case (I have experimented with more modern styles, myself sometimes).

About the instruments, I did want to maybe throw a choir in there (actually thought about using a more natural form of the AMG mTRONMix choir, instead of always trying to tweak it in my songs to make it sound more realistic; the natural sound has a more creepy electronic feel to it). Chronamut did emphasize that vocals should be included. I actually thought about putting my voice in the track, to perhaps interact with Itsy and the environment (though I don't think I have a good Itsy voice!).

Transitions are definitely something that I have heard in the past works of mine that need some build-up fixing, and I have imagined recently some things I would've love to have tossed into the mix (i.e. a harp gliss to the front door opening).

The "Rugrats-esque" part was actually the roar of the queen (if you guessed that the Mellow Organ was used, you were right!) *goes to add another line to Author Comments*. I had thought about using one of the monster roars from WavePad, but I think any of them would've come off as just plain cheesy. Speaking of Rugrats, I will definitely say that my biggest influence(s) for this song was cartoons I grew up watching in the 90s, namely the ones by Warner Bros.

I always try to aim for quality sound in my songs, but I literally finished making the song on the due day, with just a few hours left to mix/master (very busy guy), so that's definitely something I'd like to focus on the next time I decide to commit to another NAC. Personally, I thought I was already listening to a live orchestra (something I didn't think was possible with GarageBand) in most of the song, before I even did mixing/mastering! But I attempted to do it anyway.

I agree with you whole-heartedly about some parts of the song, I just want to kick myself about not deciding to fix, when it came to harmonizing. In a number of cases, I didn't really know what to do. I'm actually not too happy about some of the minor changes I made to the trumpet lead when you and the queen are lifting off.

Again, thanks very much for your judging. It's nice to know that the classic classical isn't dead just yet. Though I can make a wobble bass, I'd probably just use it in a classical beat, as my electronica skill isn't all that good. Dub'n'Classical, sounds scary, but who knows?

-FTA