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Sanctuary

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Author Comments

EDIT (19/5/12) - Tomppaah was awesome enough to master this so I've uploaded his mastered version. Please go check out his music - a lot of his tracks are in a similar style to this and he has some really amazing stuff.

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Wow, this took me ages. I started it on the 15th of January and now, on the 8th of February, I can finally call it done! Be prepared for a long-ass description

Right then, this here is my fourth ever full orchestral song, for the Orchestral MAC BrokenDeck is organising. I think it's my best too - Land of Kings isn't even comparable to this, and I don't think Journey to the Afterlife and Legend are better either. I tried focusing on three main things - composition, realism and instrumentation.

This song probably has some of the best composition I've ever done. It explores six different keys and two time signatures, and I've also worked very hard on the harmony and transitions. It has loads of mood changes too, since I wanted the song to tell a story. Basically *my* idea was of a person who constantly kept getting into danger and worked desperately to find a sanctuary, which he does find at the end. I'd write a scene but I guess the story should be left to the interpretation of the listener.

As for realism, I know it's not such a high factor the MAC judges take into consideration but I still worked a lot on it. I gave woodwinds occasional pauses, as if the players are stopping for breath, pretty much every note has a different velocity and doesn't start exactly at the right time (for humanising purposes), I tried loads of new orchestral effects such as flute trills and grace notes, and I played the harp intro and piano solo myself on my synth. The first part of the harp intro is actually improvised. The massive amount of volume and tempo automations helped too... And so did the realistic East/West samples :P.

And lastly I worked on arrangement and instrumentation. I've got 49 East/West instruments loaded (it was a KILLER for my CPU) and I tried to touch every part of the standard orchestra (Woodwind, Brass, Strings, Percussion and Choir). I even added things like guitars and pianos which aren't part of the standard orchestra.

So, as for the instruments, I used violins, violas, cellos, double basses, trombones, French horns, trumpets, flutes, oboes, a subtle choir, bass drums, taikos, shakers, tambourines, gongs, cymbals, snares, timpanis, bongos (djembe), a guitar, a mandolin, a harp, a piano, and some subtle drone effects to add to the atmosphere. Everything's from East/West - snare/timpani and the standard orchestra instruments are from Symphonic Orchestra, all other percussion's from Stormdrum and the guitar and mandolin are from Ra.

Also, as for the credits, I've got too many to name since so many people gave me feedback on this one which I improved on, although camoshark certainly deserves a mention for helping me IMMENSELY with many chords in the song (like those brass chords after the harp intro - those took like an hour, haha) and giving me all the feedback a guy could ask for.

Echo deserves a mention too for also giving me tonnes of feedback! And lastly thanks to samulis for giving me ideas for the 3/4 to 4/4 change. I didn't use the ideas though even though I planned to. I just decided to go for a more generic transition since the project file was lagging like crazy.

So, after 49 instruments, 45 automation clips, 200 patterns, 93 bars and nearly a month of work, here's Sanctuary. Fun fact: there used to be 199 patterns but due to OCD I wanted 200 so I added a timpani roll at the very end :3.

Wish me luck in the competition. I probably won't win because there are some geniuses like PeterSatera, Bosa, Echo, Computer112, blackattackbitch, samulis, etc... taking part, but I'm aiming to get in the Top 8 at least! Enjoy, and feedback is very much appreciated.

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This music is truly wonderful and brings back alot of nostalgic memory's, and for that i have to say thank you

Amazing, You did a great job!
Also, I would like to show other people your work, by playing this music in an orchestra in the small city of Tarragona
So, could you send me the scores of Sanctuary to play it in Tarragona please?
It won't matter if you don't want to send me te file. Just, do what you want.
But apart from that, i loved this music. Congratulations Step!

Step responds:

Wow, I'm so sorry for taking long to reply. I don't even know how I missed this review.

Hmm, we'll have to talk specifics about the orchestra thing (if the offer is still open). Remember that I didn't arrange this with a specific orchestra in mind, so if I were to send you the score you'd need to tell me what instruments there are in the orchestra, how many of each instrument, etc, and I'd need to rewrite it all which can be a fairly difficult job.

Feel free to PM me with more details.

Step, I know maybe all those toons of comments have bothered you alot, you may think, that I'm a simple schoolkid, you can decide to ignore me ,but then my dream will die. All I wanted to say that I was inspired by people's masterpieces works like: animaions, soundtracks, stories and you are no exception! I'm Hardly learning how to master animation, plot writting and soundtrack creation attributes by myself, to accomplish my dream about an animated-long movie about a whole year! I'm doing my best to create something that will leave a mark in people's life, something that will exterminate a brand of a parasite user from me. I just can't sit in one's hands and waste my life on nothing. Because I realized that magic felling when you create somehing beautifull.
I NEED to KNOW what kind of program did you used to create, those masterpieces. I'm already learnng FL STUDIO 12 but I don't think that that's program can create something except electronic music! you can contact me on my deviantart account http://mikera11.deviantart.com
PLEASE RESPOND YOU'RE THE ONLY HOPE FOR ME!!!
ALL WHAT I SAID TO YOU IS TRUE, PLEASE RESPOND

Step responds:

Hey, I'm glad you like my music. I'm thrilled to see that you have an urge to create. I feel like that's one of the most important characteristics of a person.

You'll be surprised to find out that I use FL Studio 12 for all my music! You can make any kind of music on it: electronic, orchestral, metal... as long as you have the instruments/plugins/VSTs for it. I use East/West libraries which aren't cheap! To start off, I would suggest using free soundfonts or a cheap library like Garritan or Edirol. Once you get a good feel for composing, then you can move on to low-tier East/West libraries like Symphonic Orchestra Silver, which you can pick up for around $100 - $200, or perhaps less if it's on sale.

Hope that helped.

waw

Step responds:

Short and sweet haha.

Thanks!

How does one explain this other than "awesome"?

I think this is your best piece ever, and if another is made that is better than this, congratulations, you are the best composer ever!

Step responds:

I don't know if I made anything better than this... there are some things I would change if I had to revisit this track, but some stuff in here I'm really proud of still! Thanks for the encouraging review.

Credits & Info

Artist
Production

Listens
69,455
Faves:
407
Downloads
3,676
Votes
160
Score
4.66 / 5.00

Uploaded
Feb 8, 2012
5:11 AM EST
Genre
Cinematic
File Info
Song
3.7 MB
4 min 1 sec

Licensing Terms

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