A Better Place - 20120731albionTest01 v004

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Here's an original piece created entirely with Spitfire's Albion 1, with the exception of the harp and timpani (from Kontakt's Factory Library).
Programmed in FL Studio 10.
Start date: 31 July 2012
Complete date: 5 August 2012

If you have been following my music and keeping and eye out for my writing trends, I believe my current inclination is sticking to minor keys, which gives the impression of gloomy/sinister/mystery for the most part.

This piece starts and ends in the minor key too, unfortunately, but I felt the middle part was like a rush of fresh air, for myself.

I feel I am having trouble with sustaining the music. This is currently as long a duration as I can push the song while still maintaining some kind of coherence in the structure. 

Another 'first' in this song, is my very heavy usage of the 'automation clip' feature in FL Studio. Many patches in Albion use mod-wheel (MIDI CC-channel 1) as a controller for dynamics and expression. I may be wrong, but on many of the patches it felt like note-velocity had no effect on the dynamics and sound at all. So I had to look around a little, read up the manual, to find out how to get at the MIDI CC data.

Using automation clips and laying them out in the playlist in FL Studio actually gives a very useful visual representation of the dynamics in each track. I can then arrange for everybody to go louder at a certain point and bring them softer at another part of the music. Previously I have always achieved this by using note velocity, but this way of working presents another level of intuitive control. This is definitely a good workflow to get used to.

Albion instruments are incredibly organic sounding and they really can be used right off the shelf without any tweaking, EQ or compression. I had an overall maximising process to improve the dynamic range.

Of course it is no surprise that Albion sounds all work together amongst themselves. The only 'outsiders' this time were the harp and timpani, and the latter is really soft in the mix. I will have to find out on the next piece that I decide to have a larger extent of integrating Albion with other libraries.

Hope you like it. Enjoy!