Feedback - Zan Mei Zhi Quan

There have been a few feedback to date, on the most current Zan Mei Zhi Quan to date.

Peter Lim (the worship leader for Johnson's wedding) says he loves the intro, and he says "Wow I am speechless, it is really very nice".

Sean says he loves the intro too, and that the GuZheng is really authentic, and blends well with the music.

Rainne from my workplace says she likes the Guzheng in the context of the music too.

YC however, says that the instruments actually sounded cheaper than this piece I made. http://soundcloud.com/patrickwoo/how-am-i-supposed-to-live-3. This was made with a collection of soundfonts, the Korg M1 Le soft synth, and some virtual instruments & generators from FL Studio.

This is interesting observation. YC is not musically trained or literate, to express exactly what is wrong, but he has a keen sense of what he expects to hear from a nicely produced piece of music.

So this is a challenge and a problem to overcome. I've just finished arranging the piece so I've just got out of the musician mindset, thinking about notes and harmony and musical lines. YC's comments have reminded me that I should also put more love into things that give the finishing polish to up the value of the piece, so it is closer to professional standards.

As it stands, I have already done basic reverb sends and levels balancing, including panning, on all my instruments. However each instrument is doing it's own send in their respective "players".

For example, the piano from Kontakt is in it's own Kontakt Pianos virtual instruments collection, doing its own reverb send and having its own reverb space configuration (maybe it's Hall A, cathedral, etc). My bass guitar is from Kontakt Factory Instruments collection, and its also having it's own reverb send with a different configuration (different delay duration, pre-delay values, reverb stereo spread, etc). Could be a reason why they are not sounding coherent.

I may need to fix this by sending things to an "external reverb" outside of the Kontakt player.

I may also have to look into widening my audio panning to give it a "bigger" feel. I might also have to re-look at my EQ to bring out unique band of frequencies in each instrument so they sit well together as a band.

Too many possibilities to test out. I may not have time to tweak this to be in time for the wedding worship. But I'll quickly do a bit of everything I've thought of to improve the mix, before mixing it down to 2-tracks for the wedding.

Passion and Interest

Sean and I were talking about passion, interest and tenacity. He says a CG artist (or vfx artist) are one of those jobs that especially need tenacity to stay long in the industry.

Many jobs only requires you to work hard during the working hours, and you will have gained the required experience to move up and excel in your career. Not for CG. Many times we need to keep practising our craft. Especially when working in a huge pipeline, you may not always necessarily be doing the full spectrum of work you would like yourself to be doing. In many instances we are just doing a very small part, or something else entirely.

To keep ourselves relevant in the specialisation, in the capacity we want our career to move towards, we need to keep "sharpening our blades", and keep doing the things we eventually want to be doing. That is quite a tedious and joyless work if we have no passion, or if we do not have enough determination to do it till we actually get to where we want to go.

This definitely requires perseverance and tenacity.

"Interest makes you work till 8pm", says Sean in these exact words, "but fire makes you work till 4am in the morning."

From my previous post, I was working on a piece of music till 5am last night. ;)

Zan Mei Zhi Quan - Completed

Click here to listen on soundcloud.com

A more modern cover version of zan mei zhi quan (讚美之泉). 

Original version here: http://youtu.be/1wGHfg_q9mM

All instruments done with Native Instruments Kontakt Factory Instruments. Drums are from NI Battery, GuZheng is from EastWest Silk. 


Added a verse before the first chorus, and another chorus with raised key, and of course an outro.


Sean is really my number one fan! It's 4.40am in SIngapore. He is still online. I told him I just uploaded it, and he immediately grabs it. He is listening to it now!

Build-A-Headphone-Graph

http://www.headphone.com/learning-center/build-a-graph.php

A fellow headphone enthusiast has shed light on my bad experience with my purchase of the Klipsch S4 . He's given me a link that I could not be too glad to receive.

Here's a website that profiles frequency response curves from major headphone for you to compare and contrast in your relentless search for the perfect set of ear/headphones (within your limited budget of course, or the lack of).

Now you can do this without running around and sifting through huge number of review websites and forums full of advertisements and sometimes biased or inaccurate reviews. Of course those sites are really important, so we know what the existing owners are saying about the perceived sounds, temperaments, build quality, etc. However, I believe that a frequency response graph says a thousand words, technically and scientifically speaking of course :).

This is definitely a place I must go to before I head to the shops to hunt for my next pair of phones.

KVR Audio Portal

http://www.kvraudio.com/

Here's another comprehensive audio portal I came across. KVR Audio is Internet's number one news and information resource for open standard audio plug-ins (yes this includes virtual instruments for DAWs).

They report new releases and latest news related to plug-in standards like VST plug-ins, Audio Unit plug-ins, and RTAS plug-ins.

Many of their services are free. Signing up as their member is free too! Free membership services include news and products information update, user reviews and a very active user-forum.

They are also the official hosting forum for many plug-in and soundware developers.

Zan Mei Zhi Quan - work in progress

Click here to listen on soundcloud.com

A more modern cover version of zan mei zhi quan (讚美之泉). 
Original version here: http://youtu.be/1wGHfg_q9mM
Done mostly with Native Instruments Kontakt Factory Instruments. Drums are from NI Battery, GuZheng is from EastWest Silk.


work in progress. not mixed

This is the first time I am using articulations from my EastWest instrument libraries.

This is a Chinese worship song that's going to be used in Johnson's wedding worship portion of the ceremony. Thus Peter requested it to be a bit more Chinese sounding, as well as more modern. So in the usual cheesy manner, the GuZheng was blatantly used. I really hope I've made it somewhat relevant in the music. 

Composer: Thomas E. Brown

I came across Thomas Brown's page, and I was somehow captivated by it.

Thomas is a music composer, arranger and performer. In his write-up on the main page, he is very frank about his involvement with writing music for the screen. Admitting that he is new to the section of the media industry, it says nevertheless he approaches it with passion and enthusiasm.

His write-up is humble, because despite him being new in this circle, he has composed and written for 2 films that went into film festivals.

He has had formal music education. He graduated in Music Performance at the renowned Tech Music Schools.  He is still studying for a Masters in "Composing for Film and TV",

The reason I like him, is probably due to the fact that he is relatively new, but he has had 2 finished films, and has made some connections with people in the circle. He also has his own page and a facebook profile in his composer capacity. Through all this, I can see the effort, and feel his enthusiasm, and I can relate to him. This is a success case of a composer entering the industry, and actively doing things to upgrade his skills at the same time. He is surely someone to look up to. It is inspiring!

Thomas' Facebook profile here: http://www.facebook.com/thomasbrowncomposer?sk=info