T w e n t y S i d e d
Once again, my goal here is to use this project to push me into doing something new. So this time around I’m going to tackle the Deus Ex: Human Revolution soundtrack. I didn’t really fall in love with this soundtrack when I played the game. I didn’t even really notice itAside from the callbacks to the original Deus Ex., but now that I’ve taken the time to listen to it properly, I have to admit it’s really amazing:
Link (YouTube) |
I’ll be honest: This is a stupid idea. I’m not remotely skilled enough to take on something like this. And even if I had the skill, I don’t have the equipmentEquipment needed: An orchestra. And singers. And someone who can conduct them.. Here is what I think is distinctive here:
- Orchestral instrumentation. Unlike the Half-LifeHalf-Life 2, really. track from a few weeks ago, this stuff isn’t filtered, distorted, bit-crushed, or synthesized. Bring a real orchestra or GTFO.
- Vocals. I can’t tell what they’re saying, but gosh those singers sound amazing.
- It mixes some electronic pulsing with the above, to give a nice contrast. It’s a blend of new and old, much like the style of the game, which mixed renaissance fashion with cyber augmentation.
- Is awesome.
I did what I could. Here is what I came up with:
I don’t think it sounds particularly like the Human Revolution soundtrack. Normally I really dig the synth orchestra and synth voices that I have to work with, but this time I have to say the synth stuff sounds really cheesy and canned when comparing them directly with the real thing.
But I like it anyway. It’s certainly not something I would have come up with just working on my own.
Here is the track map:
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What I learned:
I’m not even sure what I learned. I guess I’m breaking out of the super-structured grids I’ve been clinging to. In the past I usually pick a chord progression and repeat it until the song is over. But this is less about following a pattern and more about hitting all the moods I wanted. I think I have a better feel for building to a crescendo and then bringing it back down. Previously I just did this by making the drums fast and then eliminating them. This track goes through a lot of changes in tone, instrumentation, and tempo, which isn’t something I’ve messed with before.
Footnotes:
[1] Aside from the callbacks to the original Deus Ex.
[2] Equipment needed: An orchestra. And singers. And someone who can conduct them.
[3] Half-Life 2, really.
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You keep giving Half-life the ‘3’ annotation. If I had to use a popular meme, I’d say it would be the “stop trying to make it happen” meme.
Joke’s on me, I’ve yet to properly play through Half-life 2, and the episodes, from start to finish..
Nice new arrangement :) . I’ll listen to the DXHR soundtrack later.
Apparently there’s been a leak of Valve’s SVN repository which indicates it is in fact in progress. So it will probably be completed with their typical alacrity
pft, for all we know, as soon as HL2 came out, someone did a “cp -r hl2 hl3; svn commit hl3” and hasn’t touched it since
Yeah, I’ve seen that, and I don’t believe it actually means anything until we get more solid clues like announcements of the sort.
Yeah, certainly different from your previous works.
My five year old daughter tells me “This song is scary. It sounds like a monster… It’s still scaring me.”
I like it a bit better… but maybe that’s why she’s frightened all the time.
Well… I think you can count yourself lucky you weren’t a Might and Magic fan… or Supreme Commander fan.
Paul Anthony Romero was a literal music wizard (to the point he works on the Heroes of Might & Magic franchise to THIS DAY, even after the license changed hands to Ubi, Ubisoft realized fans would never accept a Heroes title without his opera soundtrack).
And Jeremy Soule is well known for his tracks, but I think the most complex orchestra stuff he ever did was in Supreme Commander.
Jeremy Soule’s most complex work is by far Total Annihilation. Supreme Commander is good, but every single track in TA is pure orchestral bliss.
So true! Jeremy Soule is responsible for easily 25% of the happiness you feel when playing Total Annihilation; the stirring, mournful orchestral tracks imbue your tiny robots’ base-building with an epic feel.
Eh, I feel Supreme Commander has more gravitas, cohesion and a proper theming (some tracks are fine-tuned to even start their leitmotif at some precise points during base construction, and the leitmotif is found in half the tracks in some form or another), Total Annihilation tunes sound so divorced from each other. But to each their own, I still find it a great sound track nonetheless.
It also helps that the Total Annihilation soundtrack was designed to have different moods for different contexts in the game. There’s a tune for base-building, there’s a tune when battle breaks out, there’s another when a firefight has finished. It is some brilliant stuff (that carried over to Sup Com as well).
Honestly, rather than Deus Ex, this track reminds me a lot of Christopher Franke’s music for Babylon 5.
…Which was made by Chris directing an orchestra in Germany (can’t recall which one, but they said which one in one of the seasons’ DVD set’s extras). So basically, mission accomplished. :-)
The “wordless” (sometimes they’re actually wordless, and sometimes they’re just in a different language), usually female, mournful vocals that graced a tonne of soundtracks was due directly to the influence of the Gladiator score. Hans Zimmer enlisted Lisa Gerrard, one-half of the world music/goth duo Dead Can Dance, and she lent her vocals and composition. Films like Kingdom of Heaven and The Passion of the Christ followed suit and soon it was everywhere. (It was eventually replaced by another Zimmer contribution, the BRAAAA! sound from the Inception score.)
I’ve always found synth strings to be pretty decent. Even if they’re obviously synthesized, a basic strings patch on a cheap keyboard can still sound fine. They have their own charms, even if they don’t sound like the real thing. But synth brass and winds usually sound terribly cheesy unless you have really high-quality patches. A good example of the contrast: Led Zeppelin’s “All Of My Love”. John Paul Jones wrote and played that on his Yamaha GX-1 a really high-end ($60,000 US in 1973 dollars!) keyboard synth for the mid-70s. The strings patch for the main riff sounds fine even today. But the synth trumpet patch he uses for the solo starting at 2:32 sounds so cheesy.
Huh, I’ve listened to that Zeppelin song plenty and never even noticed it was supposed to be a trumpet. :P
Part of it probably is that the melody and execution just come off like all the other synthy-prog lines of the day.
Yeah, using synth in place of real instruments doesn’t really work well. Instead of synth instruments, you should be using a Sample Library for stuff like this that’s supposed to sound like real instruments. The main problem is that the best ones are really expensive. I know there’s some free stuff out there, but I don’t know enough to be able to recommend anything specific. Once you have the samples, though, I think the process for using them is pretty similar to what you already do. Though it may be a bit more fiddly to get things just right.
Not to mention the default Orchestra and Choir instrument packs included with most music software are especially crappy.
I haven’t used a professional Orchestra Sample Library myself yet, but from what I heard, the good ones are nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. I would’ve thought the DX:HR soundtrack also used something like this, is a a real Orchestra mentioned in the Credits?
It takes some work of course, but yes, sample libraries can be made to sound a lot like a real orchestra, especially when they are just a supporting component like in the DXHR soundtrack (don’t know if they are real in that case, the wikipedia page doesn’t mention any actual orchestra though).
The thing with sampled orchestras is that they have a lot of alternate samples for the individual instruments (and individual notes!), so just smacking them onto a midi line and expecting wonders is not enough. You often need to go through the line and doctor individual sounds by hand. Some of this can be automated with various algorithms, that make the occasional note a tiny bit out of tune or tempo, but of course someone needs to make those too.
When someone really does put down the work though, even trained ears can have a hard time separating a real orchestra from a sampled one.
It’s good that you’re trying new stuff like this, but dear god those strings and trumpets sound awful. It also doesn’t feel like the song is going anywhere – whatever buildup you have is ruined by the awful sounds you use and the lack of bass – there’s 0 punch to this song when there should be.
If you want to make this kind of OST, add some serious amount of bass. Experiment with low drums. Your music is always too high pitched and excited, I feel.
Also, if you’re going to use synth, look to the original or Unreal’s OST, avoid trumpets, use strings in only very specific ways.
I found that I only started really playing with the bass (other than a blind “moar bass boost”) when I realized what the spectrum analyzer was for, and when I picked up some descent headphones.
Although I find I still have to switch between 3 different types of headphones to make sure the mix can be reasonably replicated on them. Shamus can attest to one of my mixes sounding downright terrible on anything but good quality speakers.
The other elements sounded much better–but dem trumpets. Yeah. They don’t sound real at all.
Missed out on the soundtrack but that is impressive and I really enjoyed listening to it. Makes me consider that I may want to go back to other game soundtracks and listen without playing the game to see what they sound like.
Most soundtracks in games are like this, you don’t actively notice them but you do experience them on a subconscious level, to the point that, even if you didn’t pay attention, later on you’ll definitely recognize the tune if you listen to it separately from the game.
That’s the thing of game soundtracks, though. They’re more there to compliment the experience than to be listened on their own. Mind you, some can be listened on their own though, but most will be either repetitive or even annoying divorced from their games (I find this especially true from most Nintendo classics. They greatly complement their games, but I feel like killing myself after listening to them alone for five minutes).
The same is frequently true of film scores. I’ve had a few assignments where I had to watch a film and explicitly listen to the music and make notes of what happens in the score. A thoroughly unnatural and active way to watch a film, and tiring too when you need to watch it several times to catch stuff you missed. But very interesting.
The catch is that in gaming you can’t properly “time” the parts of the song to what’s happening on the screen, so there’s a lot of guesswork involved. But there are some techniques regarding that. Timing how long it takes for a player to get to a spot so that the crescendo properly culminates at the point the player gets to a vista, or, if balsy, to the point an enemy attacks, or, in the case of a strategy game, have the song change the beat the moment some buildings are done and then again when your first soldier or worker finishes training (and I’m not talking about scripts, literally have the song naturally build up to these points).
Or you can just take control away from the player so he doesn’t interfere, but at that point you’re already just doing a movie soundtrack.
The good ones have layers, of course, so that the “battle music” and the “normal music” are the same track, but with only some elements audible at a time, so you can seamlessly crossfade between them. Transistor does a bit of that, as does that very same old Deus Ex. The tracker music in those old games was a big part of that.
The Halo games did an excellent job with this, the music was always excessively well timed, and the amount of time you could spend in a single section could take minutes to hours depending on the difficulty. Halo 3 in particular.
The “Icarus” song (can’t recall it’s exact name) but it’s the intro/theme song I guess for DE:HR is pretty awesome, it was used for the trailer etc. And it’s really up there with awards worthy tracks IMO.
Shamus, the song is OK, but the violins sound way to harsh (they kind of sucks, not sure you can improve them, maybe a different instrument instead of them), maybe a “artificial” synth sound would work better.
Also the drums are a tad odd, maybe instead of a drumset with bass and cymbals it would be better to use a gong or something oriential, and the deep drum you migh try to use a orchestral drum or a tribal or asian drum (these three types usually are banged on with big sticks with big cloths or similar on the ends and the drums are pretty huge).
The track itself does have a cyberpunkish feel to it though.
This does evoke the underscore of Deus Ex. But what it really reminds me of is the underscore from Omega in Mass Effect 2. For what it’s worth people who like the DX:HR soundtrack should give a look at the score to TRON:Legacy which is a great mixture of symphonic and electronic elements.
I think that the guy who scored DX:HR also scored the new XCOM. Unfortunately the mix I found on youtube got really repititive – it was basically that mission launch cue over and over.
Sorta off topic but in case somebody still do not know:
BioWare are giving away the Dragon Age Inquisition Tavern Songs for free until February 9, 2015 at which point it’ll be only available from digital music retailers.
Many had requested these songs and BioWare is very cool to do this.
The Dragon Age Inquisition soundtrack itself is not half bad either,
but nothing can beat Dragon Age Origins (and to some extent Dragon Age 2) soundtracks by Inon Zur. You can hear the lack of his style in DA:I sadly and I wish he’d have made the music for DA:I too, no offence to the DA:I composer, Inon kind of set a huge bar for the Dragon Age music.
It’s like somebody who is not John Williams trying to create Star Wars music, it might end up decent but nowhere close to what the original composer did.
There is one exception though. Frank Klepacki (holy shit for a impressive list of game soundtracks), his Blade Runner soundtrack while it does not sound the same as Vangelis original music, it’s similar but it’s own thing. Frank also remade the Blade Runner theme and other than some changes in the instruments sounds (sound fingerprint?) that one seems to be almost as good as the original. The other tracks from that game went a more electronic/digital route than Vangelis (which was more synth angled) and that worked better IMO for the games feel.
Another game soundtrack to try and get a hold of is the Far Cry 3 soundtrack by Brian Tyler who hasn’t done much games but his movie list is interesting.
Also the composer for DE:HR Michael McMann kind of looks like Inon Zur which caught me of guard for a second.
Inon Zur’s had a hand in a lot of things, like the recent Fallouts, and also bits of Dragon’s Dogma.
I have a sudden desire to hear your emulation of the Mass Effect soundtrack. Geth synth distortion and all.
It seems the violins in this piece have a strange tendency to articulate on a delay. Is this a result of the writing program / violin sound file, or is it written that way? I ask because, back when I used the Sibelius program, some instruments just wouldn’t playback exactly as written.
I liked the song, but to me it felt more reminiscent of the original DX than HR, except for the opening part, which was really nice by the way.
The synth strings really do sound awful, just like they did back in DX. :P A small tip is that for cheapo midi stuff, the generic “strings” patches often sound better than the individual violin/viola/cello ones. Of course all instruments are hard to mimic, but bowed instruments are among the hardest, I’d claim.
“Of course all instruments are hard to mimic, but bowed instruments are among the hardest, I'd claim.”
Actually, I’d put money on saxophone. There’s something about the timbre that synths just haven’t cracked yet. They *never* sound right.
I think most of it sounds great, synthesizer tones and all. However, I agree there’s an issue with the strings in this one (the instrument(s) starting at 0:48). I guess I’d say they… lack nuance?
If I’m getting my terminology right, all the note hits have the same ‘attack’. They follow exactly the same slow buildup on every note, which in my opinion contributes to the artificiality of the sound far more than the waveform itself. Natural playing would have a lot more variation in tone; with buildup at the start and decay at the end of the musical ‘phrases’, rather than on every single note.
While I will agree there is nothing that can compare to a real orchestra I really respect what you have done with what you have to work with on this track. It has a very sci-fi vibe to it but not in the old 80s synthesizer sense. To me it feels like this could work to any modern sci fi piece. I also like how you seem to have broken out of your comfort zone and are changing the tone of the piece as it goes giving it a natural rhythm.
Reminds me more of some of the Battle for Wesnoth music. (synth orchestra + epic overtones)
Have you checked out any of Dave Tipper’s music in your travels? He’s a pretty good example layering sounds to really build the atmosphere and also evidence that iterating on a theme isn’t bad so long as you keep working it around. Maybe he’s a bit too glitchy for your average easy listener but there’s plenty of technical details to keep you interested.
Broadly his stuff falls into two categories, this is a downtempo style mix made from one of his later albums https://soundcloud.com/tippermusic/bsj
And this is a more dancefloor targeted breakbeat https://soundcloud.com/tippermusic/covered-in-lobsters?in=tippermusic/sets/dancefloor
If you work though his discography you’ll probably find an album with a style you like.
Oh, and if you’re not wearing glasses (or wearing glasses you shouldn’t be) he kinda looks like John Carmack, that’s a good sign right?
Hey, this is pretty neat! Makes me think of the original Deus Ex, or the spirit of it at least.
I have to say that this game’s OST is more of a contemplative soundtrack in the sense that it adds depth to something the game world. You could say that it’s a perfect background music.
Anyway, you are right, your song doesn’t sound like it, well, at least it tries to !
To my ears, starting at about 1:00, it sounds like your pressing random keys hoping to build something interesting but as I tried to explain in Part 5 of your Music Lessons series, you’re not assembling coherent phrases nor making any atempt to set a theme.
Last time I commented on this topic was about phrasings and repetitions with an example from UT99.
I don’t know what you tried to mimic here but I’ll take the intro from the DE:HR OST you posted as an example.
This is a simple introductory song and the only song in the OST that lasts more than 3 minutes (the other one is a mashup of prototypes for the credits i guess).
This song is made up of divisions of 4 (basically, count the beats of that electronic part and group them in packets of 4. (http://onlinesequencer.net/64498 2 loops here = a packet of 4) These are divisions that are repeated in each phrase with a phrase being 16 divisions long). Of course, this is what structures the song before you add some flavory meat (the vocal parts that seem to say “oooseeaahh”) that also repeat every 4’s of their own which translates to every 16’s divisions.
Basically, each phrase tells a different part of the story but keeps the same structure all along that is even interpreted by other means (piano and violin).
Yours, well, is weird … Like I said before (and it’s a good analogy), it feels like you want to tell an entire story in a single sentence.
The beginning could have been very nice if you let it ramp up as you seem to have tried. At 0:24, there is a voice starting a hum and you can barely hear it attempt a hight note at 0:30 before immediately collapsing and return at 36 with two notes. I would have suggested spacing these hums evenly until you reached that spot on the higher notes before introducing the beats with a main theme.
But the thing is, there doesn’t seem to be any theme in this song. This lack of structure is exactly what makes your song feel like it was made by a random number generator. It’s very experimental in some way.
I think you could have used that small electronic part at 0:23 and expanded upon it by making it be interpreted by your other instruments as well. In the Deus Ex song, it’s 4 notes long (see the link above to onlinesequencer.net ) interpreted by the electronic, the piano and violin all the way to the end.
Man, I really have a hard time explaining my thoughts.
To give you some basis, here is crappy piece of music made in live by the developer of “The Next Penelope” (nice game btw, and nice guy too) using simple tools like an ipad app (go back to 43:25) and Live. It’s very basic but you can see that the lack of material and options like you have with Magix led naturally to the use of small samples arranged in simple segments. I think you should try something as simple as well. Something that can loop maybe ?
Again, sorry if I said something wrong. I’m just trying to give some feedback (I want you to improve, really).
Anyway, keep working on your skills. I really want to hear your masterpiece someday.
There’s a lot to Deus Ex: Human Resources’ soundtrack, even multiple tracks most people are unlikely to hear.
There’s two different combat tracks for the police station, and they’re both kinda great.
And never heard by anyone.
Although recently I’ve been playing Persona Q, the Persona series having its music, particularly its frequent vocal tracks, having a quite large part. There’s even two different versions of the main battle music for each “main” (that you choose) cast in Q which fits in with their respective games’ musical tones.
Also then there’s just some great music in general, even for exploring.
Footsteps of Time having some lovely layers and segments to it. Even having some wordless vocals in it. (Relevancy!)