Battle of the Champions - Orchestral Action Score

Hi,

for a long time I wanted to write something like this: a flamboyant “final fight” track with broad, heroic themes swirling above driving ostinati.

Battle of the Champions - Flamboyant


Originally this piece belongs to the score I wrote for a student film project realised many many years ago. The music was produced via a MIDI-based digital sequencer and of course orchestral sample libraries. Unfortunately, the London Symphony Orchestra was just too busy at the moment for a recording session. :stuck_out_tongue:

While the last bars in asymmetrical 7/8 meter surely feel a bit overloaded (with syncopated choir fills and such), I am quite happy with the overall arrangement and the final mix. But maybe I am a little bit biased since I listened to it too often and it’s just chaos to your ears… :wink: If you have some hints on how to improve the mix, sound, orchestration etc. please feel free to let me know.

Best regards and many thanks in advance,

Dustin

Very nicely done, Dustin. You really achieved a realistic rendering. I love 7/8 and it goes well in this piece. My only thought is to position the instruments into a more traditional orchestral setup, to make it sound even more real. That is, 1st violins left; second violins, on the left and a little farther back; cello and bass on the right; viola center right, brass back right; woodwinds back center; horns back left; percussion behind everyone else. Maybe I’m too deep into some recordings I’m currently doing! There are variations, of course, but in your mix, it’s hard to tell where everything is, while in a John Williams score (for example) you would hear it. Great job!

Glad you like it and thanks for your remakrs, really appreciate it. :slight_smile: Yes, the panning indeed caused me quite a headache. Since I am using stereo samples only (which mostly are recorded on their traidional posionts in a classical orchestra) I simply just couldn’t pan but only “balance” them across the stereo panaroma by isolating the two mono channels of each track, switching them to mono and then panning them farther left or right. I am using Audacity for the final mixing/mastering process and this seems to be the only way to position tracks recorded with stereo samples, that a come naturally in full center (for instance piano, harp or exotic percussion samples).

Dustin

At last, here is the complete film excerpt, to which this piece as well as two more cues were originally written:

The film itself is obviously very trashy and extremely LOW-BUDGET (shot in 2005 with a discounter camcorder), but I was primarily interested in the opportunity to finally write film music in the musically incredibly rewarding fantasy genre.
Hope you’ll enjoy it! :slight_smile: