Let's Write a Super Mario Galaxy Theme with Tokyo Scoring Strings!

what is up my friends welcome back to a brand new video and today we're going to be writing a short track with tokyo scoring strings by impact soundworks so if you haven't heard yet uh impact sound wars has been working on this library for years now and they've worked with some fabulous musicians in japan um in tokyo and they've uh they just released the library very very recently and so i wanted to take it for a test drive i wanted to thank um impact soundworks for sending me a copy for uh to check out for you guys and to kind of write a little bit with and so we're gonna have a lot of fun i haven't done one of these live writing sessions in a little bit so i thought we would just write kind of a super mario odyssey inspired track uh using the library maybe add in a couple more instruments here and there just in case to you know fill out the arrangement a little bit more but the the primary source of the arrangement will come from this library i've got all the patches loaded up here you can see we have violence one two violas cellos and contrabasses and i've loaded those in which have the uh the board mix by default load it up by default and if you really want to go in and check out the different mics you can certainly do that as well but for simplicity's sake we'll use the default board mix before we really get into the writing session though i want to give you my sample library buyer's guide in case you don't have it yet it's totally free and i've just updated it to actually include this library so if you download this it will be the most up-to-date version of my sample library buyer's guide so far again it's totally free but it combines all of the libraries that i recommend that i use on a regular basis including strings wins brands of percussion piano libraries ethnic libraries jazz libraries all that great stuff combined into one guide you can read it within an afternoon and hopefully if you're on the lookout for a new library then it will give you a sense of what i personally like to use and recommend so you can use that for your next purchase if you'd like but i want to give that to you it's totally free just click the link below and it'll take you straight there all right let's dive in so i've kind of decided that i want to do maybe like a d major thing because i like the key of d major and uh 120 actually seems pretty good for more of an up tempo sort of thing maybe we'll do like 125 um just to bump it up a little bit 4 4 seems okay d major will just set logic to that as well and uh if i need to change articulations i'll certainly do that but you can see here by default they've loaded up the multi vibrato the highest setting and i'm gonna leave it at that um so yeah let's let's give it a shot i think what i'll do is i'll start with a little theme just have a sense of what i'm going for here one two three four okay here we go let's write something here [Music] [Applause] see [Music] cool all right now let's just make sure these are more or less quantized i'm not really going to use the look ahead mode for most of this because i just want to keep it a streamline as possible i want to see if i can write this just using the standard mode but if you're interested in the full look ahead mode definitely check out the walkthrough video on the impacts that works channel but let's kind of see here let's make sure everything sounds more or less lined up to the grid [Music] so these notes here are slightly late instead of using like negative track delay what i tend to do is just drag the midi back a little bit it's just my preferred workflow this a can start a little bit right on the beat [Applause] modulation goes down a bit let's see check that again that e can come in a little earlier there [Music] maybe that c sharp can go down so it's a little more active i'm fine with that maybe i'll just shift it there [Music] one [Music] cool and what i usually do is i also write my modulation and uh dynamics at the same time and expression so you see here basically as the phrase kind of goes down with the notes i'm kind of doing the same thing with my modulation wheel right i'm kind of going down and then as the phrase continues on the module goes up and especially when they hit the high notes i like to like let it sword up even more because if i'm imitating like a singer they're going to be producing more sound and more emotion with their voice when they hit those higher notes so i want to kind of replicate that with my my modulation it kind of goes down here and then as it goes up um when this phrase ends i kind of want to make it go up here i could just make it go down and then like just taper off naturally but i'm going to pretend as if this is going to be repeating the theme so like an a prime sort of thing and the intensity should it's going to build up even more so i wanted to rise up the the modulation there to increase the intensity and vibrato so it's almost like anticipating the following section okay cool now the violins are going to be doing the core of that melody there what i'll do is maybe i'll start creating a fundamental accompaniment pattern with my lower section so let me see maybe with my uh let's check out the chili's jelly um cellos i want to see what the spiccatos are kind of like so let's see okay let's go with this kind of short pattern there um i kind of like that pattern so [Music] okay here we go so one two three one two three four [Music] [Applause] okay so forgive the sloppy playing there um slight leg but hey that's that's part of any library so let's just double check this stuff here [Music] okay so this stuff is all us a beat early there shift that all here okay so let's shift this as well and right now it's going to sound slightly late actually but i'm going to uh shift that back over in just a little bit so let's double check this this should be over here so all this stuff is still a bit early okay this is starting to be more in time here because i started to accommodate a little bit [Music] [Applause] okay this part is okay this part was terrible okay let me um kind of remember what chords i was going for there so [Music] oh right right okay and there we go okay so quantize that again it's slightly early so i'll shift that a bit later and kind of like that cool all right so now that we have this kind of spiccato pattern set up it's gonna drive the rhythm for it a little bit and i kind of like to do this one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one so it's pretty common in like super mario galaxy music more or less what we'll do is we'll take this pattern we'll shift it slightly earlier because right now again the notes are triggering a little bit late so let's see how that sounds so already a lot tighter which is nice this f sharp i don't think i need yet let's also decrease the volume because it's more of the accompaniment rather than the melody right okay so [Music] [Applause] [Music] like that kind of want the f sharp there maybe and here as well [Music] and then this i want to trigger the g chord over here i'm not really talking about the theory too much in this video but it's more like the workflow of the library for myself so far [Music] so far very easy to use i'm just hearing some counter melodies that i can add a little bit later and then flat six eat half diminished [Applause] five cool all right now for the bases i don't really need to double the chilean octave below or anything like in terms of um you know doubling the spiccato but what i'll do is i'll do a pizzicato instead because i tend to like to do this for again mario style music let's see nice reverb in there or built-in sound from the hall let's see [Music] okay here we go [Music] nice all right i already liking how this is shaping up myself so super simple so far but like you can see how um you know what with with some with the core elements of music in there melody harmony and rhythm it gets you set up pretty quickly all right let's see [Music] first of all i just gotta get my basic timing right here [Music] so yeah the the shorts in general for most string libraries are velocity-based so you just want to make sure that you're triggering them uh appropriately um you don't want them like cutting off early or late or anything so i'm just adjusting the timing here the pattern i'm going for here is like one and two and three and four and so i i personally like to emphasize the downbeats in the style of music it's kind of fl light and adventurous but with a little bit of syncopation it just lifts up the energy a bit so the one and the four i'm kind of accenting but i'm also accenting the end of the two so one and two and three and four in and so if we take a look here let's continue to analyze this make sure that nothing's coming in too early or late just extending the notes are that are cutting off a bit short here so that looks good that looks good cool all right turn off uh shut off the email here anyway okay cool let's uh i'm probably gonna have to shift this a little earlier as well okay let's see here we go this d maybe i'll go up to this a instead i look kind of i like doing tonic tonic dominant tonic stuff nice okay so what do we want to do with the violence 2 and the violas well technically i mean usually i use the violence to as a harmonic rule for the violence one so they usually um harmonize the violence one right but [Applause] maybe maybe i'll use the violence to maybe harmonize uh the violence one in the second half of the verse here so i'm going to turn down the volume of this slightly as well because i want them to support rather than being identically in volume identical in volume okay let's do that so i'm going to play it a third below essentially cool all right let's fix this up a little bit this part was fine so the f is okay maybe i'll go up to the g next [Music] yeah let's see oh oh maybe i'll do this actually so i'll do like a slight eighth note rhythm there [Music] do [Music] [Applause] see okay let's play this let's see there we go i like that better actually let's see now i'm literally just going up the scale that's kind of cool you know what maybe i'll do a slight triplet rhythm here so i'll go so it throws things up a little bit nice cool and in the first half let's not let's not waste the violence too maybe i'll do some sort of uh really light um short rhythm to kind of accompany what the shelley are doing let me see what shorts i have and i'm assuming these are uh determined by key switches let me just see here so we have let me see so we have so it's not really showing which articulation maybe i have to okay let me go into the shorts here oh i see these are all negative uh like minus two and stuff gotcha gotcha gotcha okay so what i'll do is i'll actually play it in and then i'll actually apply the key switch manually instead of kind of uh making my octaves go down actually you know what i might as well just try that let me see no okay that's not gonna work all right fine so i'll play something in let me see [Music] all right you know what i'll just play some i'll play a sustain line because i don't want the violins one to be the only thing that's playing along like a sustained type of articulation so let's let's do the violence too as well but it won't directly accompany violence one it'll just be a more of a counter melodic texture in a way [Music] okay that wasn't very good but let's see [Music] i like this part maybe i'll extend the f sharp a little further to give the third of the chord [Music] let's do this so b is there's fine tonic and then we'll go up to the third so again we're outlining that third of the one chord so it it creates a little more color [Music] i want these a little earlier [Music] later there we go [Music] not great okay this is better because so one of the reasons i want to change this up is because when the violence one and violence two are so far apart it kind of distracts the ear a little bit and it makes the violence one feel like they're a little empty in a way so if you keep the violence too within an octave or so of the violence one then more or less it creates a more cohesive sound in the violence section even if the final ends two are doing a completely separate harmony i'd like to keep it within a similar vicinity of the violence one so like for that sole purpose see it rises together and then they kind of go down together um this is okay oh let's see oh you know what because my my um the second half here it's going to go up to a third below the violence one why don't i use this opportunity to kind of go up to that line so let's see um [Music] okay let's see here we go you know what no i'm just gonna go up to the f sharp right away like that that's better okay cool now violas do i want to give them another sustained line or do i want uh a more short articulation to accompany the chili that's that's the main thing i'm thinking about right now let me see what articulations i have i have sarsandos whatever pizzicato more or less i think it's makes more sense to [Music] give them just a regular maybe maybe long let's see let's see i think i'll just have to play around a bit [Music] actually you know what let's let's actually give the violas the shorts um i'm going to go maybe if within an octave above the chelly because i want the upper parts to also have a little bit of you know um excitement so let's bring down the volume slightly here let's check this out right now the highest note in the chellies are the d the d above middle c so what i'm gonna do is go slightly above that what the violas let's try this [Music] [Applause] cool all right let's see first of all just to be safe actually no this is already a lot more in time than my uh the maceli performance so let's check this out [Music] dun dun okay all this stuff was early so this is uh this should be the bmg oops there we go and this will also be there [Music] and then it resolves down to the tonic after that there we go maybe here maybe i can try the c because it's an e half diminished seventh but no no no no maybe i'll just do the d [Music] b flat's better [Applause] this stuff is early good and then just like the chili let's move everything in touch earlier [Music] [Applause] okay cool so i'm pretty happy with that let's have a listen here [Music] do a quick purging nice and then what i'll do at the very end is i'll add a little bit of a reverb to the master just to gel it all glue it all together a little bit more but what i want to do is add a couple other instruments to just fill in the arrangement but you can you already get the sense of the core arrangement just from the strings so what i'll do is i'll add berlin woodwinds because it's somewhat um a dryer well it's not super dry but i'm going to use the rig the original version of the of berlin woodwinds here so it's a little drier i might use it to double the violins actually we'll see so i'll just write this out okay so down a little bit let's see cool okay so what i'll do is yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna double the violence in unison here for the second half [Applause] right so it adds a nice breathiness to it which i really enjoy uh let's purge that uh let's add in a bassoon as well love bassoon soon now this will be just more of a counter melodic role and if it needs to harmonize anything directly i'll let it do that but let's see two three four cool so already adds a nice color two three four oops a little late there [Music] [Applause] okay not bad oh let's hear that one more time [Music] [Applause] [Applause] cool all right let's add in a quick french horn as well just for extra warmth so let's use berlin brass for this um actually maybe i want to go for a slightly drier horn so i will use cinder brass okay porn solo [Music] let's bring that down a little bit okay here we go [Music] [Applause] [Applause] nice okay let's hear that really quickly [Music] a little earlier there [Applause] all right and the last thing i think i'll do here keep it super simple is we'll add a little bit of percussion so we'll do some timpani and we'll do a little bit of symbols and that's it so tiffany symbol oops symbols and the one thing about this library center perk is that it's very loud so i have to turn it down just to match the other things let's check this out all right here we go you know what maybe i'll uh yeah no that's fine one two three [Music] cool all right so what we'll do instead of the super low d we'll make it a little higher [Music] done shift it in time a little bit [Music] [Applause] there we go so it's like a tiffany roll on the dominant going into the next action essentially and then finally let's add a little bit of symbols just to for some emphasis it's a little bit loud turn that down there we go [Music] okay and then on these soft symbol rolls i'm going to add the crash as well so i usually do this in two separate tanks [Music] let's take that crash and let's apply that [Music] don't need there actually but we'll do it here at the end cool and then that's not bad and then i think what i'll do is yeah i'll just really quickly add a little bit of a reverb onto the individual channels i could do it ascend as well but let's just use valhalla room from what i've experienced it handles um it handles reverb pretty well actually you know what let's just put on the master on the stereo out just a little bit there let's have a listen okay ignore the click what i need to do is also add a little bit of that crash here not there symbols [Music] so it's a bit of an impact there cool i'm pretty happy with that i'm going to leave that for now and that took about yeah a little over half an hour and yeah library's super simple to use i love libraries that generally have uh you know only a couple of patches to be honest because ones that have super complicated patch listings and structures just confuse me honestly so the fact that this has you know the five different sections it has you know the board board makes by default but it also has the additional microphones that you can tweak and play with that's awesome and if i was to engage the look-ahead mode there's going to be a one second delay which uh which makes it sound better actually you know what let's have some fun let's let's try it out so i go to the audio effects i go to delay compensation if you want to check it out on audio units you can do that as well so you go to impact soundworks delay compensation and click stereo now i'm going to expect the the string line to basically play a bit early but let's see no it's not it's fine [Music] [Applause] okay i thought that makes a difference i think it sounds pretty good actually um so it made everything uh shift up a little bit i believe but if i turn it off then everything is back to normal all right and when you turn it on let's check that again yeah to me the violins already sound more natural you know so essentially what you want to do is apply that composition plug into all these different string tracks if you want to use it for all of them and then i believe you are allowed it enables you to quantize everything exactly according to the grid and it will still recognize your performance analyze what's going on there and then give the best performance possible but even in just the regular standalone uh you know standard mode of playing it's very easy to use and naturally there will be slight bit of delay but again you can use just a delay compensation plug-in for that do it within your daw even if you don't want to use the look-ahead mode but you have the additional benefit of having the performance itself be more realistic than if you didn't use it so yeah overall the sound itself is more gritty there's a more high end and it would definitely be a great layering library with something like css i believe or uh you know something a little darker but yeah i i just like the multivibrato a lot as well i think the this library from what i've heard so far it really impresses me with the shorts and the overall snappiness and responsiveness of the playability in general is really really nice the legato lines um the phrasing is beautiful as well but it's not as emotive or as expressive as something let's say you know css or something that's specifically built for storing melodic lines uh the sound itself is generally drier as well but you know very very active sound there is a lot of detail and grit in the samples and so that's kind of the vibe that you're going to be going for i think some more adventure type of uh like exciting type of lines for strings if you're if you're into that sort of thing for these types of rbg video games for you know japanese stuff that's kind of the main goal of it i think so octopath traveler the super mario stuff just more dry pop rock stuff you could even work there too if you want drier strings that are super responsive and gritty i think these will work super well but yeah overall super easy to use um they do have a couple pages that can look overwhelming on first glance especially because like i'm a super simple person and i just love plugging and playing you know but you can see here overall it's pretty simple it shows you what articulation is being played it shows you the dynamics which is manually controlled by mod wheel vibrato can also be mapped to mod wheel if you want to learn the cc automation and then just roll your mod wheel you can do that but uh yeah and then they have the the the the playable modes as well so zero latency uh literally zero latency but i believe there's no uh legato for zero latency if i'm not mistaken and then look ahead again we kind of talked about a little bit there's there's a one second delay but again it looks it looks ahead at what's going to be played and then it adjusts the performance accordingly and then in the longs and shorts they have some pretty standard articulations that are um pretty consistent across the board i'd say release samples legato different types of legato portamento which is also determined by velocity and then the different short notes you have all the workhorse articulations you really need which is great so yeah let me know what you think and again if you want the midi just let me know i'll send you the link i'll even post in the description as well but uh i think for for you know just adventure video game type of music it can work super well and for other contexts as well i'm sure but i just wanted to write something really quickly with this and see how it goes so hopefully you enjoyed it uh hopefully um it gives you some insights into what the library sounds like and how you can try to use it for some applications let me know if it's something that you're interested in let me know if this library kind of appeals to you what you think about it and i'd love to discuss that with you in the comments below and again if you don't have the sample library buyer's guide yet which is newly updated containing this library in there as well i want to give that to you absolutely free and it contains all my personal recommendations on what you could ever need um i'm not going to have every single library in existence there because that that would just be like a 500 page guide and really you don't need that much stuff to be honest you if you know me i'm more of a minimalist guy when it comes to libraries i don't have like 10 string libraries and so on and so forth i should probably do but i only consistently use like two or three so i share all my personal recommendations there all the stuff that you could practically use and it's totally free so you might as well download it just click the link below check it out and it's my thanks to you for checking out this video today i really appreciate it see you in the next one and take care my friend bye

Channel: Christopher Siu

Views: 1,020

Keywords: composing, how to write music, how to mix music, string arranging, orchestral cinematic music, how to write for orchestra, best sample libraries, best orchestra sounds, disney cinematic orchestra, nintendo super mario galaxy, super smash bros, john williams, alex moukala, daniel james, alex pfeffer, dirk ehlert, ashton gleckman, passive income, sample libraries, review, walkthrough, kajabi, orchestration, disney, nintendo

Id: so628bqmc2c

Length: 41min 57sec (2517 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 16 2021