Writing for STRINGS in 40 MINS

right hello everyone this guy is about to get covered he just doesn't know it yet it might explain the vacant expression the lack of eye contact with the camera the self-deprecation or the five to ten brain farts that i've only just found in the edit he also completely forgot to tell you about his exciting new project reflex linked above and below join us to be part of a community based sample project prizes courtesy of spitfire audio will be awarded to the best and most inspired sound makers and without further ado introducing this guy my name's dan keane i'm a composer producer and musician based in london and today i'm gonna be doing something that for some reason lots of people like to see me do which is to make a fool of myself there you go you've got your wish today i'm going to make myself sweat for 40 minutes writing a piece of music for strings so what i've got is a little template here with my string legatos as i have them a passionate chamber strings and uh bbc and i'm going to be using the legatos here because that is a little bit more challenging sometimes to make that sound really realistic then i've got what is kind of a new patch for me which is my soft strings this is the tundra soft and wild by spitfire audio these are some libraries that i love and i recently used on a track that featured just some close recorded violas stuff that i had actually recorded myself and i realized how much impact it adds to have those little things around the edges also it's one of the hottest days of the year so far and it's probably about 35 degrees in here so let's see how we go i'm going to start off as i normally do with a piano sketch and in this case for some reason i'm using wood chester piano which is an upright by fracture sounds i do really love this piano and i think it sounds really really beautiful it does lend itself to that kind of tv drama sound that we're very used to um but i think it works really really well nonetheless so i'm gonna set my time hit for 40 minutes here we go now to begin with i mean i really have no idea like i've just arrived at the studio about five minutes ago so let's just see what comes out today [Music] okay bit slower there we go [Music] [Laughter] [Music] ah [Music] [Laughter] [Music] there was one note in there that oh it's that one [Music] okay that's a good start now you can see that in some cases here i'm actually opting for fewer tonics effectively in in the base of these chords so starting with the fifth in the bottom that's the first solid chord that we [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] have i think i'm gonna go down into c sharp minor [Music] next um [Music] it could be nice [Music] i kind of lost my train of thought [Music] kind of sometimes forget what i've just written [Music] um [Music] there we go that was it that was it [Music] what do we start in we did start an e so we've actually had a nice little turnaround there should we start kind of orchestrating that out [Music] so [Music] the reason i love a passionate so much is just how agile it is in the lower dynamics if i play the first violins in the same place that's really where it flourishes there's just something so beautifully emotive about that also you can tell there's a little bit of vibrato in there as well which i really love it's just you know it just flows out strangely you can't actually control the vibrato on a passionate but i don't really mind because it's got five dynamic layers and they've all been recorded really beautifully anyway [Music] actually i wonder what would happen here if i just duplicated this and switched this out for this uh glancing attack it's nice i i think it's maybe a little bit too short for what i'm looking for right now let's just continue with that [Music] [Music] nice little breath there so what i'm going to do is pull down all of these note velocities to zero or to one rather [Music] and then let's just get the length exactly right here a little bit too long there [Music] and that might be where it sort of expands a little bit with the uh with the soft strings let's just duplicate that layer and see where this part moved [Music] tim [Music] [Music] if you hold down alt while you use the arrow keys you can move stuff between bars up and down if you hold down shift at the same time puts it up an octave those are very useful keyboard shortcuts to have now this is what i would class as sort of orchestration i guess more than really kind of composing because it's really i've already played the lines in once i finish this it's going to be plain sailing [Music] yeah these are quite nice lines the funny thing is i'm not saying that i play the piano in a way that i would want an orchestra to sound oh let's see but i think there is something quite nice about particular voicings that i just love [Music] okay [Music] i'm going to extend these a little bit you know what that didn't work at all that's fine [Music] okay so i'm going to mute this but i just want to have a look at it so we start here oh then we go up to the d-sharp [Music] i'm just going to play this in [Music] and then play it wrong which is great love that [Music] you know what actually i'm not going to do it on that i'm going to do on these amazing pulsing consorts [Music] i'm actually going to duplicate this across the soul c as well so every note is recorded on the c string let's just let's just see how that sounds of course and then play it incorrectly which i love that by the way thanks so much dan thanks so much for that that's really good [Music] ah sounds pretty horrible but let's see let's continue we never know we never know [Music] so i'm actually going to invoke my string mix bus which i don't normally do right at the beginning here but sometimes it changes the sound so much that it's actually very useful so what i've got is the string legatos and the soft strings they both go into this bus and then everything affects this bus and then this would go to either a stereo output or just like a music output if i'm working on something with a vocal i will just have a string bus that goes to a music bus and then that music bus can be side chained by the vocal or the dialogue or whatever it can be really useful [Music] i don't know how well we're doing in the time currently but uh let's see [Music] there's something not quite right with this also i don't know why that's going to zero all right [Music] let's just add some more layers let's see how that works you know what a little introduction i think let's see how that happens [Music] that's quite nice actually [Music] very very nice i wasn't expecting to do so many things here but um i think it just helped to pad things out a bit [Music] too messy [Music] beautiful what i'm going to do is add add even more reverb make it really really long i mean that might be too much [Music] okay [Music] that's quite nice let's just continue on this train [Music] not bad one wrong note there [Music] sorry about that [Music] let's create some nice movement in here [Music] oh don't you hate it when he does that this is sounding nice it got too big too soon so let's just pile that in a little bit more subtly the viola's like this is my moment my tune has arrived let's just save it [Music] i know it doesn't work with the piano but still [Music] how emotional this is suddenly [Music] sorry about this [Music] i realized there were quite a few parallel octaves in there so let's sort that out [Music] let's just make it a little bit fruitier just a little bit fruitier [Music] um i quite like this movement [Music] once we had some bass in there [Music] shift r to recover that [Music] and then let's just add some add some more stuff [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's quite nice this is the thing often these things just happen completely by accident something i'm going to do right away though is turn up the release on this [Music] and for this one as well [Music] that's messy [Music] don't really know what the chords are there let's try again [Music] that was a lovely progression that shed and if you caught that [Music] that's really really lovely great this is coming along very well um why are the two of these don't know anyway no problem let's continue on our merry way i know we've only got 14 minutes left and i know we'll probably only write like a minute long piece but i hope that it has been useful um nonetheless i mean i'm sweating so as far as my work it's complete it's done um that's what i aim to do and that's what i achieved i mean come on [Music] i mean you know what i know i work for spitfire um but the reason i work for spitfire is because i love spitfire [Music] these tools make me a better composer because if i were to play this with a sine wave or sibelius is absolutely awful uh quiet treble sound i wouldn't have been moved by that chord but now i'm crying from every pore on my body it's amazing [Music] i didn't have enough hands for those the uh modulation [Music] that's really quite beautiful actually uh if i say so myself [Music] you know what seems a little bit silly [Music] and i did it down here as well uh let's just keep things simple if you have a hunch it's probably right [Music] oh it's taking a little while to action though that um it might be because of my sustain see it knows what i want to move come on there we go oh oh dear let's just do the same thing though [Music] something is not right what is it bloody violas come on [Music] there's a note missing from that chord do i think it's an f sharp [Music] right what is going on here let's just let's sort this out because it's embarrassing oh no well that's better than it was if you're gonna have a b in the top there you kind of need an e to to back it up i have a feeling that's too low it's gonna have to go there [Music] very interesting let me just um i'm just gonna remove everything but this one on this note and then remove this note because i want it to be a little bit quieter a little bit softer just to say i know what you're talking about [Music] right just because i feel bad that i haven't used chamber or first violins [Music] i want to demonstrate that you know people sometimes ask you know is it okay to use libraries in recorded in different rooms and it's like mate that's all i do [Music] [Applause] you've got the chambers which is close and intimate and warm and portamento and then you've got bbc which fills things out just as an example here i'm just going to duplicate this bring it down because i'm running a little bit out of time and then i'm going to do the same thing on this and then i'm going to a be the difference and you're going to be blown away blown away by how just beautiful it sounds now you know the whole point in me making string legatos and soft strings is that the soft strings as indicated by the green color can just remain as midi if you really need it to if you're going to record something live you know get the legatos in because those are the things that are really difficult to uh to replicate have a listen to this everyone okay you ready i'm going to fade it down and i'm going to bring it in [Music] there is definitely still something wrong there and i think it's in one of the three cello lines we've now added um [Music] a g somewhere i'm sure of it i'm sure let me just highlight all of these i'm sorry for wasting your time but it is part of the process ah what the hell is that who oh it was oh right it's this thing right [Music] [Music] [Music] there we go [Music] that could be a beautiful little cue i was just going to experiment here oh bit of a freak out there i was just going to experiment and see what happens if i just duplicate every one of these tracks for a second and then copy the uh these these violins i'm not sure if they're gonna work but let's just let's just have a look because we can only try uh and there was no cello to begin with i don't think in this layer so let's do the same thing on this and let's just see [Music] now if you wanted to do something just to make it a little bit kind of bigger or better or whatever then i'm just gonna you know i've got i've got four minutes left rather than trying to write a whole extra section here let's just have a bit of fun with this so this is the celeste let's chuck it up the octave [Music] and just listen to how much of a difference just a little rhythm can add [Music] [Applause] [Music] i thought it might be interesting to add another part there but boy was i wrong and of course oops of course a celeste's best friend is the the harp [Music] all i do with these is just like long just long held notes here [Music] you know what that ain't half bad my rule with quantization is just never quantize any more than 80 if you can [Music] i'm just going to put this into a little tuned perk and when i'm not really sure what to put on this i end up adding something that i think is lovely which is my dk air it just adds a little kind of high frequency fizzle in fact i'm going to do the same thing on this we add it here and you'll hear the difference [Music] the last thing i'm going to do here is i'm just going to add a little uh little base action here um i don't think i've got really enough time to do it but let's just see it's exactly there jesus that's that's quite big isn't it [Music] i know i remember now you have to do it with the volume okay fine time is up well i don't care i'm gonna add this just needs a little bit of grounding maybe an octave lower actually wow that's big [Music] sounds pretty cool doesn't it i wonder actually if we added that up the octave as well here's another cool thing highlight all of your notes shift and alt and it basically aligns everything to the same length you can thank me later for that that's really useful also with this i need to set the velocities the same because otherwise there'll be different volumes and i quite like it when they're down at about 50. [Music] in case you're wondering this is the piano rhodes rhodes piano bass that's really quite nice actually [Applause] [Music] wonderful now i have a kind of go-to that i like to use in terms of my mastering so i'm just going to show you that to you first of all this is my favorite compressor in the entire world right now i love this check this out [Music] it's so beautiful it really is next uh this is kind of a go-to for me i'm just going to turn this down a little bit and then i've kind of been falling in and out of love with this recently this is the uh abbey road tg monstering chain and this is vitamin also by waves i use the greg wells umph um but it does some widening which i like but what i realize is i have to turn the width down on here in order to change the width later now that might sound a little bit silly why would you put it in and then push it out well you can see in vitamin that it's actually changing things so the the sub frequencies are in the middle and it's pushing the higher frequencies out to the side which gives it just a little bit more width in quite a pleasing way so i'm just going to introduce both of those and i can show you the difference so here's the 37 first [Music] let's just fix that horrible [Music] i know i've gone over the time [Music] i really hope you'll forgive me i'm sorry about this [Music] sounds nice right then i'm going to introduce both of these next two together [Music] so the the combination of all of these things together sounds like this [Music] so there you go the final thing i do is just a little bit of mastering um which i'll have adjusted the volume throughout this video but [Music] [Music] base is way too strong there and that's a little bit too excitable there okay i'm gonna run it from the top thanks so much for watching subscribe if you haven't done already and i'll see you again very very soon [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Dan Keen Music

Views: 28,397

Keywords:

Id: Grg5Bo-5AjU

Length: 44min 56sec (2696 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 15 2022