Orchestral soundtracks and ambient soundscapes

Michikawa

New member
I have fiddled around in my home studio for a few years now, mainly making orchestral soundtrack -pieces and ambient atmospheres. I have myself used the material as a background music in my pen&paper -roleplaying sessions so I thought it would be nice to offer the music for everyone to use. All of the stuff is free so you can copy, modify and use it as you like. I would also love to hear some feeback, what's good, what's bad etc!

I'll update the projects as often I can, so feel free to check back every now and then.

Mikseri.net is finnish page, so some of the texts are probably not understandable, but I have written everything I can in english, so I hope the pages are browseable.

Here's one sample song from Essence -project, called Hope for rebirth

Essence is the main project which contains mostly orchestral soundtrack-pieces

Divinity is the ambient project, which contains mainly soundscapes and background atmospheres.

Frozen Silence contains improvised solo piano pieces.

Hope you'll enjoy it!
 
I listened to Hope For Rebirth.

Nice overall sounds.

The horn doesn't seem to have the ambience of the other instruments and so tends to stick out a little bit as being out of place.

To me the percussion could be left out of the piece. It's supposed to be a soothing song and the drums disrupt that.

Arrangement-wise, it's a long piece for an instrumental. I know you tried to introduce new instruments to keep the listener interested. But I think the song needs more changeups in addition to modified arrangements. Just my opinion.
 
Thank you for your suggestions and feedback! I think I know what you mean... I think I shall try and make another version of this one where I try to change the structure a bit and check out how it would sound without percussions and work with the overall balance.
 
Michikawa said:
Thank you for your suggestions and feedback! I think I know what you mean... I think I shall try and make another version of this one where I try to change the structure a bit and check out how it would sound without percussions and work with the overall balance.

That's cool. But these are just my opinions. Before you go to a bunch of extra work, I'd wait and see what some other people have to say. Maybe they'll say I'm full of crap. :)
 
TripleM said:
That's cool. But these are just my opinions. Before you go to a bunch of extra work, I'd wait and see what some other people have to say. Maybe they'll say I'm full of crap. :)

:D Marvellous answer - seldom have I met people who are so feet on the ground and easygoing related to their views and roles. Keep it up :)
 
Michikawa - I listened to several of your songs and they sound very professional. Even though I love rock 'n' roll, it seems when I sit down to write music, I tend to write this style. All the songs were well balanced, technically proficient and each one had its own individuality. Keep up the good work!
 
this is awesome, im listening to "essence" right now. This is much closer to my style of music than the other stuff people on here post.
 
Michikawa, I listened to all the piano improvistations. Beautiful playing... which I appreciate because I do a similar style of improvisation on nylon string guitar.

Well done.

Tim
 
Beautiful!! This feels like I just downloaded a movie soundtrack. The quality is great :) I'll let you know my favorites. I have to hear a bunch of them first.
 
Hey there's a lot of good stuff to listen to here. I've had it on here and there and just what pink dino girl above said... just like a soundtrack. Great production.

I think my favorites are Mystic River(very favorite), Mont St. Joseph, Dreamtide, angels redemption, memories, and evening falls. Good stuff.

My only minor suggestion is in "Mystic River" I think the synth comes in too loud at 0:12. NOt too long after the volume sounds fine. I'd love to write something like that song. Cheers :cool:
 
Thank you for your comments and feedback! Nice to hear you like the material. And yes, I happen to use GPO (Garritan's Personal Orchestra) and just a while ago I invested on Gigastudio and GOS (Garritan's Orchestral Strings), so in some songs you can hear those too.

I know one of my biggest problems is mixing/mastering... I have so strong "jazz" or "improvisational" roots that for some reason I just can't yet put enough effort into the honing of balance and overall sound. Usually I just record the musical lines with one run each and that's it :) I guess I have to work on the production part a lot.
 
....

freakin' cool. It kind of goes along with an idea I've been toying with that has a D&D theme to it. A fantasy story (I'll spare you the details) that is narrated to music, with musical interludes that would match the pace/tone of the storyline as it goes along.
 
Glad to hear it would fit your game :) If you are going to play the story I'd appreciate it if you'd drop by and tell how the song worked in the actual game situation?
 
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