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Emotional Piano & Strings Cue Review · 52 Cues - A Production Music and Sync Podcast

• 0:32
  Speaker 1: What is happening everybody?
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: This is Dave Croft, and welcome back to another Q review where I feature a Q written by a member of the 52Qs community and provide feedback, like you might hear from a music supervisor or a potential library.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And today we are checking out Vanishing Rainfall from Reed Gestelein.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: This was submitted during our week 37 weekly feedback threads and this is an emotional piano and string Q, so we are going to take a listen to it and then we will talk about it on the other side.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Alright, that was Vanishing Rain from Reed Gestelein.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Reed, thank you so much for sending this along.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Really nice piano work here.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I actually enjoyed this piano work and I like how kind of intimate and close it is.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: There were a couple of resonances popping out just just every now and then.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: I think we need to be careful.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Some of these notes we can see they're almost 9 dB over unity here.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: So just let's just be careful, probably just need to tamp down a little bit.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: So I thought this was working really well.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I also like how we kind of slowly build up the Q over.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: We have a nice chunky edit point and then we go down into almost like a coda of some kind of sound like this.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Bringing in the arpeggiated piano part, it feels a little detached and I wonder if it's a sustained pedal thing.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would just maybe go in and write in that pedal part and sustain pedal.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: It just feels that the left hand of the piano feels a little some of the notes.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I think the sustained pedal can help kind of blend things in.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, it takes a pretty hard right turn here when the strings come in, and my recommendation would be to take this, the arpeggiated piano part, back.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I would actually add it here in the second phrase.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I would bring it here and then you bring in some, some sustained strings a little bit later.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: I would introduce some sustained strings earlier so that we're not waiting, you know, 40 seconds or so into the Q before we really hear stringed instruments, and so I would bring that in.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I would bring that in a phrase early, because it does take a pretty hard turn here.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Now, if you are introducing such an increase of rhythmic energy, I think we should probably put a little bit of a break before it.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: And so your edit point.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I would add another edit point.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: I would probably do this.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to delete this guy and I'm going to stretch, stretch of this just so you can kind of hear what it sounds like.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's not, it's not going to sound perfect, but it'll give you an idea of how this is going to create a float.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: So when you bring all of this rhythmic energy, we're kind of prepared for it.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, again, the edit isn't the cleanest edit in the world, but I think it's enough to kind of give you an idea of what we could do with that.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Let's see if I can't.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that works a little bit better Now that, having been said, we go from like boom, boom, two and three and four and two.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Now, I'm not sure if this is delays, I feel like the rhythmic shift here is pretty extreme.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I feel like the rhythmic shift is a little extreme.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: I think you could do away.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Do with just one that rhythm, instead of going into all the 16ths.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Love the overarching string melody here.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: I think it's really, really working for me.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: By the way, the strings here, the reverb I feel like we're losing some of the definition of all the rhythmic parts in the ostinato.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: It's just feeling a little mushy.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: I really like this.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I like that string part.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: That's nice.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: I would be careful.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: We're starting to get a little loud, pushing into some short turn and turn Loves which are pretty, pretty loud.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I feel like we could maybe a suspended simple roll or something, not too much, but this felt a little too drawn out Then.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: So hit that right there and let that downbeat start pulling the energy back.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Feels like it was sustained a little too much.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Then I think you can give it another, just just a couple of beats to extend that, because I like the return, this kind of this coda moment Sustain strings, bring them down, because now it's time for the piano to return.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: The strings, which started out as accompanying figures, become the main attraction here in the middle.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Then when we return to the piano being the primary driver, then the strings take a backseat again.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Nice button, really really nice button.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Then the last thing I'll say is I feel like we have kind of an overarching lack of anything much below 80 hertz or 70 hertz or even when I nothing really in the sub frequencies, which is understandable.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: It's really hard to coax 30, 40, and 50 hertz out of an orchestral double bass, which is why I would put a low, soft sine wave underneath to really help.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: I can kind of show you what I mean here.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I am going to load in a bass that I have that I call orchestral sub, and all this is is a logic sampler patch with nothing loaded in into it.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: So you get this sound here.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: So if we back this up here, let's go down so you really get that heft from this.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: It just feels a little thin, yeah, and I think it can go a real long way and it could just take a sine wave down the octave.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: This is a trick that I learned watching a Christian Henson video and he talks about adding an orchestral or a sub bass, a sub frequency, sine wave, way low, just to get the low end from these.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: But read really, really nice work.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: As I mentioned, this was sent along during our week 37 weekly feedback thread and we put weekly feedback threads together every single week.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: And why don't you join us over at 52 cues?
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: We'd love to have you.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: It is free to join, and right now we are getting cues for week 38 and I will be choosing one of those cues to feature next week.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: And if you found that feedback helpful and you would like video feedback on your own cues, regardless of the community or whatever, then head over to 52 cues, dot com.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Slash coaching, where you can order up your very own feedback video where I look at everything from the mix, the master, the structure, harmonic language, title and all of that.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: By the way, I think your title is great.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: So again, head over to 52 cues dot com slash coaching and while you're there, you can check out my other coaching services, such as one on one zoom sessions, and you can sign up to be on the waiting list for our upcoming winter mastermind, which starts in January.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: But that is going to do it for me.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: As always, a huge word of thanks to the family, friends and patron subscribers who really keep all of this going.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: But that's going to do it for me until next time, peace.