I experimented with some melody instruments and effects on this piece. The drums, bass, piano, acoustic guitar and pads are all RealTracks. The Melody instrument is made from Garritan sampled instruments of Marimba, Wurlitzer Piano, Vibraphone and Harp. I put a little chorus effect on the melody line. The solo part is the Garritan JaBB mellow electric Guitar.

I did have a terrible time with trying to do this all in BiaB. After getting the piece to sound as I wanted it to, I tried the "Send to Soundcloud" recording feature of BiaB. When I listened to the piece, the solo guitar part was NOT the instrument on that track. I am not sure what was playing but it wasn't a guitar. It sounded like some of the instruments from the melody track but not all the time. I tried recording it to wave and just listening to it on my computer but the exact same thing happened. I had to save each instrument track as an individual file then I finally got the guitar to be on the soloist track. So, all the mixing ended up being accomplished in Sonar X3 and not directly out of BiaB.

Is this a problem for others? Does the export to Soundcloud actually work correctly for others?

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the piece:

https://soundcloud.com/richrayer/prelude-to-spring

RichR

Rich,

An nice listen.

At about the 1:40 mark, some new instrument seems to come in - striking a chord - that seemed to compete with what was happening in the melody at the time....and at that point the tone seemed to get "darker" where it had been fairly "bright" (and clear) to that point.

The strings at 2:40 were quite nice... at 3:05 the "bright" reappeared, so it might be the soloing instruments making the change..

You've put a lot of work into this. It shows...

(the ending was just a little abrupt)

floyd

Rich,

I like this quite a bit.. it's not what we normally hear here on the forum, I suppose because you used a lot more MIDI than most forum participants have used lately. But I like the way using MIDI puts control of the melody and harmonies directly in the hand of the composer.

The piece reminded me of a ditty you might hear on a radio or tv show when they fade away to a commercial. I kept expecting someone to say "when we come back, Sally is going to show us how that cake turned out..."

I really liked the melody and the way the chords support it. The whole production is very upbeat, and a good match for the song's title.

Hi Rich,

nice and relaxing.
An enjoyable listen.

Guenter

Thanks for the comments everyone.

Floyd:
I listened and I believe that I found the sounds you were referring to. They were in the RealTracks pads. I had muted them in BiaB to not play on some of the chorus sections. When they came back in part of one type of pad was fininshing up and another pad was starting. So there existed a sound that didn't seem to belong. I re-did the tracks and also automated the tracks volume in Sonar to make a smoother dynamic entrance of the pad parts.

I also worked on the ending of the piece as you were right, it did end abruptly. I hope this sounds better to everyone.

RichR

+1 here!

Rich

Definitely some experimentation went into this. Quite an interesting piece

Quite a long song, and the ending was a little unexpected

Thanks for sharing

Plus 1

Enjoyed the mellow listen.

J&B

I found this a little choppy, most likely due to the midi.
Over all a god listem.
Rob