[Music] [Music] Hi this is Ryan Thomas with EastWest here with another ComposerCloud tutorial and today we're going to be looking at the Brutal Action Guitar demo that was written for one of the One Minute ComposerCloud tips and I want to remind you that the list of all the patches used to produce this demo is provided for you in the video description so if you have any question about the specific patches that I'm using in this demo then go ahead and just refer to that list.
So let's go ahead and dive right in we're just going to take this section by section and break it down by the various instrument groups and this piece is starting off with the low strings the low woodwinds and some percussion so let's go ahead and dive right in. [Music] All right let's go ahead and stop there and break it down starting with the strings. Okay so we have the bases just on the one of each measure and then we have the celli it looks like the um yeah the bases are kind of hiding the cello notes here um that's a bit unfortunate but uh you can kind of see what's what's happening here.
And the violas are then joining the cellos uh just the octave above in these next two bars here so all together they sound like this. And that's what they are going to be doing until we get to measure 14. So let's now add our woodwinds and we just have the bassoon and the bass clarinet uh playing the same line as the celli and we will hear what they sound like with the strings. [Music] And I'm also going to go ahead and solo the woodwinds just so that you can hear exactly what they are adding to this. [Music] So they are just there to add some extra color some extra texture and a little bit more punch to that string line. Okay and joining the strings and the woodwinds we have our percussion and let's see there we go so we are starting off with this gong hit and it is fairly light.
I just kind of wanted something there to fill that space a little bit and the gong was perfect for that. And we have the Lord of Toms uh sort of taking the lead here in the percussion along with I'm just calling the Stormdrum 3 layers. I've got a bunch of patches in this one and this one instance of Play you can see all the various patches that I have here and you can also see the relative volume levels that I have them all set to so and in order to set it up like this you really don't have to do much you just have to add you know whatever instruments you want to add and just make sure that this that the midi output is set to omni and they will then all play in the same instance of Play.
So let's hear what our percussion sounds like with the strings and the woodwinds. [Music] [Music] So this line here is the Lord of Toms just like in many of the previous pieces I'm keeping the velocities fairly light because I want a very broad frequency response from these drums. I have these Stormdrum 3 layers just kind of adding some accents. Okay so uh let's go ahead and move on to the uh next part of the piece here and this is where the fun uh really gets started so let's go ahead and take it from the top. Okay let's break everything down. I want to start off by pointing out that for the string shorts I'm just using the short mod patch which has a few different short articulations and they are triggered with with the cc1 values and for the bases i am using the marcado articulation which is the longest one in the patch and that's achieved by setting cc one to the highest value but then for violins violas and celli I'm using the shortest articulation which is staccatissimo and that's achieved by setting cc1 to its lowest value.
A very useful very versatile patch. And I'm using the rumps from Stormdrum 2 to achieve that transition between the first section and this section. That's a really cool patch uh just kind of a nice way to you know get from one section of a piece to another. And in this section we are adding the guitar we're adding the violins and we are adding some additional percussion. So let's go ahead and start with the guitar. and I am using the Gibson lead key switch patch from Ministry of Rock 2 really cool patch and I'm really just alternating between I believe the staccato and the staccato mute.
You can see exactly where those two articulations are being triggered by my key switches here so I'm gonna go ahead and solo that. [Music] Okay and then we are adding the violin shorts there's not a whole lot to talk about with the strings the violins are pretty much just doubling the violas but an octave above. And we'll go ahead and solo those with the guitar. [Music] All right we haven't added brass yet the woodwinds are pretty much doing the exact same thing that they've been doing which is just doubling the celli so we're not really going to bother with them. Now we are adding in the percussion section a pretty integral element here and that's going to be our Djembe Ensemble and that just really changes the sound of the percussion section and it really gives it this this drive and kind of a bit of an urgency and an energy that I think is really cool.
I really I love this patch this is actually uh from RA it's not a Stormdrum patch and the cool thing about this patch is that you can pretty much just wail on your keyboard roughly in rhythm with the piece hit quantize and you know nine times out of ten you're gonna get something pretty cool that's that's actually how I played this line and there's really no rhyme or reason to it. And uh it sounds like this I'm actually gonna go ahead and just solo the percussion section by itself so that you can hear what the Djembe Ensemble is contributing.
Yeah so again they just they just add this really cool drive um and uh let's go ahead and get into the next section here. Okay we're not really adding a whole lot here besides a second guitar part that's just doing harmony with the first one. I'll solo those together so you can so you can hear those real quick. [Music] [Music] And I'm just using the exact same patch I just uh copy and pasted into this track. In our strings we're not really doing anything uh too different although you do now have some actual harmonies coming in with the the violins. [Music] And at in this very last measure here we uh went to our legato violins which we will uh we'll get to those in the next section. Okay and then we are adding our brass and it's nothing too nothing too crazy here. [Music] Just kind of needed something to fill the space and kind of help it build into where the melody is coming in. And if you notice um the cc 11 isn't just mirroring cc1 in these particular patches in the brass cc 11 actually just controls volume it's just a raw volume control whereas cc1 controls both volume as well as the timbre of the instrument you can think of cc1 as basically how hard the brass player is actually blowing into you know the mouthpiece.
So I wanted this really cutting sort of brassy sound but I also didn't want it to overwhelm the rest of the orchestra so I basically just opted to essentially lower the volume in this in this section. And then again the woodwind section is doing the exact same thing as before just doubling the celli and in the percussion we have added the Lion Drums and I believe that they are just doubling the StormDrum layers uh yeah they are. They're just kind of thickening thickening up that line so- And with everything together. All right so now we are getting into kind of the meat of the piece where we have this melody coming in so let's go ahead and dive right into that. And let's actually start two bars before this next section. [Music] [Music] All right let's break everything down so let's just go ahead and start with the choirs and work our way down and I believe we've got a WordBuilder patch here and they're just singing some random lyrics that I thought sounded cool they're singing ra te nar fa mu sa ko and they sound like this.
[Music] So they're pretty much just here to help fill some space and add some definition to the chords. Let's add our guitars. Now we've done a couple things here. We've given the melody to guitar 1 and we've got guitar 2 uh kind of playing this ostinato line with the strings. So let's hear what they sound like together. [Music] I just you know this this guitar just makes me smile I love just the uh man just that that chug it's just such a cool sound and it really just works in this context I mean even just that by itself sounds pretty cool. Uh so what I'm doing in the first guitar here is I'm just using the key switch to trigger a one of the sustain articulations. Let's see what exactly it is. So we are A#1 is going to be the medium vibrato and then in guitar 2 we're just using the staccato mute articulation.
All right now I'm also adding the uh Qanun i think is how you pronounce it from Silk. And this isn't really gonna be heard as much as felt it's a very subtle texture but I just wanted something on the top end just giving a little bit more of a just cutting through the mix just a little bit more and it sounds like this with with the guitars. Actually you know what I'm going to go ahead and solo it by itself because it's it's it's so subtle. [Music] And you can see how far I've got it turned down again I don't really want this to be heard as much as just felt it needs to just be there to support the strings and the guitar line.
Speaking of these strings let's go ahead and add those with our guitars. So we now have the violins on this melody with the guitar. We're going to be playing in octaves violin 1 and two and we've got the violas and the chili as well as the bases helping to outline the chords with these shorts. [Music] Okay and uh let's go ahead and add our brass so we actually just have the french horns uh doing melody here we haven't we actually dropped the trombones from the section before.
[Music] [Music] And man you know just having those french horns with the strings with the guitar uh just a really cool combination of instruments for that melody. Now again in our woodwinds and we don't have it we don't have anything too exciting going on here. I believe now we just have the bass clarinet and the contrabassoon doubling the bases the string bases. [Music] And you know they're just going to be there to add a little bit more texture and help that line pop a little bit more. You know what I think it would actually be good to solo those so you can hear what they sound like in isolation because again you know we're kind of dealing with elements that are more felt than heard.
Might almost be too subtle but I'm not gonna worry about that for now. And we're adding quite a bit of percussion here so we've got the tambourine from Goliath uh let's see and that's going to be in our orchestral percussion bus. All right let's just hear the percussion by itself. So we have added the Dynasty o Daiko as well just on the one of every other measure just to add kind of a a big hit the Lion Drum is pretty much doing the same thing that was doing before as well as the Epic Toms now we have added the Tikis that's a really cool patch from I believe StormDrum 2 and I'll actually go ahead and solo those for you. So they're just going to be there to add a little bit of kind of high-end energy to our percussion section.
And we are also adding the Shime Daikos from I I'm gonna say Stormdrum 2 nope Stormdrum 3 the Shime Daiko Ensemble and they're just going to be kind of on these uh syncopated offbeats or something like that I don't know exactly what to call that in six eight. And then adding our tambourine as well. [Music] And uh the Djembe Ensemble is doing the exact same thing that it was doing in these measures back here I believe what I did was played I think I played about an eight bar phrase and then just copy and pasted it so there was some variation. Okay I think that actually does it for this section uh let's go ahead and move on to the final section where we are adding uh the women's choir um as well as the rest of our brass section and a little bit more percussion. So let's go ahead and get into that and let's start two bars out for context here.
[Music] All right let's break everything down. We're going to start with the choirs and we are just adding the women's choir singing the exact same lyrics as the men's choir in the WordBuilder patch. All right let's go ahead and add our guitars. Now we have taken guitar 2 from this ostinato line with the strings to a sustain articulation doing harmony with guitar 2. [Music] [Applause] [Music] And as you can see there is some key switch programming going on here we've used a sharp one to trigger the medium vibrato sustain in the guitars and d sharp one triggers this cool little effects articulation in uh in this in this key switch patch that gives you this fall and then we go right back to the staccato and staccato mute alternating articulations.
[Music] All right let's go ahead and add the Qanun and the strings. And the Qanun is actually kind of doing its own thing now apart from the strings it's just outlining the chord in fifths but again it's not really something you're going to hear. It's more something you're just going to feel. And we've taken the bases I think i might have accidentally hidden the yeah uh we've taken the bases from the shorts to a legato patch here and let's see what that all sounds like together. We've also added uh some violin shorts. [Music] [Music] bases are back on shorts [Music] All right let's go ahead and add our brass section. And we've got a full brass section for this part of the piece so trumpet one and two french horn one and two trombone one and two and tuba.
[Music] [Music] And there is just a bit of keyswitch programming going on in the trumpet so these are all just sustains but I triggered the very shortest of the staccato articulations in this in this key switch patch for these two notes. And finally let's move on to the percussion. Most of the percussion is pretty much doing what it's been doing but we did switch up the rhythm in a couple of these patches here like the the Epic Toms are doing something a little bit differently. And we've also added the Persian Battle Drum so I'm just going to go ahead and play it from right here. I'm going to add this midi information as we progress throughout this part of the piece. [Music] And that whoosh that you hear going into that last hit once again is one of the rumps from Stormdrum 2.
Okay i think that about does it for the piece so let's go ahead and check out the reverb setup. And let's start with the choirs so we are using the Davies Choir impulse response. And then for guitar we are actually just sending to the stage verb the classic digital with the 2.7 second tail here and as you can see we're also sending a good bit to a stereo delay. For Qanun we are using the Abandoned Abbey. For our strings we are sending to the South California Hall string specific impulse and for brass we are sending to the same room but it's going to be the brass specific impulse. And finally for the percussion as well as for the woodwinds we are using the NorthWest Hall rear room and I should note that I do have two different instances of this reverb on two different buses and I just do that because i like to eq them slightly differently for the woodwinds and the percussion I cut just a few more of the the lows out of the percussion reverb.
And uh of course I I still send most of the other instruments to that algorithmic verb that I was sending the guitars to as sort of a you know kind of a glue reverb so everything kind of has its own space its own defined reverb and then everything gets sent in various amounts to that what I call my stage reverb. So I think that does it for this tutorial. If you have any questions please let us know in the comments section and I will try to get to them as quickly as I can. Otherwise I hope you got some valuable information out of this and thanks for watching and we look forward to seeing you in the next video..