LIVE with blakus - Kenobi theme

Decided to do an impromptu fiddle of the new Kenobi theme!
/ blakustv

[@addd21323]

holy moly, I learned more from the first 15 minutes of this than I have after watching hours of various orchestration tutorial videos lol

[@mdp]

The legend himself! glad to see you again

[@PaulieDC]

It's alive! Welcome back... perfect timing, been a year and I needed a kickstart watching someone work. Man, these are valuable vids... worth waiting for. 👍🏼

[@ZachHeyde]

Badass as always, Blake! Love watching your process 👍🏻👍🏻

[@MichalskiComposer]

perfect! When I listen to this as a composer, I feel - all your notes in every instrument are just - PERFECT! :D GRATS! I love to listen to your music!

[@Whally]

I really love your work, any chance to have a tour of your studio and plugins ? Your own custom library, technics, skills are incredible !

[@Mojo_Musik]

What a great gift to wake up to. Really missed your content.

[@embereyes]

Such great content, I love it. I can only hope to become that efficient. 40 minutes to lay that down is amazing. Cheers - Sam

[@JadonHarperMusic]

Welcome back!! 41 minutes of pure gold

[@iamjosuefrancis]

Yes Blake we need more content 😩

[@Zoomfilm1]

Waauu I love your work - you are so good. thx for this

[@mountainorchestra6254]

Awesome!!!! We miss you, please don't leave us for long!!!

[@Iegacyfilm]

Glad to see you back my friend.

[@BenBerkenboschMusic]

It's so cool that you returned Blakus!! I hope everything has been going well for you. Your music inspired me a lot! I have a question if you don't mind, what's the most important thing for you to keep your big Cubase template still easy to navigate?

[@dlbcomposer]

Awesome stream. Well done, and I especially like seeing you approach a dense passage with EQ'ing instruments to help them better fit in the texture. I do wonder about all of those instrument tracks. Is this why you use instrument tracks for every patch instead of routing midi tracks to dedicated instrument tracks? Better control over the audio output?

[@lesfuller5984]

He has returned! The Man, The Myth, The Legend! 🙌👏😂

[@NoToneTyrone]

Amazing, please more streams. and thank you for being my life saver with brso articulate hehe

[@Blakus]

BRSO is made by the other Blake :)

[@NoToneTyrone]

@@Blakus wow confusion, subscribed anyway, you are entertaining to watch man

[@InterstellarElectro]

He's back!

[@Pax30001]

Awesome!

[@kevinperry6276]

Thanks so much for this...really learned a lot watching. Whats the lk stand for in the brass?

[@lexxosaurus]

Wooo! Recently found your channel, but I've been a fan of your compositions for a few years now. I'm in school for sound design, but compose for fun, so I've been slowly getting through your streams and taking notes! Thanks so much for showing your process. Just a question: I've noticed that you and many others separate your different articulations onto different tracks, while others keep the instrument to one track and use switch keys to shuffle through the articulations. I assume it comes down to personal preference, but why do you like to keep them separate?

[@Blakus]

Hopefully you can see here how much I love to layer articulations with care. Separate tracks gives much more flexibility with this.

[@brorberglund6686]

Another advantage to using separate tracks, at least in cubase, would be the ability to have different delay compensation for the articulations. This + ease of layering is very practical, but the trade off is obviously a larger template that can be harder to navigate

[@Soundpaintmusic]

So cool!

[@mms04270]

8:41 What doese "SO" stand for? That flute sounds so good

[@tonio3375]

I'd love to know how you've reprogrammed some commercial libraries! Would make for a great video I think :D

[@sfisodlamini54]

Man, just wish I could be atleast half as good as you are one day

[@pablodelgado_music]

Thanks Blakus! Amazing video (a fan from Spain!) What is "DV Braams", synths..etc? Thanks!

[@jamus1217]

It's been forever!

[@ChristerWibert]

You live! Finally :D

[@GlynRBrown]

Be great if you could mention the libraries that you used, it helps when making a template👍😉

[@brorberglund6686]

Pretty sure there’s a lot of bespoke samples not commercially avaibalbe in there

[@GlynRBrown]

@@brorberglund6686 Your probably right 🙂

[@Blakus]

I don’t bother since most patches are custom, followed by some reprogrammed commercial samples.

[@BanesRomance]

@@Blakus I have a huge dislike for samples, I prefer to put in many hours with sound creation

[@PsaMusicComposer]

Hey Blake, thanks so much for sharing this! One question, at 6:58 you pull down the velocity of the staccato notes and it adjusts velocity on all layers. Is that a new function in Cubase 11/12? I've been trying the same in Cubase 10 and it doesn't work.

[@talnomix3164]

does somebody know which libraries hes using? because im looking for the brass libraries hes using..

[@ivantorrent495]

How much experience do you need to stream and create so complicated arrangement at the same time!

[@brorberglund6686]

This is some really great stuff! I wanted to ask you a question about your custom libraries. I find that most libraries that are recorded in big halls (spitfire to name an example) tend to sound very narrow in the stereo field (certainly much much narrower than what we hear in scores recorded in the same halls). The custom libraries you use in your template seem to have the best of both worlds - they’ve got a lot of space bewteen the mics and the players, yet they still fill out the stereo field just right. I’m just wondering if your custom samples sound three dimensional like this out of the box, or if you’re doing some wizardry in order to make panned instruments sound… not panned. You really are an absolute legend when it comes to virtual orchestration and composition.

[@Blakus]

Interesting you noticed that. The main issue with most libraries is that the microphone positions are compromised. For whatever reason, devs feel pressure to provide a “cleaner” more pristine sound in libraries. This often means they will lower the heights of microphones and other unforgivable sins 😂. While patches may sound fuller and more clean in isolation, when adding all of these sounds together in an orchestration it sounds like a mess. When Decca and other room microphones are the correct distance away from the source, things fall into place much more easily. This combined with usage of section mics to solidify the stereo image where needed, and separate EQ on these closer mics, as an engineer would do.

[@brorberglund6686]

@@Blakus Thanks for such a detailed reply. Your insight on the matter is really interesting! At this point I’m just praying that spitfire will get it right with the modular Abbey Road Series. Also, I just wanna say that I’m a big fan of your work, and I really appreciate your channel!

[@sfJomusic]

This sounds incredible! Wonder what are those brass libraries ? esp. the brilliant trumpets sound !

[@Blakus]

All of them. Hahaha! Mostly custom with some reprogrammed commercial libraries. Quite a mixture

[@JPBlue826]

Stellar work @@Blakus! Without prying too much, what does SP on the Brass rolls stand for?

[@talnomix3164]

@@Blakus The "reprogrammed" libraries got me thinking... is this something everyone COULD do? I find myself often not choosing SSB because of the bad crossfade (sometimes) also in CSB.... Its always the crossfade that bothers me ...

[@FireF1y644]

​@@JPBlue826probably spitfire brass, at least sounds like it

[@nicksaya]

great

[@lovelymusicnow4404]

Awesome job Blakus! Question for you, are you doing this by ear only? Or did you get the sheet music?

[@Blakus]

Cheers! Just doing this by ear.

[@lovelymusicnow4404]

@@Blakus Can you share the midi mate? Would love to study your arrangement

[@Cr4z33_YT]

@Blakus out of curiosity did you do all this by ear or were you having the scores in front of you? Anyway great skill and gorgeous rendering as always!!

[@Blakus]

Thanks! I was just improvising on the theme here, no score around for this one I think!

[@Cr4z33_YT]

@@Blakus wow well done then! 👏👏👏

[@jakobg.hogarth6030]

YOOOO!!!

[@ep1cn3ss2]

fantastic, what are the string libraries used?

[@Blakus]

All custom

[@ep1cn3ss2]

@@Blakus Custom as in you made them yourself??? Thats impressive

[@MarkusJunnikkala]

I know exactly what you mean by getting 80% of the work done fast and easy, and yet most of the total time and work is spent on the missing 20%

[@gregrobertmusic]

B L A K U S is B A C K ! could I know where are your trumpets from? (1tp sus ff, etc) is it from an ultra tweaked cinesamples? also what are you using to show your keyboard input ? thank you ! also I'd like to know how do you route your room reverb, do you use a send effect with short and long reverb or you use a room instance per section, and is it still Liquidsonics Cinematic Rooms?

[@Blakus]

Trumpets are a big mix but mostly custom. There is some reprogrammed cinesamples in there too I think. I don’t overthink the reverb, just a standard hall reverb send, I swap between cinematic rooms, 7th heaven and some IRs.

[@gregrobertmusic]

@@Blakus Thanks for your answer!

[@Blakus]

@@gregrobertmusic oh the on-screen keyboard is virtual keyboard by 4drx

[@gregrobertmusic]

@@Blakus Thank you Blake ! Hope we'll catch soon live, unfortunately couldn't catch that one because of my local time zone but it is always a pleasure to watch you playing with Cubase! See ya, may the bong be with you. BRT

[@Blakus]

@@gregrobertmusic BRT will be in action again soon too! 😜

[@Iegacyfilm]

1:31 it's a shame to be a bass player until Beethoven is born

[@Blakus]

Haha this is true!

[@jerryjoseph7029]

what camera are you using?

[@BLACKMID]

Thank you, Mr. Blakus! The library really sounds cool. I feel like every "Performance Samples" Library has the same specific "audio fingerprint" / sound - a bit dry and "in your face" sounding.

[@andreilazo9280]

What is the “SO 2ft” on the woodwinds track stands for?

[@Shapeshifter0211]

Probably "(Spitfire?) Symphonic Orchestra 2 Flutes".

[@RicoDerks]

@@Shapeshifter0211 Nah.. That's labeled 'SF' i think. It could be Strezov Orchestra. They offer a2 flute patch

[@andreilazo9280]

Thanks all for your replies. I think those flutes passages sound very natural with not much midi programming

[@Blakus]

Yes, sofia 2 flutes! These are also slightly naturally out of tune in a very pleasing way that just sits well.

[@petterrong1590]

@@Blakus Are you referring to Librewave Sofia flutes or Strezov 2 Flutes recorded in Sofia Session hall?

[@normietwiceremoved]

Holy fucking cow.

[@rayfilmsmusic7538]

WEEEPPPAAAA

[@AlbertKimMusic]

27:35 Was so satisfying for some reason lol

[@RicoDerks]

Oi mate! You forgot to put part 1/3 in the title, lol

[@Blakus]

hahaha, I see what you did here!

[@dbp_pc3500]

The all custom libraries sounds super bullshit to me. It’s just a way to say that you don’t want to tell us the libraries you are using.

[@PeterTMusic]

It’s not. I know the developer who made them. It’s a custom library created for a few composers. Right time right place, and knowing the right people is the actual key

[@kimseniorb]

The music is nice. The show is a complete trash lol

[@richardwilliamsmusic]

What's that trumpet patch at 27:40 with the double/triple tongueing?

[@Blakus]

They are custom, but I think you can find this articulation in a few libraries

[@richardwilliamsmusic]

@@Blakus Gotcha thanks