Template Walkthrough 4 - SkyPassage - Orchestral

A behind the scenes look at the creation of Sky Passage. An exposed look at the composition and the libraries used to create it!
Listen to the track here: / sky-passage-blakus
You can find more of my music at the sites below:
Website: blakus.com
SoundCloud: / blakus-mfm
Facebook: / blakusdotcom

[@cinemear5993]

What a great composition!!! Gave me goose bumps! Thanks for sharing.

[@kimseniorb]

glad you're back to your walkthroughs. enjoying it. the quality of the content is superb. thanks, very helpful.

[@Floydhartmanmusic]

Wow! Very beautiful and inspiring. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[@midiman5045]

Hi Mate thanks for the video and also really great tune. Really enjoyed listing to it.

[@arkogelul5379]

Your compositions and covers sound very real. The most real I've ever heard actually. I'd love to watch an in-depth tutorial"ish" on how you make a track from scratch, all the way to final mixing (verb, EQ, panning...). And your setup using VE pro looks very interesting as well. Thanks for what you do, it's very inspiring :)

[@Blakus]

Thanks so much! I will consider doing a video like that in the future :)

[@henriqueconde6739]

blakus | music for media Blakus, please, think with love about this idea, it would so amazing!!!!! :D

[@Kraflyn]

Hi. Thank You for Your time! It's nice watching Your videos on music production :3 Please do some more, if time allows it, of course. Cheers :)

[@TheAliceKiller]

Its so hard to find, good quality music that moves you. Pure Excellence.

[@Blakus]

Thanks so much! I'm glad you liked it :)

[@paulthiebaut]

Loved this piece, loved the breakdown ! Dear Blakus, can you please make a video on how you orchestrate those beautiful brass choirs, from your majestic sounding bones triads to your horn melodies. It would mean the world to me. Cheers !

[@2047Musicvisions]

Magistral music and All

[@DorinelMusic]

Awesome video! I like it

[@Themusicguru55]

I've been using your FREE version of Blakus Cello (Thanks for a great gift!) Can't wait to get the full version! Could you give us a brief synopsis of how and why you use Vienna Ensemble pro 5, as compared to just using samples on your computer's hard drive. Also, what other equipment would we need to use it?

[@DV7Dave]

Blakus. Amazing as per usual. Brought tears to my eyes, literally. I know you have done an in depth explanation on your template...But would LOVE a walk-through on properly setting CuBase up as you have. From memory you had a slave set up running a lot of your samples through different channels? Awesome stuff! I love your work!

[@Blakus]

Hey Dave, thanks so much mate! I will consider doing a video on my cubase setup in the future. I actually don't use a slave, just a single machine. My samples are all hosted in VE Pro though for efficiency.

[@Brousitch]

If you did 2+ hour making of video, I would pay for it. Amazing job as usual!

[@dirk.claassen]

Hi Blakus! I appreciate you making these videos tremendously!!! You are a musical wizard! I don't have enough words to let you know how helpful these videos are. I have gone back so many times over these last few months just to recap what you have done in your templates and mixes. It sounds really amazing. There is one thing however that I still do struggle with. It seems that I cannot get my compositions to sound as good as an end product as yours - and especially loudness (I cannot get it to sound loud enough at an acceptable volume without sort of ruining the dynamics etc. At around 3:40 you mention that this mix sounds a bit different - due to it not being mastered. Will it be possible to do a tutorial or a walk-through on how you master your songs to give it that final 'polish' and really make it shine. Thank you so much one again for these tutorials. Looking forward to more videos from you.

[@abhisekbhdr]

Very inspiring work! Sounds great. I was also looking at the score and I love the orchestration. You mention at the end that you use the piano to compose. Do you turn into notation softwares to expand and arrange your compositions or do you do it entirely on your DAW? Thank you for this detailed walkthrough!

[@luiza177music]

I'd love to see you do a walkthrough of B2. I find it so confusing haha.

[@loot6]

Really useful video. Would have been great to hear (and see) the piano sketches too though.

[@musicdsign]

Blakus, your music is fabulous and I love the realism you are able to create with your setup. Personally I like to work with a notation package like Notion, Sibelius, or Finale. What I was wondering is, do you ever use a notation program to enter your music in, or do you always start directly with Cubase by playing it in from a score (I presume you are using a score to play each part, right?)?

[@rayasamanta]

Hi Blakus and thanks for the video! GReat as usual! I am interested on how you develop those variations from a simple theme. Is it too much if i ask you to render the piano track midifile and make it downloadable, so me and i am sure others could have a look at it? Thanks and keep rocking!!

[@DrunkenGeneralsMusic]

Blakus, this is fantastic! I noticed on HWB that you use CC1 for all your expression, but CC11 would just sit still. Are you using that mainly for volume control? Also I wanted to see your transport panel to see the levels of your main mix output channel, but looks like you work without it (or thought it would get in the way of the video) How high are your levels during the loudest section? Anyway, great work (music wise) and great walk through. I'll be going back to this for several more weeks. Thank you.

[@TEMAOHI2787]

Welcome Back Blakus! Good to have you back, it's been a while. I plan on buying mostly "SPITFIRE", I like Orchestral Tools, but for right now, I'm only going for "Symphonic Sphere" , but the "Winds" are possible. Do you know anyone that owns VSL Dimension Strings? I would REALLY like to see a "Serious" Demo on YP. Don't be a stranger, I always look forward to your post's!!

[@Blakus]

Thank you! I don't really know of anybody in particular that uses Dimension Strings sorry! Spitfire make great samples :) What do you mean exactly by YP? Thanks again!

[@TEMAOHI2787]

Opps...You Tube ;)

[@CalebFaith]

Awesome video :) I'm just really interested what chord is at 0:49 in the video?

[@arunk2010]

Hi Blakus, Can you explain how you derive the orchestral piece from the piano composition! especially the Strings and flute!

[@Joker25076]

0:53 so nice! :)

[@Blakus]

Glad you enjoyed that :) Thanks.

[@LukeStandridge]

Awesome video! Really helpful and the song is amazing! One question. Do you still use Sample Modeling brass at all, or have you moved away from that entirely?

[@Blakus]

Thanks Luke! I still use SM brass, not quite as often as I used to, but it's still great for solos and layering.

[@seanbeeson]

Are you using the main mics of the brass for HWB? Or the surrounds? They sound a bit more "spaced" out than the main mics, but it might just be my ears! Love the piece, great work as always!!

[@Blakus]

Thanks for stopping by Sean! Just using the main mics, I've got B2 verb on them which tends to push them back slightly. And a bit of EQ. Apart from that, nothing else! Thanks mate!

[@soundshigh]

blakus | music for media Do you have the Diamond version of HWB and if yes, do you find the need to use the close mics often? Thanks! Your mockups sound really good.....I am about to check the b2 on that account.

[@godswiph]

I love what I hear from Berlin Strings... but I can't wrap my head around the smaller section sizes. Do you have an approach to thickening up the sections? It sounds great!

[@Blakus]

+godswiph Hey there. Initially I was a little put off by the small section sizes too, but once I started using the library I totally forgot about it, because it wasn't an issue. The sections sound full to me!

[@FrancisArthurFotografie]

Haven't been here a while, excellent new stuff again! I've got a question about some programs and my new Steinberg UR22. I bought it to get better results with latency etc. But last time someone with a guitar visited me and I wanted to run Guitar Rig together with Kontakt and surprisingly the device could not be shared! I could either only run Kontakt stand alone or Guitar Rig. Do you know a way to solve this? TYVM!

[@isafal5615]

Francis Arthur You can't run guitar rig with kontakt. You have to open guitar rig in your DAW, the same way you'd open kontakt.

[@FrancisArthurFotografie]

isabelle falleri Thanks for answering, we haven't got the time to visit each other in a year now. But he put his guitar here so I can try but haven't got the time and willpower to install Cubase with all the stuff around it because of my BJD's. This is a good tip, I'll certainly write this down. (mmmm I saw an official Blakus Cello for Kontakt out there a while ago?)

[@GharunLacyMusic]

Blakus. Great work my friend. Just out of curiosity, what made you go with HWB? I've got HWB and Cinebrass. Right now, HWB is falling more and more out of my template, mainly because I like to use keyswitches (on midi channel per instrument) and PLAY is so in-flexible in that regard. Thoughts? All the best!

[@Blakus]

Thanks mate! The main thing that always determines whether I use a library or not is the sound :) I will put up with most inconveniences if it's got the right sound!

[@kubasliwa204]

I'm currently binge watching a lot of walkthroughs like this one so I can learn more about producing symphonic music, and one thing I noticed is that I don't really see any of the composers using any keyswitch patches for their pieces. Why is that so? Wouldn't that actually be more convenient than using several separate tracks for different articulations of the same instrument?

[@Blakus]

for me, I like to have individual control over each articulation, so that I can layer articulations subtly where necessary. Having everything on keyswitches usually means you're either one articulation or the other. Trying to achieve realism with samples usually means a bit of layering trickery :D

[@kubasliwa204]

I see. Thanks for the answer, I'll keep that in mind.

[@Michael_Leee]

Hey! Very detailed walk through. I'm curious what kind of setup do you use to run so many kontakt libraries at once?

[@Blakus]

I'm using a PC with 32GB RAM, i7 3770k, sample libraries hosted on SSDs.

[@Michael_Leee]

Thank you! Wow how many SSDs do you use? Nice.

[@kimseniorb]

2:38 very cool violas runs, pity you didn't show that midi data :)

[@Blakus]

Oh, totally missed that! The data is very simple, Berlin Strings does a great job of pulling those kinds of parts off.

[@DV7Dave]

Just watched this again...For educational purposes, haha! Was just wondering...Often when starting a piece, my head just explodes. My minds ear has what I want to put down, but I get hooked on a single phrase and cannot progress past it for some reason. Where exactly do you start? Piano? Swelling strings as a base for a melody? I need to steal someone elses' technique to bring myself out of this vicious unproductive cycle that ends in Alt F4. Cheers, David

[@Blakus]

Sorry I missed this comment! I personally try to keep it simple at the start, with just piano. I know the frustration you're talking about! And by simple, I really mean triads in the left hand, single note melody in the right. I find it easier to move on from the main phrase this way.

[@rickyparker7587]

Hey Blakus! Does Hollywood Brass ONLY go through B2 once for tail or are you doing another reverb before that to give HWB some early reflections? Thanks Friend!

[@Blakus]

+Ricky Parker Hey Ricky, HB is only going through B2 once for tail. I found I didn't need to add any more early reflections to the Hollywood Series :) All the best!

[@rickyparker7587]

+blakus | music for media AWESOME! Thanks for the reply. Are you just using Main Mics on HWB?

[@Blakus]

+Ricky Parker No problems! I only have the Gold Edition, so I use the one mic position.

[@scartabellomusic]

What are you using for the reverb tail? B2?

[@Blakus]

Hey Peter. Yeah, I use B2 for the tail :)