Skjaldmær

[psyocean]

Powerful and maestroso!

[jonetsu]

This is a very nice journey. The strings are great, as with the orchestral part near the end and the acoustic guitar at the beginning. The mix seems decent. I would have to listen a few more times to find out spots. I've only listened for the ride, and it was nice.

I'm sure that in nature, birds are looping at times.

Cheers.

[Rainmak3r]

Thanks to a national holiday here in Italy, I decided to kill some time creating a video for this song. I had already collected some material in the past few months, in particular a series of videos freely available on Videezy of a beautiful model dressed in Viking garment that I think fit the mood of the song perfectly. I used a few other stock videos to depict the different moods in the song, and the result is the following:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q3Yx7MXwTc

I created it using ShotCut, the same tool I used for my latest videos, and it was quite simple and quick to do. Most importantly, on my new laptop the export process took a couple of minutes rather than 20, so that was quite a happy improvement too

Hope you'll enjoy it! Time to use the rest of this free day to keep on working on some new music too...

[jeanette_c]

This is a great song! Very well played and dramatised. Let me interpose my criticism first and then continue with the well-deserved words of praise.
The distorted guitar somehow sounds very trashy. If that was desired: well done. It has that early 90s Sweden metal feel. The same goes for the drums. The snare in particular sounds as if it almost has no attackj. The transient is somehow diminished. Maybe that is SoundCloud playing up in its conversions. The same, to some extent, holds true for the kick.
That is such a pity, because your acoustic guitar is so well recorded. The ambient samples sound very high class, crystal clear and spacious. The clean electric guitar also sounded very nice, to my ears. I enjoyed that passage where you played both acoustic and electric guitar in unison. The way you incorporated the orchestral samples into the mix was great. They sat well and I didn't mind them not being a quintillian terrabyte library at all. Nice touch with the mouth organ, if that was one.
All in all, I did enjoy the song. Thanks for sharing! I hope I shall fair as well with my next inclusion of orchestra.

[Rainmak3r]

This is a great song! Very well played and dramatised. Let me interpose my criticism first and then continue with the well-deserved words of praise.

Thanks!

The distorted guitar somehow sounds very trashy. If that was desired: well done. It has that early 90s Sweden metal feel. The same goes for the drums. The snare in particular sounds as if it almost has no attackj. The transient is somehow diminished. Maybe that is SoundCloud playing up in its conversions. The same, to some extent, holds true for the kick.

The heavy guitars were indeed meant to be more "noisy" (I wanted to emulate the typical sound of black/viking metal bands), but I didn't actually get the result I wanted. For drums, you're right, that's always been a weak part in my works: there's actually no compression or anything on drums in here, so the lack of proper attack is probably due to that; this is something that I tried to do in "Man with a Clan", which came a few months later than this track, with mixed results. I'll probably have to rethink the way I do drums for my next efforts, even though I'm facing a different problem now: apparently my Muldjord drumgizmo template doesn't work with Ardour 6 (MIDI signals seem completely misrouted), which means I'll have to find a completely new way of handling drums, which is a scary proposition! (to this day I still haven't figured out how to create a drumgizmo+hydrogen template on my own).

That is such a pity, because your acoustic guitar is so well recorded. The ambient samples sound very high class, crystal clear and spacious. The clean electric guitar also sounded very nice, to my ears. I enjoyed that passage where you played both acoustic and electric guitar in unison. The way you incorporated the orchestral samples into the mix was great. They sat well and I didn't mind them not being a quintillian terrabyte library at all. Nice touch with the mouth organ, if that was one.
All in all, I did enjoy the song. Thanks for sharing! I hope I shall fair as well with my next inclusion of orchestra.

I'm glad you liked acoustic guitars, as I did indeed spend some time on getting them "right"! Clean guitars are done with rakarrack, that I think has some excellent sounds, and playing them with the Telecaster gave them a unique sound too. I do love mixing orchestral and rock elements, so I'm always glad when I hear it came out well

[jeanette_c]

I can only say that the work spent on getting the acoustic guitar "right", was time very well spent! It does stand the test on its own. So if you ever decide to record a solo guitar piece, you have your sound.

[pdechery]

Such a great track. I came back to this forum, after a few months, just to say that.

When I've heard your previous 'metal' track, I've said here that this wasn't my favorite style, but I loved the song anyway. This is true again this time, so I guess maybe I'm a power-viking-metal fan!

I liked the orchestral concept and the idea that the music tells a story. But mostly I loved the heavy part, where there's even a blastbeat - which I didn't expect but has added a very cool edgy vibe.

If you decide to do a power-metal album (not sure about the name of this style) just let us know here. To me, this work deserves to be at the same spot of any mainstream power-metal band.

OBS: The clean tone you used in the arpeggio part is very cool. Did you use an acoustic guitar too?

[Rainmak3r]

Such a great track. I came back to this forum, after a few months, just to say that.

When I've heard your previous 'metal' track, I've said here that this wasn't my favorite style, but I loved the song anyway. This is true again this time, so I guess maybe I'm a power-viking-metal fan!

I liked the orchestral concept and the idea that the music tells a story. But mostly I loved the heavy part, where there's even a blastbeat - which I didn't expect but has added a very cool edgy vibe.

If you decide to do a power-metal album (not sure about the name of this style) just let us know here. To me, this work deserves to be at the same spot of any mainstream power-metal band.

OBS: The clean tone you used in the arpeggio part is very cool. Did you use an acoustic guitar too?

Thanks, this is very kind of you! If you like this, you may want to check "Viides luku – Hävitetty" by Moonsorrow: it's an album they did which only contains two songs, but ~30 minutes each Both incredibly atmospheric, with plenty of music changes, and personally a huge influence on what ended up in Skjaldmaer.

[psyocean]

Perfectly masterpiece!

[Rainmak3r]

Perfectly masterpiece!

Thanks!

[oscillator]

I really like how you are telling a story, and the dynamics in the song are inspiring!

Great orchestral sounds.

Only thing I would have wished for would've been even more brutal guitars!

[Rainmak3r]

I really like how you are telling a story, and the dynamics in the song are inspiring!

Great orchestral sounds.

Thanks!

Only thing I would have wished for would've been even more brutal guitars!

Yeah, they weren't as "viking" or "black" as I wanted them to be... hopefully someday I'll find the right sound