Hi all,
since next week I'll be back to Japan for work after my last trip there 5 years ago and I'm quite excited about it, I thought I'd use that as an opportunity to finally share this track with you all:
https://soundcloud.com/lminiero/himiko
By "finally", I mean I actually finished working on this track a year ago: it's been in a shelf up to now since it's meant as part of a larger project I still haven't finished. Considering I don't know when I'll be able to finish it (rather than completing that, I've started another one in the meanwhile!), I thought I'd dust off this track instead and publish it right away.
A bit like Jade was an attempt to write "traditional" Chinese music with a soundtrack feel to it a few years ago, Himiko is basically the same thing but for Japanese music instead: as such, all the well known and expected "tropes" are there, with Koto, Shamisen, Shakuhachi and Taiko drums painting what I hope will be an atmospheric enough picture. I added a semi-full orchestra and a synth pad in the background as well since, again, this was mostly meant to have a soundtrack vibe (a bit like Hans Zimmer's Last Samurai, if you will). The whole track was conceived with a continuous crescendo, up until the "explosion" at the end.
While the orchestra is the "usual" VPO, with the addition of KBH strings for cellos and basses for more depth, the Japanese traditional instruments are all SFZ files rendered with Sfizz:
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The Koto is a free SFZ by Unreal Instruments, even though I layered it with few Kotos from other sources (general MIDI libraries, a couple of Windows VSTs) just to give it more air.
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The Shamisen and Shakuhachi, instead, come from a large World Instruments SFZ package by DSK Music; while DSK offers a lot of free instruments on their website, this package is available for a donation of 25$, that I was happy to contribute. Both instruments I actually played myself using my guitar, using the Soonus Guitar-to-MIDI converter I've used a few other times too.
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Finally, Taiko drums come from the amazing, and free, SCC Taiko Trums SFZ set by S. Christian Collins; I had already used them a bit for the aforementioned Jade, but I had been dying to use them for much more than that, and Himiko gave me an excellent opportunity to do exactly that. These I also "played" myself, using a generic MIDI keyboard, and grouping drums in three different rhythmic patterns: while I'm not sure the end result is as good as I would have wanted it to be, it was a lot of fun to score and play!
I hope you'll enjoy this, looking forward to your thoughts!