Unofficial Tex Murphy

I wrote this piece this evening in a couple of hours, it was for a weekly competition for kicks over at this other forum I visit and I thought I would share it here with my friends...

Calling the Storm

The instumentation and melodic inspiration for this piece (aside from the competition's theme 'Calm before the storm' being the main influence) was two TV shows I watched recently... the film 'The Rookie' and the series 'Taken'... the Rookie for the country town feel and taken for the majestic orchestrations.

The basic story behind the piece is (if you can picutre it) a desolate and dry American town is starved of rain, and one guy calmly deicdes that out of the blue he is going to wear his raincoat and as a result of his sheer faith he is blessed with a miracle of rain during a calm stroll through the scortched town... or at least, thats what I pictured as I wrote it... you might get a different interpretation.

I hope you like it.

-Cub. =o)

I like it.

Nice composition, Cub.

I decided I had better post something for such a fine piece of work, Cubase. Thomas Newman had better watch his back; this is right up his alley. The whole thing has a very nice flow to it; the guitar? mandolin? dobro? makes it very down home-y, but without pretentiousness, and opening up the orchestra really brings in a nice contrast. The ebb and flow is what keeps me interested in a piece of music and this one does it very nicely. The music tells a story, and that's why it works.
One question: Having upgraded to GS3 recently, and knowing the quality of professional stuff out there, I do have to ask: Was the guitar? mandolin? dobro? played live on your recording or was it digital? It sounds too damn good for a sample, but these days I can't tell anymore.
Either way, this ought to go on your demo reel. Damn fine work!

Thanks for the responses everyone,

St. Vivus: Many thanks for the detailed comments. Actually a funny note on that guitar (which does sounds strikingly like a mandolin)... I have a few sample loops of various guitars which I have collected from god knows where, and I was going through them (after digging them up from the digital dreggs) and just fell in love with this sample... so I played around with it a bit and changed it so it would follow a chord structure (as it originally was just nowhere plucking), and then simply wrote the piece around that guitar.

Anyhow, thanks for the feedeback!

-Cub. =o)