Which Intro do you prefer?

[DanLights]

So I have two ideas for a concert intro, and I'd like your input about which you prefer. Imagine yourselves in a venue ready for a show to begin, to make it realistic, imagine you're there to see a well known Doom/death band (or similar genre) and we're the opening act so you don't really know us, or at least we aren't the real reason you came to the show.

This is all a backing track, there's no one on stage yet, the band comes on stage after about a minute of the backing track. On the first one, the actual song begins with the bass intro, everything before that is a backing track intro. On the second song, I cut off the bass intro and began the song straight with the whole thing, so that's when the band would actually start playing.

Intro 1 is a different part from the actual song, so it has more of a feeling of an intro to catch your attention, then silence, and the actual song starts, but with not too much of a break, no one's supposed to fucking applaud at this point. The reason I like this one is because I'm also planning on ending the set with another part of that song that has the same main piano melody, so it has a whole "full circle" kind of feeling, making you leave satisfied as if you watched a full concert well worth your money. Plus, I love that piano melody, it's from an instrumental song that's going on the album but we're not really going to play it live entirely, more use it as intro/outro to shows.

Intro 2 is a couple piano parts taken from the actual song we're opening with, so it sounds much more "homogenous", rather than an intro to the show it's more like an extended intro to the song. I like it, but I don't like leaving out the bass intro cause I think it's a fresh and different way to begin a song and an album, so I'd like to keep it in the live show as well. Plus, I think when the piano melody pops in during the bass intro, it feels like "that melody AGAIN??" so I'm not too sure. Of course, I still think this one is good, and my guitar player prefers this one, so I'm looking for extra opinions just to have a broader scope of opinions.

Intro 1: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/954292/Ad Intra Stuff/Inside us all/Intro Test 1.mp3

Intro 2: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/954292/Ad Intra Stuff/Inside us all/Intro Test 2.mp3

Thanks in advance!

 

[Turtlemod]

Definitely the first one, but you should make it more distant and flowing, almost as if there was no attack of the notes. Try using fair amount of delay and reverb on them.

 

[updog]

i prefer the second intro judging by its composition, but to be perfectly honest i think there's a lot you could do to make both of them much more interesting.

they could both use a bit of building up to give your gig a powerful beginning, and they could use a lot more sounds than a piano and run-of-the-mill type strings. not to be a dick but you should be able to do a much better job using just free plugins available today. don't be afraid to add some small instrument flavors here and there, it will sound more cinematic and often just better.

also have some more velocity changes on the piano, yes you can hear differences like that even live and in an instrument like a piano, more realistic velocity changes automatically contribute to the production value - it's easy to make sound realistic that way. maybe play with different octaves too, maybe the piano could start with a higher octave and then descent to the octave used now at some point, it's an easy way to give a composition like this a bit more life.

hope it helps

 

[SocialNumb]

What he said^ and:

neither, they sound too generic. Just being honest, don't throw Christians at me.

 

[DanLights]

thanks for the comments guys, I appreciate it! Sopulurn, I'm still quite unhappy with the sound of the strings specially, I can't seem to find a good free or very cheap plugin to give me anything better than that, and I've been looking for a while. Maybe I'm just really bad at looking hahaha If you (or anyone) can point out some good options I'd appreciate it very much. And yeah, there's supposed to be more into it, we're thinking of adding a soft wind sound and then making it almost a hurricane near the end of the intro, plus a couple more layers of other vstis, but first I want to decide on the basic composition of it before going into details cause we might end up using a different one and starting over.

Anyways, any more ideas and suggestions are more than welcome!

 

[Keregioz]

I think it has more to do with how it was programmed than the quality of the vsti plugins. Like already was mentioned play around with the velocity on the piano and definitely add more reverb. For the strings I would add more octaves and harmonies or add layers with different strings. The preset you have sounds like a solo cello or violin sound, try maybe an ensemble string preset if you have. Solo string instruments in general are difficult to sound realistic, I imagine even more so with free plugins.
Also, my opinion (not that you asked for it ) on the "wind" idea you have is to avoid it. Wind and rain samples as intros are the most cheesy, overdone, unoriginal and cliche thing you can do in metal.

 

[FIXXXER]

intro 1, even it does sound very robotic. you could mask this a bit with some reverb. i also like to use destructive effects for intro stuff.
know the izotope vinyl plugin? this might be perfect for this!!

cheers
S.

 

[Siguros]

Just play this... then come in, eat a bats head and play your music.

 

[DanLights]

I think it has more to do with how it was programmed than the quality of the vsti plugins. Like already was mentioned play around with the velocity on the piano and definitely add more reverb. For the strings I would add more octaves and harmonies or add layers with different strings. The preset you have sounds like a solo cello or violin sound, try maybe an ensemble string preset if you have. Solo string instruments in general are difficult to sound realistic, I imagine even more so with free plugins.
Also, my opinion (not that you asked for it ) on the "wind" idea you have is to avoid it. Wind and rain samples as intros are the most cheesy, overdone, unoriginal and cliche thing you can do in metal.

I asked for everyone's opinion dude, that surely doesn't exclude yours

My problem with writing string parts is that for some reason as soon as I start adding more octaves and harmonies it all sounds way too loud and upfront. Sometimes I raise an octave on several parts in the song (we have backing tracks on all the songs) cause I feel it's doing the same octave as the guitars and hard to listen to in rehearsal, but then it's just too high or loud, or both. I don't know, maybe I need to rethink my approach to writing keyboard parts, or there's something I'm missing down the road.

And the plugin I'm using, it's a "string ensemble" sound, there are also separate violin, cello, etc. sounds on it, but the one I use is the string ensemble, but I do agree it sounds pretty "not so ensemble"-ish, I just can't seem to find a free plugin to give me a decent sounding string sound right off the bat, and to my experience tweaking string sounds with Eq is almost pointless, it doesn't really change the tone at all, just make it a bit more/less present or boomy. We're not looking for actual "orchestral" Epica kinda sound for the strings, more like "keyboard string ensemble" sound, sometimes I just want to buy one of those good classic keyboards that so many metal keyboardists use and reamp all the fucking midis through it.

About the wind/rain thing, I understand and value your opinion, but it might be too late, we already a wind intro in our first demo, and a rainforest interlude in another song

 

[AntonioPetrole]

I would just do whatever feels natural. I always end up pushing symphonic elements into my songs when they are unnecessary. One thing I have always noticed is that really successful bands don't base their music of orchestra/synth etc. Its almost always Vocals, Guitar, Guitar 2, Bass and Drums with symphonic stuff around it once in a while. The best intros are always short and sweet and to the point and often repeat the main theme or catch of the song, even if its not note for note. Not sure what kind of band this is but here are some short intros that just work so well

 

[DanLights]

I would just do whatever feels natural. I always end up pushing symphonic elements into my songs when they are unnecessary. One thing I have always noticed is that really successful bands don't base their music of orchestra/synth etc. Its almost always Vocals, Guitar, Guitar 2, Bass and Drums with symphonic stuff around it once in a while. The best intros are always short and sweet and to the point and often repeat the main theme or catch of the song, even if its not note for note. Not sure what kind of band this is but here are some short intros that just work so well

I agree dude, we rarely write keyboard parts as main melodies, more as reinforcement to the actual songwriting and in parts where we feel it actually adds to the feel and not the opposite.

But this thread and the intros are about the intro to a live show, not to a song. For the song posted in the OP, the album is intro is simply the bass part. I feel that extending an intro in a recording can make the listener lose attention most of the time, but in a live setting it's a whole different situation, and I think a long-ish (1 or 2 minutes) intro before the set actually starts, if done well, can really grasp the audience's attention and make the band seem a bit more professional. Not always the case of course, but it's what I feel would benefit my band.

 

[AntonioPetrole]

I agree dude, we rarely write keyboard parts as main melodies, more as reinforcement to the actual songwriting and in parts where we feel it actually adds to the feel and not the opposite.

But this thread and the intros are about the intro to a live show, not to a song. For the song posted in the OP, the album is intro is simply the bass part. I feel that extending an intro in a recording can make the listener lose attention most of the time, but in a live setting it's a whole different situation, and I think a long-ish (1 or 2 minutes) intro before the set actually starts, if done well, can really grasp the audience's attention and make the band seem a bit more professional. Not always the case of course, but it's what I feel would benefit my band.

Do you have a link to your band? I want to check them out

 

[updog]

it can be hard to get that large string section sound you want, it takes a lot of layering if you don't want to buy a better library. when you get the layers right it's all about layering octaves to get the base string sound. i think i've heard of a decent free library but can't remember what its name is - i'll see if i can dig it up for you.

when you want that powerful cinematic sound, here's an effective piece of advice - do not underestimate the power of the percussion. these pieces don't seem like they'd benefit from any at first but using percussion you can make it build up like the song that follows would blow up the entire venue. here you can download the g-town church sampling project sounds which are free and include more than decent percussion and more! (couldn't find the original website on a quick search) i use these in Kontakt they'll probably work in the free version within the 15-minute time limit if you don't have the full one:

http://www.vstcafe.com/2009/06/g-town-church-sampling-project.html

 

[DanLights]

Do you have a link to your band? I want to check them out

Sure, you can listen here: http://adintra.bandcamp.com the song we have there is a single we released while finishing up the album, in the album version the keyboards on it will be considerately stripped, it's one of the faster, heavier songs and we thought specially the beginning benefited more with just the guitars. If you dig the keyboard sound on that song, they were "reamped" by Jussi (vespiz here).

it can be hard to get that large string section sound you want, it takes a lot of layering if you don't want to buy a better library. when you get the layers right it's all about layering octaves to get the base string sound. i think i've heard of a decent free library but can't remember what its name is - i'll see if i can dig it up for you.

when you want that powerful cinematic sound, here's an effective piece of advice - do not underestimate the power of the percussion. these pieces don't seem like they'd benefit from any at first but using percussion you can make it build up like the song that follows would blow up the entire venue. here you can download the g-town church sampling project sounds which are free and include more than decent percussion and more! (couldn't find the original website on a quick search) i use these in Kontakt they'll probably work in the free version within the 15-minute time limit if you don't have the full one:

http://www.vstcafe.com/2009/06/g-town-church-sampling-project.html

Thanks a lot dude, I'll check that out tomorrow when on the computer. For the record though, we're not really going for a "cinematic" feel exactly, it's more or less Doom metal so the point of the intro and keyboard parts in general is to be pretty slow and "static", almost droney. Still, thanks for the advice so far.

 

[Keregioz]

Hey Daniel, if you'd like you could send me the midi files and I can give it a go with the plugins I use to see if I come up with a sound you like better.

 

[DanLights]

Hey Daniel, if you'd like you could send me the midi files and I can give it a go with the plugins I use to see if I come up with a sound you like better.

Sure, I'll hand them to you this afternoon when I get home, thanks!