Owyn_Merrilin said:
Okay, here:
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0YoFMFYIr4F
I knocked that out in a couple of hours, so I apologize for it not being a full score, but it's the kind of proof of concept that Zimmer himself makes when he's first showing his ideas to a director. It's a sample of a driving, mid-tempo track, like what might get used in the background for an action scene in the middle of the film -- one that's not at the climax, basically. Could also be hacked up and/or looped in various ways for use in trailers and so on. It's not tied to any particular film or character, because that's really not how Zimmer works. He kind of creates a range of tracks that can be used by the director as needed.
Not bad for a pitch. It reminds me of some old tunes I used to make. Good thing you keep it down, unlike many indie music makers who always has to throw everything at the listener (annoying).
Could work for a low-level sinister scene or something I guess (it reminds me of some game soundtracks of old).
And I just listened to almost the whole Dark Knight soundtrack for comparison so maybe I could give you some feedback (since we were talking about Zimmer in the first place). You're right about the 'more melody' part, but what's interesting is that in this case this would actually work against your tune. First, it's all on one noise level, while if you listen to Zimmer (or anybody similar), they put a lot of work into the dynamic range and alternating fast and slow or loud and silence (not to mention various sounding instruments, but that doesn't need to be in the first pitch of course). In fact I'd say this is the biggest part of Zimmer's music and the reason why it's so popular and recognizable. Even the infamous foghorn works because it changes its loudness, is part of a rather complex tune and in the original track isn't being sound over and over. All unlike those retarded trailers which totally missed the point and just go 'booooom'. Those bass sounds only work this well when being alternated with completely different set of sounds and when timed well. And frankly this is something Zimmer completely nails.
Just to wit, here's the measured dynamic range [http://dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=42842] of the Dark Knight OST uncompressed. Even the bullshit CD version [http://dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=35695] shows that the best tracks are those with the highest DR.
With your track, I'd say just use the part between 0:35 and 0:50 as a core, then do something completely different around it. Alternative fast and slow parts, loud and silent, just... something. At the very least, at around 01:00 mark I expected the tune to finally go faster. Even if the tune would be perfect for some particular movie scene, it would still need alterations to make things interesting. Not to mention these days, rarely a scene takes longer than a few seconds. You try to keep the tune consistent, which is nice (again unlike so many indie music makers), but the result is it feels like there isn't that much idea behind it and you're just reusing the stuff you came up with when you thought 'hey let's write a tune'. Which of course is exactly what you did because I asked you to
Just sayin'.
Back to Zimmer for comparison, check for example this track, which is probably the most similar one in its 'low level sinister' feel. Even if it's rather noisy, the dynamic is definitely a big part. Also every 30 seconds or so, the theme changes to something else. And even if I'd argue that the individual parts are better than the whole, this track is still very listenable because it keeps things interesting.