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Looking for good quality MIDI files or Cubase projects of film scores

G

General_Disarray

Active Member
My favorite thing to do these days is to download MIDI files of music I like, load them in Cubase Pro 12 and start replacing all the instruments with much better ones, not without first playing it and exporting in its original form, which makes the end result much more satisfying.

I found a lot of great stuff out there. In most cases it doesn't even say who recorded them, and some are mediocre, but there are a lot that at first sound like a song from an 80's video game, but when you start replacing the instruments, adjusting CC1 and CC11, velocity and so on, it starts to sound amazing.

I have downloaded many of Ashton Gleckman's MIDI files and Cubase projects, in fact one of my current projects is to bring his Gladiator mockup up to date, because he did it in 2018 and it's brilliant, but most of the instruments don't load in Cubase Pro 12 on Apple Silicon, so I'm slowly opening it setting Cubase to Rosetta mode so Kontakt 5 can load and sometimes give me the instrument he used back then.

But I'm also looking for MIDI files and Cubase projects of other film scores, preferably the most complicated ones. If anyone knows where to find more, please let me know. I found a really good John Williams site here: http://johnwilliams.free.fr/midi.php?critere=film&lang=us
Click to read more...
 
Jay Bacal has shared a lot of his mock-ups as Cubase Projects. But these are all recent and expertly programmed so it may not be the kind of thing you’re looking for (sounds like you want much older mock-up files that you can update?). I’ll link to it here in case you’d like to look at any of them:

Hans Zimmer - Pirates of the Caribbean - Jack Sparrow - Cubase Project Available - VSL Movie Masterpieces

Hello everyone! I am happy to announce that VSL and I are collaborating on producing a series of mockups of "movie masterpieces" by many of the greatest film composers. VSL has started hosting the project here: https://www.vsl.co.at/en/Movie_Masterpieces VSL will be releasing a new piece...
vi-control.net vi-control.net

There are a lot of other downloadable project files on VSL’s website, some much older (although, the age of them doesn’t speak to the quality of the programming as they are all excellent).

You may already be aware, but some of the film music MIDI files available across the internet are not always the most accurate. I found a number of errors in a MIDI file for a John Williams piece when I compared it to the score. I’d therefore recommend obtaining scores as a preference before using someone else’s MIDI file. The other problem with MIDI files is there may be things lurking in there not intended as sounding notes — eg keyswitches. They are not always obviously keyswitches.
 
Zedcars said:
Jay Bacal has shared a lot of his mock-ups as Cubase Projects. But these are all recent and expertly programmed so it may not be the kind of thing you’re looking for (sounds like you want much older mock-up files that you can update?). I’ll link to it here in case you’d like to look at any of them:

Hans Zimmer - Pirates of the Caribbean - Jack Sparrow - Cubase Project Available - VSL Movie Masterpieces

Hello everyone! I am happy to announce that VSL and I are collaborating on producing a series of mockups of "movie masterpieces" by many of the greatest film composers. VSL has started hosting the project here: https://www.vsl.co.at/en/Movie_Masterpieces VSL will be releasing a new piece...
vi-control.net vi-control.net

There are a lot of other downloadable project files on VSL’s website, some much older (although, the age of them doesn’t speak to the quality of the programming as they are all excellent).

You may already be aware, but some of the film music MIDI files available across the internet are not always the most accurate. I found a number of errors in a MIDI file for a John Williams piece when I compared it to the score. I’d therefore recommend obtaining scores as a preference before using someone else’s MIDI file. The other problem with MIDI files is there may be things lurking in there not intended as sounding notes — eg keyswitches. They are not always obviously keyswitches.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the great info, I’ll check those up later today.

As for what I’m looking for, it’s both. I’m learning, so if I can have expertly made projects in Cubase (or Logic Pro X, but preferably Cubase), I would love that so I can learn how the pros do it.

But it’s a lot of fun to download these MIDI files, old and new, and start playing around with them, replacing instrument after instrument, drawing MIDI CC automation and tweaking things until it sounds great. I’m working on Holst’s “The Planets” now and it’s sounding better and better, to the point where yesterday I pressed play and I thought I was listening to the source track, but when I scrolled all the way up, it was muted, so I was listening to my version.

Of course some of these MIDIs have errors, but that’s part of the fun. Fixing and tweaking them.
 
Zedcars said:
There are a lot of other downloadable project files on VSL’s website, some much older (although, the age of them doesn’t speak to the quality of the programming as they are all excellent).
Click to expand...
Where exactly on the VSL website? I tried to find them but came up empty.
 
General_Disarray said:
Where exactly on the VSL website? I tried to find them but came up empty.
Click to expand...
On the Music page. Quite a lot of the pieces of music offer downloadable tutorials, but not all. So have a look, and click the small ‘i’ to expand and if there’s a tutorial to download it will be there.

Browse - Vienna Symphonic Library

Vienna Symphonic Library Music Browser
www.vsl.co.at www.vsl.co.at
 
I also enjoy doing this BTW - I think one of my fave ways to relax is to rebuild Ashton's The Music of Wonder Woman and The Last Samurai mock ups - I love them all but those two get a lot of tinkering hah... It's great fun to hear the arrangements emerging as you build them out! Kind of like musical lego somehow...
 
For anyone who may come across this thread and wants to find the songs in the long list in the VSL website, look for the ones where the play icon is different from the normal one:

Screenshot 2023-09-01 at 5.00.53 PM.jpg

And, rather than open each one and going all the way to the top, you can add them to a new playlist, then save as Tutorials, and you can access them easier:

Screenshot 2023-09-01 at 5.02.49 PM.jpg

Now, if you will excuse me, the next 5 years of my life are going to be rather busy...
 
It's too bad I didn't know about all these tutorials about a year ago when I started getting into this. I spent thousands in libraries from different companies, not being terribly happy about several of them, and happy with others, but if I had learned that all these projects were available for downloading, a lot of that money would've gone towards VSL, knowing that I could really take advantage of them by just loading the Cubase projects with all the instruments that were used for it.

Besides that, I just bought Vienna Ensemble Pro 7, which comes with Epic Orchestra 2.0, all for 126 € (which I paid almost $150 because the good ol' times when the US dollar was stronger than the Euro are gone), and I can't believe how good these are. They sound realistic, and the legato is fantastic.
 
Snarf said:
Lorne Balfe has also shared some of his cues online if you're into that kind of thing.
Click to expand...
I know he did something I like.... YES! Mission Impossible Fallout, one of my favorite scores. He must be part of that troupe that hangs out at Hans Zimmer studio in LA, because that score is 100% Hans Zimmer style. In fact, he takes the Zimmer Brammm to a whole new level that is fantastic.

Where in the vast kingdom of the internets can I find those cues? Ask my friend Google, or do you already have them bookmarked and feel kind enough to share with me?
 
I know this if I spend hours troubleshooting this I'm going to figure it out, but I'm really eager to try all these amazing VSL projects, in fact like I said, I bought Vienna Ensemble Pro 7. So far I figured that you need to be running the server app for these to load. But what I get is a lot of MIDI channels with their levels going up and down like crazy. I can tell they're not audio levels by the way they move, and also because their levels go from 0 to 127.

Screenshot 2023-09-01 at 8.46.25 PM.jpg

Now, I can't get any audio to the stereo out channel. I checked everything I can think of, and while I haven't been using Cubase for years, I've had it since March and used it extensively. That of course doesn't make me an expert, but neither does it make me a beginner. But obviously there's something here that I still haven't learned, or maybe it's a setting in the VSL server that I need to change.

Any ideas?
 
General_Disarray said:
I know this if I spend hours troubleshooting this I'm going to figure it out, but I'm really eager to try all these amazing VSL projects, in fact like I said, I bought Vienna Ensemble Pro 7. So far I figured that you need to be running the server app for these to load. But what I get is a lot of MIDI channels with their levels going up and down like crazy. I can tell they're not audio levels by the way they move, and also because their levels go from 0 to 127.

Screenshot 2023-09-01 at 8.46.25 PM.jpg

Now, I can't get any audio to the stereo out channel. I checked everything I can think of, and while I haven't been using Cubase for years, I've had it since March and used it extensively. That of course doesn't make me an expert, but neither does it make me a beginner. But obviously there's something here that I still haven't learned, or maybe it's a setting in the VSL server that I need to change.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Possibly some other reason, but maybe you don’t have the libraries required to play back the data on those MIDI channels? It usually says on the VSL Music page what a particular piece of music used. In fact, I think you can filter the list to only show music for a particular library.
 
Zedcars said:
Possibly some other reason, but maybe you don’t have the libraries required to play back the data on those MIDI channels? It usually says on the VSL Music page what a particular piece of music used. In fact, I think you can filter the list to only show music for a particular library.
Click to expand...
Yeah I think that might be it. However, if I filter by product, Epic Orchestra 2.0 is not a choice. There are a few that are part of it, but I tried opening those projects and it didn't work.
 
One thing I've found with loading Ashton's MIDI files is I often dont have all the libs used, but I've had lots of fun swapping in libraries I do have. It's a great way to get to know your existing libraries better. In some cases I have been shocked at what was possible with a library I didn't get on with... made me re-appraise some of my lesser used libs.
 
I have these https://store.fortecomposeracademy.com/midi-study-pack-alpha-bundle and one of the things they showed me was that when I was buying up string libraries searching for something... that something was not in any of the libraries: it was the ability to orchestrate, to write / play MIDI CC data, to create realistic tempo variations, and mainly develop a better musical "ear" and gain some (any! hahah) technical understanding of classical western music theory.

These two have also helped but yeah still a long, long way to go :-D

orchestrationrecipes.com

Orchestration Recipes Homepage

Sign in Contact Store Vol 1 & 2: Recipes Instrumental combinations that work Add to your collection Vol 1 & 2:
orchestrationrecipes.com

https://www.tonegym.co/

Of course - thats just what floats my boat - might not be for you!
 
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