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Full version of "This is Berk"! (monthly How to Train Your Dragon mockups)

October's mockup is up and it's another excerpt from "This is Berk" - I hope you enjoy!



I'll return to this piece in December, complete it, do some final polishing and upload the finalized mockup of the full track - already really looking forward to that! November's mockup will likely be an excerpt from "Coming Back Around", so stay tuned for that too! :)
As always I'm happy to hear your thoughts about this month's mockup!
 
Great work! :) I know so much work goes into these things, I have Omni publishing transcripts for both HTTYD 1 +2 and wanted to tackle parts of it myself and am on the looking for good VI instruments for some of the more ethnic instruments.

Have you tried Celtic Era 2? I was considering picking it up if it goes on sale as it seems like a good library for this kinda thing.
 
Hunter123 said:
Great work! :) I know so much work goes into these things, I have Omni publishing transcripts for both HTTYD 1 +2 and wanted to tackle parts of it myself and am on the looking for good VI instruments for some of the more ethnic instruments.

Have you tried Celtic Era 2? I was considering picking it up if it goes on sale as it seems like a good library for this kinda thing.
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Thank you!

I only have the original Celtic Era library - thank you for reminding me that I need to put the upgrade to version 2 on my list :)
So far I haven't used Celtic Era for these mockups - for the ethnic winds I went with CineWinds Pro and Ilya Efimov stuff. That said, I haven't been completely satisfied with how these libraries performed, so I will probably do some experiments with Celtic Era and maybe get the upgrade if it goes on sale this month. :thumbsup:
 
Laurin Lenschow said:
Work in progress:
View attachment Romantic Flight - Solo Violin Excerpt.mp3

At first I was shying away from the solo violin part (that's why April's mockup started in the middle of the piece), but I think this is turning out rather nicely :)
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Very nice work and great balance on all the mockups I've heard so far. This violin stood out to me from the first post. I looked through all the post but either I missed or it's not mentioned what violin this is. Which library did you chose for this passage?

Thank you again for expanding my view of what samples can be capable of. Always makes me go back to what I have and find out what's missing. Pacific Strings sounds like it could be a great addition to my collection.
 
José Herring said:
Very nice work and great balance on all the mockups I've heard so far. This violin stood out to me from the first post. I looked through all the post but either I missed or it's not mentioned what violin this is. Which library did you chose for this passage?

Thank you again for expanding my view of what samples can be capable of. Always makes me go back to what I have and find out what's missing. Pacific Strings sounds like it could be a great addition to my collection.
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Thank you so much!
You'll be happy to hear that I used the free solo violin from Performance Samples, so if you don't already have it you can download it right away :)
 
Sadly this little bit from "The Dragon Book" was all I had time for this month. I got to use the Harmonics Legato patch from Strezov Sampling's Afflatus Strings though, so that was kind of fun :)



In December I'll cover the last missing bit from "This is Berk". I'll also polish the rest of the piece and plan to upload a full version by the end of the year. Until then I'll probably chime in here a bunch of times to hopefully gather plenty of feedback and suggestions :)
 
"This is Berk" features eight bars of a Sopilka, which I didn't have samples of. When I did some research I was able to find only one library with a Sopilka but it didn't sound particularly impressive to me. So I did the only sensible thing: I bought a real Sopilka from Ukraine and I'll attempt to learn how to play it. Am I taking these mockups too seriously? 👀

 
I'm currently wrapping up the strings for the final minute of my full "This is Berk" mockup and I must say I'm pleasantly surprised with how well Pacific is handling the rebows here (the library doesn't have recorded rebowing). I used to use quick dips in the CC1 curve while holding down the note to fake rebowing but if you just retrigger the note and tweak the timing and size of the gap a bit it doesn't come out too bad either:
View attachment Pacific Cellos Rebow.mp3


Edit: On an unrelated note, today I will try to record my eight bars of amateurish Sopilka-playing. Wish me luck 👀
 
ThomasNL said:
What would you say are some of your takeaways after one year of doing these mockups? Anything your learned or other tips/tricks?
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That's a good question! I think there are a lot of things that can't really be "explained", for example I think I developed a better ear for choosing the appropriate articulations for any given passage.

Out of the ones that can be shared/explained, the first thing that comes to mind is that I should be confident in EQing more aggressively. I've been trying to mimic the mixes of the original recordings (and certainly failed, but I think I got closer over time), and boosting or cutting just 2-3 dB here and there just didn't get me there. Sometimes you can or even should process an individual instrument or track so heavily that you like it less when listening to it on its own, but when played in a full mix the result will be favorable. Using a lot of high- and low-pass filters also helps to clear things up and to remove frequencies that aren't bad but that aren't needed either.

On a similar note, layering several libraries can sometimes make things sound worse in isolation but better for the end result. I used almost no layering in these mockups, except for the choir in "This is Berk". The legato patches from Chorus (Audio Imperia) didn't give me quite the momentum and musicality that were needed for parts like this one:
View attachment VIC This is Berk Choir Demo.mp3
...so I ended up layering them with the Tavern Singers from Medieval Era II. This made it sound horribly fake and synthy, but in the full mix (the clip above uses this layered version) you don't really notice that. What does make a difference though is how the Tavern Singers helped to emphasize the note attacks and make the lines less "lyrical". (The Tavern Singers were also essential to getting the shouts towards the end of this excerpt right - Chorus didn't have the right syllables/articulations and the Tavern Singers didn't have the right ensemble and room size, but the layered version worked just fine.)

I hope this advice is at least a little helpful! :)
 
Aaaand here we go:



I started this year with a mockup of the first minute from "This is Berk", so it seems very much appropriate to end it with a finished and revised mockup of the whole piece. I've also tried to improve the production quality a bit for this one (better thumbnail and a picture-in-picture part in the video), let me know how you like it!

Doing these monthly mockups has been a lot of fun and has only strengthened my love and admiration for the soundtrack of How To Train Your Dragon. I'll likely continue working on them in some form next year; more on that soon. Until then let me know your thoughts on this one and have a great new year's eve! :)
 
...I'm currently taking a 2-3 month break from HTTYD to work on some other mockups, but to fill the gap I'll make a video that breaks down the libraries and processing that I used for my recent mockup of "This is Berk". Initially I wanted to upload this today but I'm still making some final tweaks to the mockup so I'll have to delay it by aprox. one week. In the meantime, here's the announcement for said breakdown video, featuring my favourite part of "This is Berk" - I hope you enjoy! :)

 
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