Dave Kropf: 0:02

What is happening everybody? This is Dave Kropf, and welcome to another, ready for Sync, where we feature a queue written by a member of the 52 queues community and I give feedback, like you might hear from a music supervisor or a potential library, and we ask the question is my queue ready for Sync? And today we are checking out a festive Christmas queue called Tiz, this season from James Okaden. So we're going to take a listen to this and then talk about it on the other side. That was Tiz, the season from James Oakden. James, thank you so much for sending this along. James sent this along during our week 48 weekly feedback thread. I believe it was week 48. Yeah, yes, week 48 weekly feedback thread. And one of the really cool things that James is doing is he's doing an Advent queue, like a queue a day for Advent, and so that's really really great, I imagine, like opening up the little box and there's a queue you know each door, and so really really cool. I love that idea and so this is something a little festive and it absolutely is that.

Dave Kropf: 3:21

I will say I like the sounds that we're using. I think we're in really good shape with that. The choir sounds really really good. It's kind of, you know, sounds like they might be singing in Latin or might be singing, you know, a carol, but I imagine that's a word builder or something similar like a East West world builder or just some choir vocalese type sounds where it's not really words or lyrics, and so I think that's working really really well. The energy is there and it sounds festive for sure.

Dave Kropf: 3:55

It's a lot of energy, maybe a little bit too much energy right out of the gate. It's just it's pedal to the metal or I don't know. We've got nine reindeer pulling this sleigh at top speed, you know, mach three, breaking the sound barrier, and I think we probably could benefit from maybe backing off the energy here at the beginning, just so we have kind of somewhere to go. If you are pinning the needle early on, then trying to create a sense of development and create a sense of progression through the form of the cue, you don't leave yourself much to go Like right out of the gate. We could have started with just bing bong, bing bong, zhiding bong, bing, bong, but we could have started off with those, those kind of church bell kind of things. But we have kind of a lot happening. We've got the brass, we've got the strings, so we just have a lot of energy right out of the gate and I think of prepping this a little bit with an intro and letting it get, because what we really don't have is a sense of increase in energy from the first four bars to the second four bars. It doesn't really feel like it's. It's amps up the energy and we always want to be adding energy.

Dave Kropf: 5:31

Now I could look at the waveform and I can see that that we're adding more, but it's it's just kind of kind of a wall, a wall of sound, and I feel like the symbols are really sibilant and are almost piercing a little bit. And if I look at the mix, it kind of is is a little top heavy. Anything much above 2k is just really really coming out of the mix a little too bright and I wonder if I mean, if we could I'm gonna put a node here and let's set this and see if I can't. I'm just shifting it get a little bit more top end. That's without it.

Dave Kropf: 6:30

Now I'm not suggesting that you do this, in case you're listening. I'm putting a flat line EQ and basically bringing down the highs and boosting up the lows with with one kind of one fail swoop here. I'm not suggesting you do this. I think the percussion's too bright and the symbols are all just kind of there. Now, I did pull this, you know, from your soundcloud, so it's possible that some of the compression from soundcloud might be causing some problems. I know that that's what explains this 18k dip. That's a, that's an mp3 thing, but at the end of the day it just feels like it's just a wall of sound and it's, it's unrelenting, and it's and it's holly, and and it's jolly, and this feels like the finale, you know, of the Messiah or the finale of a Christmas movie. But just two minutes, kind of without stopping feels like a little much.

Dave Kropf: 7:46

So what we could have done is we could have come out really strong Bing-bong, bing-bong, bing-bong, bing-bong, bing-bong, bing-bong and then start the form over. So instead of going to that other chord, yeah, I feel like we need a new. We need the melody idea coming in Bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum. You could have hinted at that Bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum, and then and then passed it on. See, I like all of these parts and I don't think it's going to require a lot of rewriting. I actually think it's going to be.

Dave Kropf: 8:43

It's going to just take you holding things back, right, just holding, holding some cards in your hand so that you can play them. You know, every four bars you're playing this card like Magic the Gathering or whatever, or, if you want to be less nerdy, poker. Just you're playing a card each four bars and that's telling the story, that's building the story of this cue, and I would encourage you to bring the sleigh bells out a little bit. I think you can get away with sleigh bells, stay on the one chord and then hint at the melody, bring the melody Coming at the end of this first section, right, and you could have ended up boom and then gone into the next section.

Dave Kropf: 9:51

I feel like we do need kind of some edit point or something here, some stop-down somewhere. You know, if the idea with what we're doing here is like, is my cue ready for sync, then things like edit points and stop-downs I think would be helpful and what we could have done is we could have crashed over here Maybe even if you didn't stop-down, crashed over and then dipped the energy down, maybe hand off to another instrument to have another melody kind of coming out, because what we have right now is kind of build and then build and it's just like, yeah, just kind of a wall of sound and it's almost an embarrassment of riches. You know what I mean. You have so many fantastic ideas all happening. I just think we just need to lay them out a little slower.

Dave Kropf: 10:47

Things also did get pretty loud. You know, our short-term loss is pushing over minus 10, getting into the minus 8 for short-term, because it's just so much sound and it is really sibilant. Actually, let me take off the EQ I put on there, getting into the minus 6 short-terms, and that's because it is really sibilant and there's just so much sound. And I think I would hold for one bar here. And one of the things that's a real challenge when working with timpani is it can kind of sound out of tune. The release tale of the timpani is feeling a little pitchy, so I would check on that and it might mean that you cut the timpani unnaturally short if you were to solo it, but I think it would kind of get. I think it would work in in the wash.

Dave Kropf: 12:09

Is this queue ready for sync? To answer the question, is this queue ready? I don't think it's quite there yet because we need mix work and we need some form and structure work. But, like I said, you have all of the pieces there. I think it's just a matter of doing some reconstruction. But I want to applaud you, james, for your advent queue season.

Dave Kropf: 12:33

I'm going to talk to Mrs 52Qs. This is something we might do next year, so I might steal that idea. That's really, really cool, but lots of really cool things happening with this queue. I think we're on the right track. I would want to hear another pass before trying to pitch it, but the energy is there, the sounds are there, just some reconstruction that needs to happen and some mix.

Dave Kropf: 12:57

So thank you so much, james, for sending this along, and if you found that feedback helpful, we put feedback threads together every single week over at 52Qs and we would love to have you join us. It is free to join 52Qs and we also offer membership subscription packages starting at just four bucks a month, with a ton of perks to help you along your career as a production music composer. And if you want to find out if your queue is ready for sync, then head over to ismyqreadycom and you can order up your own feedback video where I provide thoughts from the title to form, structure, mix and all of that, but that is going to do it for me today. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day and your week and have a fantastic holiday season Until next time, peace.