Katawa Shoujo Forums

So I've been experimenting with orchestration for a long while now, and I've decided. I believe I have enough skills now to orchestrate the entire Katawa Shoujo OST.
This here is going to be a thread where I upload these orchestrations, and I hope I will gain some good feedback on them as well as giving everyone here a new breath of life into the amazing OST by Nicol Armafi (and if he sees these, hope you don't mind!)

Here is my first venture, starting with Wiosna, the hauntingly beautiful theme at the beginning, and more memorably, the end of each route.


EDIT: As of Monday 12th August 2013, 6 pieces have been created:
-Wiosna
-Cold Iron
-Three Stars
-Jitter
-Painful History
-Fripperies

You're relying on the piano too much, especially in the bass parts. Try expanding it out more. Cellos can play the moving eighth pattern, low brass can be used to emphasize certain points and the melody can be pass more frequently between strings, woodwinds, and high brass I feel. The nice thing about arranging something is that it's okay to change some things. Try fleshing out the chords throughout the orchestra and don't feel like you're restricted to following the source material verbatim. One last thing, I think it was a choir effect. That didn't really work me. It's unnecessary to have them double the strings, especially at that high of a range.

Thanks for the help, I'll work these into a final version. The thing is that I felt the piano worked so well in the original it was difficult to find anything to work just as well. ^^'

Right, it's pretty iconic for the piece. I'm looking at it from an audience perspective listening to an orchestra. It wouldn't really be heard over the other instruments, and since this is an orchestration project it's cool to experiment and see what does work.

For me it does sound like you took midi tracks and replaced typical midi instruments with sound samples. That sounds weird.

wazuzu wrote:For me it does sound like you took midi tracks and replaced typical midi instruments with sound samples. That sounds weird.

That would be because I'm limited in my options, I don't have a real orchestra to play them nor do I have a high-quality DAW like East West. So I'm making do with what I have, a composing tool (Finale 2011), a soundbank from a symphonic orchestra and a freeware DAW in the hope it works. Which apparently it's not.

SkyraScarletXVII wrote:That would be because I'm limited in my options, I don't have a real orchestra to play them nor do I have a high-quality DAW like East West. So I'm making do with what I have, a composing tool (Finale 2011), a soundbank from a symphonic orchestra and a freeware DAW in the hope it works. Which apparently it's not.

Hey, I'm not saying it's bad, it's just weird. Having limited options and doing something constructive anyway is a great deed, dood. Good luck with your orchestrations.

wazuzu wrote:

SkyraScarletXVII wrote:That would be because I'm limited in my options, I don't have a real orchestra to play them nor do I have a high-quality DAW like East West. So I'm making do with what I have, a composing tool (Finale 2011), a soundbank from a symphonic orchestra and a freeware DAW in the hope it works. Which apparently it's not.

Hey, I'm not saying it's bad, it's just weird. Having limited options and doing something constructive anyway is a great deed, dood. Good luck with your orchestrations.

Ah, sorry, I wasn't saying that you thought that, I'm just very quick to put myself down is all haha
Thank you, I'll try my best.

Part 2, Cold Iron. This probably isn't very good but I've tried everything I can think of, including around 35 different mixes of it because instruments were too loud or something. I took previous suggestions on board to do with using harmonics and not just arranging different parts of two melodies.

I like it! It has a much more fuller sound, and I like the choices you made in giving solos to different instruments. There's a lot more meat to this tune so I think it lends itself better to an orchestra. I'm not sure if it's intentional, but it sounds like there's some extra crunchiness in the chords between the 00:28-00:32 marks. Keep up the good work!

Thank you! I took your advice on board and added some more chords, and I already had instrument solos in place, it was just a matter of rendering them properly. ^^
It's amazing the difference just using the instruments differently makes, since this is the same set of instruments (with just a few more violins and a music box) from Wiosna :O
Also, yeah, that was the fault of my DAW, never came out like that when I was composing it. ^^'

Literally sacrificing my sleep for this whole thing, somehow vodka and coffee is a creative mixture haha
Anyway, number 3: Shizune's Theme, "Three Stars"! Really happy with this one, especially as I didn't think it would fit itself with orchestra.

OH MY GOD I NEED TO SLEEP BUT I WANT TO KEEP WORKING ON THIS.
Bleh. Due to my inability to sleep, I now how my fourth piece done: Jitter.

There are some really nice moments in these! There was a low brass entrance with a chord in Three Stars that was really great, and I like the stylistic choices with Jitter.

It really means a lot to me to hear you say that! I've been trying a lot of different things with all the suggestions I've been given, and I think it's working. ^^'
Next up, by the way, is Parity. ^^
EDIT: Parity seems absolutely impossible...o___o Will try something else.