Sep 23, 2023 - Discovering Arcade by Output VST: A Composer’s Review & Demo

In my latest YouTube video, I dive deep into Output's Arcade, an awesome VST that offers a vast library of over 65,000 sounds. From its user-friendly interface to its high-value sound palette, Arcade is a must-have for any musician. I explore my favorite lines, including "Memento" for emotional cues and "Overture" for orchestral compositions. Don't miss the real-world demo of writing a cue quickly. Check out the full video for a comprehensive review and tutorial!

Big Thanks to Output for sponsoring the video!

Try Arcade free for 30 days, get 50% off your first paid month when you sign up using the link: https://go.output.com/alvinswong

Mar 13, 2022 - The latest single “One Team One Dream” is out now!

🎶 Super excited about releasing new music — “One Team One Dream”! 🎸🥁🎻🎺🎼

The track is an anthem inspired by the Olympics Fanfare of John Williams,
80’s Glam Rock Guitar (A’La Top Gun”) and the Sci-Fi flavour of Jerry Goldsmith and Star Trek and brave endeavours.

“OneTeamOneDream” was a phrase coined by our tech startup founder that we often used in our team and core to our culture. This is in celebration of that ethos!

I want to thank my teammate Alan Vasilkovsky for helping work on the track with me evenings and weekends over the past ~4 weeks. His live guitar solo can be heard at the 1m 10s mark!

(Available on Spotify now and other streaming platforms soon!)

Dec 17, 2021 - Composer Behind the Scenes | "Composer Assassin" movie official test footage

I attempt taking on all the key roles of a full film production! In this Composer Behind the Scenes Episode I see what it is like being the actor, screenwriter, director, director of photography, visual effects, team, sound effects, mixer, wardrobe team, set location manager, gaffer, executive producer and of COURSE film composer and music supervisor!

Oct 27, 2021 - Sample Library Quick Look | Golden Age Piano by Teletone Audio

Let's play with the newest Sample Library from Teletone Audio, Golden Age Piano. In this video I play through the default preset and try out all the knobs and sliders and room mics. I'll share some of my favourites from the Scores section of the piano library.

Oct 8, 2021 - Music Track Breakdown - 007 Agent Nomi (Bond - No Time To Die Cover)

In this video we go behind the scenes of how I created a James Bond - No Time to Die inspired track called "007 Agent Nomi" which has the latest themes from Billie Eilish/Finneas' and hommage to the classic Bond John Barry/Monty Norman theme. We go over how the different pieces were developed within Ableton Live from scenes and clips to the full arrangement.

June 12, 2021

Creative Conversations Episode 3: In this episode, I had the pleasure of meeting and catching up with Toronto, Canada based composer, singer/songwriter, orchestrator, arranger and educator Christopher Siu!

May 16, 2021

Season 1 Episode 12: In this episode I share what might be my favourite workflow tip of all time for music producers and composers. We cover how to use retrospective MIDI recording to reduce repetitive tasks and keystrokes and we also remove the anxiety of having the "recording" button on! Skip the hassle of stopping, deleting and recording again -- use retro MIDI recording in most DAWs. Recording when you're not recording!

Apr 24, 2021

Season 1 Episode 11 - In this episode, I had the pleasure of meeting and catching up with Calgary, Alberta based composer Kevin Won!

Kevin has a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Theory and Composition and a Master’s in Scoring for Film, Television, and Videos Games from Berklee College of Music.

He has composed a few short films and was a composer assistant for the AMC Series Into the Badlands. These days, he primarily focuses on composing music within the video games industry with several game title credits.

His most recent major release was a Japanese RPG game called Himeko Sutori where he composed, conducted and recorded a track called "Journey’s Awakening".

We talk about all this and more! Join me as we meet and chat and get to know each other in a Composer Behind the Scenes Webex conference call!

Apr 3, 2021

Season 1 Episode 10 - In this episode, I had the pleasure of meeting and catching up with Chicago based award winning writer, director, filmmaker and composer Josh McCausland!

Josh has over 5 Million Spotify streams for his recordings of his piano compositions and performances and was featured on the major Spotify Piano playlists.

He has also scored various films including several he has written and produced himself as part of the iqflicks.com filmmaking company he started in college and continues to run.

Join me as we meet and chat about our start in music and get to know each other in a Composer Behind the Scenes webex conference call!

About the Creative Conversations Series One of the big reasons I wanted to start this YouTube channel was to put myself out there and see if I can meet and collaborate with as many other musicians, filmmakers and creators out there. With that I share my journeys and as much BTS as I can on the process and the products along the way!

Mar 21, 2021

Season 1 Episode 9: In this video I answer the common question composers ask -- "How can I get more video clips I can score to for practice or for my demo reel?" This video aims to answer that and discusses more about practicing the craft of scoring to picture. In this video I share some thoughts on what you can do to better prepare and practice for writing film and tv music. I share 4 strategies on how to obtain lots of practice material and also play a quick demo of one of my own example scoring and putting together a mock teaser trailer within 1 day.

Feb 28, 2021

Season 1 Episode 8:

Do you need a Triton Fethead or Cloudlifter CL-1 when using a Shure SM7B dynamic microphone with the UAD Apollo Twin MKII? Find out it in this video.

In this video we find out if you truly need an extra preamp module for your audio interface when using a Shure SM7B which typically has some of the lowest output levels. I will demo 2 clips and share my thoughts on whether a Triton Fethead helps.

Feb 20, 2021

Season 1 Episode 7: Let's explore how to sing midi notes. Will this work? In this crazy episode I try out singing and whistling into Cubase to compose music. I've always heard and seen tutorials on Cubase's VariAudio feature where you can manipulate vocals and extract midi notes. I attempt to write orchestral melody lines by singing into the DAW!

Feb 13, 2021

If I Film Scored Creed or Rocky...

I re-scored a deleted scene from the Creed (Rocky) film.

Here is the first of what I hope will be a bunch of "If I Scored ______ Series". Practicing my film scoring skills and sharing some fun with the fans!

Jan 30, 2021

A piano cover of Stephane Moccio’s Fracture from his Tales of Solace album.

Jan 17, 2021

Season 1 Episode 6: A presentation on the differences between the two Spitfire Audio ensemble orchestral sample libraries. I discuss and answer the question of which library to get. It is Spitfire Audio Abbey Road One vs Albion One! Will it be Abbey Road One or Albion One recorded in Air Lyndhurst Hall.

Jan 6, 2021

Season 1 Episode 5: How to time stretch or compress your MIDI notes within Cubase. In this episode I show how to easily and quickly expand your MIDI notes without needing to delete blank spaces or manually move each note around. Watch how easy it is to go from 1 bar per chord to 2 bars per chord and vice versa. Or if you want to go from a 1/8 note arpeggiation or glissando line to a 1/16 note line instead.

Dec 29, 2020

Season 1 Episode 4: Writing music fast using MIDI Arpeggiators in Ableton and Cubase.

Dec 24, 2020

Season 1 Episode 3.5: A quick holiday greetings and a Christmas song to share! Have a safe and joyous break folks. Here’s A Christmas to Remember - Alvin S Wong.

Dec 17, 2020

Season 1 Episode 3: Today we’re going to talk about how to import video clips within Cubase and setup your film scoring project quickly so you can begin to write music right away.

Dec 6, 2020

Season 1 Episode 2: (Part 2 of 2) An in depth 2-part video series on Abbey Road Studios and Spitfire Audio’s Abbey Road One: Orchestral Foundations.

In Part 1, I kicked things off with a bit of history around Abbey Road Studios and why the media composing industry is super excited around Spitfires new recording space partnership.

And, In Part 2, here we dive right into a playthrough of all the different patches in the library and listen to some demos and compare the sounds to some famous film scores recorded in that space.

This video and following cues were sketched together within my 1-week “timebox” as fast as I could. (Of course if this was a paid gig you would refine and layer further, mix and master before presenting the mock-ups).

Star Wars - Throne Room - John Williams
James Bond - Skyfall - She's Mine by Thomas Newman
Black Panther - Royal Talon Fighter - Ludwig Goransson
Star Wars - Duel of the Fates - John Williams
Bravehart - For the Love of a Princess - James Horner
Simple Fanfare Demo - Alvin S. Wong,
Star Wars - Main Theme - John Williams

Nov 28, 2020

Season 1 Episode 1: (Part 1 of 2) An in depth 2-part video series on Abbey Road Studios and Spitfire Audio’s Abbey Road One: Orchestral Foundations. In Part 1 here, I’ll kick things off with a bit of history around Abbey Road Studios and why the media composing industry is super excited around Spitfires new recording space partnership.

007 Agent nomi - James Bond (no time to die)

Agent Nomi (played by Lashana Lynch) in No Time To Die

Sep 20, 2020

I am a massive James Bond fan! In anticipation and in celebration of the final Daniel Craig film, and to celebrate a new double 00 Agent Nomi (played by Lashana Lynch), I found myself writing and producing a fan track for #Bond25 No time to Die!

I hope you have as much fun and enjoy listening as much as I had creating this one!

It has classic Monty Norman and John Barry Bond themes and chord progressions within mashed up with of course, the new Billie Eilish melody from No time to Die mixed in with my own motifs. The synths and beats represent the younger new 00 agent entry and marks a new face to MI6.

All credit and kudos to the amazing composers throughout the Bond lineage of films! Dreaming of a day where I can contribute more to the franchise.

Demo Movie Company Intro (using only Audio Imperia Nucleus)

July 1, 2020

This is a music composition and production demo composed ONLY with:

- Audio Imperia's Nucleus Orchestral Core VST Library (https://www.audioimperia.com/)
- Cubase 10.5 Pro for my DAW (https://steinberg.net/)
- Izotope Neutron 3 for mixing and mastering (https://www.izotope.com/)

As an exercise, I tried limiting myself to only ONE orchestral VST library today. Pretty happy with the results! Counter-intuitive but I did actually find constraints actually did help with my productivity and creativity!

This was a lot different than my previous norm of loading a boat load of VSTs and tracks in my usual template. Thanks for checking out the demo! If you are interested in using this intro or would like a custom one for your film/tv show or company, give me a shout in the contacts page or social media.

Huge thanks and video credit to: Anderson Campos (https://www.instagram.com/fundosperso...) care of Pixabay.com.

Rise

June 19, 2020

Rise is an epic music genre track for film, tv or video game production. Dedicated to the journey of the heroes out there facing and overcoming adversity and rising up to boldly and courageously inspire and lead.

Musically, the track is led by an epic choir for dramatic effect and solo female vocals for emotional draw with support of an orchestra.

Westworld - Season 3 Episode 5 - Scoring Demo Showreel

May 16, 2020

I am super excited to present my submission here and film scoring showreel for the #westworldscoringcompetition2020 where we got the opportunity to re-score the chase scene and mix, master and produce.

Loved working on this project...

Background about the competition:

Spitfire Audio teamed up with HBO’s Westworld to provide us composers an opportunity to download and score a scene from Westworld Season 3 for a chance to win some prizes – as well as the opportunity to showcase our work to the best in the business. Entries will be judged by an elite panel comprising the show’s composer, Ramin Djawadi, as well as the creators: Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy, Executive Producer J.J. Abrams and the team at Spitfire Audio.

See:

https://www.spitfireaudio.com/westworld/

Thanks again to the Spitfire Audio team and HBO and the producers of Westworld. This footage and the project was an utter joy to work with and I learned a ton on this. All the best everyone!

Journey

I am extremely excited to release this track Journey - A romantic voyage through distant lands and dancing through the night...

Top Gun Anthem

Top Gun Anthem (Cover). Original Composition by Harold Faltermeyer. Arrangement and Produced by Alvin S Wong. Top Gun: Maverick(2020) is coming to theaters! The original 1986 film holds a special place in pop culture and had some larger than life music by great Harold Faltermeyer. This track is a cover and celebration of the Top Gun Anthem.

Alvin S Wong