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Frozen Night – Her Nightmare | Orchestral

NB: This was originally posted on Equestria Daily on 25 June 2018.

Frozen Night’s recent orchestral works have just been getting better and better, with the culmination of their efforts being their new album Into The Evernight. This track is the last to be released from it, and you can go buy the full collection of their most releases on Bandcamp here! Beyond that, this piece itself is full of gorgeous orchestration as it mixes epic sequences with some soft and beautiful ones, and a hint of guitar too.

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Lukas Vokrinek – Black Magic | Orchestral

As a relatively new fandom producer, Lukas Vokrinek sure can orchestrate a big track! This song is a beautiful instrumental which builds on a sense of looming adversity. Black Magic makes great use of the lead violin as a tense, eerie mood setter, while the wind instruments in the orchestra help the song build into a big, intense piece. Each instrument fits very well together as written in this great composition that Vokrinek describes as a ” journey through knowledge and the struggles faced in order not to succumb to the lingering darkness”.

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Radiarc – Vile | Hybrid Orchestral

NB: This was originally posted on Equestria Daily on 19 June 2018.

Another exceptional orchestral track from Radiarc, and this one has influences from a whole bunch of places. Designed around Queen Chrysalis, it absolutely suits her character. With elements of rock and jazz, and some gorgeous vocal sounds too, the atmosphere on show is perfect.

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DoctorSympony – Making Muffins | Orchestral

DoctorSympony is back at it with a quick track dedicated to everyone’s favorite mailmare. The song is a whimsical instrumental, written as a soundtrack to Derpy baking muffins. While Making Muffins starts out silly and laid back, it escalates into a crazy adventure – showcasing DoctorSympony’s creativity and humor. The song feels right at home as a piece of background music, doing so well in its role to set a vivid scene that you don’t need to physically see for you to feel it.

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[LDB] BlueBrony – Reborn | Orchestral Electronic

BlueBrony always delivers with something that only he could, and Reborn is incredibly well put together and performed. The track takes the perspective of Sunset Shimmer and tackles the difficult concept of forgiveness from her own point of view. After a tense, paranoia-inducing intro, the song transitions into a beautiful and delicate piano piece and continues to expertly meld other musical styles throughout the piece. BlueBrony does a top-notch job at conveying the joy and almost relief that comes from e forgiveness and acceptance of her friends.

 

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Cloud Hop – Dreams of Distant Stars | Orchestral

Hold onto your flank because this track is going to take you on a ride to the outer reaches of space! Based off of a fanfic about probing the galaxy until there is nowhere left to explore, Dreams of Distant Stars is the exciting overture of the trip to places never seen before. The song alternates from soft instrumentation to a building sense of adventure, and ultimately peaks with exciting drums which drive the choir voices and other instruments with fierce energy. Both intense and beautiful, this track makes you feel the great ambience of space and not just from the perspective of someone gazing and admiring, but as the protagonist zooming through the infinite realm as an explorer!

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Toby Macarony – Welcome to the Academy | March

Toby Macarony is great with a good mashup and this time he combines a couple of songs used as backing tracks in “Wonderbolts Academy” with some of his own flair to make a spectacular march. The first part of the song is immediately recognizable from the show when Rainbow Dash approaches the Academy. Toby adds a great drum intro with embellished low brass to really solidify the rhythm before tying the pieces together in a big hit with an awesome synth added in. Unique in composition and genius in composition, be sure to taste the sky when the Wonderbolts say Welcome to the Academy.

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Repent In Reprise – Becoming Popular (covering Daniel Ingram) | Orchestral

NB: This was originally posted on Equestria Daily on 3 June 2018.

If you’re familiar with the old works of Dr. Dissonance, you’ll be excited to see something like this! Repent in Reprise’s rendition very much works off the same sort of style, with many industrial steampunk elements adding a nice unique flavour to the orchestral rendition on show here.

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Jyc Row – Title Screen (Friendship is Epic) | Orchestral

Last year, Jyc released some music that he’d composed for the (possibly now defunct) MLP-themed game Friendship is Epic. This is part of the soundtrack, a simple and slightly more minimal piece fit for the title screen of the game.

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Frozen Night – Tears of The Evernight | Orchestral Metal

NB: This was originally posted on Equestria Daily on 30 May 2018.

Frozen Night’s works are always lovely to listen to and this beautiful piece is no different. The instrumentation throughout the track evolves in an especially gratifying way and there’s some pretty epic progressions as well. As is often the case with Frozen’s works, there’s a nice touch of metal guitar meshed together with the powerful strings and percussion.