One of the great things about film music is the immediacy. You write something and record it.
But samplers have always been a hindrance rather than a help. I just couldn’t write what I wanted, I was limited to writing for the sampler’s limited abilities. It was just a completely unmusical experience.
Things are changing. For the first time I can imagine something for real instruments of an orchestra and just play it with the sounds inside my computer.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s not the same as a real instrument and I doubt it will ever be, but I can finally write what I want as if I were writing for real instruments and just play it rather than program it.
Today I want to present my newest toy: Clone Ensemble.
Choir samples are as limiting as you can imagine. You just can’t write as if it was a choir, forget it. Some get close, though, but it still becomes programming rather than music. And what about capturing the right inflection and emotion in the voice? Forget it. Only singing can do that.
Enter Clone Ensemble. With this plug-in I am able to sing what I want and it takes care of making my voice sound like the different sections in a choir.
Here is an example I wrote in about 5 minutes and then recorded in about 10. It has a Mozart meets Orff vibe. I sang all the parts independently, letting the plug-in take care of making my tenor voice jump up an octave to create the sopranos and altos. I just had to make sure I sang falsetto.
I doubled the choir with instruments to increase realism, because the choir plug-in sound when exposed is not as satisfying, but I haven’t finished experimenting with it.
Not bad. Not bad at all. Let’s what else it can do.
I have recently struck a deal with another manufacturer of musical software. I won’t say who it is yet… all I’ll say is that I have now an orchestral template that is beyond my wildest dreams!
Between this new software and Synful, I have sounds that firmly plant my little studio on the cutting edge of the 21st century.
It feels good writing that!
Especially since I never was interested in samplers and other music technology in the past because of the lack of musicality involved, but this new software brings playability and expression as close to real as you could hope for!
Anyway, I’m excited, but since I can’t write about it I’ll just leave it at that… for now!
And next Wednesday I am going to give my first talk on composition. Oh, I have taught composition before, but this is the first time I will address a class of University students. It should be a lot of fun!
I have never been big on gear. Samplers have never turned my crank because, well, it felt more like programming than music.
But with a new wave of programs that can be played in a musical way to emulate acoustics instruments, things are changing and I am following.
For the past few days I have been playing with my BC3a wind controller. You wear it on your head and blow into it as you play the keys and it allows for a much more musical result when performing wind or brass instruments.
And that is the key word here, “performing”, because now it is becoming a performance of a musical phrase, not a piecemeal construction, like some sort of Frankenstein monster!
Today I was trying the BC3a out with the Synful strings and it worked very nicely. I was playing the second violin part and had to listen to the first violins for dynamic balance and phrasing. It was a very musical experience.
Okay, this is what I have been up to for the past few weeks, writing music with one of the most amazing piece of software I have put my hands on in a while – Synful.
Synful is a breakthrough piece of software for orchestral emulation. It is not a sampler but a synthesizer, which means it takes up very little system resources and is able to do things that sample playback can only dream of – such as a true legato, for example.
And the strings are simply amazing to work with. It was amazing to be able to write for strings whatever I felt like writing and then be able to just play it and have it sound great right there. Then just a little bit of MIDI tweaking to add the finishing touches and it was wonderful.
These demos here will be up on the Synful home page as well, go check it out because there are also descriptions of each piece there.
It is very hard to be objective when you are composing or playing through your piece.
So it’s a real benefit to be able to take the listener’s seat for a few minutes and listen to Finale’s playback of the notated score.
It’s true that the playback quality is not very good, but it’s enough for me to get a sense of how the architecture of the piece is working: the arc of the piece, the flow from one section to the next, the development of ideas, that sort of thing.
But is it cheating? I used to think so, but I have since realized a simple truth:
What seems good in your imagination may not be quite as exciting out in the real world.
Anyone knows this to be true, but simple things like this tend to get obscured when you are composing in the shadow of Mozart and Beethoven.
But now I know better.
After all, it’s a lot like how musicals do workshops to fine-tune the piece, or how screenplays get altered in the editing room.
And, who knows, if Bruckner had had MIDI playback, perhaps we would have only one version of his symphonies!
Over the last four days I worked on two demo pieces for a film I am being considered for. (I am not sure if I can say the name of it, so I won’t.)
These demo pieces do not represent underscore but source pieces written by the main character, who is described in the script as a composer of genius.
No pressure, right?
The first piece was, according to the script, to be written in a Goth Rock genre. It had to be fast, intense, head banging stuff that sounded like it had been written by a genius.
So I thought, Bartok with distorted guitars! Party time!
But I was advised to not stray too far from the confines of the Goth Rock genre. (Which makes complete sense. My original intentions would have surely resulted in music a bit too …different, for a movie.)
I thought it would be a walk in the park, but it turned into a bigger challenge than I expected.
You see, even though I started out playing classical like most kids do, it was heavy metal and hard rock that got me practicing up to 10 hours a day during my teenage years.
But that was during the eighties and, since I don’t play much anymore and didn’t know the first thing about Goth Rock, I had to do some catching up and get aquatinted with the the mainstream Goth bands.
On Monday, after a half day of listening I had the gist of it down and was ready to go.
Then I had to come up with a musical concept that would make the style seem like a genius composed it without resorting to dissonant harmonies, odd time signatures or weird instruments.
My solution was to make the music flashy and virtuosic and more harmonically active, to write it in a driving 6/8 rhythm rather than the ubiquitous 4/4, to give it some smart-sounding counterpoint and an epic, orchestral feel with only guitars, bass and drums. (And a little bit of piano.)
And here’s the result!
Yeah, that was fun. I emailed it to the writer/producer and he was pretty jazzed up about it. (Or should I say “Gothed up”?)
The second piece was a bit easier for me to write. In the script there is an opera and this demo piece would be the climactic scene, an execution, also written by the genius composer of the story. Instruction was to blend the dark elements of Goth with a romantic-period lyricism.
So I wrote an epic, heroic march to the scaffold.
It’s big.
I delivered both pieces to the producers and director yesterday. Wish me luck!
The short animation score is done! Sandi Chih came in Sunday morning to record the solo flute parts and she was a pleasure to work with! All that was left after that was for me to bring in all the parts in the final mix, which is what I’ve been doing for the past couple of hours.
Doing the mix of a score requires a fair bit of concentration and patience. Listen, move a fader, listen again, move the fader some more and so on. Small things make a big difference while mixing and it is SO easy to listen too quickly and then regret a long time. “Why didn’t I bring the flute down here? The violin’s
too soft there!”
(Case in point: I was listening to mix number three as I wrote this and the flute was too loud in a few places. Fixed it. The violin seems okay, though.)
Doing the mix is also really exciting because you get to hear the whole thing come together into the final product.
So, without further ado, here’s the final score!
Part of what is hard in this one is that I wrote a solo violin part over a pretty raucous orchestral passage. What’s hard about mixing it is that I want to hear everything I wrote, but I can’t make it too loud since it will overpower the violin.
So, to satisfy my desire to hear everything, I made a version of the mix without the violin! Here’s that raucous bit karaoke-style!
I just love those chords moving around with that thick orchestration!
I have never been big on gear. Samplers have never turned my crank because, well, it felt more like programming than music.
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