This assignment tasked us to write a bunch of small pieces using as wide a range of scoring and texture techniques as possible. Currently, I have yet to upload all the pieces as some are in a pdf format. I found this task an interesting challenge that definitely made me rethink how I write and perform music. The score for Musial Whispers was performed by the Ecuatorial Ensemble for Sound Spectrum this year.
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I'm very proud of how this assignment turned out. We were tasked to rescore the foley and music for a game trailer - I chose the trailer for the creepy indie game "Limbo". I researched by having a listen to other games with similar moods and atmospheres and how they use sound to make the player feel unsettled and small. Quite often, this resulted in using a lot of ambience combined with harsh, reverberant sounds. The mixing was more of a task than compiling it together as I realised that sound mixing was crucial to the immersion of videos games (so I saved a lot of time for that).
The synths act more as ambience than actual music and I tried to keep the tonality as ambiguous as possible to keep with the "unsettled" atmosphere with the lack of a tonal centre. Link to the original trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4HSyVXKYz8 Link to my re-scored sound: https://soundcloud.com/user-751676690/limbo-trailer-foley-score-replacement Going through and analysing / cleaning up vocal harmonies in very intense detail for an artist's new album.
Said artist is wearing headphones as Lee is working with the monitors. She’s been able to catch more of the smaller details, breaths and artefacts as Lee works with the monitor’s (PSI monitors – do it as a research) to hear the piece as a whole as is his personal preference DETAILS Pitch correction artefacts and smaller mistakes in OG vocal harmonies can be exacerbated when used as a basis for the other harmonies. Make sure you’re satisfied with your vocal takes. Lee’s Vocal Plugin = VocAlign (reverb / pitch curves & automation) They’ve been catching smaller compression details and manually automating them down / up when needed. Again, stresses the importance of maintaining vocal consistency in the original recording where possible – it helps to save time during mixing. Most of the session has been going through and cutting out / fading any obvious little breaths or artefacts (mostly cutting out silences between phrases completely). Some of it has been shaping the autotune to make it smoother with the other vocal takes. Make sure to listen to how sections of the track lead into each other after spending a chunk of time mixing a certain part of the track, otherwise you may change it too much! Don’t be afraid to get rid of stuff you’ve recorded for the good of the song. This includes cutting out bass note for bass drops, elongating notes where needed etc. Getting a second opinion on certain mixes is good so you’re not getting too in your own head about it - musical opinions preferably but sometimes just asking someone to compare the pair can help. Standing up and seeing how it sounds from different places in the room (or just stretching) w ceiling buffers… probs quite important… Artist using the headphones she’s more used to / comfortable with while Lee is using BIG speakers / monitors. Micro-shifting = different version of doubling (fake doubling)
Sometimes smaller tweaks are better than outright getting rid of something / changing something e.g. toning down the micro – shifting on the song to adjust the brightness of the vocals BUT also found that a small adjustment on the multiband compressor in the top end helped with this too. Trying not to lose the tone of the song but keep album cohesive… The task was to rescore a scene to fit the mood and atmosphere the original movie intended for it. This one took me for a bit of a spin, but I liked the conflicted panic of John Travolta rushing around to find that all his tapes have been mysteriously erased to the slowly decorticating sound of smooth jazz. The differences between the high pass filtered sound and the full mix is supposed to emulate the transition from diegetic to non-diegetic sound.
https://soundcloud.com/user-751676690/blow-out-scene-film-media-hannah After a years worth of procrastination and losing / gaining footage... here it finally is. Posted January 2020. I had a great deal of fun working with this animator earlier this year to create a cute, folk driven song for their DnD inspired gif... This song wasn’t intended to be an unconventional string quartet but quarantine had me in a creative space. Since this was only my second time writing out a string arrangement, I took inspiration from one of my favourite artists, Dodie Clark to see how the string worked for her songs. Dodie’s song “When” is a personal favourite of mine and includes a cello and violin alongside piano and vocals. I struggled to take notes about the arrangement as I struggled to find a transcript of the actual score. So I directly contacted the arranger, Elana Abad, via her music page https://www.facebook.com/elenaabadmusic/ and she gave me a pdf of the score as well as notes of what they changed when recording it! (Safe to say, I was a little star struck). The arrangement is beautiful and I annotated the score for the cello and violin as I was curious to see how they interacted with each other and with the vocalist (e.g. when they supported the piano and when they actively harmonised with the vocals). I failed to write out an accurate guitar and vocal part because this score was mostly for the musicians I managed to wrangle into helping me record the song. They were all incredibly generous with their time and are all excited about potentially performing it live when students start to study on campus again. I sure as hell would love to see it come together in a live setting, I reckon it would be beautiful. Bandcamp link: https://callmecharlie.bandcamp.com/track/close-for-comfort-demo Full Score and Parts PDF
I started off the year at Nannup Festival, becoming one of four finalists in the busking competition as well as volunteering to earn myself a ticket. I perform both days of the weekend, once as a solo set and the other alongside my friend Gem Addison of Freehand - link to their facebook page here Freehand. Unsurprisingly, I had managed to burn myself out over the weekend and just one week into uni I felt like I'd been hit by several large trucks. But gigs continued to come up at The Bassendean Hotel and the Fremantle Farmers Market, so I soldiered on. About 3 weeks later, I had the exact opposite problem. On the week of Freehand's big single launch and South West tour, the quarantine was implemented. I was to cameo in their Friday night launch for the song we performed at the September Climate Strike from 2019. I would have also been their warm up act for the Pinjarra gig set for the weekend. But this was cancelled and although it was ultimately the right thing to do, it was still heartbreaking to say the least. As a musician and a friend to many in the community, my heart goes out to everyone who had to face similar circumstances and lost a great deal of time and money because of it. But funnily enough, we bounced back as Freehand and communities of local musicians put on live streamed shows, some of which I was apart of including "Grape Juice Events Live Stream Fest!". It felt great to perform, even if in an unconventional environment. My neighbourhood community helped myself and another young singer songwriter put on a gig we named "Driveway Iso". Before winter kicked in, we performed on our driveways to both an online and real life audience. I was honestly shocked at how many people came out of the woodworks to listen and park their camper chairs on the opposite side of the road. It was rejuvenating - even as it got dark, my Dad positioned his car with the headlights on so that people could still see us perform. Afterwards, many people came up to thank us for performing, saying that they'd been feeling stressed because of the isolation. Knowing that our little local event had helped to alleviate some of the pressure during these times was honestly a relief. It was a poignant reminder that this is my job for a reason - that this thing that I do, I do because it helps people. Despite how some mainstream outlets like to portray musicians and artists as an "unessential industry", we play an important role in holding people and communities together. Through the shows you binge watch, the playlists you jam out to, the podcasts you play when doing chores - art is inherent in all forms of entertainment and it the best remedy for weakened mental health. Without art, these essential workers would struggle to support themselves, let alone others. Music helps those who help others. Feel free to paint musicians as self-aggrandising and unimportant. But in the same breath, sing a song to make yourself feel at ease - that's what we're here for.
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Artist SummaryI'm a WA Fremantle based singer-songwriter / composer. Here, you can have a gawk at my studies, compositions and performances. Archives
August 2022
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