Unfortunately, during project week 1, I tested positive for Covid-19 and subsequently became quite sick. This meant that I was unable to record or mix anything during my mandatory one week isolation and fell behind on more uni work than I would've liked. Amidst attempting to recover and catch up on lost time, I had an epiphany with regards to the studio space. Because I live with my family, I'm not the only one who uses the space for rehearsal, or practice. However, the state of the room and how neat it is kept is mostly my responsibility. This has lead to much of my anxiety about the room when it has been left dusty and cluttered, with equipment not being returned properly. I've decided that this is an important issue to tackle to help make the space a more relaxing work environment and to motivate me to spend more time in there. So I've decided to have a notice on the door of the studio detailing the "Rules of Use". These will basically list how to treat the equipment, how to tidy up the equipment and to ensure that when you are finished with the space, to vacuum and clean the space. Hopefully, with a poster on the door, regardless of who is using the studio, they will be prompted to follow the rules of use. I will add the PDF of the sign just below later:
Going through and analysing / cleaning up vocal harmonies for an artists's album in very intense detail.
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 is using headphones she’s more used to / comfortable with while Lee works with BIG monitor speakers. 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. My total budget for this semester is a tentative $1000 - I'd rather not spend all of it, but I'm trying to be realistic about the pricing. Upon working in the studio for a little bit, my initial list of items to budget for come under the following: 1. A Preamp / Interface that can be extended to multiple inputs e.g. a Focusrite 4 channel preamp. Price approx. $500 - $600 2. Repairing the keys on the electric Yamaha piano. Price approx. $150 3. Extending the drum riser and adding extra storage space to it. Price approx. $50 - 70 4. Repairing the active amp for the mixing speakers. Price approx. $50 - $60 5. Buying a new cymbal stand. Price approx. $20 - $40 6. Using expanding foam and egg cartons to make extra sound proofing. Price approx. $30 - $40 Everything bolded above are my personal spending priorities for this semester as it will drastically effect my own workflow and will help to ease my mind (much of it is to do with repairs). To help reduce the cost of these renovations, my idea is to make the storage for the drum riser myself and to make my own sound proofing. You can see my initial rough design ideas for the drum riser below. It will store the majority of the microphone stands, as well as any other cymbal stands etc. that I need it to. I've already messaged the professional electric piano repairman for dropping off my Yamaha keyboard tomorrow morning. Everything is in the back of my car and ready to go and hopefully, I'll get it back before next week so I'll be ready to record.
Above is a link to my self reflective essay on my special topics unit. I describe the outline of my unit and detail a rough timeline of how I plan to achieve my goals for it this semester.
Goals & Semester Brief
This semester, I am aiming to rework my home studio so that the space is more functional and efficient for writing and recording music. This will be accomplished via a combination of:
To demonstrate that I’ve improved the studio and learned new ways to use the equipment that I have available to me over the course of the semester, I will record two tracks using similar styles and instrumentation at the start and the end of semester as a point of comparison. Task 1: Taking Stock and Researching Pre-Amps After spending an afternoon in Lee’s studio, we concluded that if I wanted to build upon my current studio set up, I would need to (at some point) invest in new “stackable” preamps. This is because my current set of mixers and preamps are “not stackable”, meaning that I cannot connect more preamps to it and therefore I can’t record using more than four microphones at a time. The preamps / interfaces I have are:
The mixer is most commonly used for live recordings and therefore, individual channels cannot be recorded as separate tracks (which is crucial when recording for the intent of mixing and mastering). However, the MOTU 4Pre can record each of the 4 inputs as separate tracks and acts as it’s own interface. This is fantastic for recording something using only four mics and it’s a high quality preamp - however, it cannot record more channels than that and unlike other brands, it can’t stack anymore preamps together to record more instruments. My first task is to research potential future preamps (within my budget) to use for my studio so that I can expand it as necessary as my studio grows in the future. Currently, my “future budget” is looking at under $800 for a starting preamp. The best starting preamp would be an 8 channel input preamp that is stackable. However, this is very likely to be outside of my current budget. So, I landed on looking at something like the Focusrite Scarlett four channel input preamp. This preamp is easily stackable with other brands and fits nicely within my price range, coming in just under $700. Although I had a look at other brands such as Audix’s Audient 8 input preamp, it’s Primera he was well into the thousands, which for now, is out of my budget. However, I believe that it is definitely something to aim for when I start building upon my preamp stacks. Another thing to consider is the amount of microphones I actually have to use these preamps with! My current list of microphones I own includes:
I’ve got 9 mics, 3 of which are in pairs (the shure SM58, the Seinheiser e835s and the C2s). It’s really important to have pairs of the same microphone as it means when your recording something using an XY configuration, it’s easier to mix since they’ll have the same sort of specs. Some of these mics are in better conditions than others merely because of wear and tear over the years (especially the Shure SM58s), but they all still work and I understand that I have a wide enough range to effectively record many different types of instruments. The only thing missing is having a pair of omni directional room microphones. Currently, I have some friends with pairs of these mics that I often borrow but investing in a pair of my own for the future would be a good investment. On the 19th of November, 2021, I finished conducting my recital to a crowd of over 150 people, alongside the 17 musicians, 1 sound technician, 15 animators and 5 voice actors who made it possible. It was an amazing night filled with lots of excitement, love and support for this project I've been working on for over a year and a half. STORING & DISTRIBUTING THE WORK The scores and technical / logistical requirements for the whole show were documented in a google drive that all the performers, animators, voice actors and sound technicians had access to. All aspects of the recital's content were organised into these respective folders: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yEqAKuzWYmTqXcJUUt-MTm2sVwyKMRRe?usp=sharing The "Audio Files" folder contains snippets of dialogue that the animators could time their work to. None of the musicians had access to these audio files - just the music files, rehearsal videos and logistics folders. The "Music" file contained sheet music and midi audio of all of the scenes of music (with and without dialogue). The sheet music section contained the updated versions of the conductor's score, the individual scores of each scene and the individual scores for each performer that they could print out themselves. The "Logistics" folder contains all of the technical requirements for the show including a yearly timeline for when each section of the composing and animating process needed to be complete by (including when rehearsals should be), a list of the number of chairs, stands, mics, and other equipment we needed, the layout of the RGA and a run sheet for the night of the show. The "Scripts & Scenes" folder was mainly for the voice actors so they could read and annotate their own lines when we were recording in the downstairs WAAPA sound studio or my home studio. However, there is an annotated version of the script that the Producer and Director used to divide up the scenes into more manageable chunks for each of our storyboarding artists to illustrate. And of course, any of the "Design" or "Storyboard" folders were strictly for the animators to upload their work into once they had completed a scene or section of work. We would have weekly Monday night meetings on our Discord Server for this project where the animators would touch base with the director and producer to say what scenes or designs that they had completed and what scenes or designs we needed. A link to the full first draft of timed storyboards with dialogue and music can be found here: drive.google.com/file/d/1RZfGUB2pbE0OP6KxSeZW8oAOLSSMT7Uk/view?usp=sharing THE COMPOSITION PROCESS My process for writing the score for the recital was to piece together the thumbnails for the storyboard panels in Final Cut Pro with the dialogue. Then, I would export it into Logic Pro so I could compose to what was happening on the screen and time it to the dialogue and action. Before this, however, I figured out:
I would also determine whether the scene needed music at all. This pre-planning stage of deciding where there should be music is what the film industry calls “spotting” and normally happens with the editor, director and composer. Since I took on all three of these roles, I had the creative freedom to choose where the music would have the most narrative impact. For example, the start of scene 9 had such strong acting performances that I didn't want to take away from the moment by overdoing it with underscoring. Instead, the music sneaks in at the turning point of the argument between Chase and Asim and makes a call back to a previous scene at Asim's house where he is looking after his father by himself. This choice works better to emphasise Asim’s own cycle of loneliness and self-reliance and more importantly, it marks the start of his character development by asking for Chase's help. All of this preparation I did before diving into the actual composing was written down in my Composition Seminar notebook over the course of this year. The PDF of the complete conductor's score is just below.
SCORING ISSUES Some of the biggest issues I faced during this process were with translating the MIDI score into an XML format. Any time it was opened in Muse Score or Sibelius, the instruments wouldn’t be converted over and the score would be a mess, with rhythms in the wrong places and note heads pointing the wrong way. This was slightly infuriating, and I managed to curb some of the frustration by making certain that the Logic Pro session was entirely quantised before converting it into an XML. This was easier but still difficult to work with and made the editing process longer, when I was trying to rush to finish the scores in time for the first rehearsal. I used Muse Score as I found the user interface easier to manage than Sibelius. Using MuseScore also meant that I was able to work from home, and that saved me the travel time of going to and from uni. As frustrating as this was, I believed it to be an easier method for composing to film and it felt more natural to me than some of the other scoring options were. In general, working with Alice Humphries, my principal study teacher, was what helped me with composing and arranging my scores the most. She really got me to think about my scores and arrangements in a more intricate and structured way, such as voicing brass chords with the overtone series. This means that tonics and fifths would sit in the bass instruments like Trombone, as they naturally incorporate the early harmonics of the treble instruments like French horn and trumpet, which would be playing the thirds, sevenths and seconds of a chord (the later harmonics of the tonic being played by the Trombone). This way of writing, where you have to actively consider the size and timbre of your ensemble, hadn't crossed my mind and really made me re-think the dynamics of the whole recital. Showing her the updates and edits of scores and arrangements over the course of each week was an invaluable experience that helped me write these scores to the best of my abilities. She also calmed my nerves about my scores feeling unpolished for the first rehearsal, saying that unless I needed to add more music or swap bars entirely, that cutting bars and adding extra dynamic annotations during the workshopping process was a normal thing to do. A piece of advice that really helped me during the scoring process was from Jeremy Zuckerman, the composer for the hit Nicklodeon TV series, Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. I was feeling burnt out halfway through the semester and had developed writers block for composing for the scenes. So I sent him a message over facebook, and to my great surprise, he sent me this as a reply: "Hi Hannah! Thanks for the kind words. I think this is the time for you to not always get everything 100% right. So first off, I'd remind you to have fun and enjoy this process. Don't be afraid to take risks and try things you're not sure will work. That's how discoveries happen... One piece of advice, if you're having trouble with a scene, ask yourself what the music is doing. What is it's purpose? If you don't know, then there's a good chance you don't need it there. Also, remember to play with density/complexity. Sometimes all you need is a very simple, functional cue for a scene. Something that doesn't really stand on its own but is there simply to serve. Good luck!!" This piece of advice was a lovely reminder that I was doing this because I actually enjoy writing music. So if I was feeling stressed, I should try to take a step back to just enjoy it and relax into it. After this, I did double back on some of the scenes I'd already planned out, and reduced the number instruments in them, now realising that a solo instrument could be better for a scene than a quartet would: Because the music is there to serve the scene - not to overshadow it. Once I'd completed all of the scores, the first rehearsal went fairly well and we ran through the biggest pieces e.g. scene 2, scene 8 and scene 10 & 11, where the whole ensemble was involved. We realised that some of the pauses in the music were confusing to count so I decided to mark them as G.P. (general pause) and asked my musicians to mark the start of the next bar as a new section. This meant that instead of trying to lock in with the click track when I got lost, I could lock in with the dialogue and cue the instrumentalists when I heard the next line coming. I wrote extra annotations in my first conductors score with what each dialogue cue was for each sting so that I knew where I was in each scene (or whether we were too far ahead and had to pause the episode, which I did in fact do on the night). Since it was my first time conducting an ensemble like this, I was quite nervous but got some good tips from all of the performers, such as when to use the 6 beat patterning for 6/8 time and when to stick with the 2 beat pattern of it. This was good for helping to keep everyone on the right track. Unfortunately, I didn't communicate enough with the musicians when writing the score beforehand, and used too many "octave above" and "octave below" symbols, since I was unaware of how comfortable the musicians felt reading too high or too low on the ledger lines. I also discovered a bit later on in the process that French horn players are more comfortable reading without key signatures. I asked my French Horn player, Milly, if she would be okay to read the sheet music with all of the key signatures and she confirmed she was okay with that (which gave me some confidence). Some of the brass parts were written a bit too high for some of the players, so I suggested to pencil in an "octave below" symbol whenever that was the case, so that it sat more comfortably in their range. Where possible, I tried to ask musicians how they felt with their registers when writing the music and how they preferred certain phrases to be dictated. For example, dictating a legato line differed in style from instrument to instrument and it was especially useful when asking the woodwind players and comparing that to the string players. This was the same for vibrato, tremolo and other terms such as "martele" for the strings (an annotation note handed to me by Kathy Potter, who was also an amazing source of guidance when learning how to communicate and workshop with the instrumentalists). Aside from the odd miss-type of different time signatures or wrong notes, this is where most of the issues with the score come to an end and where the issues with the logistics of the rehearsals and the performance come in. LOGISTICAL AND AESTHETIC ISSUES / SOLUTIONS One of the biggest problems I had when conceptualising this recital, was how to sync up the click track with what was playing on the projector screen. Initially, I had imagined creating two different versions of the video, one with a click and one with dialogue, and then just trying to hit play at the same time on both devices. However, after consulting with Arran O'Mara, we realised that the easiest way to do this was to simply use Logic Pro as the software that both the click and the video were playing from and to use my iPad as an extra controller / interface where I could turn the click track send up or down as I liked and I could even pause the whole thing so that the music could catch up. This whole setup was amazing, however, it did have some very particular specifications that it needed to run as smoothly as possible.
We ended up being able to do all of this, with Arran adjusting the dialogue audio where needed when the music was too loud. However, on the night of the performance, there were still some glitches happening in Logic Pro which made it slightly delayed and made the levels of the microphones for the ending credits song way too low at the start of the piece. On the night, these were small nitpicks, but on a re-run of this performance, it would be crucial to have more time to sort out these bugs in the performance space. Another issue with preparing for this performance was organising rehearsals for everyone. I knew it would be hard to have a rehearsal with all the musicians present, so I booked 3 rehearsals in the last week of October and told my musicians to make at least 2 of them. Most of them did, some of them didn't and there was a musician who had agreed to help me but was too injured to play and never got back to me in time for the first rehearsal, so I had to replace them with another player. This made it quite tricky when reminding players to fill out their new annotations. I would encourage them to check with other players in the ensemble for any new notes and recorded 3 of the rehearsals. I then uploaded them to the google drive and sent a link to the performers group chat via messenger. However, in many cases, some musicians hadn't had the time to do this until the day of the performance because of work, uni commitments and sickness. The day before the recital, one of my flautists came down with tonsillitis, so I madly scrambled for a replacement and was very VERY lucky to find one in time - she was sent all of the annotations for the music from our previous flautist, who did everything she could to help, considering the circumstances. My solution to performers being unable to make rehearsals was to record small videos talking about how I would approach the conducting, send links to the rehearsals videos and send updates of where the newly cut bars and general pauses should be. I think this helped to mitigate some of the confusion but unfortunately, not all of it. On the night, there were quite a few slip ups and the performers got so lost in some cases, that they would refuse to play any cues in the piece. This was a little disheartening, however, I later realised that the huge crowd of people may have made them slightly more nervous than our rehearsals had, since previously, the number of musicians on stage had outnumbered the small crowd during our soundcheck. Luckily, this confusion was offset by a very strong finish to the final ensemble pieces and a very encouraging and appreciative crowd. Other issues we had were that our front of house crew were only able to test out the lighting during our soundcheck. I was fortunate enough to run the lighting for Heather's recital the night before and had become familiar enough with the lay out of the RGA's lighting to create a lighting sheet for them which was apparently, easy enough to follow. To ensure that I didn't have too many people running up to me before the show, asking lots of questions, I made a technical requirements sheet along with the running sheet for Remal's and my recital and soundcheck that night. This had a "To-Do List" for all of the musicians, crew and composers for the night to make sure they had everything they needed, and that if they had a problem not addressed by that sheet, to then come up and ask myself or Remal. Thankfully, I had my friend Gem run around and post that up in the Green Room on the whiteboard just before our soundcheck, which, when I arrived, Ethan Bellhouse, Tayla Rattray, Cass Evans-Ocharern and Arran O'Mara had already set everything up for soundcheck, since I was running late having picked up the final edited video file. This really helped to reduce the amount of stress I was feeling after the soundcheck since I knew that I had done all that I could to make the night run as smoothly as possible for everyone. And when the performance was finished, I was ushered outside by all of my musicians before I could even start packing up and had bouquets and hugs thrown my way. It was a wonderful feeling to have so much love and support for this project and it was especially cool, because I finally got to meet all of my animators in the flesh! They all sat in the reserved seating in the front row, where they wore black and white outfits to the performance to differentiate themselves from the rest of the crowd. It was fantastic to see them and to get to thank them for all of their hard work at the end of the performance, where the whole audience could hear it. SO WHAT WAS THE POINT ... After explaining a years worth of hard work from the dozens of passionate people that were involved with this project... Why did I decide to do this in the first place? The first and most obvious answer is because I really REALLY wanted to. Film score is something I've always been intrigued by, and TV shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender shaped my childhood and my tastes in media. I was also struck with inspiration by the WASO concerts where they perform the scores for epics such as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings live to the film playing in the background. All of these things, plus my love of writing, combined together to make this project possible. Although that was my first reason for beginning the project, my main aim was to explore the impact of working collaboratively with others in the film-making process as a composer. As Australian Screen Composer, Brett Aplin, stated earlier this year in our composition workshop, "Being a composer can be a lonely and often isolating process. Most of the time, it's just you working by yourself, and sometimes, the director and editor will judge your work". It's common knowledge that in the film industry, composers often get treated as an after thought, when the entire film has already been shot and edited, resulting in very little time to score and record the music for the film. Ultimately, this means there's very little time to get to know and care for the film you're supposed to be scoring for. Naturally, I am a social person and the idea of such a lonely and stressful profession for an intricately human art such as music and film seemed wrong to me on so many levels. When directing this whole process, I wanted to be involved in as many aspects of it as possible - sometimes as a director or writer, sometimes as a composer and editor. I know that by working with the animators every Monday night, they helped me to build a greater sense of identity for the whole project through the music. I sprinkled in some leitmotifs here and there, I was able to re-time the scenes either to the music or to the animation and I was even able to get a sense of how each individual animator was interpreting the music. The added layer of involvement and collaboration made the process of composing the music more enjoyable and rewarding for everyone involved. Watching the animators get excited when seeing a scene come together with the music was really encouraging for me. On the flip side, getting to watch a scene unfold timed out the beats or mood I'd laid out for the montage scene or the battle music inspired me to write even more. The whole process was a collaborative work, and it never would've LOOKED or SOUNDED as cohesive and unique as it did without the animators, directors and voice actors having a sense for the piece by hearing snippets of the scores or by knowing how a character sounded, looked or moved. This type of collaborative film making is unique in the world of film score, and there are very few composers who ever get to be onboard with a project before it's even been filmed or animated. My developing philosophy is that the best art comes from collaboration. Sure, it may start as one person's vision, but that vision will grow into something more vibrant if it's allowed to be interpreted influenced by other creatives. If the cast and crew aren't familiar with one another, too much of the responsibility for the creative identity of the project falls onto the shoulders of the director and it can lead to them getting burnt out, and the film having a narrow field of view. The BEST work that happened on this project was when an animator, director or voice actor said to me "actually, how about we do this instead?". Let me share a few of the many examples from this year. I was editing the script with the visual director, Robin, in January of this year. I read it aloud whilst they gave me notes whenever a scene felt too long, too difficult to pull off from an animation standpoint, or just unnecessary. At scene 3 when Chase arrives home, we had a character named 'Auntie Jackie', who races out the door to the Dojo to teach a class. Robin just said to me "You don't need this character - that's a whole other design that would have to be drafted and finalised and it makes the cast too big". Initially, I was defensive, since Auntie Jackie's character hinted at Chase's familiarity with martial arts. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew that Robin was right. I didn't need the character there, I could just allude to the fact that this character existed and frequented a Dojo in the dialogue. When I was recording the voice lines for Yoshizumi, we had tried to go for an American accent (as is typical of anime English voice overs). But it just didn't seem to be working with the dialogue and I had no idea what to do about it... until the actor said something along the lines of "How about I go for a low key English accent? He seems a little more put together and more 'Obi-Wan-ish' than Asim does". We re-recorded the previous lines and they sounded so much more suited for a calm, dry English accent. When we were designing the character for Yoshizumi, Coda (the producer) asked me if he had more of a "relaxed, Literature / Drama kid energy." I was working on Yoshizumi's theme at the time and as soon as I said yes, he added some cool earrings and some big, round glasses for the character, something I'd never considered before when drawing him previously. And it just WORKED. The flowing, water-like music fit perfectly with the relaxed character design, almost completely by accident - all because we were working on them at the same time. When I received the thumbnails for scene 2 for the first time around August, I had no idea what I was going to get. All the animator had for the scene was the music and some basic descriptors of each character's journey home. What I got was both charming and HILARIOUS - Sally Henderson was the set designer for the project but soon we realised that their visual comedy was outstanding. In the scene, Chase looks behind to see if anyone spots her cutting through the supply closet to get to the bus on time and she ends up with her feet sticking straight up in the air. It added a lightness to the scene that I'd never would've known to convey otherwise. Same thing with the thumbnails for scene 3 B when Asim enters his house. I had written descriptors of making Asim feel small and insignificant in the frame and what I got was these wonderful dramatic wide shots of Asim walking through his mansion with the windows casting enormous shadows on top of him. I hadn't even written the music for this scene so receiving such striking imagery really helped me to build a sense for the weight of it - so I wrote these yearning suspended, seventh chords in the strings to convey it but no melody. I could tell from looking at it that the music in the scene needed space to breathe. In scene 6, our animator, Anna Brockless (who did the incredible stylised opening scene) dived into the realm of horror conventions, using intimidating low angle shots of the characters, stepping inside the classroom to see the Spirit of Manners literally dripping onto the teacher. I had initially struggled to write the music for this scene but as soon as I edited the shots together and imported it into Logic where I could see the frames, it was much easier to hear what it should sound like and what the scene needed from the music.
The point I'm trying to make is that when creating a film or an episode or a video game or generally any kind of multi-media art, you will work best when you work with other people who can bring something else to the table that you can't. And this doesn't just apply to the film's director - this applies to everyone who is apart of the film making process. I want to see sound designers involved in the spotting process and checking in with the composer to see how they can work together to declutter the sound, or even when no music or no sound effects would work better to convey narrative meaning (or would just sound cooler). I want composers working with cinematographers and asking if mimicking the sweeping shot of the battle field with a sweep in the orchestra would be awesome, or, if they reckon it wouldn't work with the tone of the shot. I want to see composers throwing little leitmotif cues at the character designers and to watch as they listen to it on repeat as study music when illustrating them. I desperately wanted the process of creating something like "Gradient" to be more than scoring a picture locked version of the script by myself. I wanted to rely on the expertise and experience of my animators, and to let them inspire me. I wanted them to get excited about the project by being included in each step! That includes the voice acting, the scripting and most of all, THE MUSIC. When I got into the swing of writing the music, it lit this spark in the project. When people got to see the scenes they drew actually scored and timed and feeling like a fully produced episode, they got excited. It was at that point, I no longer needed to keep them invested and motivated to finish the project. Everyone wanted to finish it because we started to see what we were creating as a team. And I can say with certainty that this project was everything that I wanted it to be and I am so unbelievably grateful and thrilled that team got to prove that it was possible and made it happen. In July / August, our animation team finished most of our final designs and initial thumbnails (the storyboard drafts) so I could finally get stuck into the full scoring process! This consists of stringing together the drafted panels on final cut pro with the dialogue and "spotting" where certain cues are needed. Once my one on one lessons with Alice Humphries was underway, she suggested using a timbre map to help keep track of timbral transitions needed between scenes so it wasn't too jarring switching between different sections (at least not on purpose like it is between scene 1 A - 1 B). Later, I would also create a table indicating the mood & atmosphere of each cue and how complex the arrangement would be in each scene / part.
I had already arranged and scored the final fight scene and the travel montage scene as I knew that these scenes would heavily rely on the beats and timing of the music so panels could be edited to it. For the other scenes, I worked out the motives for each character / set so that I'd have some musical scaffolding I could use. This has proven very useful, especially when transforming these themes to fit with the tone of certain scenes and character interactions. Fun Fact! Chase & Asim's themes are actually written in the relative minor / major of each other and use the inverted intervals of each other's melody! I thought this was the best way to convey the related but opposite natures of "Yin & Yang" through our two main characters leitmotifs. The character, creature and set designs and the storyboard drafts are all uploaded onto a shareable google drive folder that each of our crew has access to. This includes the musicians, so that when I ask them about the register and complexity of certain score parts, they can find what I'm talking about and say whether they feel confident to play it or not. Although I am the soul composer and script writer, this recital has undeniably been a group effort and it's been so fun to work with such professional and passionate people. Below is the size chart for each of our main characters. |
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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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