This week continued the study of Digital Music #2 with more Compositional Techniques #5. It begun with a study of the theme for the show Westworld by composer Ramin Djawadi. It was interesting to read that the tempo for the composition is 111 BPM and could be related to binary which is related to a theme of the show, I liked this possible inspiration due to the fact that I personally work within the IT sector so I can relate to this as well. I personally think the use of Timeless instrumentation is interesting as it features classic instruments which don’t age ( Piano and Strings) and based on the plot of the show being an old Western theme park in the future, I find the Piano and Strings to be related to more to the Western theme then the future theme and seeing the AI playing the piano is just a unique aspect to this intro. I do like the call and response parts of the Westworld theme and I feel I could incorporate this method into my secondary idea for my Nike composition as I have been struggling to find ideas for this. Using Colour Tones with my Chord tones will help add to the interest of this second idea thus making it much more exciting than what I originally planned so I plan on incorporating this as well. I also quite liked the Arpeggio section as I believe it is a good way to transition from the call and response section to the climax section, as it flows very nicely. After going through the study of the theme song, I decided to return back to Week 7’s activity and review the related keys concept. I also did my own personal googling on this subject to help improve my knowledge on this as I can see how this can be useful in future projects.
I continued work on my secondary idea for the Nike composition and I made changes from last weeks work. I moved to BPM back down to 120 as the majority of EDM sit around this 120-140 range and having it at 170 BPM was just a bit fast and my ideas kept running back to a drum and bass beat. I also changed the key to C major, this was purely so it was easier for me to produce something for this video. I created two parts and a bassline, the two parts will be doing call and response. I also included a drum loop sample which I found on Ableton, I mainly included this as I wanted to see how drums sounded within my secondary idea and I didn’t want to get “bogged down” working on a drum beat instead of spending time on my primary composition. I chose not to use this second idea as I don’t feel like it really fits the video really well, I feel like if I spent more time on it that might change but due to the time constraints this was not possible, the other reason is that no matter what I put into this second idea I was comparing it to my primary idea as I like it so much the second idea couldn’t compete. The second idea is below:
I finished my secondary idea for the Walking Dead composition this week as well. For this idea I kept it in the key of F minor, I did however bring the BPM back down to 110 as it made the rolling synths sounds sound a bit rougher which I think added to the dark, horror effect I wanted to achieve. I also re used the background atmosphere sample which I found on Splice Sounds and placed it way in the background like my primary idea, so it only really adds a “rumble” which can only be just made out to the ear. I also used a chord of F, A# and B and duplicated it and added two different synths to them from Massive to create different effects. Below is the secondary idea:
I actually do like this second submission and feel like this could have actually been used for my primary one. It achieves the dark, techy, gritty horror feeling I got inspired by from the Resident Evil movie theme song I watched/listened to the previous week. However, I feel like using this idea for my primary would be too much of a cliché and since the beginning of the term I didn’t want to do anything cliché and Horror related for this composition. I feel like my primary idea captures the isolation and loneliness of survival and being the only human around etc.
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