Week 4 focused on MIDI effects, Timbre and Instrumentation. First was a text on Ableton Live and how the MIDI effects fall under the categories: Arpeggiator, Chord, Note Length, Pitch, Random, Scale and Velocity. This was a good refresher for me as I have previous experience in Ableton Live through personal experience by creating my own music and watching music producers like Deadmau5 do masterclasses on how they use MIDI effects to create their famous tracks.  It was interesting to see the Walking Dead example and how the effects mentioned above were used in a “professional setting”. It gave me a few tips and pointers of how I can improve my working video of the walking dead intro for submission. I did some small work on my submission while watching the activity video, I mainly just checked my key and tempo and looked at effects that I can personally use for my submission. I also worked on my breathing samples and deleted some as I thought it was too much and overpowering, so I spread them out and timed them with images of the weapons and the zombies which I think creates a bigger effect. In the coming weeks I will add effects to all of these samples. I also found a sample on Splice Sounds of a radio transmission in which I chopped up the static to place it in the background of my composition. The radio transmission I found can be found at the bottom of this blog. I also read a PDF on Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard and the music used and composed for the Dark Knight. During reading this article and watching the video, I found it fascinating about how they went away from using the traditional Batman Theme Song as this Batman is complicated, how Hans doesn’t see him as a superhero and how using the old Theme Song labels him falsely. The thought process of this interests me as I imagine it must have been difficult to go against something so iconic. 

This week we learnt more about compositional techniques in compositional techniques #2. It started off with a text on music fundamentals, these being Melody, Harmony and Rhythm. I think for my compositions I will mainly be focusing on Harmony and Rhythm. I have also decided that I will be making the music for the Nike video in the key of C major. The text this week also discussed Phrases and Motives in which we also looked Arnold Schoenburg’s Phrases and Motives. I think this is important as it gives the composer somewhere to start and build his work around an opening melodic phrase however it is important to note that a melody shouldn’t be invented without a harmony. I also learnt that motives are repeated throughout a piece but is changed a little. I can relate to this by thinking of any House and Techno song. 

Another video on Hans Zimmer was also watched this week, this one was discussing his soundtracks and how they relate to time. It was interesting to see how he created the music with relation to the film for example, how the music became deeper and longer the further, they went into the dream, or how secret messages of Morse code was included within Interstellar to match the theme of time. I think these techniques have the ability to fit into many different compositions as they are so broad.

This week I have also continued work on my assessments and made some real progress on it. I have composed a Synth part to compliment the Drum and Bass beat for the Nike video using the Massive plugin and using the Twist n Shout setting however I feel the sound is not what I am really looking for, I like the notes but I feel like the sound itself is out of place, I will continue to play with other sounds for this part however keep the notes basically the same. A sample of the sound recorded using my phone is below:

This week I also made a fair amount of progress on the Walking Dead Video. I added a previously made piano loop in the key of F min which was created by the producer Slow Magic, I also added some breathing sounds to create that feeling of isolation which works quite well with the piano loop as the loop itself creates emotion. I also added two kick drums and panned one hard left and the other hard right and placed the kicks on every second beat alternating on each one. Finally for this week I added some chords in using massive and the Dance on Glass preset which creates a eerie, isolating feeling which works well with the piano. I wish to add more parts to this and work on possibly adding more drums to this.

I didn’t really do any work on the unravel video this week as I have been focused on the other two videos and work has been busy.

Week 2 of this topic was compositional techniques #1 and it taught how to plan out the ideas and strategy’s required for music creation. I was shown the composition of Peter and the Wolf and how different characters had a different theme and instrument. I feel like this could be used in my production of the unravel video for how the red character runs into some not so friendly obstacles. I can also see how this is incorporated into film with a example being Darth Vader and his little theme song in Star Wars. This week also discussed inspiration and how I can incorporate this into my assessment, for me being so fitness orientated I related a lot to the Nike video and as I do a lot of running myself I am inspired by what I listen to while I am running, which is mainly Drum & Bass (Netsky, Chase & Status, Pendulum etc) so I plan on recreating the feeling I get while listening to D&B while running. As recommended, I watched each video muted as to get some ideas for a direction I could go, my notes are shown below:

As shown on my notes I need a better plan for the walking dead video. I have just found it hard to get inspiration from a show I have never seen. I started looking for sounds, samples and some loops to use for my assessments this week and I found some really good ones that come royalty free on splice sounds. I plan on building on these as the weeks go on but this is a really good start as I will modify them to suit what my plans are for each assessment. I had one issue this week with the Nike ad as I wanted to keep the Kobe parts at 120 BPM with a heartbeat over the top but I had plans to create a Drum & Bass beat as that is what inspires me while I am running. D&B beats are normally 160-180 BPM, so I had the issue of changing the BPM throughout the middle of the video. I was unsure if this was possible but with some googling, I found out it very much was within Ableton and I fixed this issue.  

Another activity we did this week was analysing Hans Zimmer quotes about the Gladiator theme song. I thought this was useful as it gave me the ability to look into the techniques he was indirectly referring to and see how I could possibly use them for my work. It was also valuable for me as I don’t really watch movies at all and it has been making me think in a way I wouldn’t have normally and it is also interesting to see how these big movie soundtracks have been made even though I haven’t actually seen these films.

This week I also started finding the sounds, samples etc which I wanted to use for my assessment, Splice Sounds has been a massive help with this process and has also gave me many ideas and directions I can take these three videos. I also created a Drum and Bass loop using these samples in which I will build on and add effects but it is good to have a solid start. A recording of this loop, recorded on my mobile phone, is provided in the link below:

I will continue to work on my assessments over the weekend in my spare time.

So Digital Music #2 has kicked off 2019 and I am feeling excited about this year of study. Week one has started off with a film analysis of the film Ex Machina and a blu ray feature of Christopher Nolan and Hanz Zimmer’s journey creating the Interstellar theme. These activities have left a lasting impression on me and the way I will approach the assignment for this topic. The study of Ex Machina taught me about the revelation sequence and how this film engages it’s audience through this technique, I believe when this is applied and also combined with suitable music it will only make these reveals so much better. However, the main take away from these studies for me was involving the Interstellar theme and the fact that cliché methods were not used in the theme and they actually went in the totally opposite direction using a chruch organ. I believe this can be used with my assignment as instead of composing a horror theme or scary intro for the walking dead intro I could perhaps try to compose something that can inspire hope during a not so hopeful time being a apologetic zombie world. I have also wrote down a general theme or mood I would like to create with the other two videos, these being, a suspenseful, on the edge of your seat ride of the unravel video and a fast pace electronic dance music tune for the Nike ad. Below is screenshots of the initial start of these assignments.

Another activity we had was to test the Rewire application to link Pro Tools and Ableton. I found this fairly straight forward and not difficult at all and it will obviously come in handy for use with the assignments with the composing process.