How to Imitate a Whole Lot of Hollywood Film Music In Four Easy Steps

Music theory. Music as it is used as indicators of genre or meaning.

Earthkiller Podcast

Earthkiller. It's a podcast. New episodes every two weeks.

Labrimblatudinory

Inverse square law of light. I still don't understand how this applies to Fresnels. Well, I guess the bendy-ness of the lens effectively puts the "origin" of the light somewhere behind the lamp itself. I guess. Who knows? Stuff is weird.

Unfortunately this Victor Rousseau was a real antisemitic twit.

Journal reviewer.

List of predatory journals.

Music and the Moving Image journal.

Chicago format for prose extracts.

All For One

Franz is a multi-messenger client thingy.

Rambox also, too, similarly.

All-in-one messenger app works great. It's one app for Dischord, freaking WhatsApp, Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, Tweet Deck, pretty much whatever you got. Built on Chrome so it's cross-platform.
What is weird though is that the only way to actually launch it is to go to the store and hit the launch app button.
That is, until you dig deep down in the comments and find that there is a separate app just to launch allinone from the Chrome toolbar.

Reducing Tabs

Music PhD

University of Birmingham distance music composition PhD.
University of Kent.
Monash doctorate of philosophy in music composition.
The Open University doctorates.

Journals

Music and the Moving Image.

The Journal of Film Music.

The New Soundtrack.

Music, Sound, and the Moving Image.

The Soundtrack.

Sound Effects (themed issues.)

This pop-up really bugs me. It just won't go away and inevitably it will sit over the text I need to select.

Writing

Chicago Manual of Style online.

How to write an abstract.

Various sundries

Multi-messenger Chrome extension thingy-client which puts Whatsapp on your desktop. So yeah, I've got that, Dischord, and Slack running along with Hangouts. Because that's what we do now.

Desperately clinging to the NSFW status of this blog.

Oh no. Wait. I can put Dischord on this thingy. And Slack. Wait. This changes my life.

Fair Dinkum (module 03 formative 1)

I only got a "pass" on this assignment. I'm a bit bummed about it but I have to say the critique is totally fair. This was a formative (doesn't count toward my final grade) I did in order to do something outside of my wheelhouse. I sure learned a lot by doing it. The non-green text is my tutor's grading.

Stylistically the compositions don’t feel enough Mozart or Haydn. Historically, the classical period goes hand in hand with the Age of Enlightenment. The period is defined by scientific and philosophical discourse, which, according to Goethe, is also expressed in classical music: four independent but equal voices having a dialogue. Haydn’s string quartet in G minor (op. 73 no. 3) mentioned in your bibliography is an excellent example. So the best way to approach the composition is to start with very strict four-part harmony, then orchestrate. 

One weird thing about that example is that they play tutti at the top. And that doesn't count as parallel movement apparently. I got kinda thrown there.
Some melodic voices (e.g. Country House Theme, violin at 0:46) don’t feel thematic, but they also don’t blend very well with the rest and stand out instead. This means the feeling of four “equal” voices is missing. The material could be more thematic. In the Country House Theme, the woodwinds in the first few bar sort of establish a theme, but it’s not really melodic and doesn’t flow or have a specific direction. Thematic development is quite important for this style. Another important element are patterns that are usually sequenced rather strictly. For example, the arpeggio pattern at 0:35 is irregular. The chase arpeggio pattern works a lot better. 

The chase does work better.
Classical music uses functional harmony. This means you need to take extra care and check where the voices are going, especially the bass. The chase track starts with an inversion (the bass should be A instead of E). The second chord with the D in the bass is not clearly defined. Shortly later the note G is played (G# being the leading tone of A minor). A minor means A harmonic minor in this period, so as soon as G# turns into G, the music turns into C major. Etc. 

Yeah, I think I made a mistake with the chord form I took. It was an earlier chord progression but I don't think it was actually used much by Mozart or Haydn, but it was used later by Shubert. I should have nipped that in the bud. 
Inversions are important in any style and each inversion has a specific effect. A tonal piece always starts with the tonic chord in root position, unless the goal is to destabilise the tonal centre. That is acceptable in some styles, but usually in classical music the key of the piece is established very clearly with a cadence V-I.
There are similar problems with the mystery track. For example, at 0:04 D# and E are played at the same time.

[Oops.]

The other issue is an aesthetic one. The piano sounds a lot like a modern grand piano with a softer attack, more dynamics and bigger size than the instruments from the 18th century. The woodwinds are a full section playing unisono, which is not the way they were orchestrated back then. If you don’t have fortepiano samples, use a harpsichord. Try to make the close mics of each instrument a bit louder to get a more intimate feeling. 
Yeah, the harpsichord was making it sound much too early. But the only pianos I had were too late. 'Twas a bummer.
The mockups are not realistic enough. The clarinets are generally a little too loud, while the non-vibrato strings sound artificial and seem to lack true vibrato (the sampled transitions between two notes). There is a lot of reverb, which takes away the chamber feeling. The panning is too extreme, especially the col legno notes. This happens because CSSS is technically not a string quartet, but the first chairs of each section, so it still sounds very orchestral.

That's a good point about CSSS. There are a few weird moments in the mockups:
- Chase theme 0:13 - an arpeggio note comes too late
- Mystery theme 0:25 - the cello note suddenly stops with a click
Oh dear. That is. Embarrassing. 
The audio files are not directly loopable. When the end of the track is reached, it should be possible to directly go into the first bars again, without any further editing or crossfading. 
Oops. I didn't realize we were doing that for this assignment. I know better now.
Matteo

Research: 4/10
Creative: 5/10
Technical: 5/10
Practical: 5/10

Matteo Pagamici's Summary:

Overall, the defining stylistic elements are missing and the harmonies aren't exactly 18th century style. The mockup needs more work.

Fair Dinkum.

My Life as a Tailor

Sky in skirt.

The final project in last year's beginner sewing bootcamp at M Avery Designs Sewing was to make a skirt. Specifically, this very nice a-line skirt designed by Meghan.
So I thought to myself "Who would like a skirt?" and reached out to Sky. Luckily, Sky's sizing was exactly what the smallest pattern of this a-line skirt was. The other lucky thing is that I (like a boy) chose a material off the Internet with really minimal thought about it.
I got a very heavy black cotton material. But the thing with it is that 1. the color totally hides any sewing, er, "incidents"; and 2. the heaviness actually makes the curved sections stretch nicely. Sky, with her dancer figure, was made for this design.
Thank you Sky for being such a good sport. I didn't even have to poke her with needles! And it obviously fits great. The drape is very classy (because of the heavier material) and I'm rather proud of the work I did.
(I noticed that this year they added a men's tie as an option to the skirt for the class. ;-)

Second Summative

I love this spacesuit design so much.

Assignment Mark (Summative)

Assignment Score

70 %

Tutor Notes

Allison Piccioni's Notes:


Hi Andrew!




Thank you for your “Titanium Oil” submission!




Thank you for a detailed commentary and links to the engine and oil advertisements you watched for inspiration! I will always forewarn about watching or listening to a final version of something that you will be re-scoring for the fear that it will overly influence your own music, but obviously since the final brief was changed for the commercial it can be used as a good reference. Also love the David Wingo reference - an unusual reference but relevant nonetheless and I like the influence in your writing.




Nice choice in instrumentation and development through electronic to organic sounds. Great sound design to represent the engine!




I’d love to read a little more in your technical section about why you chose specific harmonic structure and how you developed melodically and rhythmically. Also curious what elements and how you created a greater density in the mix - EQ’s? Added layered elements to fill our the kHz? A mastering track, compression, etc? Would also like to know which plug-ins you are using!




Overall I find the mix and balance between varying sections to be a little scattered. There are such dynamic changes between sections, the instrumentation, and the overall mix layout- which makes me curious to know what and how hard of a compressor and limiter you used on the track. For commercial music, you will want the mix to be pretty hot, especially considering it will be ridden down underneath dialogue, and will be coming out of an assortment of speakers including iPad, iPhone, and television speakers and usually needs the bass boosted and treble or dialogue heavy kHz reduced. The beginning has a really GREAT mix balance. The heavy mechanical sounds at :19 are a little mid-range heavy (however, awesomely crunchy!) but then we go back into this atmospheric section that is well-balanced, with a good swell, although the transition into :54 could use a little something extra to smooth it over. I personally want a heavier low end under the smooth vocal sections from 1 minute out - but that is merely a personal preference.




I like the concept of bringing the vocal in the beginning, but you may want to consider using a more staccato vocal here to emphasize the mechanization of the engine at this point in the brief. Great bubbling synth bass here!




I love the junkyard percussion sound design starting around 19 seconds in, although I feel it is missing a bit of low-end or needs the bass and larger percussion boosted underneath it for power, the sound design feels more mid-range heavy here.




At 40 seconds into the track, we get this really cool other worldly atmospheric presence in the music. The percussion and vocal that comes in around 55 seconds adds to this foreign feel, which I personally find is perfect for the scenario of the brief, although I think that adding a louder, low pad would really add some depth to this section. This is where the Doppler effect is




I hear that you have a Doppler affect car zoom sound later in the track, this is something that I haven’t heard in other projects, and I think that works extremely well in a creative, sound design, and musical way!

The smooth vocal sample is great, good levels of reverb here. If you decided to use a more staccato vocal at the beginning, you may also consider taking off some of the reverb at the front, to give it a tighter and closer feel. I also find that the synthesized sounding strings are appropriate here

I myself would have gone for a bigger ending to the track, however this is difficult to assess without having visual aid of the commercial.

Research: (9/10)
Creativity: (9/10)
Technicality: (8/10)
Practicality: (9/10)
Execution: (8/10)
Style and Originality: (9/10)

Allison Piccioni's Summary:

You have a great assortment of creative sound design in this and really nice differentiations between sections! Overall the mix is great - my only critique is the mix balance between sections and trying to even out the dynamics and/or mix spread, compressor levels, etc. I feel this mostly because the sound effects (which are awesome!) seem to be very mid-range heavy in the mechanical sections around 00:19 in, and the transition into the fluid vocal section seems just a bit rushed or in need of being smoothed over. You have a really nice development to this track and I thoroughly appreciate how you have turned a multitude of sound effects into musical and rhythmic elements!




David Denyer's Notes:


Hi Andrew,

Overall very strong work with this submission. The narrative beats are well defined and clear and you’ve clearly taken the narrative aims of the brief very seriously.

On the whole the use of engine sounds has been really cool but in general I’d suggest more processing to make them sound less like an early musique concrete and more in line with contemporary synthesis - pitch shifting would be a great start (generally pitch shifting down is the only kind of pitch shifting that ever really sounds any good), but also glitching them, or FFT processing or some other kind of garbling/warping could make them sound more refined, polished and generally heavier and more dramatic. In particular, the “vroom” sounds at 1:03/1:08 etc feel a little underdeveloped and could really be stylised somehow a little more, ie to be less immediately familiar (and therefore a tad gimmicky) but more intuitively familiar. Earlier on, the “engine ignition” sounds at 0:21, 0:23 etc, similarly have that slightly early-concrete feel, where the sounds are being used but the processing on them is limited, so the source is quite familiar. If this had been slowed-down via playback rate by, say, 50% this could be a really cool grumbly sound but the familiarity of it is a little bit too jarring here - what we’re after is the feeling of “engine-ness” without actually the recognition of the sounds that we’re hearing. Consider something like the sound effects used in the Transformers films - they communicate “high-tech machinery” without actually sounding much like machinery that we’re familiar with and this allows those sounds to operate within a less clearly-defined spectrum.

Perhaps more problematically is the fact that, dramatically, the “spikey dance” is actually the coolest part of the music - and the “elegant smooth” dance towards the end actually sounds much less cool. This is a problem because the engine oil is the product that is aimed at being sold by this ad - which means the smooth elegant dance at the end has to sound like the absolute pinnacle of coolness and elegance and power and climax - this really has to be the “act 3” of the advert, where the whole piece has been building up to. What it feels like though is that the spikey dance is the climax - and the final part almost feels like a coda, or an appendage to the end of the piece, which has this kind of dreamlike, slightly resigned, sort of muted feel. So functionally and dramatically, this would probably not suffice for the producers of this ad.

Overall the production is very good, there’s some really cool sounds here and the electronics are used quite tastefully - your electronic percussion, especially in the “spikey dance” works really well. Really nice use of the stereo field too. As a track this really has promise, but the dramatic emphasis and climax so early on during the part of the film that’s supposed to be the “problem” that is solved by the “product” later - confuses the message slightly, and it’s a shame because you set this piece up really well for an incredible payoff in the last act that never really happens.

Research: 9/10
Creative: 7/10
Technical: 9/10
Practical: 6/10

Kind regards,

David

David Denyer's Summary:

Overall very strong work, some very cool sound design and an overall aesthetic that really suits the product. I think the engine sound-design needs to be masked a little more, as the familiarity is a little jarring and diverts the piece away from the more artsy/fantastical realm, and dramatically the part of the piece that should be the climax - ie, the engine finally operating at full efficiency due to the brilliance of the product - actually sounds less dramatic than the earlier part of the film (ie, the “raucous danse macabre”), which ultimately undermines the goals of the film and the music. Strong work otherwise.

Shining Edit Latency

The music in The Shining. Pretty complete notes in a .pdf.

Hedy LaMarr

Murch, Coates, and Farr on editing picture.

Latency Monitoring Software.

re [ (f)use]

Huck Hodge. Atonal and gestures. Good lesson for me.

Buck Sanders. Sound designer. Works with Marco Beltrami.

In the Aggregate

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/05/22/amuse-cd-baby-tunecore-distrokid/
Some alternatives to CD Baby.
So far I've been pretty happy with CD Baby -- mostly because I don't have to deal with anything once the title is released. But maybe that's true with the others too. I dunno.

I'm offended that my blog might end up being safe for work.

I think we're going with Podbean for the Earthkiller podcast.

Notes to live by

Assignment Mark (Formative)

Assignment Score

Merit

Hi Andrew,

There are a lot of good ideas, and the live recordings add significant depth and make the track more organic. The style is perfect for the brief. There is definitely enough room for dialogue.

The energy of the track is quite linear overall. There are always new elements coming, but the percussive pattern stays the same (or very similar) throughout the track, with very little variation in register, dynamics and harmony. If you listen to what’s happening at 1:00 and then 4:30, the intensity is the same. There is not enough development. Instead, try to start with less elements and then build up slowly.
This makes it also a bit repetitive. Let’s assume this is for a pitch and you’re creating the soundtrack without any images or script, but only this brief. The music should tell some sort of story and have a dramatic arc of its own. First of all, the ideas and themes need to be very clear-cut. If you’re writing the music with the film in mind, think of how the director and editor are going to approach it. The probably simplest approach is the classic three-arc structure with a powerful climax. So while it’s great that your composition feels very coherent, it does need more variation and structure.
When you compose, try to think about the purpose of each section of the composition and its function within the narrative and overall structure. For example, “this is the theme’s light variation with piano and less percussion” or “this section builds up from very quiet to very loud and connects theme A and B” or “this section introduces the main characters” etc. Right now it’s more like “this is a new element and the music feels slightly different, but not clearly different”, so the audience can’t really tell where they are. Basically the tricky part is to find a balance between creating something that keeps telling something new and develops all the time, but still feels like one idea/style.

In terms of aesthetics this feels slightly more 2000-2010 than 2010-2018. Mainly because of the percussion and the saturated/distorted sounds (that being said, virtual hacker battles are a very 2000s thing). Nonetheless, this style is still widely popular, especially in library music.
A more modern example for this specific style is the soundtrack of Mr. Robot by Mac Quayle.

Be careful with the limiter. Currently the track is way too loud and compressed, losing all of its dynamics. For a pitch it can be a good idea to make your track loud enough to make sure it can compete against other tracks in terms of volume, but it should not be excessive. If the director has already decided to work with you and this is a draft or even the final version of a cue, there is no reason to add a limiter, or if so, only very little. Tracks on soundtrack albums are mastered differently than the cues actually in the film, so you shouldn’t use their loudness as a reference (again, unless you’re releasing a soundtrack album).
Eventually, this is the composition’s main problem: everything is more or less equally loud, the music doesn’t go in any direction (building up, slowing down etc.) but remains static.

Matteo

Research: 6/10
Creative: 6/10
Technical: 6/10
Practical: 6/10

Matteo Pagamici's Summary:

Overall, the production quality and the style are excellent, but the music needs more development.

Stoya

 I think アンドリュー・ベルウェア is my name in Japanese.

I think that little dot between my first and last name is maybe something standard-ish for foreign names in Japanese. I dunno though.

 Gesamtkunstwerk the total artistic synthesis.

 The Artwork of the Future.

Simple Rules to be followed blindly by composers for motion pictures.

I should paste this critique on a note on my monitor: "Overall, the production quality and the style are excellent, but the music needs more development."