Music For Digital Media: Memory Collection Box

Due to losing everything on my hard drive in the weeks of Easter I was treated to a fresh start with my final task, writing and composing for cartoons. After choosing to compose a reserved piece of music for my incidental task I decided to use a cartoon, which involved ACTION!!! The cartoon used is a one and a half minute clip from the ‘Road Runner’ series. My inspiration came from the anxious sound that Jazz creates along with the cliché car chase scenes of the 1960’s, for example the 1968 movie ‘Bullitt’. I found it hard to syncopate a sound for the running; the sounds I found sounded drool and fake. However, after the first few times I watched it, I did not notice that the sound for the running was missing. The music in the background rode me subtly along quite with it the cartoon.

Motorola RAZR2 Commercial Music

This composition is a re-evaluation of my previous attempt; I have added more sound design to the commercial and made that much lower in the mix, trying to let it mold into the background. I also replaced some of the sound design with musical phrases, which insinuate what would most likely be heard, much like the method used for scoring cartoons.  I found it hard to make the musical phrase of the company much more apparent in the earlier sections because they are so busy. I believe the interaction of both music and media develop a certain mood perfectly. Let me know what you think of the outcome! 

Incidental Music In Film

The majority of the sound design you hear, is Foley. My first attempt at recording the footsteps sounded too dead because I was using trainers and they tended to slide on the floor and trail off. Until I began to use work shoes more like the ones Ethan Hawke is wearing in the scene, which gave a more dead feeling which duplicated the movements on the screen. The same with the shuffling and the necklace movement, which was hard to mix because I wasn’t sure if I should make the sound’s much more apparent but I felt it sank nicely into the background, I had to cut a lot of high top out of the audio file. The space shuttle launch needed a little low cut also, I kept a little rumble in there because it really involved me as a spectator. Originally when mixing the whole thing, the background music was much higher in the mix but I felt that it enforced more of a mood when it settled into the background. The composition is spilt into four parts the orchestration and changes give swift changes in dynamics, particularly the launch scene. In the first part of conscientiously used and made synthesizers that reminded me of science-fiction film. The crescendo is an obvious emotional incidental music rise within the video. 

Having not used iDVD before to create a menu this was my first experience of creating one. I found a basic and suitable template which represented to me the idea of a work place, particularly a student work place. I had a little trouble finding the option of positioning the buttons when I found that problem could be avoided simply by dragging the video onto the menu. One of the annoyances and obstacles was in the size of the font for tasks. I have decided to submit my commercial and incidental music for my final non-jitter tasks which I feel are my strongest tasks. For the instrumentation in the background I used a subtle ambient piece which sinks invisibly into the menu. 

I am having trouble uploading the PDF document of the blog into the dvd menu which will force me to submit the PDF file on a separate disk which is a shame. If any one have any suggestions in how to get around this, I have searched through a few forums but can’t seem to find anything very helpful. 

I was reading an article in David Bordwell’s ‘The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960′ on how music accompaniment effects narration and this strongly affected my view on the basic principles of film scoring (it is also and interesting read.)

” From the start, musical accompaniment has provided the cinema’s most overt continuity factor. In the silent cinema, piano or orchestral music ran along with the images, pointing them up and marking out how audience should respond.”

” As early as 1911, a theater musician advised players not to stop a number abruptly when the scene changed. Hollywood composers claimed that sudden stops and starts were avoidable by the process of imperceptibly fading the music up and down, the practice known in the trade as ‘sneaking in and out. This continuous musical accompaniment functions as narration. It would be easy to show that film music strives to become as ‘transparent’ as any other technique – viz., not only the sneak-in but the neutrality of the compositional styles and the standardized uses to which they are put (‘La Marseillaise’ for shots of France, throbbing rhythms for chase scenes.) Thedor Adorno and Hanns Eisler have heaped scorn upon Hollywood music as pleonastic and self-affacing; Brecht compared film music’s ‘invisibility’ to the hypnotist’s need to control the conditions of the trance. Yet calling the music ‘transparent is as true but uninformative as calling the entire Hollywood style invisible. If music functions narrationally, how does it accomplish those tasks characteristic of classical narration?”

The sources of Hollywood film music show its narrational bent very clearly. In eighteenth-century melodrama, background music was played to underscore dramatic points, sometimes even in alternation with lines of dialogue. American melodrama of the 1800s used sporadic vamping, but spectacle plays and pantomimes relied upon continuous musical accompaniment. The most important influence upon Hollywood film scoring, however, was that of late nineteenth-century operatic and symphonic music, and Wagner was the crest of that influence. Wagner was a perfect model, since he exploited the narrational possibilities of music. Harmony, rhythm, and ‘continuous melody’ could correspond to the play’s dramatic action, and leitmotifs could convey a character’s thoughts, point up parallels between situations, even anticipate action or create irony. ”

Bordwell, David (1985) The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960 London: Routledge

Due my hard drive dying over the easter period and the believe that I could work on and produce something of a much better standard than my work on ‘Aliens’. I have decided to score and sound design the ending of the 1997 film ‘Gattaca’ directed by Andrew Niccol and scored by Michael Nyman (a composer very vocal in minimalism within music.)

For those of you unaware of the nature of the film the tone of the ending is incredibly emotional and climatic. Due to the essay below I was aware of a few techniques and hit points that I was already going to use before beginning work on it. I was attracted to work on this particular scene for the atmosphere that it creates, it is a great example of incidental music. There are also a lot of subtle drop points for the sound design, which I have had to record myself. The theme of the music in the beginning is very much an ambient  one as referred to in David Bordell’s essay, it shows the invisibility of film music. Until the middle section where I wanted to create and make the music very overtly a major part of the scene, the climatic power of music in film is very apparent here. I  will have a demo available to view up in the next few days, but I was hoping to record with a cellist to create a more organic feel so you’ll have to wait.

The two minute scene I used for my film piece was the classic and untouchable final scene in James Camerons 1986 movie ‘Aliens’. If you are yet to see this then you are completely oblivious to good science- fiction film. I felt compelled to do this scene. When the task was set this scene immediately struck a chord in my head. I remember this film was the film I was first drawn into and everything about it put me in that world and atmosphere.

Firstly, before working on the musical composition I wanted to keep similar atheistic that the original score has because I especially like the way that James Horner created mood into mysteriousness and tension into terror with the London Symphony Orchestra. He evoke these feelings from the audience by using discordant pharses, suspended drones, out of tune violins and syncopated dissonant brass sections (all treated with a large amount of reverb). Having researched a little up on James Horner I came some across some interesting facts about the scoring for this particular scene on the internet. According to Wikipedia:

‘The final cue for the scene in which Ripley battles the Alien queen was written overnight. Cameron completely reworked the scene, leaving Horner to rewrite the music. As Gale Hurd did not have much music production experience, she and Cameron denied Horner’s request to push the film back four weeks so he could finish the score. Horner felt that, given more time, he could get the score to 100% of his satisfaction, rather than the 80% he estimated he had been able to achieve. The score was recorded in roughly four days.’

He earned an Academy Award nomination for his contribution to the movie. Anyway, after visiting Julio in an office hour with some well received criticisms I decided to concentrate solely on the sound design aspect of the narrative live action film project (also condensing the length of the piece). I decided to do this because I started to lose enthusiasm and creative flow around the half way mark. We came to a decision that the diegetic sound was not encompassing the atmosphere of the room or as Walter Murch coined it ‘worldizing’. The set of the scene is a large metal structure which you could imagine make sounds trail of and bounce around of each other.

I decided to revise my sound design work and found there were a few hidden movements in the visuals that I had originally missed out. So, in keeping with the ethics of mondays lesson I decided to rent out a portable recorder and do my own field recordings, which was a pretty amusing hands on activity. I preferred this aspect of sound design because today it is as easy as pushing a button and getting a sample from freesound.com it loses the passion from if you had done it yourself. It is also more organic and less digitalized. Some of the sounds I recorded included hitting the metal railings of the staircase in the musical department with a metal leg from a chair which created this incredible clash of echo and metal. Perfect for putting over the image of the Queen Aliens tail striking Ellen Ripley’s loader machine. To authenticate the sound of the loader I recorded the sound of automatic doors opening/closing running in-between each door (quite fun). I also decided to record the sound of a printer which fed me some great robotic sounds; with a little bit of compression and beefing up the sounds I found would fit perfectly. I also missed out drips coming of the Queen Alien’s mouth in my first attempt so I took the portable recorder into my houses shower room and turn the dial up a little so the shower head would let out droplets of water which sounded exactly as I had heard it being, the acoustic of the room worked well with the interior of the space ship. Im still in the process of touching it up a little at the moment but will have the finished product to show in next mondays lessons when we present are pieces.

In other related news I watched both the 15 minute original (1967) and 85 minute feature film (1971) of George Lucas’s ‘THX 1138′ to pay attention to Walter Murch’s sound design work. However, I soon found myself transported into the dystopian future world of THX which only tells me that Murch was right on the money with what he was working with to the images. I also thought the short film had a much better use of sounds and created more of a suspenseful compressed society.

Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help me out for a second. Firstly, the last few attempts I have had at uploaded my CMT media projects onto YouTube they have uploaded with no audio. Is it me or is there a hidden mute button in there somewhere? Im pretty sure there is no option to filter out the audio when the video is in the uploading stages.

Secondly, I have been trying for a day or so to get a really authentic and satisfying ‘Theremin’ sound using the VST’s and effect’s plug in’s in Logic 8 but it all sounds a little to midi. My first attempt I put a sine wave through the sound of choir into a bit crusher which was all put under heavy compression. However, it didnt sound nearly as good enough as I know I could be getting it on the program. Does anyone have any tips or advice? If they have tried to do this before. I have recently found out there is a VST called ‘Mysteron’ made specifically for imitating the sound of the ‘Theremin’ but it is only available for PC applications. If you are unlucky enough to have PC instead of a Mac (although not under this circumstance) then download it as soon as possible.

Must appreciated

I had come across 3 or 4 adverts that I wanted to work one, each one had a lot of interest there visually and they were big company names. The commercial I wanted to be stuck with was Michel Gondry’s work that he did for Motorola in early 2007. He was basically asked to create a film based on the experience of the RAZR2 Phone. Typical of Gondry’s work the is a sparse dreamy nature to his mechanical eye. Before I started I had a basic idea for orchestration and the fundamental idea of what instruments I wanted to use and how the structure would flow. Due to the sparse nature of visuals I wanted to marry this to the music which I achieved successfully with reverse to adjoin some of the more difficult parts of the advertisement. I tried to delve into the thought of how a viewer would perceive this on a television screen, and what would attracting. In conclusion I tried to make the music inviting yet mysterious.

The first impression I got from the commercial was that the musical phrases should start of with a dreamy nature then lift into something happier. I took my insperation from the film composer Danny Elfman (best known for his work with Tim Burton) and Jon Brion (who has also worked with Gondry before). The composition is split into five segments introduction, middle, diagetic sound, outro and brand. The whole composition is in a major form the happier part of it is introduced around the 23 second mark to exemplify the jumpiness of the character in the advertisement. For the sound effect I used the same technique I used in the cartoon of watching it a few times and making a list of all the sounds that were needed. I found the FX that come with Logic 8 very helpful, I had never used them before and its library has some incredible effects which I would recommend to other users. Around the 34 second mark of the commercial I utilize the same idea that the original music to the commercial used, there were a few problems. Firstly, there were a few ideas of mine that share similarities with the original, not at all musically but the aesthetic behind it. For example; the idea to put different musical genres reacting to the way the visual changes and the instruments that the musicians are playing. Suddenly before I realized it I had packed all this intricate detail into what seemed like a 4 – 5 minute piece. I found it extremely challenging and enjoyable.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse

I believe this music holds the weight of the optimism in cartoons but lacks certain suspense in the chase scenes. I wanted to give it the jazz feel of that era, also placing sound design and moving images in juxtaposition for comedic value. Comments would be appreciated!!

To begin with I found a clip on you tube of an old Tom and Jerry cartoon that was revolved heavily around music as a basis. It was quite simple to download firefox and video helper, the only negative to this is that you tube videos can often be in quite low resolution so I would find a clip I wanted to do that looked terrible so that was a disadvantage (I found the download helper and isquint very helpful and efficient). When looking at Scott Bradley’s original orchestration for it, it gave me a few ideas of my own. The clip I choose was from the Tom and Jerry episode “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse”  by Fred Quimby, very funny and inventive in its entirety.

Firstly I went through and made a list of sound effects that would be needed in the video before I began work on the actual score. Finding the sound to fit to the images was a very amusing part of the process I wanted to use sounds that weren’t associated with the image but because I had fitted them there the audience would not question the sounds placement. For instance when Tom is chasing after Jerry I used the sound of a motor bike starting up about 33 seconds into it. I found it hard to negotiate all the little clips of music within the cartoon for instance key and time changes were hard to match together. After I came across this obstacle I did a little revision into cartoon music by watching a lot more cartoons in order to gain a wider knowledge (not a bad way of revising). I also referred to lecture notes, afterwards I went back to it and erased my disappointing first attempt. In my first attempt I tried using mostly electronic generated sounds but I found this lost character in the visual, and with cartoon music it is often good to stick to the foundations especially on a first attempt at writing for it. 

Lately in my lectures I have been noticing an increasing amount of names emerge from the pioneers of 20th century music. Composers, musicians that are responsible for all the small details we take for granted such as Raymond Scott, Carl Stalling etc. Each have influenced the way in which I look at working in music. The lecture itself coincided with a detailed inspection of the characteristics and themes within cartoon music. I found the topic of conversations brought up in the lecture much more productive and I have a lot more confidence vocalizing my opinions on what I believe should be utilized in film music. Below is an example of the chart we used to describe the separate entities in creating authentic cartoon music followed by what process must be taken in the creation of the score to fit these two pieces together as well as possible

What Is There?:                                       How Do I Do It?:

Sound Effects                                           

Footstep Syncing                                     Sync Directly 

Radical Mood Shifts                               Change Of Key/Modulation 

Extended Instrumental Techniques     Represent Unusual Things

Representing Movement                        Pulse/Time Change

Dynamics                                                   Velocity/Volume/Change of Timbre/Layering Instrumentation

Wall to Wall of Music                              Divide into Sections     

Falling Things (Descending Pitch)          Slide Whistle (commonly used)/Descending Scales

On reflection the midi in the soundtrack is still very much in foundations I am pleased with the musical output but the sound of the instruments need slight altering and adjustments to create authenticity. The most satisfying aspect of composing cartoon music is the exaggeration of musical phrases in characters movements and gestures. I could imagine this genre of film composing is extremely rewarding professionally. 

Arran