ELECTRONIC: FILM SCORING

[jimmyklane]

Here is the opening scene of a student film I'm helping out on. Check out the soundcloud description for some more details. I'll post everything here later, but have to get working! For now, enjoy the track and please post your opinions!!!

[djadalaide]

Nice vibe, perfect for an opening scene to a film!

[jimmyklane]

Nice vibe, perfect for an opening scene to a film!

Thank you!

[jimmyklane]

A bit more about the track, and I can only speak to my process and not the actual video I worked from, unfortunately.

The intro instruments are a mixture of:
Grain (with a custom sample of 2 synced Moog osc)
Europa (with custom wave table in the filter patch modified by high-frequency noise.
Ensoniq EPS 16+ with 4 saws sampled from the bass station two, and ran through its great LP filter for that “brassy” sound.
The drums in this section were sampled into the SP-1200 and pitched a bit, sequenced a very simple intro loop and sampled it into the Native Instruments Maschine 2 for playback.


We move on to the main theme:



The busier pattern after the ambient washes were single hits sampled into the SP-1200 and then back into Maschine for sequencing inside of Reason. So the entire drum track got some parallel compression from a pair of distressors set 6:1 with the HP filter in the detector path so I was mostly squashing the snare.

The synths that pop in are two Moogs for bass duties, one ran an octave up with an Ibanez SC-10 analog chorus on it to make a nice stereo image. And the Novation Bass Station II creating the melody. During the drum break, added to the BSII is the Moog Slim Phatty in harmony. The Oberheim Matrix 12 comes in with the bright 9th Chords and I synced the filter lfo to the track by ear, so it’s charmingly off in places. During the second breakdown, around 5:12, I introduce the Roland Alpha Juno....which is supposedly a guitar patch, works more like a clav in this song. And serves to contribute the driving force now that the drums have slowed back down.

This is really just seven synths and two drum machines....and the intro synths are only touching the outside world for reverb and delay.

Effects:
Eventide H3000
Eventide H9
Strymon DECO
Strymon ElCapistan
Lexicon 480L (multiple bounces of this one)

[jimmyklane]

I’d love some more opinions?!!?

[sleep1979]

Here is the opening scene of a student film I'm helping out on. Check out the soundcloud description for some more details. I'll post everything here later, but have to get working! For now, enjoy the track and please post your opinions!!!

quite nice dude

[jimmyklane]

Here is the opening scene of a student film I'm helping out on. Check out the soundcloud description for some more details. I'll post everything here later, but have to get working! For now, enjoy the track and please post your opinions!!!

quite nice dude

Thanks!!!

[hurricane]

Love the synth porn. Really like the Moog bass. Everything sounds nice and big. Bonus points for using some sexy hardware. : )

[jimmyklane]

Love the synth porn. Really like the Moog bass. Everything sounds nice and big. Bonus points for using some sexy hardware. : )

LOL! I’ve gathered quite a collection of hardware over the years... when Reason came out with the EMI in version 7 I was finally able to begin the process of leaving Nuendo (with Rewire) and move into the modular environment of Reason. The SSL makes if very easy to simply route its aux sends to hardware in real-time, so if I program an instrument and have it coming in live I simply monitor the track through Reason and use the SSL to hear the effects live. The last 16 channels of I/O (out of 64 total) are dedicated return feeds from effects.

Something I was really pleased about is how well the intro Grain/Europa combination fit into the later hardware-only section. In effect I go from software synths with hardware reverb and delay to all hardware with hardware reverb delay.

Anybody that’s interested, I can upload the Reason file to my DB, and you can play around with the track yourself. (All I ask is that you absolutely do not publish it except to share it here. This is somebody’s entire last year of college and really important) You can solo the reverbs and delays and hear just how washy a Lexicon 480L really is....it’s not a super dense reverb, simply heavily modulated, and it sounds amazing in a mix but really not that amazing soloed! It’s pretty interesting to hear.


Also, I’ve got some convolution samples that I took for this project, as I will end up needing more effects than I currently have so I’m planning on using RV7000mkII in convolution mode. If anybody would like those convolution impulses I can give you guys those as well...along with some patches that recreate the internal modulations and darker sound of the actual units.

[jimmyklane]

A bit more about the track, and I can only speak to my process and not the actual video I worked from, unfortunately.

The intro instruments are a mixture of:
Grain (with a custom sample of 2 synced Moog osc)
Europa (with custom wave table in the filter patch modified by high-frequency noise.
Ensoniq EPS 16+ with 4 saws sampled from the Novation Bass Station II, and ran through its great LP filter for that “brassy” sound.
The drums in this section were sampled into the Emu SP-1200 and pitched a bit, sequenced a very simple intro loop and sampled it into the Native Instruments Maschine 2 for playback.


We move on to the main theme:



The busier pattern after the ambient washes were single hits sampled into the SP-1200 and then back into Maschine for sequencing inside of Reason. So the entire drum track got some parallel compression from a pair of distressors set 6:1 with the HP filter in the detector path so I was mostly squashing the snare.

The synths that pop in are two Moogs for bass duties, one ran an octave up with an Ibanez SC-10 analog chorus on it to make a nice stereo image. And the Novation Bass Station II creating the melody. During the drum break, added to the BSII is the Moog Slim Phatty in harmony. The Oberheim Matrix 12 comes in with the bright 9th Chords and I synced the filter lfo to the track by ear, so it’s charmingly off in places. During the second breakdown, around 5:12, I introduce the Roland Alpha Juno....which is supposedly a guitar patch, works more like a clav in this song. And serves to contribute the driving force now that the drums have slowed back down.

This is really just seven synths and two drum machines....and the intro synths are only touching the outside world for reverb and delay, and modulation effects)

Effects:
Eventide H3000 (Dual 910’s algorithm)
Eventide H9 (Reverb, Delay, Pitch)
Strymon DECO (chorus and “tape” saturation)
Strymon ElCapistan (“tape” delay)
Lexicon 480L (multiple bounces of this one)
ADA S1000 digital delay (secret sauce with this one!)
Sony HR MP5 (Modulated reverbs/delays)
Sony DPS-M7 (Modulation, micro pitch-shift)

Edited the gear-list to complete what I’ve used on this track. Anyone that wants to check out the Reason file or grab some convolution impulses from the track is free to comment here or PM me!

[esselfortium]

I listened to this the other day, sorry for not responding sooner! Very nice work, I especially like the second half when the fuller rhythm and more melodic parts come in. Really solid mixing, too, the drums come through super cleanly and have a lot of punch without being overbearing. The repeating clavinet part that comes in toward the end is a really nice addition.

(And as you asked in the other thread, yes, I would definitely consider this synthwave!)

[jimmyklane]

I listened to this the other day, sorry for not responding sooner! Very nice work, I especially like the second half when the fuller rhythm and more melodic parts come in. Really solid mixing, too, the drums come through super cleanly and have a lot of punch without being overbearing. The repeating clavinet part that comes in toward the end is a really nice addition.

(And as you asked in the other thread, yes, I would definitely consider this synthwave!)

Thank you for the compliment. I really wish I could release the intro to the film that this piece is scored to....I can’t but I CAN explain it somewhat.

The intro, where it starts on the simple root note of A, and finally builds up to big open 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th harmonics is a scene set in 1982 where we see a naked, battered and bruised, very young lady wash up on shore in Lake Michigan here in Chicago. The scene widens to show the police in the scene trying to make some sense of what is clearly a homicide. We come to the crescendo as the body bag is zipped over her head.

The beat comes in as we see fast cuts of a grizzled detective...himself battered and bruised emotionally....being deeply and personally affected by this murder. The first drop in the beat, where we hear a harmonic refrain to the main simple melody shows us a picture on his desk of a young girl with an uncanny resemblance to the victim. We are left to draw a conclusion at this point.

As the clav type sound comes in, we are fading out to a family scene that the watcher does not yet know is a flashback to just before the girl in the lake goes missing.


There are some cinematic tropes and cliches here, but it’s shown in a really unique and stylized way, hence the stylized and very electronic music. There is a movie called Hanna (with a very different plot, feel, and look!) scored by the chemical brothers that I’ve always really liked. I don’t want to copy any of it, and I bring my own unique compositional, musical, and mixing style to the table....but scores like Hanna, Deadpool, etc are maps to how one can create an almost completely electronic score for a movie and have it be really successful.

As an aside: In the end, there is really no budget here. The student is using school cameras and lighting, actors from the drama department, eventually the schools recording studio, and for the few parts of the score that I think I’ll want real orchestral parts (based on MY interpretation of the script) we’d use students from the music department. Everything is interconnected because all students get to use this as credit for their degrees. I’m the only outsider involved....and it’s because I know the student. I had to go through a fairly lengthy process of talks with The instructors and dean to do this gig for free!

[TheGodOfRainbows]

Excellent composition produced beautifully. I love it. Warm, juicy sounding pads and leads. Drums are perfectly warm punchy and saturated. Good stuff.

[jimmyklane]

Excellent composition produced beautifully. I love it. Warm, juicy sounding pads and leads. Drums are perfectly warm punchy and saturated. Good stuff.

Thank you very much. You’re correctly hearing saturation of the drums... in fact it ALL has some saturation on it due to how it was summed, but since I left much of the transient information in the drums intact before the final sum, they are what pop through as being saturated. Nice ear!

[jimmyklane]

I just noticed that the track has the first impact of the following cue at the very tail! LOL. Now I’ll have to release that one once it’s done.

Reason is a little tough to use for scoring. I’ve got an old DV can that runs off of FireWire, so I bought a PCIe card and used my video editing software to print to tape with a timecode readout superimposed...and I’m simply displaying that on a little monitor while composing. If I could have a video thumbnail in Reason like you can do in Nuendo, it would be huge for me.

After living with this for a few days, I think this actually stands as a song in it’s own right, which while not exactly intended is pretty cool.

I love all the opinions and critique, please keep it coming!!!

[TheGodOfRainbows]

I just noticed that the track has the first impact of the following cue at the very tail! LOL. Now I’ll have to release that one once it’s done.

Reason is a little tough to use for scoring. I’ve got an old DV can that runs off of FireWire, so I bought a PCIe card and used my video editing software to print to tape with a timecode readout superimposed...and I’m simply displaying that on a little monitor while composing. If I could have a video thumbnail in Reason like you can do in Nuendo, it would be huge for me.

After living with this for a few days, I think this actually stands as a song in it’s own right, which while not exactly intended is pretty cool.

I love all the opinions and critique, please keep it coming!!!

I would also go bananas for the ability to easily score for video! Perhaps you, as well as I should at least send Props an email mentioning there are some of us out there that want it. But for Reason to import a video file, Props would then need codec licensors and whatnot maybe, so it's probably not high in their to do list currently.

I would be practising my score cue chops everyday if I could drop an mp4 into Reason!

[TheGodOfRainbows]

Excellent composition produced beautifully. I love it. Warm, juicy sounding pads and leads. Drums are perfectly warm punchy and saturated. Good stuff.

Thank you very much. You’re correctly hearing saturation of the drums... in fact it ALL has some saturation on it due to how it was summed, but since I left much of the transient information in the drums intact before the final sum, they are what pop through as being saturated. Nice ear!

Did you use any tape emulation plugins? The recording has a legit fat recorded to tape fullness and retro sound.

[jimmyklane]

Thank you very much. You’re correctly hearing saturation of the drums... in fact it ALL has some saturation on it due to how it was summed, but since I left much of the transient information in the drums intact before the final sum, they are what pop through as being saturated. Nice ear!

Did you use any tape emulation plugins? The recording has a legit fat recorded to tape fullness and retro sound.

No plugins on this one. It was summed out through a passive summing box I made (which is simply a bunch of resistors, a bus bar, and a pair of old Altec transformers with a Neve Portico 5012 at the end for makeup gain) into an Empirical Labs FATSOjr—>Alan Smart C2–>Pendulum Audio PL-2–>Alesis Masterlink @ 96k.

[Carly(Poohbear)]

I would say this is Vangelis meeting Tangerine Dream back in the 80's.

The first half was too long as in the repeated section but with visual it probably works.

Lets call it the break between the slow and faster section was too long by even a couple of bars, made the track seam more like 2 tracks.

The energy and sound design is top notch and I like it a lot, but then I'm rooted in the 80's with JMJ, Vangelis, TD and all the other synthwave\synthpop so this fits in nicely to my listening tastes...

[jimmyklane]

I would say this is Vangelis meeting Tangerine Dream back in the 80's.

The energy and sound design is top notch and I like it a lot, but then I'm rooted in the 80's with JMJ, Vangelis, TD and all the other synthwave\synthpop so this fits in nicely to my listening tastes...

High Praise indeed!

Thank you. And I realize it's a 6:00+ piece....yeah it's a touch long for how simple it is, but with dialog and foley happening as well as the music.....the first part will probably only need to compete with beach-type sounds, but there will be other effects in there once the "fast half" begins.

[jimmyklane]

Just wanted to say that I really appreciate everyone’s opinions! If you don’t like it, or parts of it....TELL ME WHY!!! I won’t get offended or upset, I’m here to learn and grow.

I love to share my musical adventures with the world and see what the world throws back!

[eusti]

I just noticed that the track has the first impact of the following cue at the very tail! LOL. Now I’ll have to release that one once it’s done.

Reason is a little tough to use for scoring. I’ve got an old DV can that runs off of FireWire, so I bought a PCIe card and used my video editing software to print to tape with a timecode readout superimposed...and I’m simply displaying that on a little monitor while composing. If I could have a video thumbnail in Reason like you can do in Nuendo, it would be huge for me.

After living with this for a few days, I think this actually stands as a song in it’s own right, which while not exactly intended is pretty cool.

I love all the opinions and critique, please keep it coming!!!

Would something like ReasonSync help? http://www.reasonsync.com/ReasonSync.html

D.

[jimmyklane]

I just noticed that the track has the first impact of the following cue at the very tail! LOL. Now I’ll have to release that one once it’s done.

Reason is a little tough to use for scoring. I’ve got an old DV can that runs off of FireWire, so I bought a PCIe card and used my video editing software to print to tape with a timecode readout superimposed...and I’m simply displaying that on a little monitor while composing. If I could have a video thumbnail in Reason like you can do in Nuendo, it would be huge for me.

After living with this for a few days, I think this actually stands as a song in it’s own right, which while not exactly intended is pretty cool.

I love all the opinions and critique, please keep it coming!!!

Would something like ReasonSync help? http://www.reasonsync.com/ReasonSync.html

D.

That looks promising! Thank you. I’ll check it out in detail soon

[nickb523]

Track meets the grade man. Seriously, it's good... chasing clouds maybe, but it's good... Ride that synthwave.

You know Joker is a somewhat famous dubstep artist from the UK (he is signed to the same label as Burial)? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joker_(musician)

I'm assuming this isn't you of course!

Nick

[jimmyklane]

Track meets the grade man. Seriously, it's good... chasing clouds maybe, but it's good... Ride that synthwave.

You know Joker is a somewhat famous dubstep artist from the UK (he is signed to the same label as Burial)? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joker_(musician)

I'm assuming this isn't you of course!

Nick

Assumptions can be dangerous mate.