Musings from a Matchbox

Having worked on this task as a piece called “Whisper Not”, I ended up with an unsatisfactory result, in that the takes that I had recorded could have been better and required a lot of chopping and changing, which would degrade the quality of the finished project. In this event, I decided to start again with a new piece. I recorded a gospel choir, accompanied by piano, contrabass and drumkit. Firstly, I recorded the intstruments, as a basic starting point and as a guide for the vocals to be added later. This I did by using Rode NT1As, an SE Z3300As, 2 Oktava MK-012s, and Shure SM58s.

After the instruments, I recorded the choir using 2 SE Z3300As in Blumlein configuration, two Oktava MK-012s in AB and the soundfield microphone suspended from the ceiling. 

I have included diagrams on paper with my CD. 

The mixing mainly involved Equalising and balancing the many different signals together. I stripped the silence out of the vocals and kick drum, as they had picked up other sounds such as the headphones and the snare. I then compressed many of the tracks through submixes and put an overall reverb on the master track.

I have completed the commercial. In the end, I chose the waltz as the style in which to compose my piece, and I think the results are quite pleasing. I have violins, violas, celli, and contrabasses accompanied by timpani and cymbal crashes, and also a glockenspiel harmonising the melody, which the violin plays. I had originally intended to include the piano, but felt that there was already much happening in regard to orchestration, and that adding anything more would make it too complex. 

While the violins play the melody, the violas and celli are arpeggiating, although the latter at a slower rate, and the contrabasses and timpani play strong single notes to accent the downbeat. The timpani also, along with the cymbals, musically represent the various explosions and crashes that the advertisement depict.

I didn’t include a jingle as such for the Dell logo, as I felt it wouldn’t fit with the piece, and that the way the music finishes exactly when it appears would be enough of an impact for people to remember the name.

http://www.divshare.com/download/7345706-696

This task is pretty much completed and ready. Again, I may change parts yet, but as it is, I am happy to call this a day, so to speak, for now, and move on to other things. Most recently, at the suggestion of my classmate, I added more musical expression to movements such as blinking and reaching to grab Tom’s tail and stretching it, for example.

http://www.divshare.com/download/7257933-e3a

I have hopefully finished tweaking and changing this, now with a piano section at the end and some distortion and manipulation to follow the picture. I have also changed the music I had before and mixed it to my own satisfaction. I may change it still, but for the moment, I shall be content to work on everything else, and be prepared to hand in this version:

http://www.divshare.com/download/7257869-6b5

This is the current state of Task 1, the music for a 1 minute section of “Persona”. This is unfinished and I seem to be having trouble completing the last section. This is the section after the initial lights and the rolling film, and we start to see the cartoon of the woman washing herself.

I was thinking of writing a piece of music that would go with the cartoon, as if we were watching it normally, and have it change and distort according to what happens with the picture.

This week we saw how to create and compared the results of more microphone techniques. We created the Blumlein Pair, Phased Array, OCT and Decca Tree. I think that we would be able to better compare these different techniques with a larger room, and possibly multiple sound sources placed around the microphones, to get a true feeling for each technique in different positions.

This week we looked at our work on film scenes. There was some really good work on Jurassic Park, Lord of The Rings, which made me realise the importance of the sounds used and how they accentuate the visuals. My work so far is something I am very happy with, as I have managed to create realistic effects from esoteric sources, for example, I have used the sound of a car passing by, with some editing, to create a ‘flying sound’ when Neo gets hit and flies backwards in slow motion.

This week we went over more of the microphone techniques we will use for the recording task, including NOS, DIN and M/S. NOS configuration involves two cardioid microphones facing outwards at 90 degrees, and with a space of 30cm between the heads. DIN is similar to NOS in that the microphones are angled at 90 degrees, but instead they are spaced 20cm apart. M/S, or Mid-Side, uses one cardioid microphone, pointed at the centre of the sound source, and one figure-8 microphone placed facing 90 degrees from the cardioid. This enables sound to be picked up from the front by the cardioid mic, and the left and right by the figure 8.

In this week, I spent quite a lot of time searching for my film scene to score. I went through many which I had thought would be ideal as they were very active and emotive. Scenes I had in mind from (in no particular order) “The Shining”, “The Exorcist”, “Cloverfield”, “Scarface”, “Indiana Jones” and “Resident Evil” were perfectly plausible, but many of them seemed too iconic or had too much dialogue to re-record to use for the task. In the end, I settled for a personal favourite of mine: the fight scene in “The Matrix: Reloaded” where Neo fights against hundreds of Agent Smith clones.

This scene will be a challenge to score well as there are plenty of foley hits, smacks and the like to create and integrate, and also because there are a few times where the music will slow down or suddenly change to mimic the slow-motion shots and changes in movements.

This week, we began training for Task 3. The session consisted of Gareth playing improvised clarinet while we improvised microphone positions. The task requires us to create 9 recordings, three of three instruments. We will use AB microphone positioning for one of each three recordings, as well as two other established positions, or one established and a new creation of our doing.