Week 17 - Second Recording Session - Psycho Thriller for Wind Septet - Worst day yet

Last Tuesday was another recording session, thankfully without all the drama of the first session. There was no printing fiasco and my son drove me to the session as I did not want to chance public transit breakdown after last time. 

The program founder / director was on hand as well to provide additional commentary and feedback from the sound booth. 

I was very pleased with the outcome of the session, my cue sounded good and matched what I heard in my head pretty well.

Next cue is a Tension / Chase cue for Brass, Piano, and Percussion. We are starting to tighten timings up now, not just for this cue but all home work being assigned now requires more precise hit points (Can't be off even by 1 frame) and time restrictions. For the Tension cue we have exactly 90 seconds, the last note must finish sounding on the 90 second mark. This is the nature of film scoring, sometimes the timing must be absolutely perfect.

The ensemble is as follows:

• 2 Trumpets
• 2 F Horns
• 1 Tenor Trombone
• 1 Bass Trombone
• 1 Tuba
• 2 Percussionists 
• Piano

The timing is highly restricted, but we have more freedom for the form and sonics of the music. The last 2 cues were meant to be quite rhythmic with an easily identifiable pulse. This cue is supposed be the exact opposite. I build tension by using alternating and odd time signatures so there isn't a sold sense of time. Melody is derived from a 4 note kernel, and the beauty is it needs to be presented in the same order each time, allowing for transpositions of course, so there is practically no overhead when creating melody. It's kind of like rolling the dice.

Harmony is limited to a 3 pitch 'structure' and as the melody must be used in the same form each time, again allowing for transpositions. The reason for these limitations is they are well founded for use in creating tension in film music and work every single time. It's a 'tool' for our belt we can use to create tension without a lot of work.

Projects are becoming more and more dense and complicated, portions of one class now bleed over into one or more others like a web. Managing my homework / project schedule is now almost as complex as my course load.

Today was the worst case of 'Fuckitall' I've had yet. Last nights homework for Logic and Studio Technology was all over the fucking place, nothing worked the way I wanted it to and everything I wrote sounded like shit. In today's classes, Logic and Sibelius, the instructors were on speed, I'm convinced they were moving three times as fast as usual, I couldn't keep up with anything. By the time they were over I was on the verge of a full on panic attack, fortunately Jenn was there to pull me off the ledge and remind me who I am.  

Then, I had a meeting with my newest composition advisor and I had convinced myself that what I had prepared for him was garbage. I was totally ready to just give up. However, my meeting went way better than expected and tonight I wrote what I consider to be some of my best work to date! 

So up and down and up again, imposter syndrome barking at me from the shadows.

Tonight was definitely better than last night.

Week 14 - Back at it - New Classes / Feedback on Strings Session

Started new classes this quarter. Logic replaces Digital Performer as the new DAW, which I'm fine with, I hated working with DP. Unfortunately there is still one facet of the program that requires me to use DP until gradation, it's either the only or the best at setting up the click track the sound booth uses during the recording session. 

Sibelius replaces Finale as the Notation Software we use, again, fine with that as I have only used Finale since version 1 came out in 1989. Sibelius is fine on its own I guess, but I'm not starting over with a new program after 35 years. :-) 

Studio Technology is a new addition (I may have mentioned it already) and is rapidly becoming a favorite of mine! This class covers so much stuff. We use Pro Tools (Another DAW) which we will go into greater depth next quarter. Yesterday's assignment was to take existing voice over and music and cut a 60 second radio spot. This was both enjoyable and quite easy as I spent the last 10 years editing VO and Video as my career. We also cover sound engineering, recording studio hardware and software, sound design, signal processing, et cetera. You may ask, "What does that have to do with writing music?" and you would be right to ask. A good portion of commercial music today is written solely with computers and instrument sampling libraries. This is a vital skill for anyone who wants to survive in the music world today.

Advanced MIDI 1 is also new, and leads me to believe there will be an Advanced MIDI 2 at some point. We cover modular synthesis, computer score mockups and how to make them sound VERY realistic, and other electronic goodies. This week I created 2 brand new sounds using a software modular synthesizer and then used those sounds alongside more traditional orchestral instruments to write a piece of music. This was fun, but a ton of work if you have never used modular synths before.

Got my official grade and feedback from the Strings session. I was surprised and humbly gratified to see the 'A' and read feedback from the 3 composer / instructors that graded the assignment! Musically I nailed it! The only feedback was that my theme development could have made 'more musical sense'. I also dropped a point for turning in an audio sample as a .wav file instead of the .mp3 they asked for. 

Currently working on a theme for a Psychological Thriller (Think Basic Instinct) for woodwind septet. (2 Flutes, 2 Oboes one doubles on English Horn, 2 Clarinets one doubles on Bass Clarinet and 1 Bassoon) For those who may not understand doubling, 1 of the Oboe players can play either Oboe or English Horn at any given time. We are employing a very specific and specialized form of harmony known as Chromatic Voice Leading (CVL), which basically means a series of chords that have at least one pitch in common with the chords on either side of it. We're also using Out Of Scale Chromatics (OOSC) to create completely freaky sounding melodies. Look up Basic Instinct Main Theme by Jerry Goldsmith on a streaming platform or You Tube, he uses both CVL and OOSC heavily in that score, particularly the main theme. Moving on to a new clue also means a new composition advisor, it's refreshing and quite frankly necessary to work with and receive feedback from more than one contemporary. 

Feeling very positive this week.

So yeah, the new year brings new / fun challenges and approval of my work from professional peers.

Week 13 - New Year - Audio from recording session

So, I've had a few weeks to mull things over. I don't know what happened after the session. I had no real reason to be disappointed, yet I was. Now that I've sat on it for a while, I listened to the recording again and seem to be (for the moment at least) happy with it.

I don't remember if I relayed the specifics of this cue (piece of music) so I'll recap.

We wrote a cue for a Romantic Comedy and were allowed to use exiting ROM COMs as examples. The instrumentation was fixed; the melody was played by a soprano sax, the texture (accompaniment) was 7 violins, 3 violas, 2 cellos and 1 double bass. 

Over the course of three weeks I met with a composition advisor to go over my current work and make changes he felt were necessary, the cue was carefully crafted a bit at a time and was eventually approved to be recorded.

Well, you know what happened Thursday before the session and Friday of (if you've read my previous posts that is) so no need to cover that again. 

I've put the recording up on my Patreon page in front of the pay wall so you can listen even if you are not a subscribing patron.

Find it here: David Checketts Music Patreon