Hey all
Been a while since I have posted, but have been so snowed under with projects going on.
Have been busy on three in total, one on the overall soundtrack for sfx work, another for sound in video games and this one here, the Score to a film.
Now keep in mind, these are all university projects for my Masters in Sound Design so won't be used in any future releases.
Now as I last updated, I started working on my own interpretation for the score for the 2015 film Crumbs, a post-apocalyptic film set in Ethiopia.
Having watched the sequence I had to consider how I wished the sound to come across. Would it be minimalistic, tranquil and slow, or a full orchestral piece with lots of layering and texturing of the instrumentation?
For me, I felt the harp was the way to go, I've heard it performed solo a number of times now, and it also plays quite a part in film scoring today as well. Jerry Goldsmith used it as the lead instrument for the film Star Trek: Insurrection before the full orchestra kicks in and Michael Giacchino used Harp and Violin within the new Batman score to great effect.
Drafting of the score was done in Pro Tools, and above is the midi editor page, showing the scoring for Violin showing the notes, duration and velocity of the key presses. The same process was also used for Harp.
Now the lovely thing with many Digital Audio Work Stations. They have a Score Editor mode as well. So for those that can read and write musical notation then that is available.
As we can see here from the first page of the score, it shows the lead harp and violin accompaniment.
Now anyone that can read music, please excuse any errors, I'm not musically trained! Audio engineer trying his hand at composition for the first time!
After the initial scoring was complete, it was time to head into the studio. Where we have the use of, well this Mac DAW setup.
Feeling quite lucky on this one I was able to find a harp player who is studying traditional music within the University who was more than happy to take part.
If anyone is curious about the mics, I have KM184's in XY close-mic pairs and Behringer B-5's in A-B Omni to pick up the room sound.
What we have here is the recording of the harp within the Pro Tools session. With the top two being the close mics and the lower two being the room mics, which should be visible the differences in the waveform size.
Now I imagine you might be wondering what it all sounds like, so I've included a small segment to hear, and please be kind!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XCIsxmyCKlLIyHMGkr63tdpYEKAAPzZX/view?usp=sharing
This will open up in a new window so just be aware of that.
Anyhow, that was a little insight into one of the projects I've done this year so far!
edit for correct audio link
