Have you ever copied a technique you've heard on a score, how did you go about doing it, and how did it turn out?
I'll go first. I'm working on a film at the moment, and the temp has these cool, time-stretched cello pizzs. I hate copying temp so I tried a load of ways to get a similar sound through prepared piano/other pizz techniques, but nothing was working. That deep, wobbly sound was definitely the one the scene needed. So I started crafting cello lines, bouncing them, and then stretching them and manipulating them (playing with pitch, reverb, delay, removing the attack from the notes, etc). Even though I borrowed the technique, it sounds really different to the temp because of how I've constructed the harmony and the rest of the cue.
Would love to hear other people's experiences with copying techniques, and how it turned out.
I try almost every day to perfect my crafts and study where I flopped,But one thing I like is to do Unique Products
Just happened - director yesterday gave me a temp track. I copied the tempo, key (i just hate A minor ! :) ) and the feel. I gave him three different melodies. He picked one. I orchestrated it last night and sent to him this morning. He said: (1) sounds too "Russian", (2) he didn't like the melody and it had too many notes, (3) didn't want the snare (the temp track had a snare) and (4) uses the wrong 'bass' drum instrument. Mea culpa! Sometimes I get one of these.... just rolled with the punches :). I told him I am headed to a dentist appointment and if he wants a different melody, just hum it into my voice mail. I am so glad the film has an 11am deadline tomorrow (Fri). Good news for me is after 30+ films, this will be my first scored animation.
P.S. - Deadline was today and they decided to go without the snare but kept the Timpani. The 'final' problem became the 'stiching'. There was no transition between the Aminor track/cue and the next cue which followed immediately. The director noticed there was no simple transition from A minor to the next cue in G major. I should have created a more effective modulation at the end of the A minor cue but we had no time and changing the length of the cue would have required a bunch of other modifications and resyncs. So I did the most 'expedient' thing to make the transition less 'rough' - I transposed the whole A minor cue down a major 2nd to G minor and ended the previous cue before with a dominant D7 :)
@Joel excellent stuff! Glad you managed to get the transition sorted ok with a cheeky transposition.
Interesting that you gave the director melody options, he selected one, but then decided it had too many notes in the next draft. Did the number of notes change at all between the versions, or was it purely an orchestration issue?
I had similar experience to your snare drum one once. The reference music for a film I was on was full of tremolando strings, so, I used trem strings as part of the score. I also used atmospheric synth and piano so the strings weren't prominent, more like waves of trem under the melody. The director said the music sounded scary but couldn't tell me what about it sounded scary to her (it didn't sound scary to me). We went back and forwards for two weeks trying to figure out what was "scary" in her interpretation, until we finally figured out that for her trem strings- in any context- were automatically the sound of horror movies. Despite having them in most tracks on the reference playlist. It re-enforced to me how everyone brings their own understanding, musical history and interpretation to a piece of music, and I've certainly got better at understanding how to translate what a director says, and what they actually mean when they offer a critique, because of it; but at the time it was very frustrating for us both!
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I am so glad the deadline for both films was yesterday at 11a pdt. He wanted long half note melody notes by his humming. I met him in the middle with a mixture of 1/2, 1/4 and 1/16. As far as the snare drum, I went with a 'substitute' - groups of triplets in the string section played 'detache'.
We don't normally publicize our stuff in this lounge so if you go to my recent profile post, you will see links to the scores for both "Storm Watch" and "Love Like A Hero" (the film in the above discussion). After 32 films, I finally got a chance to score my first animated short (on the homeless in LA). The films will premiere at the 168 festival which is virtual/online this year from Nov 15 to 20, 2021.