This one took about 3 weeks in total due to commitments in University coming round. Having to juggle studies and an online life is tough, so I might decide to take a break from gaming for awhile. The piece this time contains a tad of irony for those of you that know me personally. But less of that and more of the song.
Description:
The story this time is about a group of air cadets getting their promotion, revelling in the new heights of the sky they are able to fly in and finally passing on that dream to a younger version of themselves when they return home. A short work, the piece describes an imaginary world where the ideals of men in the army triumph over the shortcomings of the people inside of it.
Analysis:
I went for a different style in composing this song this time. Focusing on the conversation between the strings and the brass, a round robin style is adopted in passing the melody starting from the middle range strings to the higher range strings and finally the brass. A solo then comes in for the strings to bring out the emotional scene within the hearts of the people graduating. That solo is then answered by the climax of the song which contains rich textures and heavy involvement of the brass instruments --- A stark contrast to the beginning of the song. At this point the theme of the song is more developed and becomes more memoriable. This is the point where the new warriors soar through the air with their new wings, both physically and mentally. This memorable experience of their first flight is captured in a clearly defined theme at this point. The last phrase is a solo flute section which echoes the theme in a softer voice, representing the scene of a child looking up wishfully to become a warrior some day. The song ends on a bombastic note, as though the child has found something that foreshadows his taking up of the mantle some day in the distant future.
The song this time has a very militaristic feel to it ---from the strong beats of the timpani to the patriotic sounds of the brass instruments. Some point halfway through the song, the piece sheds it's chordial nature and focuses more on the melody of the song at the climax. The piece adopts high leaps between notes in the beginning of the climax to give this uplifting feeling of soaring in the sky. Here the instruments all enter in full glory as though celebrating the act of being with the sky. I borrowed the feeling I get while playing Japanese pieces in the band back in Junior College here. Thus the instruments become more of a voice in the story rather than the background in the climax. I've always loved to write something emotional and melodious at the same time, so I'm happy to be able to sneak in such a style midway to the song. This style is a stark contrast to today's film music style which carries quite a bit of chords to colour the background of the film, rather than using the music to help tell the story. It would be nice if I could develop my style a bit more to incorporate ideas from both schools of thought.
Mixing:
This is a new section for today that needs to be added since considerable amount of time (1 week) went into personally mixing and cleaning the audio. This time round I culled off the lower frequency noises (up to 1kHz) to mix the sound specially for headphones. Lots of the lower brass and percussion instruments gave off a lot of excess signals upon ending a note. This lead to the overall master track becoming too hot at times. Culling these lower frequency sounds allowed for the more audible range of sounds to be processed and thus lead to a cleaner audio track. I did cull off a bit of the higher frequency ranges because I suspected there might be some signals I'm unable to hear that were cluttering the audio, but as of yet I'm uncertain of the effects. A trick I'm currently using is to reduce the volume (by a few db) of certain regions that are too hot using the ChannelStrip plugin provided by Pro Tools 11. It seems to allow for a greater amount of instruments to be heard at the climax without compromising the overall effect. Had to make use of the "depth" option to prevent the volume from dropping too low however. Over the next few days that I'm free I'll experiment and see what should be done to make the same effect on a stereo system.
That's it for today! With university coming up and a few promised projects I may be posting less of my work here till time allows again. Look forward to the next one because my style may have changed by then. :)
