In the past few months I learned more than I could ever imagine. Allthough I already finished a lot of sound design, there was still a huge load of work to do for me. The entire music score had to be written, the entire mixdown had to be done, every sound had to fit together. In the meanwhile some shots had changed or new shots suddenly popped up, like the robot opening his wrist on the deck of the ship. Long story short: a HUGE amount of work. This was a great challenge.
Rob, Remco and I had decided the film would need an extra for the music. Something special. We all agreed that it needed some ‘handmade’ music to make it real. We started looking for opportunities to achieve this. We were in need of a guitar sound, a horn, a trumpet and an electronic bass. After searching around for a while, Tjerk de Groot, my consultant teacher had the idea to let us work with some of his students of the Enschede conservatory, ArtEZ. Over there we had the opportunity to make a professional recording. Something I had never done before! Eventually we found all instruments and their artists.
Let me tell you about the pictures above. They are shot in the process of creating the music score. I didnt capture more photos of the sound design, because I already showed a lot of how I did that in the past on this blog.
Photo #1: At the conservatory of Enschede, ArtEZ, I met Koen Cramer and Daan Scholten. Those two guys were asked by Tjerk and knew how to control the big recording studio’s in the building. Koen also supported me with some musical feedback on my scores every once in a while. In this photo, you can see him on the chair in the back with his Macbook. The woman coming through the door is Rianne. She is the one who played the horn for us. If you look closely, you can see she is carrying the instrument with her. The guy in the front is me, and the bald man is Remco.
Photo #2: Since I didnt have much experience with studio’s this big, I decided to watch and learn. Daan told me about the studio and how certain things worked. While recording the horn, I gave instructions to Rianne. We played the score I created before, which contained some synthetic horns, and we asked her to play along with this. At this point I discovered that the lines I created in a software program, were almost impossible to play for a real, physical horn player. Eventually we decided she could take it a few notes down so she had some breath left to give it some push at certain points.
Photo #3: One of the most kind and enthusiastic guys I ever met is Nick de Vos. He played the electronic bass for us. As I played the score for him, which didn’t contain a synthesized bass this time, I gave him instructions on which push it should have. As you might notice in the picture, this studio was far less complicated to handle compared to the big studio. This gave me the opportunity to record and save takes myself. Of course I didn’t do this all by myself. Koen and Daan already established the recording setup for Nick and they told me how to handle the software, which was Pro Tools. Luckliy, this project forced me to use some kind of professional DAW, so I was already familiar with Steinberg Cubase, which is similar to Pro Tools in many ways.
Photo #4: Back to Cubase for some needed changes in the Sound FX!
Photo #5: Annndd switch to my home studio! Over here my ears are completely used to the sound. This allowed me to create the perfect mixdown. Allthough you might not expect it, I worked out the music in Fruity Loops 11. When it comes to making music, this software has a way easier way of handling the tempo, bars, melodies, midi’s and so on. This is why I decided to combine FL and Cubase. At the conservatory I used Pro Tools, so this project already made me use three different DAW’s!
Photo #6: Just a log of the music process in FL. This is only the master project and it already took me 36 hours! Imagine all those little side projects that are bounced and included in the master project. I think I worked over 60 hours on the music in the studio only! By the way, the file says I started the project in June, but back then we didnt even have plans to record real instruments. I think I started some small ideas on this day and eventually worked in this project all the time.
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