Music Composition

I worked on a music composition a couple of quarters ago.  Our parameters for this involved using no musical sounds whatsoever.  This is known typically as Musique Concrete.  It requires a lot of attention to detail and a lot of fine tuning of many sounds to get each sound to function properly within the tune.  I started out by recording a handful of random knickknacks from my garage and bedroom. I used things such as glass bottles, metal water containers, jars of screws and nails, a butane torch, and even the sound of water running.  On top of that we were allowed to synthesize sounds together using an old fashioned Analog Synthesizer, which works on making physical patches to get specific sounds.  I recorded about an hour of different patchwork with that, and that provided me with many of my layers which I used to provide rhythm to the piece.  The fun of music concrete is really manipulating the samples to change their sounds into something completely different than what they originally were.   Using time expansion and compression I took many different sounds and sped them up, and others I slowed down to add more ambience to the piece.  Lining the samples up with each other amongst the whole piece was very time consuming, and it took a lot of creativity to really get some magic to happen.  We weren’t allowed to use any real plug-ins for this project either besides basic EQ and compression.  This added another layer of difficulty in making these sounds stand out without adding any high level effects such as flanging or chorus effects.  Arranging a three and a half minute piece sample by sample is definitely tedious, but the ultimate outcome of the piece was exceptional.

ADR and 5.1 Mixing

 

This is a piece I’ve been working on currently and is coming along quite nicely.  I found a short film online that has some good dialogue in it called Expo.  I gutted the entire piece after gaining permission from the films creator and sound designed the piece from the ground up.  The most important thing for a piece like this is the dialogue, and getting great sounding recordings that match the lips of the characters in the film.  To achieve this you must have your voice actor loop the dialogue until it matches the appropriate tone of the piece and the character they are portraying.  Because all of the characters are in space helmets throughout the piece I am working on, some filtering with EQ must be done to make their voices sound like they are indeed in a helmet.  For the voice of the computer I recorded my own voice for the very short lines, and using elastic audio compressed the time slightly so that the voice sounds more like a computer.  I added some little flanging and some pretty drastic EQ-ing to get the perfect sound.  After listening to it back I find it hard to believe that it was once my voice. Realizing that, I knew that I had done well.  Casting the right voices for the characters is one of the hardest parts about the ADR process.  So far my two actresses for this piece are doing great, and I am excited about the final product.  This will also end up being my 5.1 mixing project which I’m very excited about. 

Sound Design and Music Composition

This is one piece that turned out fantastic despite being given few tools to work with.  The object was to sound design completely from scratch a scene from an old science fiction movie.  We were not allowed to use any canned sounds and everything had to be created using only sound synthesis.  I chose an old classic, War of the Monsters and found the perfect monster fight scene to recreate. 

The most unique part about this piece that I enjoyed doing the most was creating the monsters different roars that they do throughout the battle.  I did this by layering several distorted sounds from the Vacuum plug-in in Pro Tools.  I then modified them by putting them the various pitch shifters, flangers, and to add the larger than life sound I put them through some reverbs.  The results turned out fantastically. 

Creating the ordinary sounds was actually the hardest part of the process.  Without Foley as an option I had to get creative and create footsteps out of different low bass drum pads. With some careful EQ work I managed to get them to sound like real footsteps instead of what they originally were.

For the music I wanted something that would match the otherwise cheesy puppets fighting. With that in mind I composed some fairly basic chord structures that helped move the action forward, and they added the proper tension to the piece.

Given all of the time I put into the project I’m definitely proud that it turned out so well. After sound designing this piece I feel like I can create sounds for any occasion or piece.

Commercial Production Piece

This particular piece of my reel is my Commercial Production.  I came up with the concept of a commercial that makes fun of some of the goofy energy drink commercials out there, especially 5 hour energy drinks.  I recorded all the audio in a pro tools session and I shot, edited, and color corrected the entire piece myself.  The hardest part was getting the voice over to match along with what was happening on the screen.  I found the music on firstcom.com and as soon as I heard it I knew it was the perfect fit for my piece.  I used some goofy wipes throughout it very similar to how that energy drinks commercials work.  It’s definitely a comedic piece.  

 When the main character first drinks his coffee and the black and white editing flips to full color was a lot of fun to put that particular part together.  I edited the piece with Avid Media Composer, a hefty program but I’m very comfortable working within it, and especially color correcting it as well.  The footage was shot with a P2 camera, and didn’t use any audio from the shoot because of the fact that it was to parody energy drink commercials.  I recorded the dialogue for the voice over using Pro Tools 10 and a Sterling Audio ST-51 condenser microphone.  I did some light mixing on the voice and it was ready.  Getting the music at the perfect level was probably the hardest part of the whole thing. I’m very happy with how this piece turned out, and is probably the highest quality editing work I’ve done to date.