Week #44 - Horror

Here is my, dare I say, appropriately themed song for this week:



Description:

This began life a something ambient, background music, but gradually I tried upping the spook factor until it grew into a monster. It's definitely a mood piece, and that mood is creepy. I was sort of thinking in a horror movie soundtrack direction - not really a slasher film or gore-fest, but more of a nightmare thriller, almost psychadelic, lost-in-the-woods-on-a-bad-trip territory. At least that's where my head was...

Tools:

Propellerhead Record 1/Reason 4
Garritan Personal Orchestra Refill

Read more...

Notes:

- I began this piece by exploring harmonies. An orchestra patch I'd put together using the sample sets in Garritan's Personal Orchestra Refill seemed an appropriate sound for some spooky backing chords, so I played around with closely clustered triads spread over a two (or more) octave range. I kept things slow (60bpm) and sustained (whole notes).

- I started by moving about chromatically from cluster to cluster keeping the intervals the same for each one. I liked this 4 bar phrase:
Cmaj9 | Dbmaj9 | Dmaj9 | Ebmaj9 |
though I eventually moved the last chord up a semitone to Emaj9.

- Next I tried variations on this progression until I had a handful that sounded interesting and appropriate to me:
Cmaj9 | Dbmaj9 | Dmaj13 | Amaj7 |
Cmaj9 | Bmaj7/A# | Bmaj9 | Am maj7 |
Dmaj7b9 | B9/C# | Caug | Cm |
C b9 | Cbm9/Eb | Bb/D | Am/C |
Dmaj7 | Dbmaj7b9 | B #9/D | C/E |

- Next I arranged these shorter progressions into a single 24 bar progression, still just as sustained chords:
Cmaj9 | Dbmaj9 |Dmaj9 | Emaj9 |
Cmaj9 | Bmaj7/A# | Bmaj9 | Am maj7 |
C b9 | Cbm9/Eb | Bb/D | Am/C |
Dmaj7 | Dbmaj7b9 | B #9/D | C/E |
Dmaj7b9 | B9/C# | Caug | Cm |
Cmaj9 | Dbmaj9 | Dmaj13 | Amaj7 |

- At this point, I was glad I'd used the full orchestra patch because it was much easier to just add the melody/ornamentation/etc. around these chords on a single piano roll. This helped keep things organized with these crazy chords and meant I didn't have to work as much on a mix and had more time on MIDI editing.

- I was going to leave it as is and just render the orchestra part, but it didn't really excite me.

- The first part I added was the bass vamp. I thought with all the crazy harmonies, a vamp would work underneath things driving the piece forward and forming a foundation (in Am) for the chords. Instead of starting the piece with teh vamp however, I decided to wait adn bring it in after the initial 4-bar progression.

- Next up, I moved what I guess is the melody from the orchestra to the high end of a very wobbly hammond organ patch that I had put together in Reason awhile back. I felt this gave the part the right sound to cut through and heighten the tension.

- I decided on two more parts based on patches I'd made previously. The first was a stereo vibes patch, and the second was this delayed percussive synth noise. For both of these parts, I improvised full takes until I got one I liked. It didn't take long as the piece is so dissonant, there isn't really a harmonic center so pretty much anything goes - the less it sounded "right" the better in this instance.

- After that I just set levels, and mixed it down. I could spend an eternity tweaking things, and I'd love to take the parts and really orchestrate them, but I decided to just keep it as is so that I could work on other pieces and get myself caught up with this project. Hopefully, I can post two songs by the end of next week and be back on track for the last 2 months!


Share on Facebook