Follow my journey as I compose a piece of audio to compliment an animator's character showcase...
Jeleesa Johannessen is a budding animator who is currently creating four characters that she plans on showcasing. To compliment the visual aspect, she has requested for a piece of audio to sit behind a video of her animations spinning. She originally mentioned she would like it to be reminiscent of a fairy-tale, of less than a minute in length. Below is a progress shot of the characters she sent me for inspiration; a demon, a griffin, an anonymous creature, and a skeleton-horse character.
Upon seeing these characters, I immediately got dark or mystical vibes. Considering the purpose of the audio, I proposed a dark, ambient piece of music. Jeleesa confirmed that this was aligned with her thoughts, and suggested the music could 'flow between light and dark' to represent the different character personalities. To gain a better understanding of what sort of audio she had in mind, I asked for some reference tracks, and she happily obliged with the following:
Amongst her references I noticed a few tracks from the How to Train Your Dragon soundtrack. As such, I decided to dissect the one above in a DECOMPRESSION blog, to better understand how such a track is composed. I noticed through this exercise that the song doesn't adhere to a regular song structure; rather it morphs and changes over time, repeating some sections with additional instruments to create a different feel. By analysing her other reference tracks, I noticed a common theme of modulated ambience, and haunting choir sounds.
Consequently, with all of this inspiration directing my task, I got to work and shortlisted a bunch of appropriate sounds. These included including ambient pads, choir sounds, random percussive samples, and a piano reminiscent of the Schizophrenia track. To provide a mystical fairy-tale element I also chose to include chimes, mapped to a MIDI keyboard, and recorded what was produced when I ran my finger down the keys with a 'misplaced' echo on each note for realism.
Whilst compiling these sounds I ended up placing 4 of these chimes, one at the beginning of each 16 bars, to represent each new character. I then filled in the middle of these sections, differently for each one, by stacking additional instruments to create movement in the piece. A lot of reverb was used on the piano to sit it hauntingly distant in the mix, and the chimes were included in some sections slowed down for an additional eery effect. In the end, after much playing around, I came up with this piece of music as a scratch track to send to Jeleesa for feedback:
Jeleesa loved what I had created, commenting that I had managed to capture everything she sent me as reference. She also liked that I had created 4 separate sections for each character, rather than just one piece of audio for less than a minute. Whilst she is not yet sure how long her final product will be, I created the audio in such a way that when she nears completion, I would be able to cut out 8 bars from each section if necessary.
After some time, she got back to me with an updated edit of her video, which ran for around 32 seconds. Consequently, it was back to the drawing board to rearrange the session to suit. I aimed to do this in such a way that left all of the elements she liked remaining. After much cutting and pasting, and a little EQ applied, I ended up with this as a final deliverable:
With Jeleesa's project plan running overtime, she has not yet completed her final asset. As such, I am still awaiting feedback on whether this will be acceptable to sync with her associated video. There is a chance she will need the length adjusted again, or perhaps may have other suggestions for the production. For now I have provided all the encouragement and support I can offer; so I must eagerly await her response, happy to work with her to obtain the best possible outcome.
Stay Tuned
- TA
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