I try my hand at composing an orchestral backing track for an animated fight scene...
Another local animator, Stephen Mazza, has reached out to collaborate. Bringing with him his first draft of an animated fight scene, he has requested a backing track of roughly 30 seconds in length to work with.
To obtain some direction, I requested a reference track, which Stephen provided in the form of battle music from the game Skyrim. Immediately I drew similarities to a lot of orchestral-type scores from games and movies. It was interesting, all of this time hearing this style of music around me, and yet never quite paying attention more than realising that it was emotive or 'moving'.
From this I went straight to Ableton, inserted MIDI tracks, designed a few Samplers (see how in my SHARPEN UP blog on Samplers), and utilised the Impulse instrument to stack samples to create unique instruments suitable for my virtual orchestra. After hours lost in the void of a computer room, I emerged with this as a scratch track to send for feedback:
Normally, I would like to spend more time both researching and working on my projects, however with extreme time limitations, I had to work within the schedule I had set myself. Fortunately, Stephen was happy with what I had created, and even seemed surprised that I wanted to work on it more. He had nothing that he particularly wanted changed, so moving forwards I just had to tidy up some notes that stood out to me in the string section as not fitting, tidy up some EQ, and add some percussion.
I also played with the instruments location in the stereo field. Using the blow image as a rough guide, I arranged each of the instruments accordingly, before balancing it out to my ears.
In the end I was I was happy with what I had produced, and linked it to Stephen as my final asset. Check out the final product:
Stephen was impressed and thanked me for spending the extra time on it. Another successful colab, out of The Co-Lab!
Stay Tuned
- TA
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