BlazingDragon Posted May 20, 2012 Share Posted May 20, 2012 Mural OST - Drifting http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/486325 An animation student recently messaged me asking if I could rearrange a piece of mine called Drifting for a short film he is developing. While I've had a number of pieces used in videos and flash games, this is the first time that I've went the opposite direction and set music to film. It was a lot more difficult than I imagined, because synching the music to the visual cues created all kinds of headaches with timing. I had to take a nearly five minute piece and boil it down to two figuring out which parts were relevant to the short film and which were extraneous. In the film there is a significant visual cue where the entire mood changes, and I was desperately trying to get the music to fit up to that point. I had a sixteen bar phrase preceding it but ending up several seconds short. Slowing down the tempo to compensate sounded ridiculous forcing me to recompose much of the piece. I had to change the harmonic rhythm to get something like an 18 bar phrase. All of this was challenging but also an enormous amount of fun. I can't wait to score more films now. The video might be submitted to film festivals, so I can't link to it for a few months. Also, I improvised the piano part at the beginning and end, but everything in the middle is sequenced with mouse/keyboard. Constructive criticisms or other thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chee Zeee Posted May 21, 2012 Share Posted May 21, 2012 my only complaint is that it seems overly compressed. about a minute in is the change of mood, but it's almost the same volume as everything before it, the bass drum and the cymbals should be ear rapingly overpoweringly loud. a piano playing softly is very very very very quiet in a large concert hall, a piano playing loudly is rather quite (somewhere between a section of violas and the 2nd violins perhaps). The percussions would easily be 1.5x as loud if this piece were to be performed. I don't 'feel' the music as much as hear it. That being said, what I am hearing is sonic bliss, definitely have skillz to pay da billz. Good piano as well man, this cat is jelly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlazingDragon Posted May 21, 2012 Author Share Posted May 21, 2012 my only complaint is that it seems overly compressed. about a minute in is the change of mood, but it's almost the same volume as everything before it, the bass drum and the cymbals should be ear rapingly overpoweringly loud. a piano playing softly is very very very very quiet in a large concert hall, a piano playing loudly is rather quite (somewhere between a section of violas and the 2nd violins perhaps). The percussions would easily be 1.5x as loud if this piece were to be performed. I don't 'feel' the music as much as hear it. That being said, what I am hearing is sonic bliss, definitely have skillz to pay da billz. Good piano as well man, this cat is jelly. Thank you for the helpful advice. I have a decent grasp of music theory and composition but know next to nothing about mastering. The mood change did feel less satisfying after compression but I couldn't put my finger on why. Is it probably better to not even compress orchestral music in most cases? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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