Over the last weekend, we had to choose a video of our choice to do a score on. We also had to make a 6-week production schedule of a projected plan. Over this last week, I got a big start on my project doing most of my work with the MIDI and audio tracks using Logic Pro 8. I am very pleased with the extensive library of synths and all kinds of instrument and effects plugins. I am going with a video that is a CGI adventure in space, floating away from planet earth. It is the intro scene from the movie Contact. The instrumentation will be drums, a harp, a string section, and a guitar. I want to make these instruments sound like they’re floating in space, and I want to have different instruments represent different planets and themes that are happening in the video. Adding the right amount of the right type of reverb will help define the spatial atmosphere. I came up with many great ideas this week for my video. As planets are going by the screen and floating away, I want them to have a huge rumbling sound. To get this effect I knew that either a pre-recorded sound effect or a lot of reverb would do the trick. I decided to create my own sound effect with a lot of reverb. I was messing with a kick drum with a reverb on it. I set the reverb to have an infinite length. I turned the input of the dry kick signal all the way down, and fed the reverb with a 100% wet signal. The resulting sound was an explosion with the attack of the kick, followed by a tail and sustain of very low sub bass frequencies. This sound was going to be perfect for the sound of the planets going by, as I can automate the bass sound to swell up and down in volume as the planets are closer and fade down when they drift away. I recorded this sound of the MIDI kick and its reverb to an audio track, and that was my sample. I finished the “rumbling” automation for the whole video that is 2:45 in length. A few meteor showers fly by and I wanted to capture a sound effect for those too, so I played around with some synthesizers in Logic Pro 8. I found a cool air swell patch that was just what the video needed. I played around with a few chords on the harp patch I was going use, and decided to base the music for my movie around the C SUS4 chord. To me this suspension chord creates a sense of tension and release, and is always very close to a solid resolution, keeping the emotion moving and interesting for this particular video. I recorded a phrase in 11/4 for the harp, on the keyboard. I then programmed a drum beat to that, using a standard drum kit, with a kick/snare/crash/hi-hat/ride/toms. In order to make the kit sound like it was in space and not in a studio or quiet room, I bussed the output of the midi tracks to a single aux track as drum mix. Then I created a send from that channel to additional aux track to be used for effects processing on the drum kit. I introduce the music as a fade in representing planet earth, and as Earth floats off in the distance, I automated the volume parameter with a downward slope, and gradually increased the wet mix setting on the reverb, and it gave a really cool effect. There is a part in the video that looks like space is being engulfed by flames, and I wanted to find a huge, fiery sound. I decided to take a rain patch from a synth in Protools, and created a swell, pushing more notes down as the fire got thicker. It sounded too much like rain, so I added a reverb and a distortion plug-in to it to make it sound like a raging firestorm. What I like to call little blue ice stars fly by at one point. In this part of the video, I want everything to be silent, more resembling a space atmosphere. I was looking for a wind-swishing type sound, and used the same air-space sound that I used to introduce the film. A very short guitar riff that has a space reverb as well really fills things out. I set up auxiliary tracks for every instrument so they could have a separate channel for all of the effects and automation. The strings fill out a nice layer and they are characteristic of floating in the clouds. I added a really high-pitched choir patch for a “wonder-invoking” effect, and kept it really low in the mix. All in all I have a total of 27 tracks being used for this score.