When I finish putting together a track for a game (or any track, really), I’ve got a well-mixed version that I wouldn’t mind listening to, but I often have to crank up the volume or play with it a little bit to be able to jam rightfully.  Additionally, if I sent this track to a game developer, they probably wouldn’t be very happy with how the track looped in the game (assuming it to be used in a looping manner, of course).  So how do you fix this?  Well, have a listen and follow the jump to learn more!

Right at the beginning of the track “Oblivion,” you should hear a pretty obvious soundscape preceding what feels like the first beat of the song, combined with a crack of thunder.  However, you won’t quite hear this same start in the game – instead, the song starts right up on that first beat.  For even the simplest loop to sound correct you have to align your seams very carefully, a trick which is pretty easy to pull off.

When I’ve got my song finished in its premastered form, I bounce the entire thing to a separate WAVE (or sometimes to be efficient I bounce it to a track within my DAW that I put on solo and apply my effects chain to).  Either way you work is fine, but you should have your premastered uncompressed audio, including about 4-5 seconds of trailing audio (or whatever it takes to capture your ‘reverb trail’ – the trail of sound that comes naturally after your last notes that include delays and reverbs, or natural sample releases like you’ll find in EWQLSO).

To make an efficient loopseam, you should make sure you stick pretty close to your bar-grid and split the audio at the first beat of the measure that follows your last measure of music.  Then, to create your in-game loop, push the start of your reverb tail, or the second half of the split audio, to the very beginning of your audio.  You’ll end up with layered sound of the beginning of your track and the reverb trail.  Now, in many cases, you’ll find that when playing your song from the beginning the reverb trail is actually a noticeable sonic entity and is really quite gross.  This is where you may find yourself tampering with the time that you cutoff – sometimes I have to add some ambient effects or change last music at the end to get a proper loop, but either way you do it you have to be extremely careful and pay close attention to your loop.

Marsh Hell (D2) is an early example of “Oblivion” that demonstrates how it appears in-game, with a more sudden and abrupt ending – you’ll find that it loops seamlessly.  The way I create the soundtrack versions (yes they are separate versions) of the music is by manually looping and finding a good fadeout point.  This can be tedious, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

As for mastering your music to give it more of an ‘edge,’ there really is no single bit of advice that can be given.  Different genres of music call for severely different approaches, but I’ll go through a quick runthrough of my mastering chain for many of the GunGirl 2 tracks.

I start with some slight EQ, to add a little sparkle, boost the bass if needed, and turn down the muddy regions in the 200hz area – however, when I say ‘slight,’ I mean it in the same way I said I applied effects earlier – I rarely boost or cut more than 1dB, but stay closer to .5dB on average.  Really, all EQing should be done per track before this point.  A high-pass filter at 20hz isn’t a terrible idea, and cutting everything about 25,000hz isn’t an awful idea either.  (Purists will tell you 20khz is the high-end to cut at, but I also like to have a little elbow room)

I follow with dynamic multiband compression in subtle amounts – I don’t like to overcompress and using multiband compression can often skew your previously sparkly mix – I usually find a preset I like as a good start and toy from there, and once I’m happy, again, I crank down the mix % of the compressor.

Stereo imaging and harmonic exciters are also in play, but as I’ve also said before, generous panning and EQ before the mastering stage let’s me avoid cranking those too high.  What I -do- recommend is removing all stereo width below your 80hz subbass frequency, to really give tight kick and bass sounds.

The last step is my favorite step, and I admittedly probably abuse this a little: The limiter / loudness maximizer.  It’s smart to cap your mix around -0.3dB or -0.2dB, but never, EVER, EVER set your margin to 0.0dB as that will register as clipping to a lot of editors (like Audacity).  And like I said already, ELBOW ROOM IS GOOD.  You can set your threshold to whatever you like, and it will vary per mix, but make sure you end up with a consistent sound across your album.  Make sure your using as transparent a limiter as possible, because you don’t want to know it’s there – I prefer Izotope oZone for pretty much all of these steps, but there are plenty of free ones that can give you a decent sound.

Last but not least is dithering, and I pay careful attention to letting my mastering suite do it instead of my DAW (which means I export with NO dithering from the DAW and dither in my mastering chain).

There are more than plenty of good resources on mastering on the web, especially if you’re going to be using oZone, so I encourage you to read around in multiple places before you get your feet too wet, but then again, most learning is done by doing.

Next time, I’ll be giving away all my secrets to distribution, and tell you how it’s possible to make a little money off of even a freeware soundtrack.

Well, there have been many great articles on this subject, written by many a more gifted-engineer than myself.  I will also confess that I believe true the same as many musicians, that there really is no substitute for someone else doing your masters.  I am notorious for picking a sound or thinking something sounds really great that, simply put, sucks.  I know I can do better, so that’s why I keep listening to new music, reading up on the subject, and practicing.

So, let’s get on with it shall we?

Mixing isn’t too hard, but there is one consideration that I’ll give you right off the get-go.  Nobody can make the sewer shine (read: you can’t polish a turd).  Put into more applicable terms: you need to start with clean source material.  This seems SO obvious, and for the longest time I thought I really understood it, but I don’t think it really dawned on me until I started working with synthesizers like Zebra 2 and libraries like Symphonic Orchestra.

There are few quick tips I’ve got that might help you get a good mix (and I’m not saying any of these are the RIGHT way to do anything, but they are good suggestions to getting a cleaner sound):

• Reverb and delay, these things are good in moderation, as any effect is.  As a general rule with any effects I tend to apply them to a level I find desirable, and then turn down the effect a few steps more.  For example, I’m sending my snare drum in the included song, “12-Gauge Rave” to a bus that has a reverb effect on it.  I found a good setting for it so I felt that the snare had enough presence, let’s call this send setting -14db.  From there, I would probably have cranked it back about 2.5db further, beyond what my ear might consider discernable.  While the effect maybe not have been so clear at the time (I was sitting in front of the computer for a few hours at this point), it definitely was come master-time.  As soon as I put that final limiter on the mix I was comfortable with once again feeling the space of the snare but not having it overdone.  That was automatic victory #1.
• Equalization is your tedious but extremely powerful friend.  I consider it like a really annoying friend who happens to have design skills I really, REALLY like – maybe it’s annoying to work with them, but I’ve known them long enough that I know how to communicate to then what I’m looking for without compromising their original vision (which, in this case, would be the original sound?).  Okay, maybe this is a bad analogy, because I don’t treat my friends this way – but the point is this:  Every sound, coming from a synthesizer, library, or something you recorded in your backyard – they all fill a space.  Besides filling the right spaces, though, they also fill some spaces you probably aren’t even aware of.  Like that awesome lead you have skyrocketing through the 6th octave may have some character in the 200hz range where you’ve got your pads, percussion, and other accompanying instrumentation.  But hey, you can’t hear that stuff, so why in the world is it there?  The same thing applies with vocals – unless you’re working with James Earl Jones you can probably afford to drop some of those bass frequencies entirely, it’s simply not helping you, and they ARE there in your mix (use a graphic equalizer to show you).  Find your ideal space for any given sound and carve around it.
• What about guitars!? Guitars may be the most annoying instrument to mix in the world because of how versatile they are.  Before I tell you what I do about guitars, I’ll send you to an example of a track with pretty smooth rhythm guitar by my friend Danny Baranowsky.
  
  Listen carefully to how, particularly in the right channel, you can hear artifacts on the performance of the guitar, like occasional fret-slides or discrepancies in the playing from the left channel.  Wait, wait, WAIT!  Josh, you are in NO place to criticize this man’s … On the contrary.  If he wanted identical guitar playing in both channels, he would have used identical recordings.  What you’re hearing is two separately recorded takes of the same material hard-panned in both channels.  In layman’s terms, he’s recorded the guitar twice, and panned each recording hard left and hard right.  As you can tell, this gives Danny a lot of space to work with in the middle of the mix – maybe for a lead guitar, lead synth (as he has), or whatever he’d like.  I apply this same technique in “Gloria Fatalis,” and nearly every other track with guitar on the GunGirl 2 soundtrack.
  
• Another useful guitar tip requires a story.  I was working on a very old song called “Let it Live,” which probably had some of the first guitar recording I had worked with, and now lives on my harddrive in 21 different draft versions.  Back when I was recording it, I would show the different renditions to my girlfriend, and one of the first things she loved about the guitar presence was how heavy and edgy it sounded.  However, much to her dismay, in the following revision of the song, I had cut out nearly all of that crispy beefy sonic-meat by EQing it to daybreak to fit in other elements that I thought were important, pads, synths, or whatever was sounding good at the time.  Of course, having your girlfriend say she liked one thing and then taking it away sort of makes you want to strive to get that sound back, regardless of your better judgement.  Okay, here’s the point: Sometimes, in the pre-master stage, and in general when assembling a soundscape, you have to make compromises to get the end-sound you’re seeking.  The reason the sound got less-edgy in regards to the guitar was because I pulled down the mid-frequency range to fit in space for pads, synths, and the drumtrack.  If I went back to re-record “Let it Live,” there would be a LOT of things I’d do differently, sure, but this is one choice that ended up being beneficial come the mastering phase, where adding limiting and dynamic compression were able to bring everything back up to that hot, edgy sound that I had premaster.  Long story short, despite having a REALLY BIG NASTY AWESOME sound in your rhythm guitar, there absolutely is such a thing as over overdrive. And as I said a few bullets back, everything’s better in moderation.  (and if you really MUST know what Let it Live sounds like, you can check it out here… but don’t say I didn’t warn you)
• PANNING IS YOUR FRIEND (too, yes I know you have a lot of friends), and the real reason I know this is because I was homegrown on tracking, when mixing and postproduction really weren’t the focus (this is not an excuse, I still should have paid more attention to these things, but I was 16 and not exactly genius).  The way to make sounds fit without real EQ back then was to move them around through the stereo-field until everything was able to sit.  I once took a course on songwriting where there was a little bit of a detour week where we talked about production in a DAW, which I didn’t really see the point of at the time, and I managed to learn a lot of important things.  One of which was this analogy: sound is like a 2D grid, where you have your stereo-field from left to right on your X-axis, and you’ve got your frequency spectrum on the Y-axis, running up and down.  Imagine stuffing a single moving box with everything you own.  You’ve got your valuables, and then those things that just kind of fill space, like loose paper, maybe decorations you picked up, who knows.  Well, then all of the sudden you have this glass vase which has been an heirloom in your family for decades, and you just can’t part with it.  Ideally, you’d place the vase in first, and somehow give it room to sit with other things bumping into it.  Practically, you or I would surround the vase with some sort of cloth, pillow, or sufficient padding to make sure it didn’t crack, but what if we could place the vase in the box with an invisible force field that would guarantee that nothing else in the box would touch it.  Wow, that WOULD be awesome! Well, this is EXACTLY what you can do with sound in our grid!  If you’ve got guitars panned hard-left and right, they could fill most of the height of the grid (occupy most frequencies, from high to low).  Your bass, kick, snare, and vocals could sit stacked on top of the other (of course there is some overlap), without bumping into the guitars, and your pad has enough stereo-space that it turns the otherwise white background into a very light shade of gray.

These tips really apply across the board to every genre, even though I’m very aware I’ve used a language more conducive to electronic rock.  I follow the same rules when I imagine how I want my performers to sit in a live performance.

My colleague Andrew ‘zircon’ Aversa has compiled a pretty handy set of tutorials and guides on Overclocked ReMix with plenty of audio examples that I highly recommend you read – he touches on a lot of elements of mixing and production that I do not.  Conversely, I believe there is a lot of information there targeted at musicians that are new to the trade, but still extremely helpful nonetheless.

Next time I’ll talk specifically about mastering and use dirty words like limiter, exciter, stereo imaging, and… compression.

But before I do that, I wanted to let everyone know that I’ve got limited edition GunGirl 2 Soundtrack CDs on sale for $8!  I’d really mean a lot to me if you’d stop by and pick one up to support future endeavors of mine, or as a “thank you” for reading this blog.  It’s got some incredibly sexy artwork by Amanda Appiarius along with a photograph of the team taken by Lauren Walsh.

But, okay, enough of that… let’s get on with it, read on for the equipment I used in creating the GunGirl 2 soundtrack…

First, I’ve chosen “No Looking Back” as the example track here because there are no live elements whatsoever in the track, it’s all done through my sample-library and synthesizers.  As a side note, nearly every single track contains some sort of live element of some sort, be it manipulated vocals or even my own guitar playing (Kyrie Immanis and Dies Irae).

The picture of my studio on the right dates back to 2008, but the core setup is still pretty much the same.  This also is good evidence to my argument that an effective home music studio can exist in a dorm-room, but that discussion is for another time and place.

The following items represent the core studio seen here:

• Two M-Audio BX5a Monitors that I love dearly.  These give me a very accurate frequency response and are pretty good bang-for-their-buck.  They are self-powered too, which is good for someone who doesn’t want to worry about having a pricey amp.  I feed them through my…
• Behringer XENYX 1002 Mixer, my minimal does-what-it-has-to mixing board.  I route my soundcard into this and control volumes on the mixer rather than having to use volume controls on the computer.  I don’t suppose I really even need this, because I don’t route inputs through it, but I do often use the line-in support to plugin my laptop.  This is a good time to note that I use a…
• Barebones Windows XP 64x System.  This is probably the most important piece of equipment I should describe.  I keep an ABSOLUTELY-CLEAN system by never installing games, accessories, or any program that is not directly related to audio production work.  I even have internet and network connections disabled.  That’s right – I cannot access the internet directly from my computer, which means I never have to worry about installing anti-virus software or taking up any valuable resources.  I think this where a lot of home-musicians run into trouble – they try to let their music-computer be their everyday machine, a task which I rely on my MacBook Pro for.  Update: After I finished this soundtrack I finally migrated to Windows 7 64bit – and it was ACTUALLY a pretty painless process.  Just had to reinstall my VSTs and DAW – the only hiccup I guess was authorizing all the plugins on a no-internet system.  Reason #1 I actually LIKE the iLok.
• M-Audio Audiophile 192 is my low-latency PCI audio interface, which sports 2 mono-inputs, 2 mono-outputs, and some other stuff I don’t use, including otherwise handy Monitor outputs.  I’m not sure there’s much to say here other than I use the ASIO interface religiously.
• M-Audio Fast Track Ultra is my backup and portable audio interface, sporting more power than my PCI interface can probably even handle.  I didn’t actually use this at any point when recording the GunGirl 2 soundtrack, but I thought it’d be nice to mention I had it, and it could have easily served as an alternate audio interface to my Audiophile.
• M-Audio Axiom 61 has got to the prized possession in my setup.  This 61-key midi controller is ideal for a keyboardist as myself (I never use the piano roll when initially writing a line of music, I stick to playing most everything on the keyboard – so I need my octaves!).  The huge range is also VERY handy for those nasty keyswitches, where I’ll have to hit C-0, play a line in the fifth octave, and then hit Eb-0 to switch articulations.  I’ve got a preset setup on the keyboard that splits the lowest octave to play in the 0th octave regardless of the transposition setting, which is VERY handy for solo instruments where I spam articulation-keyswitches like it’s nobody’s business.  I’d like to point out that I am not an advertisement for M-Audio, I swear.
• AKG K-240 goldy-love headphones.  I bet my neighbors wish I used these more than I did – these were primarily used for recording, when I had to have the monitors off, obviously.
• Cakewalk Sonar 6 is my DAW of choice, but it’s really just my preference.  For The Spirit Engine 2 I also used Renoise, because I love trackers.  Gotta respect my roots, yo!
• Sibelius 6 was used to score Libera Me.  I put in all those notes by hand and approached it as I approach classical music.
• East West / Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra Gold Complete is the crux of my sample collection.  Besides the core library, I have all mic-positions, essentially giving me the 16-bit equivalent of the platinum edition – for half the investment.  The real trick to this program is understanding how to appropriate use the articulations.  But if I were going to give you any one suggestion on how to use ANY orchestra library, it’d be to take a break from the computer and read a book on orchestration.  Study it and be one with it – listen to examples, see what works and doesn’t – and then go and listen to an orchestra in person.  And do it regularly.  Don’t stop.  That’s how you’ll know how to achieve a real sound.
• East West / Quantum Leap RA, Voices of Passion, Symphonic Choirs and Ministry of Rock are other core sets I’ve got in my library.  The pro tip here is to skip Voices of Passion, because it’s very easy to tell where these samples come from, and Symphonic Choirs will take a very long time to achieve a realistic sound (in GG2 I only used it in limited flavor on staccato samples, as you can hear in Dies Irae and Heartless Abyss).
• Guitar Rig 3, because I’ll never in my life carry around an expensive amp collection.  Also substitute in a Line 6 Pod XT if you care to… same effect.  Professional guitarists, go ahead and groan at me… (again, I’m about getting the job done).
• Audio-Technica AT2020 Studio Condensor Microphone paired with an ART Tube MP Preamp for inhaling all of those audible sweets.
• A bountiful collection of VSTis, namely Zebra 2, Rob Papen’s Blue, and a large, large handful of others.  I’ve also got a LOT of samples collected from the days when I tracked, self-made, and some libraries I’ve purchased over the years.

So, there you go – I hope you found this helpful.  Don’t hesitate to ask my any questions in the comments section.  Oh, and maybe buy that CD on your way out! (;

Just figuring out the best way to talk about this subject is a problem of infinite complexity, so I’ll be doing the best I can to discuss working with musicians as it applied to the GunGirl 2 soundtrack.  While my two personally favorite tracks with live performers are “Anomaly” and “Libera Me,” I’ve decided to talk about “Heartless Abyss” first for it’s pretty straightforward approach and execution.

What’s that I hear? Why, yes! It is a violin!

One important thing to think about whether or not you’re writing for a live musician or not is to remember that you’re writing for an instrument, and in order for it to sound like that instrument, you must write idiomatically.  That, simply put, means to write things that the instrument does well and distinguish why exactly you chose it to begin with.  For example, I might have picked a violin for its control over vibrato, ability to dramatically slur when shifting positions, or for its double-stops.

I recommend as a good practice to ANY composer that you listen to solo repertoire for as many instruments as you can muster.  This means listening to solo violin, solo flute, solo oboe, solo horn, and so on – and you’ll definitely benefit from listening to some percussion excerpts as well.  It’ll be even better if you are able to look at the score as you go along, remember – you should be doing critical listening. When you’ve finished this, make a point to then listen to orchestral work, and listen to how those same instruments function in the orchestra.  You’ll find that the writing is very different.  You wouldn’t write for a solo violin the same way you’d write for the 1st violins.  Interestingly, this same principle should apply to any instrumentation you use, whether it be orchestral, synths, or samples of cowbells.

Writing for instruments, sans sheet music?

So it turns out that not everybody writing music knows standard notation.  I have no idea why, but I’ll roll with it because this same principle also applies when you realize you wish you had written something that you didn’t and your live performer is only available for a limited time (or when you realize it takes a really long time to prepare clean scores and parts and your client wants the music yesterday).  Most DAWs come with a “Staff” or “Score” view that lets you view your MIDI data in a notational view.

For “Heartless Abyss,” which I didn’t originally intend to have violin in a few spots, I decided to add some passages on the fly before my violinist arrived.  To do this, I pulled up two new synthesizers and played in the lines I wanted her to play (yes, I did say two).  I cleaned them up in the staff view and had her run through the material practicing with the surrounding material so we could curve and phrase the lines as I wanted them (remember, didn’t have time to write in dynamics, articulations, and such…).  After we got it perfect, she was able to pretty much fly through the recording process.

Helpful Tips for Recording with Musicians

• Performers are a lot like us composers, they like the way they play just as much as we like what we write (come on, admit it).  On this note, you have to employ a certain sensitivity when asking for what you want – you have to equally communicate the things you believe they are doing well as the things that don’t agree with your vision.  On that same note, you shouldn’t settle and be afraid to get what you really want, but you should definitely use compliment sandwiches. I use the same trick when teaching swim lessons to six year olds that I do when I work with performers, and for good reason!  No, no… performers are not like six year olds, but they are human – and I can promise that there is no way you’d enjoy having someone constantly tell you what you’re doing wrong.  The trick to getting the sound you’re looking for is to shape the sound you’re getting into that, much as you’d make a clay sculpture – you have to start with something.
• Your recording space is sensitive, but there’s no reason to be anal about it.  I’m sure most audiophiles shriek when they see where I’ve been recording these performers, but in the context it’s working fine.  Obviously, don’t cram yourself in a bathroom, but find a space that will give you a clean sound with what you’re working with.  Drums will obviously need a lot of space and attention to acoustics, but the violin is such a loud instrument that mic’ing it close and letting subtle reflections come back creates a pleasant natural sound.  One viable option is, of course, renting and going to a recording studio.
• Be prepared!  Time is money (usually) and nobody wants their time wasted.  This is why you must be absolutely prepared when you work with a musician.  Have your parts neatly written and evaluate them from the perspective that you have no idea what the final sound will be.  You are the only one who really knows how the final product should sound, so you have to be mindful in communicating that on your notation.  The more you write, the more there is to follow.

In the following video, you can watch how Rachel practices her parts a few times before we go for the recording.  I managed to get a few shots of her playing with the written in synth-line as well, so you can get a feel for how that was done.  This was live footage and is unedited, so you’ll get a good idea of the raw session.  This was started in about the final 1/3 of recording.

While you watch, or listen, here a few mixing tips I keep in the back of my head when working with recorded material that you may find useful.

• Always, always, always get as many takes as your musician is comfortable giving – for me I stick safely around three takes per passage per part.  With this you can splice out anything weird that happens and get your best overall compilation.  Pretty cool, if you ask me.
• Never, ever, ever overcompress.  In fact, and I apply this rule with any effect, find what works at a minimal level to your ears, and then turn it back a smidge more, even if it at first irks you.  This is a pretty good rule to compensate for the fact that our ears work in exaggerations. In this same vein, don’t overkill the reverb… please!  True fact:  Too much reverb will only make mixing and mastering harder.
• One musician + the same musician = two parts!  Yup, have your musician harmonize with his or herself, or even go on some crazy dueling solos.  A little virtuosi spirit never hurt anyone!

I hope this shed some light on this fun process.  Next time we’ll talk about mixin’ and masterin’!

Score to “Libera Me”

I wanted to post a “Making of” tonight but unfortunately I only got about a third of the way through the article.  To make up for this, here is the score to Libera Me.

There are some obvious things that have changed between this draft-score and the final version you’ll hear, most importantly being the ending and the range of the voice in certain places.  Stephanie is an extremely gifted mezzo-soprano and there was no sense not taking advantage of the superior tessitura.

Enjoy!

Before I start talking about working with live performers, I thought it’d be a good idea to discuss the process behind creating one of my favorite tracks on the soundtrack.  I’ve got demos of the piece through various stages of its creation as well.  I’ll be listening the gear used and what’s added through each of the three iterations up to the final version.  I also spend a LOT of time discussing the live performance elements of this track.

- Listen to Anomaly v. 1 / “String it Back”

Anomaly was born as a slower tune that I was going to use for the menu, something a little more laid back and less aggressive, but still dense.  I had originally titled it “String it Back.”  This version features many of the things the final version does, the same basic musical material, the same string lines (not live recordings), but it also has some big differences.

For starters, “String it Back” is a lot slower, obviously.  It’s also worth noting that the volume levels are haywire – the viola is extremely loud and harsh on the ear.  Also, because it’s slower, the music just doesn’t move along at a good pace at all.  I had started it this slow to really have a lot of control over the solo violin samples I was using to ensure that I could fine-tune them and that they had space to ‘breathe’ between phrases.

“String it Back” features:

• East West / Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestras Gold
• - Lots of Solo Violin and Solo Viola
• - Those ‘slap’ hits are Bass Slaps, and there are timpani accents as well.
• Native Instruments FM8 is making that bass sound that you can hear right from the beginning that is very wide. It’s got a simple saw-type figure under it to give some mmph.
• The obnoxious percussion track is… well… obnoxious.

- Listen to Anomaly v. 2 / “Hell 02 (D1)”

Obviously, as I was perusing the list of tracks on my todo list about 3/4 of the way through it became blindly apparent to me that the menu song I had was awful, and I had a LOT of “hell” levels to score.  I opened up “String it Back,” applied some drumming, and went to town.  (Note, I label all of my Work-In-Progress mixes with D1, D2, D3… etc (for draft#)).

Worth noting is the increase in tempo, the snare drum which is way too loud (the drums in general are too loud in this mix – as are the violins again).  To create the drum tracks, I usually do the kick and snare by ‘punch-recording’ them in.  This means that I play them on keyboard as the song progresses, and I do this in segments.  I generally quantize with about 99% strength, and I go back and manually adjust things like flam (1min 25sec).  Then I go through my library of drum patterns and find appropriate hi-hat riffs and things like that.  I toy with them a lot though, and make them my own – it would be bad practice to keep them as they were (unless I’m REALLY in a hurry).

The fills are a combination of my own drumming and listening to things on other rock albums.  Occasionally I’ll use a fill pattern if I’m feeling like a fish out of water.  Again, I heavily modify these to fit my liking.

Things added here:

• East West / Quantum Leap Ministry of Rock
• Time and Love

- Listen to Anomaly v. 3 / “Hell 02 (D2)”

Enter Rich Brilli and Rachel Denlinger, stage left.  I was talking with Paul Schneider, the game’s creator about where this song would potentially be placed, and he said that it’d be the opening Hell track most likely.  Well – what better way to go then with an epic opening… more on that later.

I brought in Rich Brilli pretty early on in this soundtrack’s creation – I had written the beginning of the Earth track (“No Looking Back!”) and the Lab track (“12-Gauge Rave”) with no real hook, and I had done the majority of the Desert track (“Phantasmagoria”). I had also done a great majority of the first boss track (“Kyrie Immanis”), but I was using my own guitar expertise, which, let’s face it: it’s limited.  There is no reason for me to go around prancing about playing guitar on my tracks when there’s someone who can do it better and wants to be involved.  Here’s an important lesson, which I’ll call truth #1: there is no reason to achieve it all on your own! You’d be surprised how many musicians want experience recording and will be willing to help you out.  I’ll talk about this more later…

SECTION I: RHYTHM GUITAR

Essentially, I asked Rich to provide some heavy rhythm guitar elements following the chords that I had already laid down (you can hear them obviously).  These guitars were recorded straight into my audio interface and processed using Guitar Rig 3.  I’d also consider using a Line 6 Pod XT if I had one.  The challenging part about adding the guitar here is mixing it properly, so I’ll let bullet points do the talkin’:

• Who cares if you LOVE that heavy sound in the guitar, you’re going to EQ IT OUT.  I fed my rhythm guitar tracks into a bus where I EQ’d out the lows, pulled up the highs and tossed down the mids just a little.  So where does the bass come from? A bass.
• Panning is your friend.  Just like in vocal processing, you can really fatten the sound by creating a ‘manual chorus.’  Simply put, I had every rhythm track recorded twice, and we panned one hard left, and one hard right.

Interesting enough, if you solo the guitar tracks, they don’t sound nearly as fat – what you’re really hearing is the combo of the guitar and string section, as well as that chunky FM bass I’ve got in there.  Rich also added some of his own flare giving that real “ripping” tone.  I love it.

SECTION II: LEAD GUITAR

Skip to 2:10 in the song, and listen to that.  I could never do that, but Rich Brilli is a maniac, and he will do anything I ask him (read: definitely not anything).

You can approach the writing process in two ways – write out the lead part by using some sort of notation your musician understands, like tab, sheet music, or just have them play along with a line you write in yourself and hope they figure it out.  Alternatively, if you have a musician who is competent and talented enough, you can say “generally I want something like this – *sing* – but it’s all you.”

A majority of the solos in the GunGirl 2 soundtrack are all improvised by Rich Brilli.  The process was simple – loop a section where a solo belonged and record many many takes.  Eventually, something golden will emerge, and you’ll have a living, breathing, guitar solo.  Yum!  If you go to 2:37 you will hear a place in the song where I instructed Rich what to play, but even with that in mind he made it his own creation.  Gotta love ‘em guitarists.

SECTION III: LIVE VIOLIN

And then we have the lovely and talented Rachel Denlinger and her fierce, fierce violin playing.  If you were listening to the original versions of this, you could hear that I already had a nice pretty violin living in the mix.  Truth #2: It doesn’t matter how nice your sample library is – live is better 99% of the time. I absolutely LOVE my sample set, but it doesn’t mean that she couldn’t do it better.

I want to save talking about this process mostly in the article I write on Live Musicians, but I will happily show you this.

Violin part to Anomaly

There are some obvious things to note.  You can hear everything out loud – this was one of our practice takes before she put on the headphones and did the actual recording.  There is no acoustic optimization in the room either – but sometimes you have to work with what you have.  But also, using some of the room’s natural resonance was helpful.  Fortunately, the nice microphone and preamp that I have were able to make short work of this.

IN CONCLUSION, my dear watson, Anomaly was an evolving child that grew with a lot of work and time.  Final touches that I added were mixing elements, placing the distortion and EQ effect on the opening violin passage for dramatic emphasis (it says, “oh by the way – you’re in hell now!”).

If you’re interested, you can watch where this song is played first in the game below.

Next time I’ll talk about LIVE MUSICIANS!!!  I’m also going to eventually discuss writing for specific areas, mixing and mastering, and how to make your music loop for ingame.  I’ll conclude the series talking about how to package and promote a final soundtrack product.

THANKS!

Oh, and if you’re enjoying this series, let me know what you’d like to see by commenting below, or be a doll and become a fan of mine on Facebook!

(Previously, I talked about COHESION in PART ONE)

I’ll probably post this over a few days, but let’s get started, shall we?

How to Approach a Large-scale Soundtrack

• Know the Audience and the Setting
  This one should feel very, very obvious.  If you don’t know who’s going to be hearing your music, or in what setting it’s in, you have no hope of creating a cohesive final product.  There are a lot of starting composers that jump headfirst into their first project (usually a free game) and just start writing music.  They produce and produce and produce without really looking back before sending something that they think they’re proud of to the designers.

  Does this really work? Well – I’ll be honest here, sometimes it does.  Plowing through material and just getting it done is an extremely important ability to have, but it’s not always the best option.  Sometimes, the developer might be really rather grateful to for the large amount of music just handed to them, but it doesn’t always mean good things.  I know that when I look back at the first large soundtrack I did, The Spirit Engine, I absolutely cringe.  Some things there simply don’t fit (yes! I am using myself as an example of what not to do in this case).  On the plus side, there is a lot of material there that I am happy with, but only a certain cream of the crop.  I would not call this a tangible cohesive production.

  There were SOME things I did right, though, and these are things I’ve employed since then.

• Create the Illusion of Cohesion
  My original goal was to be a film composer someday (and to some extent, it still is).  One thing that film composers are drawn upon to do fairly regularly is to create thematic elements for characters, locations, and emotions.  People who do this incredibly well include John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore, and… oh wow, those seem obvious.  Well Harry Gregson-Williams, Danny Elfman, these are also people who get the job done.  But of course film music has that, we know that, but what about Nobuo Uematsu, Koji Kondo, Y. Mitsuda, Jack Wall, Harry G-W (yes, he started out in VGM), … this list will go on forever.  These composers use a variety of methods to create tangible cohesion from theme to theme.

  When I think of any evil or sorceress from Final Fantasy VIII (N. Uematsu), I will immediately think “Fithos, Luesc, Wecos, Vinosec,” but that example may be tacky and unoriginal.  So, how about I ask you to close your eyes and think of a green-clad hero from Zelda.  I bet you’re hearing our favorite heroic melody… Let’s change it up.  Think of dinosaurs now.  Did you think of this?  Actually, you probably heard this guy.  Astoundingly similar, though, aren’t they?  And I’m sure the Orks and our heroes in Middle Earth make you hear a bombastic brass motif (read: Howard Shore is a beast).

  My point is that there are memorable elements to each of these themes, be them instrumentation choices (as in using a tragically dark choir for the evil in the world), or melodic elements.  I guess you’re wondering how I did this in GunGirl 2…

• Use Common Elements to create Cohesion (in GunGirl 2)
  Having a fairly simple plot-line, GunGirl 2 didn’t really need a diverse set of character themes or motifs.  I was asked to tackle “Hell Variations” of three major areas, the Desert, the City, and the Marsh.  Besides those variations, there were four major distinct “hell” areas that needed scoring.  With this in mind, I decided to come up with two larger motifs that’d be present throughout most of the agenda: I wanted GunGirl to have a theme.  This is immediately apparent in the 11th second of the Opening Theme.
  
  .

  I decided to take this motif and place it through a great-majority of the soundtrack in a Lord of Vermillion style execution.  In some places, the theme is almost identical to a tee (2:19 in Phantasmagoria
  
  ).  In other places, I did a lot of changes to get the idea across without being so specific (1:17 in Sanctus Inferno
  
  ).  Probably my favorite change is the sequencing of the melody into the Major mode which I did for Hell in a Handbasket (:30 in
  
  ).

  Okay, so that’s the game’s theme, but what about the sound of hell?  I decided to use two different instrumentation choices to tackle this.  One is a ripping synthesizer heard in The Unforgiven (
  
  ).  The most obvious though, would definitely be the crazy demonic voices heard throughout the soundtrack.  My favorite implementation of this exists in Desert Hell (
  
  ), but you can hear it in Oblivion (Marsh Hell), very VERY obviously in Unto the Wicked (Ice Hell), and in Iron Curse (a more ambient choice), and so on and so on.

Next time, we’ll look at how more ways to tackle large scale projects and start talking about how to actually do the composing thing for a specific theme or area.  That sounds like fun!  I’ll also eventually talk about how I made creepy voices!

Thanks for reading ^_^