• January saw my first panel appearance at MAGFest 8, where I met people who knew who I was and even asked me to sign programs!  I’m not sure I quite did anything to earn their respect to that degree, but it made me smile pretty big.  I also met several people that I should have asked to sign my program – Jake Kaufman, Shael Riley, pretty much everyone at OCRemix, Zen Albatross, and several others, including Jayson and Patrick of Original Sound Version (whether or not they’re glad they met me, I do not know ;D).  I gave a panel on indie composition, and a fun time was had by everyone!

• On March 10, 2010, I premiered the piece “Your Name,” which you can watch here, which was my first chamber arrangement.  I learned a lot through the rehearsals and writing of this piece, and got a lot of advice from composer and conductor Gonçalo Lourenço.  This performance featured vocalist Tara Morrow, who did a fantastic job with the piece (you can hear a studio recording of this piece on Songs for the Cure ’10.  I dedicated this piece to my mother who passed away late last year.
• My first OverClocked ReMix was posted on April 16th – a goal which I had for many years. “Shine Tonight” features my efforts as Poolside with Melinda Hershey, and was originally conceived for Songs for the Cure ’10.
  

  Poolside at Relay for Life 2010

• Soon after that, on April 19th, I premiered the small dramatic piece “stop watching me,” which can be viewed here.  A completely different creation, featuring pianist Martha Mingle and violinist Rachel Denlinger, went very smoothly!
• April 24th was Relay for Life, an event held on my campus for the American Cancer Society to help raise awareness and funds for cancer victims and research.  This was my “soft deadline” for raising money with Songs for the Cure ’10.  We raised over $5,000 in three short months, with the release of the 2-CD compilation going over ecstatically!  Over 30 artists came together to help create this amazing effort, and since its release we’ve raised over $7,000 (not including sponsorships), which soars over last years $4,000 (without sponsorships).  What a triumph!
• I appeared in my first music video with my favorite self-made pop song to date: Go ahead and get DAAP Slap’d.  This happened in late May – June.
• June 6th was the release of the GunGirl 2 soundtrack, which you’ve all heard about by now.  The talented performers and I spent a day taking photos to accompany an interview I had with Original Sound Version, which you really ought to read!

Tara Morrow recording "Your Name" live with Martha Mingle (not pictured).

So what’s to come?  Well, I’ve been writing a mini-opera that will be premiered on October 7th, but I haven’t made an official announcement regarding this quite yet.  I’ll be posting that on my main website, my blog, and my twitter when the time comes.  I recently finished two OCRemix‘s, one for the Donkey Kong Country 3 remix album which we should see sometime in 2011, and another that we should see much sooner than that.  Additionally, I’m working on mixes for three albums – the Final Fantasy IX album, the NiGHTS album, and the Seiken Densetsu 3 album.

As for game soundtracks, I’m scoring a small handful of soundtracks which I’ll announce upon their release, but nothing huge is on my plate in that arena at this time.  The rest of this week we’ll be seeing Rich Brilli’s “Get to Know” interview, and I’ll finish up the Making of GunGirl 2 OST shortly thereafter.  Thanks for reading!!

1) Tell us a little about yourself.

Hi! My name’s Rachel D. I’m going to be a sophomore this year at the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, Ohio, majoring in violin performance. I’ve been playing for 14 years now! It’s pretty much what defines me and I love it.  :)

2) How, when, and why did you get interested in and start performing music?

When I was four I was watching the Disney Youth Symphony Orchestra on TV and out of nowhere I blurted, “I wanna play violin!” So after some serious nagging, my parents finally gave in and bought me my first violin (it was so tiny!) That’s where the story begins…

3) What was your initial reaction when Josh asked you to record for the soundtrack to a game called “GunGirl?”

I know I was pretty pumped about it. The fact that it was called “GunGirl” was just icing on the cake.

4) How do you feel about the final product, now that it’s all finished and complete?

The finished product really is just awesome. It was incredible to see how it all came together, and I really feel honored to be a part of it.

5) What was it like working with Josh?

Josh is definitely a jerk…just kidding! He’s so easy to work with and knows exactly what he wants. His “compliment sandwiches” are a nice touch as well.

6) What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

I’m a busy bee! I don’t leave myself much spare time. Any bit that I have is usually devoted to napping!

7) If you were a zombie, heaven forbid, what kind of zombie would you be? Would you hide out waiting for your victims in sneaky spots, or would you just run at them madly? Would you be aggressive or wait in the back for leftovers of your zombie friends? What would you wear if you were a zombie?

I’d take those victims down in a second. Aggressive all the way.

8) Any last words or shout outs?

Go “GunGirl,” Go!

But seriously, everyone involved in the making of this game should get a huge round of applause. Hours and hours of hard work went into this project and wow, what an incredible result! An especially big congratulations to Josh. Writing music for a whole a soundtrack is definitely something to brag about.

If you haven’t already done so, make sure to check out Josh’s other music and keep up to date on what he’s working on. It really is exciting stuff! Well that’s it for me! Keep listening!

Rachel doesn’t have a website to share with us yet, but you can hear more of Rachel in Josh’s compositions “Your Name” and “stop watching me.”

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’!

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)