Greetings readers.
6:35am, Monday Morning. I’ve been up since 4:30 am, trying to (re) effect this early morning, “get at the day” routine by getting into bed every night at a decent time. So far, it’s a good way to kick the week off.

I’ve been in the studio for the last hour, getting some to-do tasks checked off. One of them was trying to get the right drum track feel for this third and last idea for the title sequence (theme music) for the web series I’m scoring too. I’ve done a fair amount of my own drum programming since the days of drum machines (of course, for my own tracks), but taking that approach here seems a bit daunting. I’m hearing something similar in feel to Crockett’s Theme (Miami Vice) but can’t get it out of my head to the recording part of it. My sample library is fairly large and I think I have something that may kickstart the idea quicker…we’ll see.

I spent the last few days driving back and forth to Savannah, GA (including an overnight hotel stay). Left Thursday at noon, return Friday night at 8pm – a total of 20 hours or so of driving. Needless to say, it caught up with me by Saturday afternoon. By Saturday night, I was back at it for a little while – my son sat in on one of my sessions and asked me about the totality of the project. Being not one afraid to voice his suggestions, he listened to one of the ideas and suggested I try to mute a portion of a specific track until a certain part of what the video was showing. I’d not thought of that, but tried his suggestion and it didn’t sound to bad at all. It goes to show you that one never knows that another suggestion from someone removed from what you are doing, can turn out pretty good.

As for the theme music, it’s time to concentrate translating this scene notes into actual audio ideas. Last week I finally created the cue sheets that I’ll be sending to the director once I get some initial cue and hit music for the scenes. She spied a session pic of me working on it in studio and replied “I know it’ll sound good, take your time”. You know my steelo is to stay ahead of the game, so…..

Anyway, time to hit the road….have a a good one.

Peace,
Fresh!

Greetings….
Saturday morning about 10:28am – rainy, but expected (glad I got the front and the rear lawn mowed). It’s been a busy work week so I’m glad the weekend is here, From a scoring standpoint, it was a bust though. Wednesday night I gave it ago, but starting at 10:15pm was to no avail, especially since I’s still learning Logic Pro X and can’t yet navigate it as quickly as with Logic Pr 9. I had an idea for this third and final submission idea for the theme music but I just couldn’t find what I wanted to quickly in the software. Add to that, I was having some unusual application freezes, which slowed the process down. About 10:40pm here comes the frustration and the fact I knew I had to get up at 5pm….oh well.

Thursday was a bit different (though I didn’t actually get into the studio). The official contract came back signed from the director. Everything was agreed to, so that was cool. With that, she also sent me a private link to a demo her and the videographer/music supervisor put together. This demo was actually Episode 1 which she used for a quick presentation at her alma mater.The demo included not only some stock theme music but some cue music for a few scenes in the episode. What was cool about this was that the demo the supervisor chose as a place holder for the theme music was essentially the same idea I had recorded, so that let me know I was on the right track. In addition, cue music in for the scenes were essentially placed in the same place I chose, another sign of thinking in the same lane. All of that was encouraging, as the more you’re inline with the director’s vision for music the better.

So, this weekend I’ll continue to work on cue music for Episode 2, but mainly focus on getting more familiar with Logic Pro X and incorporating the use of various plugins I have, and will use. Speed always helps in getting this type of creative job done.

Quick shout out to a few friends who gave me some opinions (and examples) as answers to a question I had about what kind of music they would expect to hear in watching a certain scene. This type of scene I never thought about writing to because, despite seeing many “variations” of it, in TV shows and movies, I never paid attention to the music. “What kind of scene is it?”, you may ask…stay tuned to future blog posts, I’ll post and talk about the answer in the future.

For now, peace….

Fresh!