Here is my entry for the action music contest. First, just a quick thanks to @Mikael for these contests; I’m having quite a bit of fun doing them, learning a great deal as I go, and I think having a specific theme and a deadline makes me focus more and develop a vision faster.
For this piece, ‘action’ instantly brought to mind some dark, Cyberpunk type of music and since I really like composing to visuals, I used the image below as my inspiration. From there I decided to write a piece that was kind of a dark hero/heroine, 1980’s TV type theme. I also decided to try my hand at writing it so it could loop and be used as video game music. Weather it worked is another story The title is Japanese (pronounced KUro-ts’ ki HEEmeh) meaning roughly “Black Moon Princess”
Musically, the overall key is C minor, mainly harmonic minor, and the main theme plays around with a Cm-Ab-Fm progression with a pentatonic scale run at the end to give it a bit of 1980s cheesiness! Not sure exactly which pentatonic scale, but it runs 1-2-b3-5-b7. I used a lot of minor 2/major 7 intervals to create the dark dissonant sound as well. Tempo is a steady 159bpm throughout and in 7/8 meter.
Gear:
Brass: Audio Imperia Nucleus elements/Cinematic Studio brass (for horns)
Strings: Audio Imperia Nucleus elements
Percussion: NI Action Strikes, Soundiron Apocalypse Percussion Micro.
FX/synths: NI Rise and Hit, Heavyocity AEON/Evolve, Audio Imperia Jaeger, ProjectSAM Symphobia free orchestra, u-he TyndallN5, Valhalla Room reverb.
Written/recorded in Studio One 5, mastered with Ozone 9 and Mastering The Mix Expose
https://soundcloud.com/parnassus-musique/kurotsukihime