Since there’s so many things going on production-wise in my Stargate mockup, I thought it would be a good example to do a detailed walkthrough of how to mockup an existing orchestral piece. So I’m doing a series of videos going over it. In part 1 I talk about matching the tempo, deciding which instrument to start with, and trying to use a score as a guide.
Great video Mike. Really looking forward to see more and how you create your pieces. I know you use BBCSO a lot and I’m trying to use it in my newest original, which is inspired by Legend of Zelda, but I’m still not convinced by it and am rescoring it with Dorico.
Great job though, the choir bit sounds absolutely epic!
Thanks, Matt! I’ll have to get a bit more into my use of BBCSO on the next part that I film. For these first few parts of this walkthrough, I kind of just turned on the camera and rambled for an hour hoping I could edit the parts where my ramblings made sense into a video. Now that I’m through the first few rounds of edits, I have a better idea of what to talk about next time I do this. Talking about the choir is coming up in my next filming session. I’m excited to talk about that.
Here is part 2. Part 3 will be ready tomorrow.
Here is part 3, mostly discussing reverb. There will be a part 4 where I show all of the things I did wrong, and a part 5 where I show how I did the choir.
Here is Part 4 where I listen through each section of the Main Theme and point out some of the stuff that I did wrong and how I would go about fixing it.
Thanks for sharing these Mike. They were really interesting to see how you layer your instruments and a big help to me seeing what the different sections are doing individually and in doublings. I’m really poor at ideas for little flourishes and textures (which btw, Arn Anderson from Evenant is doing a live stream class on this Sunday) so seeing those things visually is a huge help–I always wondered why it seems these classic film score pieces are all over the place, yet still sound cohesive.
By the way, as far as the vibraphone, I’ve come to like using it just to add some harmonic “glue” especially in softer sections. I got this from John Williams; he does it a lot. You don’t really hear it out front at all (if played piano) but it really does glue everything together!
Yeah, I rarely use the vibraphone, but I think I’m going to look for ways to use it more. I’ve kind of just thought of it like a xylophone, but that’s a mistake. Xylophone is punchy and can cut through the mix well. Vibraphone is much mellower and gets lost if there’s a lot of stuff going on. But if you use it like glue, like you said, it can strengthen other parts even when it’s not heard itself.