My Entry to MSF Music Competition - The Power Of Small

Here is my original entry to a music contest hosted by MSF, Doctors Without Borders, a charity pledging to help needy countries all over the world.

Please like the YouTube video to vote for the piece, if you like what you hear.

My soundtrack aims to be uplifting, with rising and falling dynamics matching to the timing and cue of the visual material.

It starts small, with a single piano, then builds up to a full band (a drum kit, bass, guitar, and some voices). At the end it goes back to a quieter and reflective tone, that urges the viewer to consider the implication of how a small giving can enable and empower MSF to reach out and help the needy.

You can check out the original competition site here: http://www.msf.org.uk/power-small-music-competition

How to Create Width, Height and Depth in a Mix

The Pro Audio Files

http://theproaudiofiles.com/width-height-depth-in-a-mix

This is a  great article about how to manipulate your audio content to create the perception of depth, width and height in a mix. This article is written by Matthew Weiss, a mixing and recording specialist based in New York and Philadelphia

I like the way Matthew breaks down width, depth and height and tells us how each of these are perceived. Once we know what governs our perception, he then tells us what we can do to accentuate or even exaggerate it in our mixes if we so choose to.

I enjoyed reading this and I hope you pick up a thing or two also.

Behind the Scenes of Disney's Frozen

Great to be able to witness part of the workflow, and amazing team of many people working in collaboration to make this movie happen.

The featurette begins with the voice actors recording their lines,
then at 7:00 we see some kind of dailies for the visuals.
At 8:15 we see 3D artists actually working with the poses and rigs in Maya.
At 10:13 we are shown the choir recording their parts.
At 11:58 we finally see the orchestra recording the cues.

This is really good stuff!

Grey Moments - Co_02c_FilmScore_TheViolin_V001_003

Here's a moody piece for a rainy day. This is for one of my online assignments, where I attempt to write expressively for just the string section, using a solo violin as the lead instrument.

The brief included words like, 'beautiful', 'haunting', 'world war 2 era', 'hopes', 'dreams'. I hope I managed to capture some of those in my track :)

Written in 3 days, programmed in Sonar X3. Since I read up on the assignment, I began to think about how the track would sound, in my mind, maybe about 3 days before. Therefore the song could have taken about 6 days. Along the way, I had 2 earlier ideas which I abandoned as the piece progressed.

On this piece, once I came up with the beginning of the melody, the track sort of shaped itself. It was coming up with that initial line that was hard.

The key of the song changed from F# Minor to B Minor almost without me noticing. I would be quite concerned over changing of keys in the past, because back then I felt like a key change would have to be intentional, with good reason. I feel I am going at it from a different angle now. We'll see where that takes me.

The time signature is set in 6/8 time. There are two places in the music where retard of tempo takes place. I still don't know how to handle that, whether to slip in a bar of 3/8 or to keep to 6/8 with a slowed down timing. I chose to go with the latter. Still do not know if it is the best way to do this. :)

I hope you like this piece. Do give me your feedback :)