As previously mentioned in an earlier post. It was required of myself to write a full orchestral version of the lullaby for the ‘Light Dance’ scene. After receiving the visuals, my original, estimated version written at the start of the project did not sit right with the visuals. After analysis, I attributed it to the following factors:

Creative & Technical Decisions

As stipulated in the above table. The music needed “darkening” up. The piano was the most important instrument as it delivered the lead lines of the melody, therefore I wanted to achieve a raw and aggressive performance. The basics of this was achieved by attacking the keys with more vigor, however other factors included:

• Compression: I employed the CLA-3A compressor plugin by waves of which is modeled off the vintage LA-3A solid-state compressor and is one of mix engineer, Chris Lord Algae’s goto compressors. Algae is well known for his loud and aggressive mixes and the plugin seemed to deliver the desired effect when pushing it fairly hard. 
• Saturation: To further add to the aggressive performance, I ran the signal through Decapitator by SoundToys.“Saturation in any form adds harmonics to the sound. The perceived volume is also raised as natural compression and limiting occurs when the effect is introduced” (music tutsplus, 2012).This allowed the piano to sound less MIDI as the plugin offered a more vintage sound. The added compression, limiting and therefore, perceived loudness also heightened the aggression of the performance allowing it to pierce through the mix.

Piano can be heard here:

I similarly employed another saturation trick on the double bass. This was not only to give it an edginess but to allow it to stand out enough to compete with the other instruments of which distortion “can help the bass cut through a mix in a useful way” (Sound on Sound, 2011). To do this, I set up a mono auxiliary channel with some distortion and rolled off the low end to allow for the main bass to occupy that spectral space and sent some of the bass signal to it.

Here is the bass with the aux channel muted:

Here is the same bass with added distortion:

I have also posted an example of notational dissonance. For example, the next clip of the bass plays out in the melodic minor key of C. Notice how the final note of the bar has dropped a semitone. The dropping of a semitone helped create an aesthetic very reminiscent to the style of Danny Elfman.

Finally, here is the full, completed sequence. Notice the effect of starting with the music playing over a radio speaker in the corridor before switching to it’s full, non-diegetic form: