Knick Knack (Re-Score) Knick Knack raised the question: how can I represent two different worlds while maintaining an overarching structure? While watching the film, I distinguished a pattern in the snow globe’s thought processes, which was based around two key emotions – hope and doubt. As harmony is so closely associated with mood, I decided to use these emotions in order to design my harmonic structure. I set the tempo of the composition first and foremost, which was governed by developments on screen, as musical interactions with these developments would play a significant part in the narrative. Similarly, while considering tempo it was useful to acknowledge the impact of ‘mickey-mousing’ in relation to timing and phrasing, which, in itself supplies the events on-screen with humorous value. Having fixed the tempo, I revealed 8 bars of hope, 4 bars of doubt and another 4 bars of hope, which repeated four times during the course of the film. Alongside the mood-inspired harmonic progression, a simple melody repeats a number of times throughout the film as the snow globe invents different ways to escape his isolate world and join his friends. In order to repeat this melody while maintaining interest, it was useful to exercise variation techniques, particularly in terms of harmony, rhythm and texture. During the early stages, my music was more intricate than that of the final product, however I began to realise that generally, the more I repeated the melody, the more amusing the film was to watch. Fundamentally, it seemed that melody and harmony should remain the same upon each return of the theme because it evoked a sense of tedium as the snowman repeatedly tries to break free. I introduced the film with instrumentation such as acoustic guitar and bongos that one might associate with an exotic spontaneous summer party. The outer appeal of this introductory music encourages the audience to empathise with the snowman and understand his desire to join this gathering. To maintain light-heartedness, I constructed the harmonic movement to mirror that of a typical Dixieland jazz piece. When we pan over to the snowman for the first time, the harmony captures a feeling of doubt. Whenever these minor chords appear elsewhere in the film, something goes wrong and the snowman starts to lose hope. In terms of sound effects, I wanted sound and music to be closely integrated. As we are following his world throughout, every sound effect is with the snowman, because if the audience cannot hear the sounds of the party, it reinforces the distance at which the party is for the main character. There are various moments where I rhythmically integrated the sounds into the tempo, such as the nose squeaks, the blowtorch and the hammer drill. Tremolo strings emulate the drill sound, exploring the gap between sound and music and contributing a sense of realism to what is happening. I used two live instruments in this recording – trumpet and whistling. Occasional whistle gestures highlight the blasé attitude of the snowman. The live trumpet allowed me to exploit the timbre of the instrument, which is particularly appropriate for a comedy. When manipulating my trumpet audio, I was able to cut and paste material around – I time shifted certain notes and also used pitch shift as the original trumpet sound was slightly too sharp. Panning was most effective for following physical movement on screen. While considering space and how it might enhance the composition, I figured it might be another way to help represent the different worlds. One of the ways to dictate a sense of space is with reverb, so whenever we are inside the snow globe and representing this world, we hear a dryer sound with less reverb. I particularly took advantage of this towards the end and increased the reverb as the snowman is close to escaping, but the chord at the end is very dry and close up in contrast. However, as we are inside the snow globe most of the time, and carefully adjusted amounts of reverb generally improve sound quality, I used some throughout, but altered the amount at different points with automation. _______ FOLLOW LIPSapp Smooth Radio _______ FB: r-js/1wsLIZx / TW: r-js/1wsLDoS / Listen to LIPSapp Smooth Radio r-js/1dOIQ18 #jazz #blues #randb #mariahcarey #tonibraxton #tedeschitrucks #davekoz #boneyjames
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 11:58:10 +0000
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