I have this theme here for the new project, and I'm pretty happy with it; but I don't think I'm succeeding in making it "big" yet. I tend to think of big orchestrations as primarily still having just a few coherent parts, but those parts are assigned to blended timbres. I think I started out with that in mind here, but my ears must have gotten tired going over it time and again, and now I feel like I've just been kitchen-sinking it. Maybe some new ears on it will help. Thoughts?
(Since we have a thread for The Other Fantasy Show.)
...
(Warning for spoilers.)
Anybody else been watching this? I've been catching it since the first episode and I'm really enjoying it. It hits the ground running.
The actors are fantastic, even given that the time skips require them to keep changing. I had initial doubts about Matt Smith but it turns out that when you get him to calm down he's actually really fantastic. Paddy Considine especially has been a revelation—don't be surprised if there's an Emmy nom. for him later in the year.
You can really feel the budget differences between it and Thrones, given that HotD is starting with multi-million budgets and GoT had to work its way there across seasons. Throne's aesthetic peak, for my money, was between seasons three and five—after that point the costuming declined pretty noticeably (the endless series of triangle dresses, for example)—but HotD is better even than that, from the costuming (the colors are so very rich—consider the way color is used to distinguish between characters [Alicent's greens, Rhaenyra's reds and blacks]—and the designs, with their variety of headpieces, layers, decorative filigree is leagues beyond GoT) to the sets (the expansive Red Keep with its monstrous take on the Iron Throne). The recurring motif of rats crawling about, everywhere, is unsubtle but effective.
The directors are more willing to use the artifice of cinema, and the result means that it's a more visceral show than Thrones, too low-budget early on and too epic later, ever was. I'd point to the intercutting between the scenes of the forced surgical removal of Aemma's son from her womb and Sir Criston's duel with Daemon Targaryen as an example. It's not just, of course, these huge climactic scenes that demonstrate this; Sapochnik's careful use of angles to capture the glances and chance encounters at the beginning of "Driftmark" (alongside Djawadi's disquieting music) is another example of this (and what a loss it is that Sapochnik has departed the show!). I daresay the directors have a confidence with the camera that Thrones generally did not—given that it was their first tv project and a massive project besides, I imagine that Benioff & Weiss were a bit self-conscious, and they enforced a very naturalistic style with only a few exceptions.
Having read Fire & Blood, HotD is a fantastic adaptation. F&B is a faux-history book from within the ASoIaF world, itself drawing upon multiple 'sources,' and the show is doing a great job of both threading the needle between the different "versions" present in F&B and making necessary changes and expansions. Transforming what's happening into the result of frustrated teenage crushes—whether it's Rhaenyra's and Alicent's on each other, or Rhaenyra's on Criston Cole—is one of those instantly genius moves that uplifts the whole drama. (Of course, the showrunners are fortunate in that the source material is complete—which was not the case, and wouldn't be the case were there to be a fresh adaptation announced this morning—with ASoIaF.)
My biggest criticism thus far is the reuse of the original GoT title theme—not merely reusing the music but the same damn recording! Yes, yes, I understand all the intellectual reasons for it, but it's not fitting for this show. The original tune, with its relentless ostinato, was perfect for the vast sweep of numerous characters pursuing interdependent storylines across multiple continents; it works less well for what is, in the end, the Dance of the Dragons: a family affair, a tightly focused story that keeps to just a small handful of locations.
Ok, since I know Mattias has seen this, I figured I would bring it up in case anyone else has seen it.
A very interesting new addition to the LOTR "franchise", by as far as I can tell, a totally different creative team, and, so far, it seems actually pretty good from the three episodes now available. Relatively high-budget feel, darn good CGI (and not insane amounts of it everywhere or so I think), nice soundtrack by Bear McCreary, very pleasing cinematography and color grading (genuinely pleasing to watch on a nice screen!). Only slightly weird thing I guess is the lack of a firm plot yet, but I guess it's just one of those shows where the plot slowly emerges as time goes on, widening from a very "narrow" lens to a very "broad" lens very gradually, sort of like The Expanse in a way I guess.
The McCreary score seems to nod at Shore's ethereal openness while having McCreary's trademark intriguing harmonies and counterpoint. It does its job while also being enjoyable enough to actually want to listen to on its own, not just a series of sustaining chords, straight chugga-chugga cellos, aleatoric sounds, or trumpets playing quadruplets like many modern scores are (though there is unfortunately a bit of all that scattered throughout still), though I must add it is not very memorable (one might say in a good way). Shore's main title theme for Rings of Power on the other hand feels rather out of touch, like I'm about to be read inspirational children's stories on public access television from the 90's or something.
Score thoughts: One of the things I've noticed about the score is the use of more "archaic", or at least, "unexpected" harmonic elements. There's a lot of pedals, grounds, and blunt or 'misleading' harmonies manipulating the appearance of tonality or suggesting modality.
This isn't necessarily all that different from Shore's approach to LOTR, with borrowed rhythmic concepts throughout, and Shore made heavy use of pedals and grounds in his scores. I just think McCreary is doing a bit more with harmony, especially incidental harmonies from passing tones and counter lines, which seem much more prevalent and willing to step outside tonal boundaries while still pushing in a clear direction.
Khazad-Dum for example starts with a bass ground which gradually gives way to increasing polyphony. Even then the harmonies are simple and very fifthy/fourthy, with even some elements of a canon and some pedals. When there is harmony, it's largely blunt and archaic, like early American music.
Numenor is another piece which makes use of very old fashioned forms at the start, starting a very rigid, almost early-medieval harmony. Later on, it does get more complex with a few modulations and some again, rather bizarre chord progressions. There's an interesting chromatic descending choral line throughout Numenor as well. Khazard-Dum also curiously has a descending line at the very end of it, albeit with different intervals and landing over the bar.
Sauron makes use of some rather curious harmonies at first, albeit later devolving into a pedal bass and chugga chugga violas.
Galadriel's theme is quite lovely, of course, and treated throughout the score in a variety of colors. In Galadriel, it feels like a classic 90's movie score through and through, though with some pleasing counterpoint, in particular at its height. It almost has a Latin flair to my ear at times which I find curious. Maybe I have spent too much time listening to the excellent Brazil themes from Civ V...
Valinor has some curious harmonies with a few tastily placed chord extensions. Almost reminds me of 2000's choral music, almost Whitacreish or something. Some typical "space chords" in there too.
In the Beginning is a tour de force of textures and attitudes. Getting everything here from Whitacre to Gregson-Williams Narnia and nods to Shore.
Durin IV also stood out as quite pleasing.
McCreary is also much more willing to reach for non-orchestral sounds, and non-western sounds, which again lends an ancient or neo-medieval feel to some of the pieces.
It is rather curious that I am hearing a number of things that sound like virtual instruments in these, in particular the harfoot music? There's a flute that does what sounds like a volume-based fade.
None of this to be honest makes for much memorable music, but, alas, to some extent that is sort of the point of film/TV music I guess, at least according to some schools of thought on the subject. I don't find McCreary's melodies all that memorable overall, and Shore definitely wins in that category in the original LOTR trilogy by quite a wide margin. I would say overall as a probably rather gross generalization, McCreary isn't as much a melodicist as he is a careful harmonizer and counter-melody writer, while Shore generally seems to focus a little too much on rhythm and melody while often leaving harmony rather simple. That said, McCreary still succeeds in writing clean, vocal melodies... even if they are a bit lengthy and far from the immediately-etched-in-your-brain earworms of Shore's LOTR.
Quote:Aside: Out of curiosity (and bad discretion), I decided to rewatch the Hobbit movies after and WOW, my opinion on those movies was not changed for the better. The only good part of those entire three movies is the bombastic, ridiculous combat, and not because it's epic, but rather because it's so damn funny. I could watch that Barrel scene on loop for a solid hour before going insane. The whole thing seems mired in its technical ambitions, compounding early-adopter digital video with 3D and 48 fps just seemed too much, and the choices in color grading (your typical desaturated orange-blue thing from every movie poster ever) and post processing (grainy? denoised?? over-sharpened yet not really that sharp???), probably an attempt to fix visual issues introduced from technical choices required to enable 48 fps and 3D nonsense, don't help one bit.
The result is a film which is visually dull to the point of feeling completely disconnected from anything going on. It might as well be in black and white. Oh, and the CGI is straight up uncanny valley, sticks out like a sore thumb, though I can't decide if that's because of the 48 fps nonsense or the 3D nonsense or a mix of both. I've already accidentally purged the entire trilogy out of my mind just writing this post, and had to go back and rewatch parts already just to remember what exactly I didn't like.
Somehow the score to the Hobbit films is even less memorable than McCreary's Rings of Power. I find it just as dull and disconnected as the films.
I guess the whole thing is a case study in "don't let technical ambitions ruin a perfectly good project"?
Anyway, Rings of Power? Pretty good so far. Not huge about the 3rd episode, but it's still leagues better than The Hobbit movies so far, and I'm happy to keep watching it.
I mentioned buying a Yamaha MX49 some five months ago. Since then I have only used it as a MIDI controller (which was of course the reason I got it), and I haven't really explored its synth capabilities much beyond loading up a few presets and going "OK, cool".
Last night though, I was looking through the manual and realized the sheer amount of patches this thing has. Like well over 1000 voices in all imaginable genres! So of course, I couldn't help but wonder... can you do orchestral stuff with this thing?
Now obviously, all the typical disclaimers apply here. No... it doesn't hold a candle to even older sample libraries. No... it isn't really capable of the dynamics and expression we have come to expect from VO's. And no, you most definitely can not create a "proper" full-fledged arrangement with only 16 MIDI channels. [Edit: For example, even something as basic as Waters of Redemption still had 100+ channels.]
But despite all that, there's a variety of decent orchestral instruments hidden in that tiny 166MB ROM, and the MX49 has some really fantastic reverbs to boot. Working with such a limited setup is also strangely liberating and I think I might actually use this for roughing out orchestral ideas.
My first attempt at being a documentary film music composer. It's was an interesting challenge for me to compose multiple short pieces of music where the length/style was dictated by the video. I envy people who are good enough to do this sort of thing for a living.
Long story short, I'm finally done with my thesis and back to making music. I decided I would do some music based on the book I did my thesis on, A Voyage to Arcturus. I've also been keeping busy with music related stuff, so this track was made after I switched to Reaper, started taking music theory more seriously, started reading up on orchestration, and even rebuilt my music PC. It's definitely a WIP in all ways, but I thought it would be good to get some fresh ears on it. I might have posted a track with this title awhile back, but this is the REAL thing now.
Last year I bought myself a new MIDI controller since my Oxygen 61 3rd Gen had been deteriorating for a long time and no attempts at fixing it had any lasting effect. I kept having to redo the graphite trick every six months or so, and finally I said screw it, let's just get a new one.
My choice fell on a Nektar SE61 as I wanted something more basic than the Oxygen (in the 12 years I had it, I made use of the knobs and sliders only once or twice), and it appeared to have generally favorable reviews. When I got it, I immediately realized the keybed felt weird. The keys were sort of hard and springy. I figured it was just going to take some getting used to, so I kept it anyway.
Well, I didn't get used to it. And by the time I knew it wasn't going to happen, it was too late to return it. I begrudgingly abided the damn thing for a while, looking for some better option. I didn't want to spend even more money without having a chance to try before buy, and the local music store had nothing in stock that caught my fancy.
Then a couple of days ago a Yamaha MX49 showed up on Facebook Marketplace for around $200. I went over to the seller's place to check it out last night, and as you can see, I liked it:
Sure, it has only 49 keys, but it plays really nice. Since I'm not doing much orchestral work anymore, my need for a 61-key controller has lessened anyway. The MX49 being an actual synth rather than just a controller is a nice bonus too. It has a ton of high quality patches from the Motif range as well as some excellent built in effects; it even functions as an audio interface, though I have no intention of using it for that as it has only line-level inputs.
Have you ever wondered why small diaphragm mics have a ring of slits or holes about a centimeter or so back from the capsule?
The purpose of these holes is to allow a certain ratio of sound waves to enter the rear of the capsule but delayed and/or filtered. When a sound comes from directly behind the mic, the time it takes to reach the diaphragm from the front and back is equal and the sound is cancelled out. That is how single-diaphragm mics like these achieve directional patterns, a technique invented by Shure nearly a century ago, which they called "Unidyne", probably because it allowed a single diaphragm capsule to have directional behavior. A more technical term would be 'pressure-gradient'.
Before the Unidyne and of course the Dual-Diaphragm method pioneered by the Germans (which is used on almost all large diaphragm condensers, where a diaphragm-backplate-diaphragm sandwich picks up sound to the front and back, which is then combined electronically to achieve the desired polar pattern(s)), there were only two patterns available: Omnidirectional, or Pressure microphones, and Bidirectional/Figure-8 or Gradient microphones.
While both 'pure' patterns are of course extremely useful, even today, there's a big problem in situations like sound reinforcement or critical recording where the noise (such as another instrument or a stage monitor) you're trying to null out may be directly opposite the performer/instrument you're trying to capture, and other situations where you want to pick up, say, a semi-circle of performers with a single mic, but the omni is too distant sounding while the bidirectional badly favors those standing in the middle of the semi-circle. The most rudimentary attempts to create intermediate patterns between the two involved essentially putting two capsules, one omnidirectional and the other bidirectional, in very close proximity and perfect alignment, then electrically combining their output. The problem with this is that the highest audible frequencies are only a few centimeters long, so comb filtering and other issues might occur unless the capsules are incredibly close. So, the Unidyne method was a really quite remarkable breakthrough.
If you look at an omnidirectional capsule for a small diaphragm condenser, it has NO visible holes (ok, maybe just a tiny vent somewhere to equalize pressure so it doesn't explode when a big pressure change occurs!). This is because it is designed to be, at least in theory, a pressure microphone: it doesn't matter what direction the sound is coming from, the wiggly membrane of the diaphragm in theory will respond equally (until you get into fun stuff like the body of the mic masking certain sounds, filter and mesh materials, resonator plates and cavities, but I digress).
Well... that's where things get naughty and definitely not within warranties...
What if you took a small diaphragm condenser and covered up the vent holes? In theory it would make an omnidirectional mic, right? But what happens to the frequency response?
In theory I assumed the mic would get incredibly bright because it's commonly known that pressure microphones (omnis) are more or less insusceptible to proximity effect, and at this distance (like 6 cm from my mouth), a lot of that low end is due to the proximity effect.
(masking tape or painter's tape is a no-residue, relatively weak paper tape used for making sharp, clean lines when painting; it's commonly available in the US in hardware stores, but I assume it can be found under a similar name in Europe and elsewhere. I chose it purely because it is easy to remove and in theory should be quite absorbent of sound)
A few takeaways:
The effect isn't that noticeable even if there is the smallest of holes left open. It's still audible for sure, just not as big as when the final gap is covered.
The cavity seems to become resonant as the tape covers more and more of the vents, you can hear a few particular bands of resonance.
The final result is... a super bassy sound? This went against my prediction that it should get brighter. My best guess is this has to do with dampening of the diaphragm being calibrated to compensate for the sound of the capsule with both sides active, OR that the tape is actually acting as a filter as it just can't absorb low frequency sound that well?
The mic gets CONSIDERABLY hotter as the holes are covered. Again, totally unsuspected.
I had predicted that in this case the mic would become incredibly bright... and in this case I was right! Never in a million years would I suspect you could get that much highs out of a ribbon mic!
Again, it seems some noticeable resonances have appeared. I wonder if these are due to the cavity left between the tape and rear of the diaphragm/ribbon acting as a resonator.
To me the most useful situation for both of these is to make some old-timey sounding mic effect. They both seem to have something strong around 3kHz which helps that 'old radio' sound a lot. You could alternately use it for special recording purposes or effects, especially since off-axis it should have some TRULY INSANE coloration I can't even imagine.
So, if you ever have a SDC which is impossibly bright or a ribbon which is impossibly dark... a little masking tape might be all you need, supposing you don't mind EQ'ing out the horrific resonances?
![[Image: IMG_20220315_053633.jpg]](http://mattiaswestlund.net/misc/IMG_20220315_053633.jpg)
