My partner and I have been working on creating a soundtrack for King Kong for the past couple music lessons. We used mix craft to compose this music piece and already having used it before, it wasn't difficult to work with. However, due to the fact that we were using mix craft for classical music, we weren't familiar with with the instruments that we were supposed to use which were: drums, flutes, atmospheric sounds, etc... So, to overcome that stage, we began investigating with different instruments and different sounds usually on either soft pad or sound affects. We started negotiating the different instruments and sound effects and how each would work at each scene in the video track we were given. To remember all the points we made, we noted them down for later notice.
We've had assisstance from Mr. Marie with telling us what we needed to include in our sound track and a few of them were: drones (a long held note; can be atmospheric), minor chord (a chord defined by three notes: root note, minor third and a perfect fifth), a melody and atleast 3 repercussion instruments. Right after we were done with investigating, we started choosing reprecussion instruments to start with because we wanted the soundtrack to fit with the tribe scene. We began discussing the different rhythms that can work for a start to the music piece. At the begining, we started with a more complex rythym, but that made it harder for us to choose a rhythm for the next 2 reprecussion instruments and when we did try they didn't fit together and it sounded like chaos and didn't match the scene. We improved that by deleting the every thing we did and tried to start with a simpler rhythm and move on from that point, but we made the mistake of making the next two reprecussion instruments have the same rhythm from the beginning and can be on afterwards. So, we asked for help from our fellow classmates how we could improve it and they showed us a few examples of different rhythms. So, we decided on two rhythms with the last one the most complex out of the first two. We also used the notes from the previous lessons we've had to help us with the pace of both rhythms. We decided to also make the dynamics of the first rhythm build up to match the scene because at the beginning the camera was getting closer to the place where the main event was happening and it would create a realistic effect because as the camera gets closer, the dynamics get louder.
Then, we decided to add a drone in to add an atmospheric feel to the piece. So, played different sounds on the soft pad category and chose the one closest to a forest's wilderness. My partner then came up with a melody that builds tension because the scene where the victim screams was approaching. When we were searching for screams in the sound affect category, we found out that the scream affect was too short, so we investigated the different ways we could make the note longer and we figured out a way we could make the note longer and that is by clicking the actual recording and dragging the note across further. After that, the teacher showed us a few examples of eerie minor chords and we chose one of them, and that was the easiest part of the whole process and the best due to the fact that the melody shaped the soundtrack and brought it all togther.
I think that this unit refreshed my memory from last year's music lesson because last year I didn't understand minor and major chords but I understand them this year. I also know more about notes from last year because notes weren't clear to me last year and drum playing really did help me improve that.
