Squeezing Audio

Don't forget me

2012-01-27T09:04:00.000+02:00

I recently released a single track called:

Remembering things seems to be a little difficult sometimes? You tend to forget the little things, but we usually remember the big things, the important things. Important people. But what if we didn't? What if your spouse simply couldn't remember you? What if they really forgot who you are when you've left their side?

That is the feeling I tried to channel in this track. No loud parts, no epic percussions or brass here. This one's about the emotion.

This track is basically an evolving loop since the main melody the piano plays repeats itself through out the progression of the song. I chose this form because most of our days pretty much go along the same routines as the others. We don't usually even notice it and most of it is good for us. Routines aren't that bad.

I wanted to keep the feel of this track a little hopeful. Because maybe, just maybe, she or he will remember you when come home. That would be something to look forward to.

Gear I used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar X1

Samplers and instruments:

NI Kontakt 4
NI KorePlayer
NI Massive
NI FM8
Vienna Instrument Special Edition
Sample Logic Cinematic Guitars
NI Kontakt 4 Library
Cinematique Instruments Bowed Guitars
Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion
Project SAM Brass

Effects:

Vienna Suite

Chase

2012-01-26T10:36:00.000+02:00

The elevator doors slide open. The first thing you see is that they're carrying guns. You don't wait to see more but turn and bolt back inside the room and towards the window...

Chase.

This one's set into the same story line as "Sunburn". This delivers even more of an adrenaline punch than the previous installation as I've upped the tempo and intensity quite a bit.

...The balcony. A quick look around. You turn and jump just as the door of the room is kicked in. The railing of another balcony, swing up, break the window, dive in. Bullets behind you...

I wanted this track to be more relentless in pace and sound. The beat drives on with force and only breaks for short periods before the release at the end. There's no time to breathe, no quiet moments of peace here. The beat makes sure your feet won't stop. Because if they do, you're dead.

...Yank the door open. Quick look around the hallway. Staircase to the right. You dash to it. Sounds from above, men rushing downward. Jump the first railing, a few steps along the wall, then another jump...

I also made the overall sound a lot harder. The sounds are sharper and more broken. I didn't want this to be as ambient as Sunburn, but rather be an in your face kind of track. The sounds will assault you and probably mangle your ears and nose a bit, but they're there for that reason. Because they are harsh. Because they will kick you. Because if they don't, you are going to die.

...You land and roll to an open door. A window there, the roof of a building visible there. It's far. But hopefully not too far. Your feet move, you gather speed. Jump. The window breaks. An eternity. Then the roof. You roll, and sprint for cover. Shooting behind you, bullets miss. A door. You open it, duck inside.

Gear I used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar X1

Samplers and instruments:

NI Kontakt 4
FutureAudioWorkshop Circle
Cakewalk RXP
Synapse Audio Junglist
u-he Tyrell Nexus 6
HG Fortune Serenity
HG Fortune Altair 4
NI Massive
Sample Logic Cinematic Guitars
FM Future Loops

Effects:

Vienna Suite
Illformed Glitch 1.3
Kjaerhus Classic Master Limiter
Kjaerhus Classic Delay
u-he Zebrify
Variety of Sound Ferric TDS

Burning Jetfuel

2012-01-25T10:56:00.001+02:00

I've been a wee bit delayed in writing this but here's my rant about:

Burning Jetfuel.

I started this for a competition on Audiodraft. The competition was for a World War II era aerial battle game and the makers wanted to have that style in the music. Well, this track isn't exactly what you might expect for that era. When I laid down the first pieces I noticed that this track got out of hand. And frankly I didn't mind.

I didn't mind because I started to have too much fun writing this. Everything just sort of fell in place as I went along. I didn't think about grand aerial battles, but my thoughts were more focused on the feeling of rushing through the clouds and smoke. So this is more about the adrenaline of survival than the violence of combat.

This track though orchestral in color is really more of a rock song. It's driven forward by a heavy bass and drums and the melodies are saturated with electric guitars. Don't worry it's still layered full with lush strings and big brasses.

And that's about all I've got to say about this one.

Another calling card

2012-01-18T08:54:00.000+02:00

We did another calling card video. This time it's for Teemu:

Calling cards

2011-12-12T10:46:00.000+02:00

(I've spent quite a lot of time this autumn thinking about our calling cards. I've tried to re-imagine what our cards should be like. I wanted them to show our sounds somehow (which incidentally is frigging hard when you're dealing with cardboard). The first thing I came up with was memory sticks. We got them printed and packed them full of music and sound design stuff (a whopping 11 hours and 28 minutes worth).

But I wasn't really yet satisfied. I wanted to have something we could just easily give someone. For some reason I started to think of videos. They've usually got some sound and most people are kinda visually oriented.(Geewiz, film composers making videos with images and music... That's original.) But I gave it a shot and came up with this:

(And here's the music on SoundCloud)

Now, if we could only get our hands on something like this:

Come on Sony. Get that sucker into production so we can finally have our cool calling cards...

Sunburn

2011-11-13T11:30:00.000+02:00

The sun shines brightly. The pavement feels rough under your running feet. Jump. Grab a drain pipe. Start climbing. Gravel on the roof splatters around as you jump on it. You move again, running...

Sunburn

Sunburn is a track started out as something else than a track. I originally needed a loop to fill out the background of a radiospot. For this I used about an hour but then the loop started to sound pretty damn good on it's own.

In the original loop I only had some atmospherics and the beat, which clearly were not enough for a ful fledged song. The biggest thing about the original loop was the lack of a melody since it was not meant to have one. And that was the first thing I started to work upon. For the melody I drew inspiration from the soundtrack of Bladerunner. I kept it fairly simple so I wouldn't loose the atmospheric nature of the song.

...The sun light reflects of the glass and steel around you. Foot steps on the gravel behind you. They're chasing you. The roof ends. You jump...

After I got the melody down I started to work on the structure. I wanted to have this track rolling and not change too much, but still wanted clearly different sections as I imagined this to be the soundtrack of a Mirror's Edge like video game level. I wanted to have some calming moments, some dramatic moments and some parts that rolled forward. And all the time I wanted to keep a good pace. So I imagined different kinds of situations you could get into and began to mold the section according to them.

...A railing. You grab it mid air. Fling yourself over it. A fire escape. Kick the ladder down. Slide...

After I had finished the structure and mixed the track I still wanted to mess with it a bit. I popped the beats and the melodies on different tracks in Sonar and started to mangle them with Illformed's Glitch plugin. I used it to create new drum fills and section changes. I used it to stop the beat, reverse it, retrigger it and just generally abuse the hell out of those drums. And then I did the same to the melodies. To top it of I intentionally forgot about making clean and smooth cuts between the effected parts and the clean ones.

...Head down the alley and back into the sunlight. A plaza, people there. Blend in.

Gear I used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 8.5

Samplers and instruments:

u-he Tyrell Nexus 6
Synapse Audio Junglist
HG Fortune Serenity Free
HG Fortune UltraSwamp Free
HG Fortune Altair 4 Beta
Cakewalk RXP
NI KorePlayer
Novakill Neokiller III
Ummet Ozcan Genesis

Effects:

Cakewalk z3ta+ FX
Variety of Sound Ferric TDS
Illformed Glitch 1.3
MeldaProductions MEqualizer
Kjaerhus Classic Master Limiter

rvltn @ IGDA 8.11.2011

2011-11-10T10:34:00.001+02:00

We visited the IGDA event of November in Helsinki with really big plans for promoting ourselves to the Finnish game industry. Well, turned out that Supercell was giving out free beer and the bar was full. So we did whatever a reasonable person does: made a video of it.

A wee bit of a teaser

2011-10-11T10:28:00.002+03:00

I wrote about a really huge project I'm working on a little while back. I'm really excited about this project and the work has started out really well but the thing is I really can't reveal what I'm working on until the autumn of 2012. It's a really BIG and long project. But I still want to share something.

This is what I've been mulling over the past weeks. This simple line of melody. Two and a half bars of notes. And hopefully I'm on the right track with it.

reveltone @ Facebook

2011-10-08T09:28:00.000+03:00

This is just a reminder for those of you who haven't noticed it yet (I'm betting a lot you haven't...). We can now be found also on Facebook.

rvltn @ FB

Mush over there and like us if you like us!

Starting something big

2011-09-27T10:59:00.001+03:00

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will begin to write and design something big. Short but big and really frigging exciting. The concepts I've seen really are inspiring and I'm quite anxious to get work started. That's about all I can say right now.

The New Dawn

2011-08-15T21:23:00.002+03:00

A little while back I spotted an interesting contest on Audiodraft. It was hosted by Nelonen Media. They were looking for a new sound for their brand. My suggestion did not win, but I got a chance to flex out Sample Logic's Cinematic Guitars.

The sound I went after was uplifting. I began with pads and guitar harmonics. I got some really nice and airy atmospheres created with the new guitars. But they alone would not be enough to carry the track.

So I dug out a crushed and glitched drum kit to create a driving rhythm to give the song a good momentum. I didn't want to create too elaborate of a beat so I kept it simple with just the bass drum and a fast paced glitch ticking. On top the beat I wrote passages with a massive tom ensemble.

Once these were done I turned to the orchestral elements. I used lush strings to create a melody which I doubled with french horns.

The track was kept short due to the lenght requirements in the contest, but I'm quite happy how it turned out.

The New Dawn

5 second audio stories

2011-08-05T19:23:00.001+03:00

A short post this time. I have a really good feeling at the moment about a bunch of IDs I worked on this week. They are to work as transitions between songs.

I didn't just want to make single sounds but rather wanted them to be mini stories. It's actually quite a challenge to create an understandable short story with just sounds. Also they needed to have a good tempo so they won't slow down the show. I think I got them sounding really awesome.

The elements I used in then I collected from things around the office and things associated with the channel. They range from monkeys to UFOs.

I'll post some of them here later.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4

Pelasta Punainen Pallo - End Credits

2011-08-04T10:39:00.000+03:00

I finally got around to actually uploading this piece online. A detailed account can be found in an earlier post.

Pelasta Punainen Pallo - End Credits

So that's how it sounds. I'm proud of it.

The Frontier

2011-07-17T22:01:00.001+03:00

Every now and then I start up a track just for the heck of doing something. Anything. With out any real purpose to begin with. This is a journal of one such track:

The Frontier

Like I said this started out as something to do on an idle day. I layed out the beginning pads and bleeps one day and then nothing. The track sat on my hard drive for quite a while just waiting. Eventually I just forgot about this.

Then another idle day came and I browsed through my projects folder to find this one. I gave it a listen felt I could build on the simple beginning I had in my hands. I began laying drums and strings on, but the strings began to have a little too much of an ethnic vibe, which I for some reason did not want for this track. So I dumped most of the strings and pulled out the brass. They began with a simple idea that grew.

The more I wrote for the horns to play the more I felt the melody push you towards an entrance to some unfamiliar (yet all too familiar) place. So that became the theme to carry this track. The brass melody became grand and everything felt like it was going to plan. Then I hit a wall. What next? What happens when you get to the gate?

For a second time this track was left to wait.

For a while I had no answer. I made several different versions in my head but all of them sounded wrong. I actually spent a few weeks thinking about how to go with the second half. Then yesterday I fired up Sonar and began to write without much thinking of it. And the second half kinda just wrote itself.

In the end it was fitting that writing a track to portray the transportation between two worlds was so hard yet so easy to write.

Gear I used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar X1
Sony SoundForge 7

Samplers, instruments and effects:

NI Kontakt4
NI Battery 3
NI Massive
NI Absynth 5
Z3ta+ FX
Vienna Suite

Libraries and impulses:

MOTU Ethno Instrument 2
Zero G Animato
Sonic Couture Konkrete 2
Nine Volt Audio Stickbreakers 2: Ten Man Taiko
Kirk Hunter Symphony Orchestra Diamond
Cinematic Strings Monster Staccatos
VSL Horizon series Epic Horns
NI Kontakt 4 Library

Pelasta Punainen Pallo - charity concert

2011-05-28T11:11:00.000+03:00

Ok, let's break this long overdue silence on this diary.

I did a pretty rush job at work. Due to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, there was a charity concert in Helsinki, which YleX was a part of. The sound work for the radio and TV spots and the YleX Areena web-TV broadcast fell into my lap.

The first thing that was decided was the tone of the sound. None of us working on this project wanted to have the sound feel too solemn or downcast. We wanted to give people a good feeling about the concert. In the end they're going to see their favorite artists perform and the side product is them helping out. How can you do that if they get a dark mood from the sound? On the other hand we didn't want to go with something overly energetic since that would give out a wrong signal as well.

I started with the beat. I didn't want it to be too in your face but it still needed to have a driving force. I took the human heart beat and built the basic beat around it. Over this I built a mix of dub and downtempo drums that rolls forward slowly but steadily. I made the drums sound quite dark to give them a more dramatic tone.

I didn't want to use your traditional Japan clichés so I steered away from your normal goto Japan instruments: the shakuhachi and the koto. Instead I focused on getting the feel of Japan into a set of modern pads. I gave them a lot of air to contrast the dark tones of the drums. I also layered some electric guitar licks into them.

The final touch I added was the sound of a geiger counter ticking. For me this was the most dramatic part of the sound of this project. The geiger counter is such a regocnizable that it really drives home things. It's a simple touch which doesn't underline the tragedies too much.

One Dollar Trilogy: A stranger in these parts

2010-12-14T18:35:00.000+02:00

And this is the third piece from the "One Dollar Trilogy".

A stranger in these parts.

This is again built with the same instrument set as the two other tracks. I saw no need to change the sound too much since all the parts of this trilogy are short (hence the cheap sounding name).

I imagined this as a sort of farewell for the nameless (these dudes never have names, their parents must have hated them) hero as he limps into the sunset boding ill omens for the next town he stumbles into.

Although this trilogy was a rush job it was great fun to write these and I think I will return to these on a later date to create more pages for this story.

Gear I used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 8.5

Samplers, instruments and effects:

NI Kontakt 3
Independence Free
Kjaerhus Classic Master Limiter
Melda Equalizer
Sonar PerfectSpace

Libraries and impulses:

Project SAM Brass
VSL Horizon series Chamber Strings
VSL Horizon series Overdrive
VSL Horizon series Concert Guitar
NI Kontakt 3 Library
Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion
Ilio Origins
Independence Free Library
Gnomehammer Sleigh Bells

Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion impulses

One Dollar Trilogy: Bullets, bloody bullets

2010-12-14T18:23:00.000+02:00

So, today I finished the two other parts of my "One Dollar Trilogy". The second track is titled:

Bullets, bloody bullets.

I built this one around the same palette as the first one. It's actually in the same frigging project file. This one needed to be a battle music, but I didn't want to go the normal way and raise the tempo to make it more faster paced. I kept the tempo same but used the snares to bring a military march type feel to the track. I also gave more room for the trumpet to play to give that Texas/Mexico feel so essential to Westerns.

This is clearly a tighter sounding song and it's a track I might want to extend once I have more time to do it. But for now (and for the theme of this trilogy) it is as it is.

Gear I used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 8.5

Samplers, instruments and effects:

NI Kontakt 3
Independence Free
Kjaerhus Classic Master Limiter
Melda Equalizer
Sonar PerfectSpace

Libraries and impulses:

Project SAM Brass
VSL Horizon series Chamber Strings
VSL Horizon series Overdrive
VSL Horizon series Concert Guitar
NI Kontakt 3 Library
Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion
Ilio Origins
Independence Free Library
Gnomehammer Sleigh Bells

Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion impulses

One Dollar Trilogy: Red Creek

2010-12-13T20:40:00.001+02:00

I received a project at work which required me to write three short western themed music bits for an awards gala. It was a rush job since I only had a few days to do everything. And to top that I didn't get the video clips the music was meant for since it was in edit at the same time. Here's the first of these tracks. I titled it:

Red Creek.

Since time was sparse I didn't even begin to create something inspired and new but started with a basic western palette of sounds: lonely primitive drums, the Mexican trumpet, the acoustic guitar. Around these I wrote a simple progression to create a foreboding mood; a waiting but driven atmosphere. The track grows as it goes along. I used a lot of other familiar elements on this one as well. The always ominous church bell is present as is the massive french horn section and the gritty distorted electric guitar.

This is not a very difficult track as it is simple in structure and melody. But I like it all the same.

Gear I used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 8.5

Samplers, instruments and effects:

NI Kontakt 3
Independence Free
Kjaerhus Classic Master Limiter
Melda Equalizer
Sonar PerfectSpace

Libraries and impulses:

Project SAM Brass
VSL Horizon series Chamber Strings
VSL Horizon series Overdrive
VSL Horizon series Concert Guitar
NI Kontakt 3 Library
Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion
Ilio Origins
Independence Free Library
Gnomehammer Sleigh Bells

Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion impulses

Way of the Fist

2010-12-04T12:14:00.000+02:00

I've been a fan of Hong Kong action movies for I don't even remember how long. This track is a tribute to them. The name of the track comes from Jeet Kune Do (Way of the Intercepting Fist):

Way of the Fist

I originally started this track as a way of learning to do Asian drums (taikos and Chinese style). It kind of evolved from there. The backing of the track is firmly rooted on the beating of the taiko drum, which are accompanied by Indian dohl drums (for the taiko drums I used Nine Volt Audio's Stickbreakers Vol2 and for the dohls Tonehammer's Epic Dohl). To these I combined Chinese Bangu drums from the MOTU's Ethno Instrument and a modern drum kit (well, the NI Abbey Road 60's drums, but that's close enough).

After I had the drums down I thought it would be cool to combine instruments from different continents into one. So I began to go through my arsenal and see what kind of a crazy instrument mix I could get. There are plucked strings from Japan (koto and shamisen), Finland (kantele) and North America (a telecaster guitar). Strings range from western orchestra strings to a gypsy violin layered with a Chinese Erhu. Woodwinds from North America (Native American flute from Orange Tree Samples' MesaWinds) and Japan lead the solo section of the ensemble. Then everything is layered with synths and massive orchestral brass.

This is one of those tracks that I didn't build around a story, bu rather just let it unfold itself as I went along. Rarely has it been so easy to write a song not centered around pivotal story points. What drives this one is the general mood of things happening and the hero simply kicking ass. So enjoy this one.

Gear I used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 7
Sony SoundForge 7

Samplers, instruments and effects:

NI Kontakt4
East West PLAY 2
UVI Workstation
NI FM8
NI Massive
Sonar PerfectSpace
Timeworks Equalizer
Waves L3 Multimaximizer

Libraries and impulses:

Nine Volt Audio Stickbreakers Vol.2: Ten Man Taiko
Orange Tree Samples MesaWinds
Tonehammer Epic Dohls
NI Abbey Road 60's Drums
NI Kontakt4 Library
Project SAM True Strike 2
Project SAM Brass
VSL Horizon series Epic Horns
VSL Horizon series FX Percussion
Bela D Media Sampled Landscape
Ilio Origins
MOTU Ethno Instrument
EastWest Quantum Leap Gypsy
EastWest Quantum Leap Ministry of Rock
EastWest Quantum Leap Voices of Passion

Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion impulses

Avatar Pony Quadrille

2010-10-24T11:00:00.017+03:00

Ok, as I said in the previous entry that the theme for the horse show we wrote music for was the film "Avatar". So there isn't much I can say about the sound of this score, since it was really defined by James Horner before us.

An interesting thing happened while working on this though. I had already passed the music on for the final rehearsal when it was noticed that the practise arena and the show arena aren't the same size. The practise arena was smaller so the ponies took a shorter time to ride through the program than they did in the show arena. So I hauled ass back to my gear and extended the drums and the ending for over 2 minutes. So the end result is 11 minutes and 34 second long.

In the end I believe we created an enjoyable score for the show. Take a listen yourself.

Avatar Pony Quadrille

The show was performed on 24.10.2010 at the Helsinki International Horse Show.

Gear I used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 7
Sony SoundForge 7

Samplers, instruments and effects:

NI Kontakt4
UVI Workstation
Sonar PerfectSpace
Timeworks Equalizer
Waves L3 Multimaximizer

Libraries and impulses:

Cinesamples Drums of War
Tonehammer Epic Dohls
Tonehammer Forgotten Voices: Francesca
Project SAM True Strike 2
Project SAM Brass
Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion
Bela D Media Sampled Landscape
Ilio World Winds
MOTU Ethno Instrument
Kirk Hunter Symphony Orchestra Diamond
Cinematic Strings Monster Staccatos
NI Kontakt 4 Library

Tonehammer Epic Hall Convolutions

Breaking new ground

2010-10-02T08:44:00.000+03:00

For the last few weeks I and Teemu have been working on something really new to us. Well, the material we've been writing isn't actually new but the reason for it is. We've been commissioned to write performance music for a live performance pony quadrille. This is something neither of us has done before. Actually neither of us has been that close to anything resembling a horse (ok, ok, they're ponies) before and we know basically nothing of such shows. It's not the first (nor will it probably be our last) leap into unknown territories and we're really getting a crash course in horse shows. At least no one can say we wouldn't live up to our motto: "If you need music we'll create it."

The music will be in the vein of Avatar, since that is the theme of the show.

Sarcofagus @ Dante's Highlights, Helsinki

2010-09-24T13:22:00.001+03:00

I hadn't planned on writing about gigs into this diary, but last night I heard something so inspiring that I had to share it. I went to listen to Sarcofagus on their gig. I got a little more than I expected. Most of the set was made of their most known songs and they rocked through them well. The big surprise came at the end.

The show ended with a few guest appearances. The final two guests were a guy playing an electric kantele and a singer doing throat singing. Imagine the sound you get when you stack up a rough heavy metal background, the kantele playing distorted folk melodies, the throat singing bringing an air of ancient things to the mix. And to top it all off the keyboard player starts jamming with a 60's or 70's analog Moog synth over everything else! Talk about originality.

The Terror: Ice bound - finished

2010-07-22T12:59:00.000+03:00

Just finished mixing the intro track. I felt it did not need any of the compositional changes I was pondering. So without further ado, here it is:

The Terror - Ice bound

Gear I used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 7
Sony SoundForge 7

Samplers, instruments and effects:

NI Kontakt4
Sonar PerfectSpace
Timeworks Equalizer
Waves L3 Multimaximizer

Libraries and impulses:

VSL Horizon Series Chamber Strings
VSL Horizon Series FX Percussion
Soniccouture Bowed Gamelan
Cinesamples Drums of War
Cinematique Instruments Bowed Psaltery
Sample Logic Vuvuzela
Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion
Kirk Hunter Symphony Orchestra Diamond
Cinematic Strings Monster Staccatos
Project SAM Brass
NI Kontakt 4 Library

Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion impulses

Yeah, I used Sample Logic's Vuvuzela library. Can you spot this much hated instrument there?

The Terror: The beast attacks

2010-07-20T14:10:00.000+03:00

I started work on the main action cue of this project. This is where we get the Tuunbaq, the beast that hunts the stranded men, inside the ship. This is when they are hunted in their temporary home. This is where many of them die. It will be a brutal track without respite, without mercy. There are lot of drums and less melodies. It's more about panic and haste than coordinated action. This is where they scramble to survive.

The Terror: Ice bound

2010-07-19T14:23:00.000+03:00

Just finished the first draft of the intro track of "The Terror". It sounds very cool even before mixing. There are still some things I have to think about though. Mainly the ending and the length of the middle section. Both are good, but I'm thinking that the middle could be a little longer still. So going to do some intensive listening for the next few hours. Of and the name of the first track is:

Ice Bound

The Terror: First notes and bars

2010-07-15T22:39:00.000+03:00

I began work on "The Terror" album right away. Since it's one of my favorite stories I really didn't need to search far for inspiration. The intro track is about halfway done and it conveys very well the main elements of the story: isolation and freezing cold. Both of them ooze out of the novel. You'll never look at snow the same way after reading the novel. I'm hoping to convey that into the music as well. If the intro track had images to go with it they would contain a Luc Besson style moving camera that floats over the ice and snow towards two stranded ships.

New spec project

2010-07-14T17:56:00.003+03:00

Chipping in with a simple cover picture post of a new project I'm starting (yeah, I know, maybe I should finish some of these spec projects for a change). I'll be doing some tracks inspired by a fantastic book by Dan Simmons called:

The Terror

Sippo and the funk - rehash

2010-06-27T09:16:00.000+03:00

Yesterday I started to work on rearranging, reinstrumenting and generally pimping up the track "Sippo and the funk". Going add many new layers and changing the instruments to make the sound more cinematic and retro. Also going to make it really into a theme song from the current background loop style. Hopefully will get it done soon.

Before a blank DAW view: Spec tracks Part One - Inspiration

2010-05-22T08:58:00.000+03:00

I thought I'd write a bit about what happens before I start a new project for a change. So this is going to be a rant about inspiration, ideas and how to get them. So with out further ado I'll just jump in and start.

Inspiration sources for spec tracks

Stories
Obviously for me stories are a main source of inspiration. I rarely make music without a story to inspire it. So where do I find these stories?

1. History
History is one my favorite sources of inspiration. It is filled with unbelievable stories. The only thing one really has to do with history is choose. And this is where the inspiration part comes in. I try to avoid making the obivous choice of a big heroic story and try to dig in deeper to find those events and stories that happened outside the limelight of victorious glory. Did I mention that for me inspiration is as much detective work as it is something mystical that can't be described?

2. Myths
After history myths are my biggest source of inspiration. I find it interesting to see how the mythologies of different cultures vary from each other but are still some much alike. You can find new perspectives to familiar stories by looking into a different mythology.

3. Books in general
This is one of those duh-things. Books are stories. A good book can inspire you to many things. Simple as that. Books you can easily tackle, since there's a whole a lot more in them to work with. Often some obscure side line can be the most interesting part. For example a single line "the final flight of the Luftwaffe"from a book spawned an eight minute action packed track.

4. Newspapers
Newspapers are full of interesting stuff. Usually there's a lot of stuff that can tickle the imagination and bring new ideas to your head. Most of the time you just have to dig deeper into the subject. And who knows, you might end up finding a different story that way.

5. People
Listening to old people is often really inspiring. They can have a lot of increbidle stories to tell and they can give you the human side of them. You don't find these stories in the history books, but they are more tangible than all the above.

Other sources
Not all of my tracks have stories behind them. Ok, this happens rarely, but it does happen (sometimes). Then I need to dig my ideas from somewhere else.

1. New instruments
I tend to collect instrument libraries and almost always when I get something new on my hard drive I get inspired by it. Ok, at first I'm baffled by how to use them, but then I get inspired. The new sounds just bring new worlds to mind and open new doors for you to explore. Usually getting new instruments gets me out of my normal tracks and shift me into different styles of music. Which is always a good thing.

2. Old instruments
I really have to mention this as well, since I get this often. As I'm always buying new libraries I tend to forget somethings that my old libraries have and then "discover" them. And get inspired.

3. Art
I find a lot of ideas from different kinds of art work. Sometimes a beautiful photograph, an unfinished painting or a sketch is all that is needed to get my mind running. The only problem I find with art as an inspiration source is that you might have go through a really large amount of stuff to find the pieces that inspire you. But like I said before, the detective work is one of the best parts of working with new ideas.

4. Travelling
Getting stuck in your normal circles is a pretty bad thing when your trying to be creative. Travelling is probably the best way to break your routines. Plus going to someplace that is really cool can give you extra vibes and ideas.

5. Nature
It's no surprise that nature has inspired so much art in the course of time. It is just full of marvelous sights from small to large. You just have stop and see them.

6. Design
This one crosses paths with art (and sometimes with nature) as well designed objects, places, whatnot, are pieces of art. But I feel this still needs it's own little tab here. Let's take an example: a Ferrari sports car. No one will says it's not a piece of art but there can be so much more to it. I have seen a group of Italian Carabinieri (the police for those not familiar with Italy) just stare at a starting Ferrari and watch it speed away well over the speed limit right before them and not one of them gave chase. They just took in the beauty and power or the car and then went on with their business. So design can give you quite alot of stuff to work with.

These are some of the things I've found inspiration for and this is by no means a complete list. I will write more about my working with spec tracks in time, but there's still one thing that this post needs. A little piece of advice.

Keep an idea book. Write down things you hear, see, read, experience. Don't let them escape.

The story behind "Suosikkijuontaja"

2010-05-17T08:44:00.000+03:00

I had an interesting project at YleX radio station. It involved the station morning show team and their mystery trash journalist Trash King.

The whole thing started when the morning show got a make over; they received a completely new soundscape with new jingles and background tracks. Well their main background track (which is a driving rock electronic mix) was used for the shows TV commercial and the music gained some questions about what song was used there. This happened also when the new soundscape went on air. So I suggested that we actually make a song out of it.

The idea was thrown around a bit before it was agreed that the song had to be made. I started out by doing some rearranging on the material. The original background track consisted of an easily loopable elements which I divided into verses and a chorus. This way I built the basis for the track.

But lets have a look at the music of the song before going deeper into the actual making of the song. The strongest element of the song is the beat, which is forward driving and massive in sound. It is layered from four different drum layers (read kits) ranging from a punchy rock kit to an electronic drum'n'bass kit. There are no breaks from the beat during the song. When I had started to make the original background track a few of the descriptions I got were ballsy, in-your-face, large. The beat is all of these.

On top of the beat there's a slap bass. I originally selected the cheapest sounding synthetic slap bass I could find to give it the feel of, well, adult movies. It worked well with the background track and I saw no reason to change it. What I did with the song is that I added a distorted electric guitar on top of the bass to give it more power and even more rhythm.

The acoustic piano playing long, sharp notes and chords from the original track stayed the same as did the electronic beeping sound I used to create a lead melody with. For the song I gave them a backing with ambientesque pads to have a more airy feel in the music. I also wrote an ever growing brass section for the song. From the first chorus to the last the sound of the song grows larger and larger.

When I had rearranged the song I had a few meetings with the morning show team so that they could have their say on the lyrics.It was decided that the track should revolve around Trash King and his Trash Kingdom (I won't reveal who he is, for his vengeance would be far too gruesome). With this decision it became clear that the lyrics would revolve around trash journalism.

The lyrics evolved to form the imaginary weekend of a star persona "Suosikkijuontaja" (that's Finnish for star host). The lead vocalist would be Trash King who belts out one outragious scoop after another and the morning show team responds to the scoops with your somewhat standart celebrity answers that end getting them deeper and deeper into dire straits. That's the basic idea of the lyrics.

Then the date was set when we'd record the lyrics. The day started with some choir singing as I had the guys and their producer chant out the chorus. I have to admit, it sounded just as horrible as I had imagined and then Tom led out a few choruses with some freakishly high notes in there. It was really disturbing. But I knew I had recorded the perfect chorus for the song. Luckily Trash King wasn't in the house yet so Tom was spared being ridiculed for his "masculine" performance.

After the choir session I remained in the studio with Tom, who had a tighter schedule than the rest of the guys. I got a few really good reactions from him, but the coup de grace of the day was joining of a vision I had had and an instrument Tom owns. The vision I had was a fusion jazzish instrument solo over just the beat, bass and guitar. And the instrument: a bagpipe. That's right: a jazz bagpipe over a slapbass and distorted guitar. I don't really know which of us is the sicker man, me for dreaming it or Tom for going along with it. Well, it's still probably me since I had Tom play various length licks from which I edited the final solo performance. It's probably one of the most absurd and disturbed musical things I've done. Seriously. No really. Listen to the track and you'll know what I mean. Moving on.

The rest of the recording session went as planned. I got really good stuff out of Juuso and Matti, whose performance dropped me to the floor a few times. Then came the dreaded moment of recording Trash King. I have never heard such things in my life. It still gives me the shivers. He truly is the king of trash.

The recording and vocal editing day ended up being 11 hours long. It was a long session, but I'm glad I did it since the next day I could just start finishing the song. First I put all the vocals in place then divided them into three sections divided by choruses. Between the last two sets of choruses I placed the bagpipe solo. The final thing I did was to create and intro and outro for the track containing rantings from Trash King. Then the mixing and the song would be ready for listening.

I was really nervous about what the morning team would say when they heard the final result. I was relieved when the guys started laughing out loud. Then I knew they liked it. And with that the song was finished.

Trash King fist. YleX AAMU - Suosikkijuontaja

Gear I used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 8.5
Steinberg Nuendo 4

Samplers, instruments and effects:

NI Kontakt 3
NI Battery 3
NI Guitar Rig 3
NI FM8
Cakewalk Dimension Pro
Kjaerhus Master Limiter
Melda Equalizer
PerfectSpace

Libraries:

Vienna Horizon Series Overdrive
Project SAM Brass
NI Battery 3 Library

New and improved website

2010-04-29T08:52:00.002+03:00

I'll give you guys a heads up with a quick news flash. We've gone over our website and given it a make over and it now looks snazzier than ever. There's a chunk load of music to hear now as we've placed some our favourites from past years at your listening pleasure.

The Brand New Firelight:Studios Website

Sippo and the Funk

2010-04-27T15:19:00.002+03:00

This one is about the theme song for the online person of YleX radio station, Sippo.

Sippo and the funk.

What was wanted from the music that it would give you the feel of a lot of hassle and stuff going on. Also a bit of that undercover cop feeling wouldn't hurt. So my mind pops up with the feel of the 70's, of funk music and Starsky & Hutch.

I pondered on the elements for a while before one day I was going to lunch and a clavinet melody started playing in my head. It was just the thing I needed to get things rolling. So there I was trying to eat lunch as fast I could, humming the melody in my head all the while. Then a rush back to the studio and some quick writing to get it down. It ended up forming the backbone of the song.

Next up was the beat and bass. I didn't want the beat to be too grrovy, but rather be a forward moving force that drives the track onwards. I stacked three different sounding drum kits on top of each other to get a good layering into the drums. I selected some of the most dry and dirty kits I had at my disposal at the time. For the bass line I selected to do a slightly slapped bass to get some of that funky feeling. But not too much since I wanted the bass to be low.

From the actual lead theme I wrote an ascending and descending brass theme for saxes, trumpets and trombones. It's a simple enough melody, which starts out from the same note each time go either up or down. I wanted the brass to sound dirty and used quite a bit of gracing elements on the trumpets. There are stabs and falls all through the melody.

The sound is rounded out by a rhythmic organ and wah guitar.

I'm still pondering whether to do a more song like version of this with added string elements. Now the structure of the this song is more of a loop than an actual theme song.

Gear I used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 8.5

Samplers, instruments and effects:

NI Kontakt 3
NI KorePlayer
NI Battery 3
NI Guitar Rig 3
Kjaerhus Master Limiter
Melda Equalizer
PerfectSpace
Audio Damage Roughrider
Bootsy Ferric TDS
Smartelectronix SupaPhaser

Libraries:

Vienna Horizon Series Overdrive
Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion
Project SAM Brass
NI Battery 3 Library
NI Kontant 3 Library

The Giant Steps

2010-04-24T11:18:00.007+03:00

Yesterday I wrote about composing by colors. Well there's another aspect of that same project that I'm working on, the sound design. There's going to be a TV commercial about the event and it needs some new sound elements the first of which was needed before the actual commercial is even ready. Since the project spans different medias (TV, radio and the internet) it requires a quite large array of different sound pieces.

One of them being an audio signature identifying the artists performing in the event. All the elements sound have the same feel to them so I started building a few blocks to form the basis for that sound world.

One of those blocks I started with is the foot steps of a giant walking in a city. I started by selecting the lowest and most massive bass drum sound I could find to form the thud caused by really heavy feet.

For the second layer of the sound I wanted a realistic sound of something heavy hitting the ground. At first I was thinking of concrete blocks, but then turned to falling trees, which had a more organic sound. I doubled that layer and shifted the pitch down an octave to get it to sound heavier and a little unnatural.

The third layer of the sound consisted of pitch shifted snapping branches and breaking wood. They give a nice organic breaking sound. Another layer had large falling rocks to designate the small pieces of pavement that might burst around the foot step.

As final touch I added a layer of shifting sand to make it sound like the pavement actually moves to the side when the foot presses down on it. After this I made several different version of the sound with varying volume levels for each layer to make them sound a little different and to make them work at different distances from the actual foot step in the commercial. Some of them are just low thuds and some of them have all the elements blaring at you at very close range.

This sound became the start of the audio signature. The rest of the audio signature consists of the green and orange musical sound scape I talked about in my previous Production Diary entry.

Composing by colors

2010-04-23T12:15:00.003+03:00

This is one of the weirdest composing tasks I've had so far. I'm responsible for how an outdoor event sounds like and the only thing I have to go with are palm trees swaying in the wind and the colors green and orange. So now I'm pondering how does green sound? And what about orange?

The helping hand of technology

2010-04-02T08:49:00.003+03:00

I've been battling with a crowded monitor display for quite a while now and finally the camel snapped. I went out and purchased a new monitor. A larger one. My previous display had a resolution of 1280x1024, which isn't bad if you're used to just surfing the net and writing the text or two. But for anything as large scale as my compositions tend to be it started to get rather small. So yesterday I bought a BenQ G2222HDL wide screen display with a resolution of 1920x1080 and boy is my screen now a lot less messy.

After the fall: Prypiat suite

2010-03-23T08:50:00.001+02:00

"After the fall" is a video game inspired apocalyptic story. The first part (which is actually the third track, writing these isn't going to happen in sequence) of it is:

Prypiat suite

Prypiat is an abandoned city originally built close to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and inhabited by the plant's workers and their families. It was transformed into a ghost town after the, umm, minor malfunction at the plant in 1986. It has already been featured in a few games, but since this is simply a concept production I feel that it's a good place to use.

As the name suggest this is a suite of cues, in other words this is a collection ideas what might happen in the Prypiat chapter of the fictional game. The different cues that make up this suite are:

00:00 - Out of quarantine
01:03 - Abandoned
01:55 - Where am I?
04:09 - Death
05:44 - Strange footprints
06:21 - Run!
07:48 - Leaving Prypiat

I was originally inspired to write this kind of music after playing Resident Evil 4 and being a long time fan of post-apocalyptic scifi I felt like writing music for a fictional game in the vain of RE4 set in the future after the world of man has fallen. So it's the vein of survival horror. In this chapter the main character is mainly unarmed and running and hiding and just plain surviving.

In this chapter the main character also has his first contact with the horrifying creatures preying in this cold world. He doesn't yet stand a change in fighting them so he has to keep quick on his feet if he wants to make it out alive. The chapter ends with him leaving Prypiat.

I started out to write music that is less thematic and more dramatic and ambient. I started with several NI Absynths at the core of the sound for this. From them I got the spacey desolate whining pads the play through out most of the track. They are the lungs of this song as they breath in and out of the listener consciousness. They provide the track with a welcome feeling of alienation and unfamiliarity, which is a must for such subjects.

If the pads were the lungs then the beating heart are the percussions. For most of the track there is a steady presence of massive low booming drums that keep the track in motion. These sounds were provided by Project SAM True Strike 2, Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion and NI Absynth. To contrast them I used the Epic Dohls from Tonehammer to give the track a feeling of suddenness as they provided a shard rushing sound to mix. With them I could rush at the listener if I needed to.

A big part of the sound is the female vocals provided by Tonehammer Forgotten Voices: Francesca library. The vocals are a key element at bringing a human side to a track filled with alien noises and on rushing sounds. They brought warmth and emotion. They also increased the feeling of alienation from as they brought an element of home into the dark and hollow soul of the track.

An interesting fact about this track is that for once I didn't spend more than an hour tweaking the mix. It had all come quite nicely together in the composing phase, so the end mixing consisted of some equalizing and level checking. Wish every project was as easy to mix.

In the end this kind of sound is something I want to explore more and will do so as I compose the other parts of "After the fall" concept album.

Gear I used for these tracks:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 7
Sony SoundForge 7

Samplers, instruments and effects:

NI Kontakt 4
NI Absynth 5
NI FM8
NI Battery 3
PSP Nitro
NI Guitar Rig 4 Pro
UWI Workstation
Timeworks Equalizer

Libraries:

Tonehammer Epic Dohl
Tonehammer Forgotten Voices: Francesca
Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion
Project SAM True Strike 2
Project SAM Brass
NI Battery 3 Library
NI Kontant 4 Library
Cinematique Instruments Bowed Psaltery
Soniccouture Music Box
MOTU Ethno Instrument
Vienna Horizon Series FX Percussion

A perfect moment of freedom

2010-02-08T00:04:00.001+02:00

Do you know that feeling of total independence of the world when you're pushing yourself to the extremes of your performance ability? That moment when the world around you just fades away, all the stress of daily life disappears, your mind is freed from all arbitrary things and the only thing left is you, your body and the movement?

A perfect moment of freedom.

This is my first track of the year 2010. For quite a while now I've wanted to do a track about movement. The idea came out of watching pictures of parkour and free running. Both sports break the norms of moving in the urban environment by finding alternative routes going about. They both contain a certain search for freedom. Then again one can experience freedom from the world in basically any sports you really concentrate on. For me this happens every time I walk into a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gym. What's outside the walls doesn't matter, it simply doesn't exist. The only thing that matters is the movement you're doing right then and there.

I actually had less trouble figuring out where to start than with most tracks. Somehow this track seemed so clear from the start. I wanted to use a lot of airy instruments in this one. For that I fired up several NI Absynths and a few NI Reaktors, since they provide some of the best soundscaping possibilities. Also on the top of my list was Soniccouture's Pan drum, a sampled hang drum. It has an amazing out of this world sound, which was just perfect for this song. They created the backbone of this track. On top of them I layered lush strings, ethnic percussions, massive french horns, a Chinese Gu Zheng zither, the legendary Japanese Shakuhachi flute and a Boesendorfer grand piano.

As I said this track is more about the feeling than head on action. That's why I didn't write hectic drum lines, even though there is a strong beat in the song. Hectic just wasn't what was needed. Tranquility is more like it. A slight meditative state of mind, without actually being meditative music. This thought I carried with me to the melodies. They're ambient in nature, but there are parts you can grab a hold of. The different instruments play with each other, one taking the lead after another. I'm thrilled that the mesh of different sounds came out so well. For me the sounds of this track breathe positive energy out of the speakers.

This is also one of those tracks I'm completely satisfied with. I wouldn't change one note or sound from it. Creating this track has been a real pleasure.

Gear I used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 7
Sony SoundForge 7

Samplers, instruments and effects:

NI Kontakt 4
NI Absynth 5
NI FM8
NI Battery 3
NI Massive
NI Reaktor 5
Vienna Instrument
EastWest Quantum Leap PLAY
UWI Workstation
Noizware TriDirt
Cakewalk Perfect Space
Sonic Timeworks Equalizer
Kjaerhus Classic Master Limiter

Libraries:

Analogue Drums Big Mono
Fixed Noise OTTO
Soniccouture Gu Zheng
Soniccouture Konkrete
Soniccouture Konkrete 2
Soniccouture Pan Drum
Vienna Horizon Series Epic Horns
Vienna Special Edition
Tonehammer Epic Dohl
EastWest Quantum Leap Ministry of Rock
MOTU Ethno Instrument

EMMA music awards gala 2010

2010-02-04T23:30:00.006+02:00

I had an interesting project to work on: writing music for a music awards gala show. This was again new ground to tread on, since I've never composed music for a live awards show before.

The theme of the show was the circus. But we didn't want it to sound like your traditional circus but a more modern, a little macabre circus. Then again we didn't want it to sound like any other Finnish award show and so we opted to go big.

To get that massive sound I turned to Tonehammer's Epic Dohl s and slave ships. You know the age old worn out image of slaves rowing and an obese guy in a loin cloth beating their pace. That's what I started from. To get that kind of driving solid beat at the core of the music. The same drums control the music in different variations from one cue to another. The music in all is percussion driven with several smaller percussions and electric and acoustic drum kits joining in.

The next step was to create the kind of circus atmosphere without going too traditional. Electronics was what everybody wanted. But what kind of electronics? You couldn't go too spacey and or too pop. In the end I chose to use some really odd electronic sounds to form the basic progression. They're on the border of being really out there, but still have an edge of familiarity. They also gave the music that desired macabre feel. Needless to say that I relied heavily on NI Absynth. An important element was also Tonehammer Phonautogram library.

On top of these core elements I wrote layers of stuff ranging from light string arrangements to rough and tough heavy guitar riffs via ethnic flavors and electronic buzzings. They come and go as the elements of the show require them to do so.

An interesting part of the project was writing background music for a magician performing there. This is where I broke the basic back bone which had dominated the other cues. It needed to be swifter than the rest and I think it needed a more mysterious air about it. The sound here is still dominated by the Epic Dohls, but massive brass and strings come out to play essential parts. The end result is a mixture of awe and fright. And I like it.

One of the things about this project was that I didn't actually get to see the results until the show was aired. Everything was being developed still on the day before the show I had no idea how all the elements would work together. In the end it worked well, which is always a relief.

As I've said all along this was an interesting composing project and I'm glad I got the chance to do it.

Update 6.2.2010: Finally I have these in presentable form so here's a bite of what the music sounded like.

EMMA 2010 Theme (short version)
EMMA 2010 Theme (longer version)
The Magician
The Nominee Categories

The Nominee Categories is mixed from several different loopable elements, so don't mind the rough edges.

Gear I used for this project:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 8.5

Samplers, instruments and effects:

NI Kontakt 3
NI Absynth 4
NI FM8
NI Massive
NI B4 II
NI Battery 3
NI Koreplayer
NI Guitar Rig 3
QuikQuak Upstereo
MeldaEqualizer
Kjaerhus Classic Master Limiter

Libraries:

Tonehammer Epic Dohl
Tonehammer Phonautograms
Tonehammer Gnomehammer Kazoo Ensemble
NI Kontakt 3 Library
NI Battery 3 Library
Project SAM Brass
Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion
Ilio Origins
Hollow Sun K3 Bass Station Library

Latest experiences

2009-10-28T12:21:00.000+02:00

I wrote about ordering Native Instruments Komplete 6. Well I finally got around to actually using the new tools in productions and I have to say I'm impressed. Especially Kontakt has been tweaked really well from the previous versions. I always ran in to trouble with the Direct-from-disc loading with the older versions, but with version 4 this works like a charm and found myself just loading more and more instruments while working. It was just a joy to work with the new Kontakt 4.

Absynth 5 seems to be even better than the previous versions and the rest of the classic soft synths in the Komplete packet are killers. Sorry for the shameless product pluck but working with them is just sheer pleasure.

Also I've been waiting to really use Tonehammer's Propanium and Epic Dohl libraries. They are absurdly excellent. The propanium has such an off worldly sound that you just get inspired by that alone. Also the Epic Dohls are massively usable. You can hear the ensemble in the individual sounds.

Finally have to mention Bela D Media's The Giovani Edition is a brilliant choir library. I've had it lying on my hard drive for quite a while now but this is about the first time I actually use it. The library has a really aetherical sound which is perfect for haunting choral passages. Can't wait for Bela D Media to finish of their choir library with a male and female choir... At least the boy and girl choirs rock.

I'll chug the tracks I worked on here so you can hear what I'm talking about. They're just a collection of ideas and as such are rough and unfinished. They're for a short scifi film.

Landing
The ship descents
Killing time

Gear I used for these tracks:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 7
Sony SoundForge 7

Samplers and instruments:

NI Kontakt 4
NI Absynth 5
NI FM8
NI Massive
NI Koreplayer
u-He Zebra CM
NI Guitar Rig 4 Pro

Libraries:

Tonehammer Propanium
Tonehammer Epic Dohl
Bela D Media The Giovani Edition
Project SAM True Strike 2
Vienna Symphonic Library Horizon series Epic Horns
NI Acoustic Refractions
NI Kontakt 4 Library
Samplelogic AIR

Isolation

2009-10-28T12:20:00.000+02:00

This is about a track called:

Isolation

I started working on this track at my day job when I needed to test out my new computer and the software I installed on it. So it's basically a test track.

Inspiration for this one came from the brilliant movie "District 9". I loved it's realistic approach to scifi, the themes it touched and well just about everything about it. I wanted to create something on a similar basis.

As the basic ideas and inspiration behind this track were quite opressive I wanted to create a gritty sound. This in turn gave me a good chance to get familiar with NI Guitar Rig 3, which I hadn't used before. Also getting my hands on FM8 was something I had waited for a while. I used quite a lot of distortion and compressing on a lot of the instruments to get that dirty sound. I found that Audio Damage's RoughRider gives out a quite nice crushed sound so I used that quite a lot on different tracks.

The biggest new technical thing on this track was mixing it in surround sound. It's a whole new world for me and experimenting doing a surround mix took some time. The first four or five mixes were totally and utterly incomprehensible. But after a few mistakes I found the right kind of balance for everything so that the track sounds good in normal stereo and surround. Listening to in surround gives a few more little things to the listener, but it's not necessary.

With a lot emphasis on the grittiness and harshness of sound I wanted to bring a "human" element into the track. I chose a set of natural sounds from an up close and personal violin to warm ethnic percussions and Arabian Oud lute. I used them to round out the overall sound and to get a more vibrant air. The middle between the earthy natural instruments and the gritty synthetic side I filled with orchestral strings and brass.

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the results and will definately continue exploring along these lines.

Gear used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 8
Sony SoundForge 7

Samplers and instruments:

NI Kontakt 3
NI FM8
u-He Zebra
NI Battery 3
NI Massive
Cakewalk TTS-1
NI Guitar Rig 3

Libraries:

NI Kontakt 3 Library
Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion
Cakewalk TTS-1 Library
NI Battery 3 Library

Gearhead

2009-09-08T09:28:00.004+03:00

I'm really starting to be frigging gearhead. Native Instruments is releasing Komplete 6 on October 1st and they've made a really nice deal for Kontakt 3 user, which I could not pass. So now I'm waiting for the mailman to bring me the goodies next month. Can't wait to get them!

Ender

2009-07-18T10:15:00.005+03:00

For over a year and a half, playwright Jari Hietanen and director Antti Mankonen have been setting Orson Scott Card's cult Sci-fi classic Ender's Game for the stage. The book presents a deep investigation of interpersonal relations in society by looking at the uninhibited interaction of children - the setting being not entirely unrelated to the more widely known classic, Lord of the Flies.

The production for the stage piece is now in full steam at Legioonateatteri in Tampere, Finland. This production, in what the director calls a 'mystery theatre' approach, is the first ever stage-setting of the novel. I am taking the huge responsibility of the audio side of things, starting with the actual design of the PA system: the theatre has recently relocated and received a state grant to get the lights and sound upgraded.

What I have made out of this freedom is a three-speaker plus subwoofer system with Ableton Live for playing out the audio. The sound for the play is built for a left-centre-right speaker configuration from the ground up, this really adds a great degree to the means of spatialisation. For every sound scene, the audio has been split into stems that can be independently sent into the stereo set of speakers, the middle speaker or reverb using a set of rotary encoders, and the live sound mixer has the opportunity to really react to the action on stage.

In keeping with the mystery theatre ideals, the sets will be abstract and minimal, and lots of mime techniques are used to 'sketch' the surroundings into thin air. On the sound front, my guiding thought has been to work every sound scene into a single drone, where abstract renditions of what one might expect to hear in the scene are coupled with synthetic sounds bordering on noise, but still exhibiting a fundamental frequency. What the audience hears is a complex weave of sound, and for those more sensitive to aural experience, delicate harmonies are found everywhere.

This production has also seen what must be my finest creative moment in sound design: time-stretching the slow release of water from a toilet water container to create the resonances of a spacecraft's walls in takeoff!

Ender - Defender of the dead will premiere on 6th September 2009. For more info (in Finnish) take a look at the Facebook event page or Legioonateatteri's web site.

Sumeria: First tracks

2009-06-21T10:19:00.002+03:00

Another small scribble here about the progress of Sumeria. The opening track has turned out like I wanted it to sound and is mixing ready, though I'll mix each track once the whole album is composed. The opening track is synthetic and weird is sound and yet retains a certain acoustic and natural feel thanks to the few selected acoustic instruments used. The Tonehammer instruments work like a charm.

I'll reveal a little about the album here as well; the names of the first three tracks.

The first and opening track is called: Zero.
The second will be called: Zoe
And the third will be called: Grijalva.

Sumeria: Production has started

2009-05-21T10:03:00.003+03:00

Well, writing a short bit about the first track of the album. I finally got all the pieces together and managed to start composing. It was pushed back by the fact that I needed to write out what each track is about; to give them their stories that they rely on. I'm not throwing out story telling entirely, but the overall story will not be a finished one.

Second reason for starting only now is the fact that I was searching for a few new instruments to play around with. I found a small firm called Tonehammer who make excellent sampled instruments, and I've bought four of them for scoring this album; their sampled Didgeridoo is excellent and is featured quite prominently in the first track, their Epic Dohl library, which is something I've been looking for a long time, the dreamy sounding Propanium and their latest Bamblong library. I also bought Bela D Media's Sampled Landscape, which contains some very cool instruments and drones.

The first track of the album is turning out very nicely. It's a bit ambientesque as there will not be that much melody in it. It is the prologue for the album and it sets up the overall sound and feel. For this the first track is called: Zero.

Concept album: Sumeria

2009-04-16T23:56:00.004+03:00

It's been a while since I've done a bigger project of my own, but I've decided to do a concept score album. I really want to do something different stylewise. The album will be more fragmented than most of my larger works and will not contain a straight forward storyline to connect the dots between the pieces. The whole thing will be called:

Sumeria

The album will contain 13 tracks and will be released when it's done and no sooner.

Ei Kenenkään Maa

2009-03-19T14:33:00.004+02:00

This article backtracks the scoring of the latest film by director Oskari Sipola:

Ei Kenenkään Maa
(Enemies within)

Production for this started shortly after we had finished scoring Oskari's previous film "Repeämä". He gave us a script with a Romeo & Juliet type of love story setting, neonazis, immigrants, broken friendships, hate and violence to read. I for one was intrigued and inspired from the get go.

From the first meetings it became clear that we were all going for a sublime, brooding type of score. It was clear it had to sound threatening and raw but not overpower the images on the screen. We set out to create a score that plays in low register and most of the time you feel the music rather than hear it.

We started off by doing a few short cues of what the score might sound like. The most dominant elements used in these cues were haunting atmospheric pads and primal beating drums. The cues did their trick as Oskari felt we had the right direction and we were able to start with a basic palette once the final cut of the film was ready.

The composing was done separately with me working in my own hole and Teemu in his. Though we worked individually we still managed to work as a team, since we bounced bits and pieces of the score back and forth between us as the work progressed. One can't really spot what piece is done by which composer. It always feels really weird to notice that on our own both of us compose really different kind of material and yet together our composing styles blend seamlessly (I personally am glad that it works that way). During the composing process we had two pit stops with Oskari to check the direction of the score. Both times we made some slight modifications to the details, but the general direction was clear all the time. The final editing and mixing was done on my setup with the score spanning over 60 different instrument tracks, it was so heavily layered.

The score is a haunting mix of layered pads that give an almost eerie feeling to most of the score, with an under current bass rumble and pumping to make it menacing. At times the score just swims elusively with the images, events and sounds, just out of reach but constantly present. We used melodies sparingly with most of them being played by a lonely echoing grand piano. It moves in and out of the score. Also a vital element were the large tom drums; primal and militaristic in nature. They were edited into a low rumble, that rises and falls as the events unfold and only during the final clash at the end they were given free reign to beat with force.

Other instruments used include industrial clangs and metal hits, which accompany the toms, orchestral strings, which appear in both clean and lush and heavily effected forms, percussions from Africa and Asia, which are used to give the toms more backing and give the score a more worldly feel, some very urban beats, ethnic flutes, Tibetan bells, glass harmonica, acoustic and distorted electric guitars, an Arabian female vocalist and a shaman throat singing. Most of these are layered into the synth work, so that they're not really discernible, but add flavor to the wall of sound that the score is.

In the end I feel the score leaves you uneasy since it is not a light listen with only a few points standing out as something to take hold of. And I for one love it for that. It has the feel of the movie, it pulses and grows as the story unfolds, it breaths a steady but unnerving heartbeat. It's not in your comfort zone and it's not meant to be.

Oh, this movie also incorporates a bonus from us: a rather generic heavy rock track that was needed when the director and producer noticed there wasn't enough left of the budget to get the rights for Rammstein's "Feuer frei", so I loaded up Ministry of Rock and played around with it for about 45 minutes and composed a little piece of bad heavy music. I then chugged it over to Teemu who did some vocals for it and presto! The end result plays filtered from a radio in one of the scenes.

The Score

Bonus track "Disemboweled virgins on crack"

Gear I used for this project:

Hardware

Ensoniq MR-61 Workstation Keyboard

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 7
Sony SoundForge 7

Samplers and instruments:

NI Kontakt 3
NI Massive
NI Kore Player
EastWest PLAY
Vienna Instruments Special Edition
Yellow Tools Independence Free
Homegrown Sounds Astralis Orgone
Ummet Ozcan Genesis

Libraries:

Ilio Origins
EastWest Ministry of Rock
EastWest Voices of Passion
Vienna Horizon Series Glass & Stones
Sonivox Flying Hand Percussion

The Deep Blue

2009-02-10T22:32:00.004+02:00

I'll start this diary off by following the production of a single track:

The Deep Blue.

I've always loved water as an element and doing stories that happen in and around water have a certain appeal to me. For this track I had no particular story in mind, only images of a single diver, free diving in the ocean. The ever darkening shade of blue, the isolation, receding light.

Production for this started over a year and a half ago. It started out as a test for my newly acquired soft synth Massive, which I had had lying on my computer for a while. Well, it grew into something more, umm, massive.

I wanted the sound to be deep and grand, but still retain a certain up close and personal feel. I used a lot of echoing and low synths and big, soft brasses to give it a bottom sound to give the music the same vastness and depth as the Earth's oceans. Then again I used a clean acoustic guitar to give the song a personal feel as it plays bright and clear over the wall of sound that creates the rest of the track. An essential element was the use of a large choir, singing almost constantly through out the track.

This song went through several different stages and forms of development until I found the current form for it. At one stage there were acoustic percussion along the track, but in the end they just sounded wrong. The instruments used changed a few times before they settled in: at times there were more synthetic elements and at others more acoustic. The only element that was there all along was the choir.

The ending proved more challenging than the rest of the track and the whole song laid dormant on my computer for almost a year before I bought NI Acoustic Refractions for Kore Player which gave me the final tools that the ending needed. From there I found the high, dreamy sounds that I felt necessary to contrast the low sounds with which the track fades out.

Gear used for this track:

DAWs and editors:

Cakewalk Sonar 7
Sony SoundForge 7

Samplers and instruments:

NI Kontakt 2
NI Massive
NI Kore Player
Vienna Instruments Special Edition
Yellow Tools Independence Free
ComputerMusic CM303

Libraries:

NI Acoustic Refractions
Ilio Origins
Vienna Horizon Series Overdrive
Spectrasonics Symphony of Voices
FutureMusic FutureLoops Vol. 2