New and improved website

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

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

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

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

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

"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:

1. 00:00 - Out of quarantine
2. 01:03 - Abandoned
3. 01:55 - Where am I?
4. 04:09 - Death
   
5. 05:44 - Strange footprints
   
6. 06:21 - Run!
   
7. 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

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