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

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"

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

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.