Weekly update - telling stories, getting cinematic!

This week I share some of the work I’ve been developing recently, I am getting into more cinematic music and it feels good

First of all, audio visual sound

One of the million things I’ve discovered this past week or so, has been Visual Synth by Imaginando and you can get it for both IOS and MacOS, the first example here didn’t work as I had wanted it to lol but is a funky visual effect nonetheless!

I thought it hadn’t recorded my mic but turns out it did! The sounds you hear in this video are all OXI Coral, which is basically an evolved version of Mutable Instruments “Plaits” instrument.

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Another experiment did work out a bit better but I need to spend time with visual synth to get the best out of it, it’s very good but as with a lot of these things there is a learning curve. Here goes, one of my many recent jams I’ve recorded.

This piece was recorded using the OXI duo once again and you’ll hear these two a great deal going forwards, they’ve become my primary tools of late. There are two voices at play here, one that plays the lead and another that occasionally triggers, I love Stochastic sequencing, as there are plenty of controls to drive it with, I enjoy varying the note lengths, adjusting the tempo in mid flow, adjusting the probability that notes in the scale of Dorian (root C) are random enough but with a certain restraint. I did carefully tweak the filter, resonance and space (reverb) in real time. It’s great. Love this synth.

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This week’s audio improvisations, film score ideas!

The next composition was recorded live from the OXI One in poly sequencer mode, with multi-timbral voicing set up on the Coral. I am rather proud of these, a friend commented that they were film score quality, which made my day. I am exploring my various composition ideas a lot more at the moment, as much as I am a fan of exploring generative ideas, having control on the outcome matters too.

The above was an intro I recorded for a podcast that I later abandoned but loved the composition that I came up with off the cuff at the start. I really should edit the end to remove my talking! I just quite like the context, it’s like one of those demo tapes musicians used to record, where there might be other sounds or chatter in the background present.

I’m heavily inspired by Jarre by the way.

I am beginning to explore composition as a story telling medium and making better use of emotion in that process. I’ve long studied the music of Hans Zimmer, movie composers and a lot of the music I grew up with was far richer in it’s narrative than perhaps music is today.

Opening theme of the film I’d love my music to be in that hasn’t been made yet! I wanted this idea to ease you into the story and was particularly chuffed with my distorted filter that closes this off, which cuts it off nicely.

I’m saving my best for last in this post, something I composed in very little time that actually made me think, holy shit, I can actually write music and I never had a massive amount of education on the subject, other than guitar lessons and teaching myself to play keyboard over the years, which has led to this point in my journey, exploring sound, the ideas.

I am very proud of this last piece. I promise to explore this a great deal more and work hard on an EP for 2024.

Thanks as ever for reading, listening and watching. If you haven’t yet subscribed I would be delighted if you did. You can do so for free or if you want to support me a little more, you can take out a paid subscription.