This Trimester I transferred from the Bachelor of Music production into the Associate degree of Audio. I did this because I was interested in learning more technical skills around recording, mixing and mastering using the analog hardware in the Neve room studio. But also to focus a bit more on sound design and post production skills next trimester to compliment my skillset of composition gained from the Music degree so far.

I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from some inspiring people this trimester. Having the advice and feedback of my teacher Kevin Hay on a professional project I ended up incorporating into this trimester, gave me the confidence that the work I was making was to an adequate standard to submit out into the real world. His approach to teaching is inspiring, creatively rebellious, full of philosophical ideas and outside the usual realms of thinking. Which makes you think about concepts and ideas for hours, days even weeks after a class.

AUDIO SAMPLES:

PROCESS:

I Sampled/Recorded every fifth note on my piano, twice. Once hard and once soft to capture two velocities. Then in Ableton using keychain inside sampler assigning these clips to the midi keyboard. After this was done, I was then able to layer other effects like a rusty Windmill sample, Mosquito Synth, Reverb and distortion effects. Mapping to macros for the user to be able to control how much of each sample they want.

ABOVE: Video Demo of the Instrument Rack that was created incorporating other sounds inspired by the desert, and a heavily effected distorted version of my sampled piano. (x3 Demos in the video the first is the arpeggiated bass sound clip posted on soundcloud above with desert piano, the second a UFO syth x Mosquito synth x Dingo synth and the third a couple of drum sounds)

REFLECTION:

I'd like to develop and improve this instrument further, add more drum sounds and macro's to create more user control and interesting effects. I can see this could be a potential side income, having digital products available for purchase on my website. But also useful in composition creation. In the vein of concrete music which was the precursor to electronic music, I'm interested in merging sound design and composition to create music from field recordings. Adding the context of the environment to create a connection to person and place in time and space.

Sound design and score for a short film sponsored by Epic Games and Unreal engine.

I was commissioned by QLD based screenwriters and film makers to create the complete soundtrack for a short animated drama to be released with Mardi Gras 2023. The story centralises around two friends on a road trip through the Australian Outback, they encounter multiple car problems on their way to Sydney to make it to Mardi Gras.

The length of the film ended up having to be cut to just 5 minutes but compositionally it needed to convey many emotions and scene transitions to new moods, in a short period of time. The producers of the film chose not to have dialogue as they wanted it to be accessible worldwide. The production was Sponsored by Epic Games , so it was an exciting prospect for me to be involved in something out in the real world and in the animated film industry. I really wanted to do a good job of it.

It was a challenging task to begin composing music to an animated hand drawn story board and a written script before any animations had been finalised. In fact due to the nature of this type of project, my composition timeline had to run in parallel with the Unreal engine Video creation timeline, so a few times the scene timing would change slightly and I would need to re-place compositions, atmosphere design or effects which had been synchronised already on multiple occasions. Also it was one of my first experiences composing and recording music to a client's specifications instead of my own. But I loved the challenge of it all and learnt and discovered new techniques of composition, file management and project organisation which will help on projects like this in the future.

COLLABORATIONS:

I collaborated with Kathy Stephens in Audio Trimester 4 who provided sound effects, to complement the existing sounds provided by the client. Kathy collaborated with me on sound design ideas and advice at the very beginning of this project. This helped to shape my perspectives in terms of usual process from a sound design angle, though this project didn't follow the normal sort of timeline of receiving a finished video before work starts. At the end when the video was close to 'picture lock' Kathy did the final placement of the sound effects. She had a professional and very well organised approach and I hope to work with her again sometime on future projects!

I also collaborated with Luke Bonner from Music production Trimester 4 with arrangement ideas and enhancement of the dance music track at the end of the score. He has a great ear for what sounds good and a strong sense of what is needed. I value his advice and decisive creative direction.

I put a call out to find someone to emulate a drum track sample that I really wanted for the opening scene and Marcos Micozzi from Trimester 5 had it done within hours of answering the ad and it fit the track perfectly!

PROCESS

Amidst short transitions, sound effect placement and Sound design , there were 6 main compositions:

• Intro song 80's synth: Talking heads bass line reference track inspired

• Emotive photo reveal flashback motif: Jazzy/desert blues genre

• Transition music: Car troubles and break down in the middle of the desert

• Intimidating bikey scene born to be wild reference track with heavy guitars and bass

• Foreboding scary crash scene in stormy weather

• Celebration Mardi Gras anthem party track.

To begin with I created a 'mood map' track in Ableton by chopping up a feature length track at the locators where scene or emotion changes happen. I then colour coded the clips. This helped to see how much time I had to move to the next emotion or scene and synchronise the composition to the scenes. Later on as the editing got more detailed I had to move on from this and had multiple side projects in both Logic and Ableton with different BPM's to record and also work on ideas exclusively in more detail, I then imported back into a main project for glueing it all together.

There were a few other brainstorm tracks created that didn't suit the score along the way which I quite liked, so I'd like to finish these and compile them when I have more time and release as a soundtrack album perhaps on Bandcamp.