Composer’s blog – changes Tuesday, 14 April 2009

I composed all the music in episode 3 to precise tempi, and there are three distinct tempi within the whole soundtrack. Composing to a ‘click-track’ in this way allows me to synchronise my music exactly with the picture from initial conception to the recording session/final mix (I think that Blair and Alexis have already explained the concepts behind this in their posts). This system works very well as long as the timings of the film itself do not change once the music has been composed.

Unfortunately this is exactly what happened with episode 3! I had completed a computerised MIDI ‘mock-up’ of how the music would sound with the picture on Sunday evening (the recording session was due to take place Monday morning). When I sent it off to Helen and Adam at Binary Fable to have a listen, Adam phoned and said that they really liked the music, but they felt that story-wise the last shot wasn’t working. In the end, the only option was to cut that section from the episode, which meant a section of my music was now out of time. I had a rather late night on Sunday revising the music so that everything was ready for the 10am recording session, but I am very glad that Helen and Adam decided to loose the last scene; the ending is much slicker without it!