How I Make Music

Join accomplished sound artist and ‘Unwell’ audio drama creator Jeffrey Nils Gardner to explore a disorienting ambisonic violin recording sound installation which toured both Burning Man and the streets of Chicago. 'Five Twenty-Three AM' was adopted as an unsettling and arty exploration of sound and used as the soundtrack for fiction podcast 'The Museum at Tomorrow.’ In writing the piece, Gardner’s influences ranged from Pauline Oliveiros to John Cage. Immersive listening. Headphones required. TRANSCRIPT00:00 Intro The piece of music we're listening to in the background is called Five Twenty-Three AM. It's an instrumental track used in The Museum At Tomorrow, an abstract audio fiction collage miniseries. Today we'll break it down and experience why and how it was made. If you're listening to How I Make Music, where behind the scenes, musicians get to tell their own stories. My name is Jeffrey Nils Gardner. I'm a sound artist, director and designer from Chicago, Illinois. And this is How I Make Music.01:50 Beat scriptFor each episode, I write out what I call a beat script laying out each moment of the show. And then I conduct interviews with friends or colleagues or interesting people I run into, along with music and other audio elements to fill in that beat script. We create this collage that tells the story in a very different way.02:45 Great grandmother's violin I've been playing violin since I was six years old. This instrument was actually my great grandmother's. I have a very sharp memory of as a very small child, finding this instrument in my grandparents' attic. And that was how I went down the path of becoming a violin player.03:31 DisorientationDisorientation is what I would say one of the main goals of the piece. Kind of like with a magic eye puzzle. If you unfocus your ears and kind of let them follow where they want to go in the overlapping sounds, I find that the listener often creates a fascinating story alongside the narrative that I'm telling. Adds a certain element of chaos. So Five Twenty-Three AM was originally a part of an eight channel sound installation. This installation toured both to Burning Man and also around Chicago. So the experience is you walk into this octagon and close it behind you and lay in the space and are surrounded by this huge number of speakers and the walls block out the city around you. And so you're hearing this fascinating array of experimental music in multi channel sound. And you just see the sky airplanes crossing your sphere of vision. Laying in the octagon it really effectively blocks out the city, which is not something that we get to do very often. Here in Chicago. It's a cool installation.05:35 InfluencesPauline Oliveros is is a big influence for me, and you can hear some of her work with the Deep Listening Band. One of the other really interesting things that Oliveros has done is create these text scores that are that would stand in for a musically notated score. A text score is a set of instructions for creating a piece of music, something like find an object in the room. Begin manipulating it to find a sound that interests you. Make that noise for five minutes. The piece ends. John cage also works extensively in text scores. Pretty fascinating. He calls them (without prevarication) music. I think he would be deeply offended to hear them not described as music. So I will try not to what you're hearing now is one interpretation of John Cage's a dip in the lake. And I want to be really explicit, this is challenging, strange art. And that is totally okay. It doesn't have to be for everyone.07:37 Recording processI recorded the material for Five Twenty-Three AM while I was in grad school at Northwestern University. I woke up very early in the morning, went down to the studio. I set up an array of these eight mics scattered throughout this large open studio facing different ways. I began to improv

The piece of music we're listening to in the background is called Deneer Death Experience. It's an action cue from the sci fi audio drama Entropy, which tells the story of a group of people working to find a new habitable planet. I would describe this cue as an action cue that kind of dips and turns, slows down speeds up. You're listening to How I Make Music, where behind-the-scenes musicians get to tell their own stories. Every Wednesday, we break apart a song, soundtrack or composition and get into why and how it was made. My name is Aaron Weatherford. I'm a composer from Summerville, South Carolina. And this is How I Make Music. 

IN THIS EPISODE

1:21 About Entropy 

The name of this audio drama is Entropy. And it's about a group of people trying to find a new habitable planet. Within that, there is a little bit of conflict between colonies. My favorite character is actually the villain Deneer. His full name is Pron Deneer. The name of the piece that we're going to be breaking down today is called Deneer Death Experience. Very funny. Nobody dies. It's okay. Everything's fine. You'll just have to watch the audio drama ... listen to the audio drama in order to find out what happens.

2:17 Influences 

One of my main influences is Michael Giacchino. He did Ratatouille and a lot of Pixar movies. The Incredibles, Star Trek scores. And what I really like about him is his sense of storytelling. It's really really cool and the fact that he manages to be both old school and new school at the same time, fresh and new. John Williams style orchestrations, like very golden era silver era mixed with stuff like synths. 

3:09 Context of the piece 

The context of this piece is during when the main character Jan is in the middle of having a conversation with her mother. And it gets very rudely interrupted when the ship blows up, and there's a hole in the ship and they almost fly out and die. And then this whole battle ensues, then Deneer comes in and gives this speech. And then Jan and a couple of other crew members have to escape. Really slow and kind of menacing and has a little bit of kind of these weird orchestrations that can tell you what type of guy Pron Deneer is. Here's what his theme sounds like. More of a motif than a theme because of the fact that it's only a few notes and it's so short, you know. 

4:54 Off the tempo grid

So the escape stuff, the escape juice, all of a sudden are these kind of magic. Measured trems that start going. And it gets faster and faster and faster. And it builds up and builds up and then stops. That's when the piece finally ends. There's a part in there in the piece where the tempo starts to ramp up here, take a listen. You don't really hear this sound of tempo ramps often in modern film scores. I feel it kind of adds motion and emotion. And it kind of needed that ramp. It's one of those moments where it's like, here goes nothing, and then they blast off. For me, everything is about story and emotion. And a lot of stuff stays the same tempo for a really long time. And it kind of gets it kind of gets boring after a while. Alexander Desplat brings this up a lot, the fact that we're really attached to the grid and we don't like to get away from it. Sometimes I don't do a metronome at all, I just play and whatever happens happens.

6:44 Mother Knows Best

So there's actually another piece in the audio drama Entropy called Mother Knows Best. And it's actually the talk that happens right before the battle scene that consists of Deneer Death Experience. And it's just really slow, no tempo, just piano. And it has this little like pad synth under it. And really, that's just those two things. And that kind of made up this little. This motif that I come up with for the relationship between Jan and her mother, they're obviously very close.

7:43 Slap bass orchestration

The piece of music we're listening to in the background is called Shaylee meets Black Annis. It's a somber soundtrack which I wrote for the fiction podcast The Hidden People. Today, we'll break it down and get into why and how it was made. You're listening to How I Make Music, where behind the scenes musicians get to tell their own stories. Every Wednesday, we break apart a song, soundtrack or composition, and give composers a chance to share some of the insights into how it was made. My name is Katharine Seaton. I'm a composer and sound designer from the UK, and this is How I Make Music.

IN THIS EPISODE

01:07 Welcome

Welcome back to How I Make Music Episode 76, Shaylee meets Black Annis by me, Katharine Seaton. Thanks for listening in. The Hidden People is a long format audio drama. In this episode, you'll hear me talk about Shaylee and Black Annis. These are two of the characters in the story. I first got involved with Dayton Writers Movement to make The Hidden People when they were looking for somebody to develop a sound world. I am primarily a musician. Sound design is definitely a second string to my bow. 

02:11 Female sound design

There was a competition a year and a half ago run by an advertising firm who wanted to get more women into sound design. And the prize was a professional development course. On that course, I found out some new techniques and one of them was the use of contact mics on various surfaces. And they showed us how they put a contact mic on one of those big rubber birthing balls. The result was a creaky groan, sort of...I think it's like a tectonic plates moving under the belly of the earth sound. Maybe because they're underground, they can almost hear the earth moving under the soil. And I thought yes, I've not heard anything like it and I thought it was great. When I got home, I started incorporating these techniques into my composition. I used a contact mic on various items to create the sounds in this score. So rubbed my leather handbag and a blown up balloon with wet hands to get some of those creaking noises. I taped a microphone to my throat to get those swallowing sounds. This was about trying to get the earth swallowing Shaylee up. What do you listen to this piece at the end of this episode, see if you can spot some of those strange sound design elements.

03:55 Inside Shaylee

Within the series, there's a character called Shaylee. She's a mentally and physically dexterous survivor. Another character, Black Annis, is based on folklore. In the legend, she's a terrifying figure used by parents to scare their children into behaving. When Shaylee meets Black Annis, she's engulfed by a dark cave, as well as her own feelings of fear and sadness. Shaylee Meets Black Annis involves a lot of bringing the sound design in the series into the music itself. And I was able to use the sound design to try and reflect how she's feeling about that space. So it could be the sound in the actual narrative or it could be musical score because there's that blurring of the boundaries there.

05:00 Influences 

When I got the initial brief that they wanted to incorporate the folk music that comes from the origins of the folklore, this story is based on, I looked into it. As an English person, I'm quite familiar with British folk music, just through living here and knowing that tradition, so that was all already in my sort of inside my ears. And I think in Shaylee's original theme, the fragments of strings that play under the melody might have been inspired by composers like Benjamin Britten in the first part of the 20th century of English music. Take a quick listen. I did spend some time doing the classic music composer thing of going on to YouTube and just finding what looks like authentic performances. And just listening for a bit and getting into that sound world. 

The Irish folk

The piece of music we’re listening to in the background is called Unsealed. It's the mysterious title theme for season three of the audio drama The White Vault. Today, we'll break it down and look at some of the insights into why and how it was made. You're listening to How I Make Music, where behind-the-scenes musicians get to tell their own stories. Every Wednesday, we break apart a song soundtrack or composition and get into why and how it was made. My name is Brandon Boone. I'm a composer from Cincinnati, and this is How I Make Music.

IN THIS EPISODE

01:17 Intro

I used to have a cello that I rented for like a year for some projects and people would see it in my room like oh, you play cello. I'm like, no, I just use it. I just use a cello. I don't play it. I took lessons with the strictest teacher from Russia who had like the old school like slap on the wrist if you do it wrong.

02:13 Two versions 

So today we're looking at two versions of the song unsealed from the white vault. There is the first version that was used in season one and two and then the second version and season three and four. For season one, we were going for a more isolated cold feeling in Antarctica with these researchers. Whereas in season three and four, we wanted to do something more South American and so we started to introduce more instruments from that region.

03:13 Influences

What's most noticeable about the theme song is that heartbeat that's throughout the whole piece. We drew on that from Ennio Morricone’s title track for The Thing. Here's how that sounds. This desolate, lonely research facility. So I kind of tried to start with that heartbeat feeling and glass sounds, sounding as cold as possible. While still having a melody to it. That simplicity kind of lends to being kind of memorable and you recognize it when you hear it. Separating our found footage story is a documentarian who's compiling it together. As she speaks, we have the drone from unsealed playing underneath, to glue the production together.

05:00 A 40-person choir

The expression on my face when Travis called me he's like, how do you feel about writing for a 40 person choir? And I'm just like, yeah, I'll figure it We'll figure that out! We worked with a friend - Steven Melin - quite a bit on this piece. Travis mentioned that there was a choir. And so I wrote the choir piece on my computer and then sent the score to him.

05:32 Remote recording

Steven did the orchestration for the choir. He's very much a classical musician. So you can't just write notes on a paper, there's actually a lot that goes into it. And the directing session also was quite terrifying because I was suddenly directing a choir for the first time in my life. And it was quite the experience at four in the morning. They’re in Hungary. They have a unique Skype-like service that has zero latency, perfect audibility of exactly what your wave will sound like, in real time. It's both exhilarating and terrifying. With 40 people, you've got a split of gender, and you've got a split of alto, soprano, etc. We had different variations of the arrangements. So we've got one where it's just the women doing the higher end voices, whereas there are a lot of rest notes for the lower end. So there are a lot of variations within the choir.

06:54 South American version

For season three and four, we wanted to do something more South American, and so we started to introduce more instruments from that region. What you're hearing right now is a live guitar played by Steven Melin for a track. Hearing the scrapes and taps and breath of an actual guitar is something that's very difficult to fake. Even with high quality samples. There's also an ocarina , which is a small handheld wind instrument. You're probably familiar with it if you've played Zelda. There’s some really cool percus

The piece of music we’re listening to in the background is called Within Gravity. It's a relationship theme for Quill and Mandry, two characters in the hopepunk sci-fi audio drama This Planet Needs A Name. Today, we’ll break it down and look at some of the insights into why and how it was made. My name is Trace Callahan. I'm a composer from Florida in the United States, and this is How I Make Music.

IN THIS EPISODE

01:39 Evolving

The piece Within Gravity begins in one of the prologue episodes for the show and evolves into its full form over the course of several episodes as the relationship between the two characters evolves. Within Gravity has its roots in American folk song, especially music of Aaron Copland. Very simple violin motives and melodies. Here's a section from a piece called Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copeland. Take a listen and see if you can hear how it influenced Within Gravity. The idea of hope and exploration and openness that his music tends to evoke.

02:45 Sing along

So Within Gravity begins with a pulsing, slow rhythmic, not even quite melody, just a feeling that's based on the idea of a radar or some kind of instrument in this ship. The feel of the piece is intended to be something like a lullaby. When I sat down to write Within Gravity, I played the scene that it was going under on a loop actually continuously while I played the keyboard along with it. The first layer of Within Gravity that was written was this set of floating, morphing chords that are very gentle and slow and soothing, kind of like the lullaby with a pulse on the root of the chord acting in a rhythmic radar like fashion. Sort of to emphasize the spaceship aspect of where their relationship takes place. While the scene was playing while the dialogue was playing, I would play the scene and plug my keyboard into my DAW and just sing different ideas along with what I was playing until I found something that I liked.

05:06 Viola for Quill

Once I was done singing my way through the melody and I was happy with it, I took it and transcribed it into sheet music which became the viola part for Quill in Within Gravity. In Within Gravity each separate piece of the music represents something the viola melody is quill. The radar pulse is the character of Mandry who is our pilot. The floating chords are gravity itself binding the piece and the melody and all of the other parts of the song together, like gravity binds us to the ground.

06:09 Dialogue clashing

One of the challenging things for me is that the instruments that I like to use tend to live in the same area as the vocal ranges of our actors. To demonstrate what I mean by the music and the dialogue clashing, here is me speaking in my normal voice against the melody of a viola. And here I am speaking against the same melody but in the range of a cello. So you can hear how much easier it is to hear me and understand me when I'm speaking over the cello.

06:50 Keep it simple

It would be very easy for me and it is my natural tendency to overcomplicate music and so keeping it simple and something that can exist peacefully in the background, while the scene is happening was something I definitely had to work on.

07:04 Wet keyboard

This Planet Needs A Name is a pretty emotional show. We sometimes say that it's very effective free therapy for people who listen to it! And audio drama tends to be pretty emotional anyway, so the dialogue is already emotional and the story and then you're adding the music. There is a lot of catharsis. There is a lot of crying. Sometimes happy tears, sometimes not so much. You have the occasional wet keyboard!

07:58 Layers

The background parts of the song are happening over several layers. You'll hear several different instruments combined to create each part. But when you have a melody that's representin

The piece of music featured in this episode is called Are You A Memory. It’s a traditional jazz piece which I wrote for the comedy/horror audio drama Mockery Manor by Long Cat Media. The show tells the story of an amusement park set in Britain in the 80s with a dark and thrilling history. And furry mascots. This week we’ll look at some of the insights into why and how it was made. My name is Laurence Owen. I'm a composer from the United Kingdom, and this is How I Make Music.

IN THIS EPISODE

01:23 I was a child actor when I was a kid. It all came together recently when I thought actually, I should be making audio dramas!

01:37 This song, Are You A Memory is from the podcast Mockery Manor, which is set in a theme park in 1980s Britain. There’s a lot of music in the show, including songs by fictitious pop stars of our own invention. In reality, they’re all just me singing in different voices.

02:21 The piece was designed to sound like an old scratchy jazz shellac record on a gramophone. It’s a weird thing to do in the 20th Century using computers and software. It’s formal and influenced by British jazz performers like Henry Hall and Al Bowlly

03:51 Mockery Manor is influenced by the horror films of the 80s, particularly The Shining. There’s a lot of the same territory, with a creepy haunted hotel and jazz pouring in through the foyer. We also pay tribute to the Tower of Terror rides from The Disney theme parks around the world. 

05:00 Are You A Memory often plays in the background of scenes in Mockery Manor. We wanted it to be unclear whether or not the music is diegetic. 

05:51 The first step was to write out all the chords on the piano. It has a straight, deliberate functional rhythm. Then I added drums and double bass, both software instruments. In the spirit of the recording practices of the day, there’s very little expression to the rhythm section.

06:47 The violin is the Spitfire Audio Solo Strings software instrument. Tasteful, and not as bombastic as the Hollywood sound. Sounds realistic! I added live guitar and lead vocal.

07:46 I added vintage orchestration in the form of brass, a small string section and a sax choir. Then I aged it by applying gross EQ to make it sound boxy and horrible. Originally, the whole orchestra would have been crowded around a single microphone. 

09:06 A major challenge was making orchestral instruments sound live. Jazz is hard to do on synths! Another challenge was imitating the sound of playing. I had to add fake vibrato to the saxophones. I was trying to remove any aspect of the digital.

09:45 I’m a singer. This was still out of my comfort zone because I had to sing in this polite, flutey voice. If you feel like you’re taking the piss, you’re probably doing it right. 

10:23 The guitar wasn’t sounding right. I had to hammer it because the guitar is one of the quietest instruments in a vintage jazz ensemble, and that’s how they would have had to have played it in the early days of jazz. 

11:18 In the B section, the piece modulates. The harmony is super simple. No Herbie Hancock or Jacob Collier chords here! Towards the end, the piano does some flourishes. I imagine that to be the fictitious bandleader Alfred Mockery taking liberties on the piano that the others can’t. 

12:59 I play the theremin. Here’s a piece I wrote called Sonate D'Une Autre Epoque. 

SHOW NOTES

• Want merch? Get the (physical) pop magazine from inside the Mockery Manor universe https://longcatmedia.bandcamp.com/
• Listen to audio drama Mockery Manor by Long Cat Media https://pod.link/mockerymanor
• Visit Long Cat media https://www.longcatmedia.com/mockery-manor
• Check out other work by Laurence Owen 

The piece of music featured in this episode is called Colin. It’s a genre-bending piece which I wrote for the fantasy audio drama Casual Magics by Inside Fictions. The show tells the story of a young mage who must discover his identity as a freshman at The Weisz Institute, a college for mages. This week we’ll look at some of the insights into why and how it was made. My name is Jacob McNatt. I'm a composer from the United States, and this is How I Make Music.

IN THIS EPISODE

01:23 Casual Magics is about young mages at a college for magical beings, and they quickly get swept up in danger beyond their abilities

01:52 The writer and producer, Steve Spalding, came to me with the idea of listening to Darren Korb as an influence. Darren Korb is an American game composer 

02:28 We knew we wanted there to be an element of jazz. I always want to incorporate the orchestra. In my head I kept hearing elements of hip hop, even though I have no experience in it. The result was a total genre mashup outside of my comfort zone. But original!

03:08 The tune plays whenever the character is narrating the story. He’s not as adept at magic as some of the others, and quickly gets taken advantage of by a barista that casts a charm spell on him. We wanted the music to reflect a ‘fish out of water’ feeling of naivete.

03:53 We established a jazz combo timbre with trumpet, trombone, saxophone. These instruments are used throughout the whole soundtrack.

04:23 I love imperfection. Because everyone uses the same sample libraries, music can become very samey. My goal is to use the samples in a different way. I intentionally detuned the trumpet alongside the saxophone. You don’t really notice it until it’s isolated.

05:07 To write a melody, I sit at the piano and begin playing. Colin’s theme needed innocence, so I centered it around a nice C minor ninth chord. I started writing an uplifting version in the relative major (Eb), but it drove me insane. I think the minor key still retains optimism. 

06:15 Colin’s theme uses traditional orchestral instrumentation. It was a challenge to tie it in with trip hop and jazz! Woodwinds, strings, low brass. The Cm9 chord really brings it all together and ties Colin to the story. The flute arpeggio represents magic. The tuba fulfils a comical role which suits Colin’s dorky side. 

08:37 Near the end, a distant piano plays the melody, which ties Colin to the secondary protagonist Kim. There’s also a swish effect which I made by recording my voice and running it through some weird guitar effects. 

SHOW NOTES

• Listen to audio drama Casual Magics by Inside Fictions https://www.insidefictions.com/
• Check out other work by Jacob McNatt https://www.jacobmcnatt.com/

BONUS 

• Check out a video of Jacob doing a trombone/hip hop cover of the TwoSet Violin roast challenge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEx6vBqwWw8

MUSIC & SFX CREDITS

• Darren Korb - Old Friends
• The Pebble Shaker Jazz Band - The Jumping Jive
• Lil Miss Beats - Just Let Go
• Ludwig van Beethoven - 7th Symphony (2nd Movement) 
• Bernard Hermann - Vertigo Theme

ABOUT THIS SHOW

How I Make Music is where behind-the-scenes musicians get to tell their own stories. Every Wednesday, we break apart a song, soundtrack or composition and investigate the insights into how it was made.

• Subscribe to How I Make Music https://pod.link/1460793686
• How I Make Music https://howimakemusic.com
• Contact How I Make Music https://johnbartmann.com/contact

The piece of music featured in this episode is called The Amelia Project Theme. It’s a fun and eccentric piece which I wrote for the dark comedy podcast The Amelia Project, which tells the story of a mysterious agency which helps its clients fake their deaths. This week we’ll look at some of the insights into why and how it was made. My name is Fredrik Baden. I'm a composer from Oslo, Norway, and this is How I Make Music.

IN THIS EPISODE

01:18 I still choke up when I think about my high school graduation composition. Take a listen. 

02:10 The Amelia Project, which tells the story of a mysterious agency which helps its clients fake their deaths. Clients feature scientists, politicians, cult leaders and even an AI. The only way to get in touch with The Amelia Project is by having a really interesting story to tell.

03:09 Today’s selected soundtrack is version 7.6 of the musical theme. Over time, I’ve written many versions of the musical theme for different contexts.

03:30 My girlfriend and I searched for the Dirk Gently opening theme but accidentally stumbled on the BBC version of the show. I kept it in mind and would consider it an influence, along with the theme tune for the TV show Dexter. Ominous and weird, I guess!

04:45 I was approached by the show creators to write the theme. The first few drafts were considered too serious. My family has a cabin with a pedal organ. I came up with a really silly ‘oom-pa-pa’ sound just to find an extreme for them to counter against. But it turns out they really liked it! Big sound, big melody, big drums, big bass offset with plucky chords, honky strings and a piccolo flute fanfare!

06:32 I’ve made a few versions of this theme to suit different stories. A metal version for an episode set in a funfair park called ‘Hell’. There’s a mafioso Italian version and a Frank Sinatra Christmas version. There’s a Scottish version. 

08:10 For World Audio Drama Day in 2018, we collaborated with four other audio dramas. I ‘frankensteined’ a whole bunch of themes into one theme. I butchered it, but it was a load of fun. 

08:58 The opening of the track is a simple beep which creates suspense. I set the beep on the dominant (C over Fm). 

09:35 There are five keyboard sounds: strings, rhodes, accordion, dream piano and a harpsichord. A mellotron joins in the B section for dreamy feeling.

10:35 The drums use subdivision emphasis to keep the momentum going. Everything else is very ‘oom-pah-pah’. 

10:59 I have a habit of trying to make sense out of weird things. I try to find out what kind of chords these weird sounds have. The chords progression for this piece is a mix between phrygian and locrian. There’s a tritone interval which creates a sense of oddness that suits the eccentricity of the audio drama. 

SHOW NOTES

• Listen to audio drama The Amelia Project by Philip Thorne and Øystein Ulsberg Brager https://ameliapodcast.com
• Check out other work by Fredrik Baden https://fredrikbaden.com

BONUS 

• Listen to The Amelia Project’s sound design special ‘Liquified Marzipan’ https://art19.com/shows/the-amelia-project/episodes/79ff5b6b-66b4-4735-b340-9f60ac715d47

MUSIC & SFX CREDITS

• Juan Cristobal Tapia de Veer - Theme from Dirk Gently (US)
• Daniel Pemberton - Theme from Dirk Gently (UK)
• Rolf Kent - Morning Routine from Dexter 
• ZeSoundResearchInc. - Vinyl Backspin and Beat Scratch.wav

ABOUT THIS SHOW

How I Make Music is where behind-the-scenes musicians get to tell their own stories. Every Wednesday, we break apart a song, soundtrack or composition and investigate the insights into

The piece of music featured in this episode is called After The Darkling Thrush. It’s a chamber piece which I wrote for a performance in New York City in 2015. The piece was later adapted to the psychedelic noir audio drama What’s The Frequency, which tells the story of Walter “Troubles” Mix and his partner Whitney as they search for a missing writer and navigate through a city quickly falling into madness. This week we’ll look at some of the insights into why and how it was made. My name is Kurt Nelson. I'm a composer from New York, and this is How I Make Music.

IN THIS EPISODE

01:04 About What’s The Frequency and the backstory of how I got involved.02:55 The work was inspired by European composers from the second half of the 20th Century, including Witold Lutoslawski, Alban Berg and Luigi Dalapicco.04:44 I draw heavily on the symmetry of the octatonic scale in this composition. The flute solo demonstrates this in a very clear way.06:47 This atonal type of music is a good match for a show like What’s The Frequency. The inconsistency of the tonality reflects the meltdown in reality that we experience when we listen to the audio drama. The tonality of music by Mozart, Haydn or Beethoven provides a stability. In an atonal composition, we experience a kind of freedom from that.09:18 I use identifiable motifs to bind the piece together. One example is the dotted rhythm first heard in the piano, then the piccolo and repeatedly throughout the composition. 09:48 In a dramatic flourish, I use the piano and the vibraphone to separately play the eight notes of the octatonic scale, which I find to be a brilliant instrumental effect. 10:38 The original inspiration for After The Darkling Thrush was a poem by Thomas Hardy. The poem depicts a bleak view of the arrival of the 20th Century. The thrush in the poem is a bird that sings, oblivious to the cynicism of the poet. The flute takes a solo role to depict this innocence. 12:24 Many composers who write concert music have just one performance before they have to move on to the next project. With podcasts, I find a wonderful opportunity to give the music some life after its initial performance.

SHOW NOTES

• Listen to audio drama What’s The Frequency by James Oliva https://wtfrequency.com/
• Check out other work by Kurt Nelson https://kurtcnelson.com/
• Bonus video: watch ‘After The Darkling Thrush’ being performed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgoN2nUnrLk

MUSIC & SFX CREDITS

• Witold Lutoslawski - Five Songs
• Alban Berg - Violin Concerto
• Joseph Haydn - The Creation
• The Darkling Thrush (by Thomas Hardy) - read by Tom O’Bedlam)
• Thaighaudio - Concert Applause 4 (CC0)
• Artemis R Swann - Song Thrush (CC0)
• Victor Herbert - The Prima Donna

ABOUT THIS SHOW

How I Make Music is where behind-the-scenes musicians get to tell their own stories. Every Wednesday, we break apart a song, soundtrack or composition and investigate the insights into how it was made.

• Subscribe to How I Make Music https://pod.link/1460793686
• How I Make Music https://howimakemusic.com
• Contact How I Make Music https://johnbartmann.com/contact

How I Make Music is created by John Bartmann https://johnbartmann.com

The piece of music featured in this episode is called The Fugue. It’s an atmospheric piece which I wrote for the sci fi season finale of the audio drama The Big Loop, which follows a ship’s peace officer sent to investigate strange visions haunting the crew. This week we’ll look at some of the insights into why and how it was made. My name is Daniel Birch. I'm a composer from Somerset in England, and this is How I Make Music.

IN THIS EPISODE

01:59 For this episode of The Big Loop show creator Paul Bae wanted a mix of ambient drones and haunting sci fi horror themes. 

02:33 Influences include the score for Ex Machina by Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow. I’d heard they used a plugin called PaulStretch, which influenced me to create ambient tones of The Fugue. I retained certain childlike qualities using an instrument called a celesta. Clint Mansell’s score for Moon is another influence, and uses sparse instrumentation to create a powerful score. 

04:43 Show creator Paul Bae sent an email requesting [quote] “Something beautiful, ambient, reflecting the vastness of space and human sacrifice. I want to bring the listeners to tears with this one." I only had a few weeks, but I find having a short deadline really helps. 

05:09 I subscribe to the YouTube channel of Christian Henson, the co-owner of Spitfire Audio. I was inspired by his use of various pedals to resample and manipulate audio, turning them into sampled instruments. I thought “I could do that!” 

05:21 I ran some of the sounds through my pedals. I ran my Arturia Microbrute through the AMA’s AC Noises pedal, which is a spring reverb with a bitcrusher and oscillator. By the end of it, I had a totally new skill.

06:37 I am also a vocalist. I included vocals into the compositions by singing along without a clear melodic line, just capturing my emotional response to the story. It’s definitely an organic sound, with some granular digital static. 

08:09 During the intro to the track, you hear a combination of a patch called the ‘unstabler pad’ with the celeste and vocals to create a nice mellow bed. 

09:16 There’s a heartbeat-style sound which plays throughout parts of the track. The sounds are a sampled instrument called Native Instruments’ “The Grand”. It sounds like the side of the piano is being tapped, drenched in reverb. I wanted this to symbolize the humanity of the lead character. 

10:23 The synth lead was a mangled, distorted version of a simple saw lead. I used a plugin called Reels to provide tape emulation.

10:57 Another influence was Mica Levi’s score for Under The Skin. Very dark and atmospheric. 

11:47 In episode 59 of How I Make Music, David Devereux cites Disasterpeace as an influence, and I also love his use of ambient washes and synth darkness. 

SHOW NOTES

• Listen to audio drama The Big Loop by Paul Bae https://www.thebiglooppodcast.com/
• Check out other work by Daniel Birch https://www.danielbirchmusic.com/
• Follow Daniel Birch https://twitter.com/iamdanielbirch

MUSIC CREDITS

• Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow - Skin (from Ex Machina)
• Clint Mansell - Welcome To Lunar Industries (from Moon) 
• Mica Levi - Lipstick To Void (from Under The Skin)
• Disasterpeace - A Chorus Of Tongues (from Hyper Light Drifter)

ABOUT THIS SHOW

How I Make Music is where behind-the-scenes musicians get to tell their own stories. Every Wednesday, we break apart a song, soundtrack or composition and investigate the insights into how it was made.

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