"Giant, Epic, Huge Space Opera Theme"
This project has an interesting origin, at least in my opinion. You may disagree, but that's kind of rude, but whatever. Anyway, I really struggled coming up with an idea for the second project, which I guess is kind of normal. It is, after all, the "forgotten" project. Eventually, though, I settled on something I've always wanted to do - actually compose an entire musical piece in GarageBand. I had used GarageBand for my first project but only some of its really basic features. In the time since, though, I had begun playing around with it, spending hours upon hours just experimenting with what it could do. So I decided to try and compose a big, cheesy space opera-sounding score from the 80's in the vein of movies like The Last Starfighter or Blade Runner (without that fucking voiceover). In the beginning, it sounded like something Brad Fiedel would've come up with in his garage, which is all sorts of awesome, but after a while, it started to actually be kind of good. I demo'ed it for friends and they all dug it, rather than laugh at how outrageous it was. At that point, I decided to just try and make it serious and I'm really happy with the result. I'm proud to say that I wrote every single note in the song, with the exception of the funky radio signal sound at the beginning. It took me around 40 hours to complete, for reasons I will explain soon, and I think it came out pretty cool. So, without further ado, I present the birth of a song?
It began three weeks ago with hours upon hours spent in the Digital Media Labs just experimenting with compositions that I thought sounded interesting. I don't actually have any musical training (save the year I spent in band in 6th grade, does that really count?) and I can't even play any of the instruments in the piece, or even the keyboard for that matter, so I spent many hours arranging the notes with the mouse. This might seem like a ridiculously inefficient method, but I actually quite enjoy it. It gives me the opportunity to hear the notes arranged differently in a visual way, which is the only way I can create them. I know the sound I want in my head, but I have no idea how to produce it other than to keep screwing around until I hear it. In that way, I actually enjoy using the mouse. The picture below was the first part of the song I came up with. I would call it the "main" theme of the piece, in that I kept returning to it throughout the piece.
I liked how it sounded almost like an imperial march, not THE Imperial March but something you might hear as a bunch of starfighters take off to fight whatever oppressive, fascist dictatorship the script calls for. It had a peak that seemed to stick in my head, which I think was a good sign that I had a somewhat memorable lick on my hands. At first, it was a bit more light and positive sounding, but when I decided to go for a more serious tone, I broke some of the notes down and made it darker...I think, my roommate disagrees, but what the hell does he know? Another interesting fact - I wrote a brief piano section to be played at the very climax of the first main theme, however, after about a week, I got rid of it because I thought it was too over-the-top. Strangely enough, though, when my roommate heard this version of the song, he was disappointed that I had taken the piano out. So I ended up adding it back in, and realizing that it was a great way to transition into the "bridge" by just playing two notes over and over and letting it fade out. So, maybe my roommate does know what the hell he's talking about?
Next, I shaped the intro to the song. I had found this awesome mechanical oscillator sound on the UT server, so I threw it in and slapped some effects on it and immediately it reminded me of the sound that SETI seems to always be receiving in every alien-contact movie ever. I knew right away I wanted to start the song this way. I threw some atmospheric sound behind it and let a rip. After that, it was trying to find a way to bridge between the quiet, ominous beginning and the grand theme I had started with. What came out was a very melodramatic composition that I liked but seemed to annoy the shit out of everyone I played it for. At first, I just said "Fuck it, I like it, that's all that matters." Unfortunately, on the third week of working on the song, I came to the labs early one morning, fired up the song and realized I couldn't stand this part of the song. It was like the shittiness (is that how you spell the noun form of "shitty"?) all of a sudden clicked for me. I rewrote it, made it darker, just like the main theme and was very happy with the result. Below is a screencap of the intro to the piece.
It was around this time that I learned what, in my opinion, is the hardest part about composing a piece of music - transitions. UGH! I had all of these interesting pieces that sounded really great but had no idea how to fit them together or move from one to the other. I spent more time on transitioning from composition to composition than anything else. It drove me bananas! I STILL think some of my transitions suck or I didn't even bother to include one after three weeks of work. Simply put, this was by far the area of music writing that I gained the most respect for. Luckily, though, I came up with an awesome idea for how to bridge the beginning half of the piece with the second half, which I wanted to be much darker and melancholic. I wanted to have this huge chord last out of the end of the main theme section while all the other sound faded out, and then gradually, I would replace each note in the chord, one by one, over the course of, like, 32 measures. The result sounded pretty cool but it wasn't there yet. I then had the idea to layer some really distant sounding higher notes underneath the large chord and have them kind of carry the listeners interest through this part. I think the result was really cool, though some people have complained that they wanted to hear them better. I threw a treble reducing filter on this part to produce the far away sound. Below is the bridge...
Next was the grand finale! It was hard enough writing a bridge that would return back to the original theme, but I quickly realized that the composition would be very boring if it just returned to the first theme, so I said, "Fuck that" and embarked on a journey of self-discovery and adventure. Actually, I just took the main theme and broke it down to produce something much darker, in my opinion, and more desperate. My hope is that people could hear that it was a twisted version of the main theme, though I don't really know if they could. Either way, I LOVE this part. It's by far my favorite section of the song. In my "mind-script", this is the point in the hero's journey when all hope seems lost and he/she must make a great sacrifice, or something along those lines, to defeat an overwhelming evil empire (or, actually, just a nation with differing ideologies and governing systems, really). Anyway, I loved how dark this section sounds, but it wasn't enough initially. I produced this awesome screaming sound, like a wailing guitar or a screaming eagle, and wrote some long high notes, then layered them over a the grand finish. Finally, I took the piano piece from the end of the first main theme, broke it down just like I had with the main theme itself, and slapped it on the grand climax. The result is an awesome finale that I think really gets the blood pumping. Below is a screencap of the broken-down main theme and the so-called "screamin' eagle" part.
I ended the song with a return to the first main theme and a long chord to take the song out. I add a low bass note gently rise in volume to fill out the end, almost like a wall of soothing noise. Initially, that was all I ended with, but at the last minute, I thought it would be really cool to throw some more really distant sounding notes behind that final chord like I had with the bridge. I thought it added a very ominous sound to the ending, almost tragic even. And, finally, my composition piece was complete! Yay!
This was, without a doubt, one of the most stressful projects of my life. I was so nervous about what people would think of it. I had put so many hours and so much work into it, far more than I usually would, and I was terrified that it would suck or that it wasn't worthy of being a full project. I think I had momentarily forgotten the attitude of the ActLAB and my wonderful classmates. When I started playing the song in class, I rubbed my eyes with my fingers because I LITERALLY could not watch the reaction to it. However, when I did steal a peek and saw that everyone had their eyes closed and was just listening intently to the song, I remembered what this class is about and the attitude that its students take toward every project. In the end, everyone seemed to like it which was an awesome feeling for me, very rewarding. I'm very thankful to have had a class that allowed me to do a project like this. I got a chance to test my musical prowess for classroom credit, how cool is that?!
Anyway, let's get to the song. This is "Grand, Epic, Huge Space Opera Theme" by Kurt Falkenhagen. Enjoy!