Category
Recording
Part 2 This is the second half of my discussion of the piece I recorded with Hollywood Scoring, where we look at the melodic section of the piece from bar 32 onward. Be sure to check out Part 1 so everything here makes sense. Main Theme I recently bought a new piano and walk past it on every trip to the kitchen. I remember as soon as I got confirmation that this session was happening, I was on my way to make some vegemite on…
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Summer 2022 has been busy! This weekend (September 8!) Cars on the Road will debut on Disney+. This was one of the first projects to kick off the latest batch of new work. Jake Monaco scored this new series from Pixar, and I orchestrated and conducted. Prey also recently released on Hulu. I played a small role in helping with Sarah Schachner's score for this one shortly before we got into work on Cars. We got to make a lot of cool sounds, including some…
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Mixing and Mastering are done. The Expensive Train Set is at Origin Records with artwork underway! The album will be out in September 17. Here are a few teasers. Update: You can buy it here.
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One would think that if you want to make a small string section sound bigger, you could just record it twice and the sound will double. Unfortunately, this does not work too well. There will be a tinny or fuzzy sheen to the sound. Listen to the strings on Coldplay and Christina Aguilera songs and you will hear what I mean. Even though there are two separate takes, players have a unique talent for being able to play the same phrase pretty much the same…
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There are a number of differences in how I approach conducting a choir as opposed to how I approach conducting an orchestra in the studio. You usually only get a single session to record the choir for a whole score, so here are some tips to get everything you need. You need to emoteWhile I have said I do minimal gestures and stay out of the way with the orchestra, leading a choir is very different. I have found you get the best results when you…
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That was great, now lets make it betterThere is nothing like working with the greatest sight readers on the planet. But even if they get every note right on the first run, the magic is not going to be there yet. My theory is that it takes at least three runs before the real magic happens, when the orchestra gets the correct tuning, timing and balance. For my example let's assume this is an easy-to-medium difficulty cue. Harder cues would take more time, but this…
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When I started working on large orchestral scores, the string section sizes were pretty standard, and similar to the concert hall where each lower section shrinks by two players. So for example, a standard orchestra might be 14 first violins, 12 seconds, 10 violas, 8 cello and 6 basses, or "14/12/10/8/6" for short (in the film world where we lump all the violins together, so this is often condensed further to "26/10/8/6"). After many years of orchestrating, conducting, and recording orchestras I have come to the…
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