The drum sound that came from a stairwell
A producer explains how a hit's drum sound came from recording in a concrete stairwell, with Hannah playing the raw and finished stems so you can hear the difference.
A film composer on writing to a scene that keeps changing
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Show notes
Scoring a moving target
A film composer describes writing music for a scene that was re-cut five times after she had finished the score. Hannah asks about temp tracks, orchestration on a budget and translating a director's vague notes into actual changes.
- The scene, the five re-edits and how the cue survived
- Temp music and why it ruins a composer's week
- Orchestrating with eight players to sound like forty
- What a director means by bigger, warmer and more emotional
- The cue played in three versions, start to finish
The three cue versions are played in full in the final segment.
Transcript
Welcome back to Room Tone, I am Hannah Whitlock. My guest today writes music for films, and she has brought a cue that she wrote for a scene that was then re-edited five times after she had finished. Five times. We are going to talk about what that does to a piece of music and to a composer's nerves, why temp tracks are the enemy of everyone, and how she makes eight players in a small room sound like a forty-piece orchestra. She has also agreed to translate the notes directors give, like make it bigger and more emotional, into what she actually changes. At the end we play the cue in three versions, start to finish, so you can hear it grow. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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