Day 10: ProTools and Pictures

I went in to the studio around 11am today. I had 4 more cues to write. The first, second and last went smoothly, but cue 4m3, the second to last was a beast. It starts all mysterious and then has 3 different types of action sequences. One is a chase to find out where someone is in danger. The next is when the girl finds out for herself that she's in danger, and finally is when the cops show up. And all that was in the course of about two minutes. So that cue took the longest. After that, I had finished scoring my firsts episode of SVU! Next came mixing. Each cue is a separate file and must be mixed individually. This is where things get complicated because their system is so huge. Logic (the program used to compose the music) is on one Mac. You write there. Protools (the program used for mixing and recording) is on another mac. So you need to send all your music over to protools to mix. Then you need to record it into the soundtrack for the show in sync with the dialogue and sound. Brandon and Dave were not there today and had not taught me how to do this, so I had to figure it out myself. After 45 minutes of tooling around, I had figured it out. So then I recorded everything to the final mix and the show was done. Mike was there and I told him that the show is ready. He was surprised to hear that I had finished so soon. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing yet. So tomorrow at 11 is my critique to see if I was successful in sounding like Mike Post. Now all I can do is wait. In the meantime I have the pictures from when Lauren was here, so I can give you all a tour of the studio. I'll add some pictures to earlier posts as well, so check them out if you want.

Me at the Logic composing station

Watching a cue

This is the main mixing and Protools station

That thing to the right of me is the rack of computers in a soundproof housing

Full size keyboard, monitor and synthesizers

Mike's Grammy's and BMI awards

More of Mike's wall of awards

Mike's office

Mike's Emmy

Gold Record for the Law and Order theme song