Day 22: Second Review

I went in to the studio today at 11am. Brandon and Dave were there working on the Law and Order main title. The producers still aren't happy with the mix, so they've created 3 new versions of the song to send their way. Hopefully one of those will take. Once they did all they could, Brandon showed me about templates. It's pretty complicated, but I'm beginning to understand it a little. The upside of everything is that the template they use for SVU is actually a full template just specialized for SVU. I can modify, add and customize it any way I want so I don't need to build a new on from scratch. Mike had some meetings in the afternoon, so the three of us went to lunch and hung out in the studio, watched some videos and had a really good time. During that time, I also found out that I'm the only Pete Carpenter winner to get sent out to visit other composers, so I'm wondering how many firsts I'll have before this thing is over. I feel like I'm getting this special treatment or something.

Then Mike came back and we had my review. This one was great. Here I was thinking that I wasn't happy with the music. Then after I mixed it, I felt better but still unsure. This review went fast, and that was a good thing. First cue, in his words "Batting a thousand. Moving on" The trend continued. On the third cue, I got the best compliment ever. He told me he liked my cue better than the one he did that was used in the episode! So there that is. There were only a couple of cues he had notes for me on, and they were very minor. He told me none of my cues were bad. Then he looked over to Brandon with this very proud tone in his voice and said "The kid's done the entire episode." Turns out, I'm not supposed to be doing full episodes. Just a few cues from each one until the review, so he was very happy that I'm getting everything done. He's going to give me one more episode to score because he thinks that after one more, I could do my own show no problem. After that, I do the main title, and then who knows what. Overall, great day and a lot of good news.

Day 21: Templates

Ah, templates. Every composer uses them. A template is a set of commonly used instruments (virtual ones of course) in a project. That way you don't have to load every instrument from scratch every time you start a new piece of music. My template for example is all the common orchestra instruments, because that's the kind of music I write. I still usually need to add a few unique ones for each individual project, but it saves time. On a TV show, you usually have the same template throughout the seasons, and a new template for every new series you're working on.

I've only had to use the SVU template at the studio so far, but today I had nothing to do and wanted to get a jump on creating a template for a main title sequence. I know that's my next project after my review so I wanted to get a handle on how to create a template using Mike's gear. Originally I wanted to use my own stuff that I brought with me, but after talking to Atli, he said to take advantage of the better gear that they have, so I intend to do just that. Especially because this is the gear the rest of the industry is using too, so knowing how to use it may just help me get a job. It wasn't until I got started that I realized how complicated their system really is.

WARNING: This segment is about to get very technical, so skip to the end if it starts to get boring.

Logic runs on a Mac Pro in the studio. It's where all the writing is done. To get sound out of logic, you need to use virtual instruments. To do that, you load each instrument into Logic so that logic can control it. That's all well and good so far. My setup works the same way. But on mine, it ends there. All my sounds are on an external drive and that's that. In Mike's studio, the sounds aren't on an external drive at all. They're on another computer, and it's a PC. Two of them in fact. Those PCs are running a program called Vienna Ensemble Pro. On a normal computer, when you load a template, it has to load every instrument one after another, and then you can write. If you load too many your computer crashes under the strain. If you load another cue, or another template, it has to load all the instruments again. That can waste a lot of time. Vienna Ensemble Pro allows you to load the instruments once into a server. Logic then accesses that server when you write, so even if you switch projects, the instruments don't have to reload. They're already there, which is really brilliant when you think about it. The problem is. . . I have no idea how to do any of that. To create a new template on Mike's system you need to program all these connections between 3 computers, 2 virtual desktops and a server. Then once you have sound, you need to route that to another Mac Pro running ProTools which is attached to the mixing board where the speakers are so you can actually hear that sound. Whew! That was tough even to write.

The techno-jargon stops here.

Needless to say I couldn't figure any of it out so I came home empty handed. I spoke to Brandon and he said he'd show me how to make a template that way. He said once you see it done, it's not that hard, but definitely overwhelming the first time. So that all starts next week. Until then.

Day 20: The Importance of Mixing

I went into the studio tonight to finish up my episode. Turns out that I was ready to record the finished cues right after mixing. And here's where the beauty of that lies. Mixing is when you balance all the individual instruments into the final cue so that your main instruments are clearly heard and your background voices are helping the sound, not overpowering. As I mentioned yesterday, I wasn't sure how happy I was with the music, but now that it's properly mixed together, and when I watched it with the video, I was extremely pleased. This one felt a lot more like a proper episode to me, and when I take a step back and watch it from a viewer's perspective, the music starts to go away and helps the scene. That's exactly what it's supposed to do, so now I'm very excited to show this one to Mike.

Tonight for the first time, as I was locking up for the night, I had this little pang of sadness. I'm only three weeks into this experience; not even halfway, but it hit me that this is going to end. I've gotten used to this place, and even if I get a job, Mike Post's studio is not my final resting place. It's exciting, but the building and the people in it have really grown on me and treat me like I've been with them forever. It will be really hard to leave this environment in three weeks time. Until then, I plan to enjoy every moment and hope that I find myself in an equally great place in the near future.

Day 19: Finito

Tonight I finished my score for the newest SVU episode. There's not a lot of music in this one. I tried to improve on all the things that Mike told me about during the last review. I change keys less often if at all, I incorporated more sound elements and really focused on counterpoint. I don't know how happy I am personally with the music, but the point is to get out of my comfort zone, so even if this soundtrack isn't as successful as the first one I did, hopefully the things I tried to improve on did get better. That way, I can take the new things that I did better and incorporate them into what I was already doing right the first time, and then I'll have something really great. Tomorrow I'll go in to the studio and do my mixing, and maybe add some finishing touches to the score and I'll use sunday if I have to as well. Most likely monday or tuesday will be my review.

I had another idea today that I don't know why I didn't think of earlier (but better late than never). My goal is to get into Disney somehow. So I figured, why don't I do some research on IMDB and get the names of a lot of the Disney composers for both film and TV? That way I can ask Mike if maybe he knows some of them. Even if Mike doesn't, sometime soon I'll be having a meeting with some of the folks at BMI who will also try to set up some interviews for me. Maybe they know some of them and can also set me up with a few of them. I figure what I need to do is get as many names as possible because even if I get 100 'no's, all I need is one yes.

Day 18: Techno

I went into the studio this morning and worked through the afternoon on my SVU assignment. I hunkered down and got halfway through. There was a new twist thrown in this one though. There's a scene that has my first 'SX Cue' in it. An SX Cue is a Sound Effects Cue. It mean the music I'm writing is actually what the characters would be hearing in the scene, and for this scene, it meant . . . techno. The scene in question is inside a  clothing designers shop before a runway show, so they were playing the runway techno music you would hear before a runway exhibition. This was a perfect challenge to test my ability to write music I have no experience with, because at the end of the day, you have to write what the producers ask for or you don't have a job. I'm pretty pleased with the results. Check back in a few days once I have the final mix and I'll post it here. So after that I finished my half of the work and I plan on going in tomorrow to finish the second half. And that's it. After tomorrow I start mixing and then I get my second review most likely on monday. After that, I believe it's main title time. Until then.

Day 17: Part 2

I just got back from the studio. Dave and Brandon were there talking about the episode and the kind of work they have cut out for them. They already wrote as much as they could but can't go any farther until they get a more finished version of the show. They left and then I started working. I got almost one cue done and then the computers started doing things I've never seen them do. Rather than try to fix those kinds of problems myself I decided to take the hit and call it a day. I don't want to mess around with all that expensive gear but I heard there will be no one in tomorrow morning and afternoon so I'll go in then. Hopefully having all the gear off for a night will have fixed the problem and if not, then I'll see if Brandon or Dave knows what to do. So one extra night off which I definitely need after all that driving yesterday. Then it begins in full tomorrow.

Day 17: 2 Parter?

This title means a couple things. One, it could mean I'll write again tonight, and two is because I just finished watching the episode I need to score. First off, wow. This is a heavy episode and may or may not have two parts to it. I can't tell yet. So much of it is missing. At least 5 scenes need to be re-shot and 3 or 4 aren't even in this cut yet so I have my work cut out for me. This is a twisted, emotional episode so I'm going to need to rely on some strange sounds to make this one work.

I'm excited to start writing later, especially after my meeting with Atli yesterday, I'm ready to really embrace this electronic sound and learn all I can so that I can be ready for a potential job. Still no word from Robert yet. I don't want to be annoying, so I'll give it a few more days before calling again. In a few hours I'll be going in to the studio and see how far I get.