Where to start …?

Recently I learned a method of getting past writers block, that works well with the blank canvas problem. Blank Canvas being, open a new project with all my trust instruments and then what? Which instrument do I start with? Melody or Chords?

So, the trick is to use an image, video, story or something else that can inspire the writing process. The point is, this gives you boundaries or limitations to work within, and then suddenly it’s a lot easier to get started.

Credit where credit is due, I got this advice via the awesome Alex Moukala.

Check out Alex Moukala's YouTube channel if you want to see someone who is so much better than me. 

So, the idea with this track was a slow, probably melodic piece with a wedding theme.

The Chord Progression

With this track I started with the chord progression. Key of A major, just for a bit of a change from my favourite dark key of D minor. Try and create a lighter mood for a lighter idea.

This began with the piano, nice and simple. Later on, it’ll probably change somewhat, maybe a different instrument will play the chord progression or the progression might even get orchestrated across the whole orchestra. But for now, I’ll keep it on the piano so it’s easy to read and manipulate.

Now that we have the Chords…

It was time to come up with a melody. I thought something really appropriate would be a beautiful legato violin melody, so that’s what I went with. This involved quite a bit of trial and error, trying to come up with a nice melody but I hope you like it.

The thing about the violin here was that notes could slur together, that was kind of the point in using a Solo Legato Violin. When I talk later on about other instruments playing the melody, you’ll see why this was important to talk about.

Moving on…

I still thought there wasn’t enough here, it wasn’t quite a texture or a cohesive sound, just a piano and some nice violin lines. So, I went to my trusty synth samples and tried to find something that would work within this mood and genre, that wasn’t dark or moody but not too bright either. If I had found something really bright and intricate, it would have distracted from the Violin. When you listen, pay attention to the low end, you’ll hear a nice simple low-end texture that adds a lot of warmth to this part of the track.

Evolving the melody…

As I mentioned before, I had to change up the melody, keep it interesting. There are lots of ways of doing this, add a counter-melody, change the instrument that plays the melody, change the octave, and so on. I opted for flutes to take on the melody. For a start, Flutes are lovely and they add a certain vibe due to the way the instrument is played, with breathing. The Flutes just generally have a much different texture to that of a Violin. No matter how lovely a Violin part is played, it is still strings rather than reeds.

And yeah, like I mentioned before, I had to edit the part for the Flutes to make sure it sounded like the performance was real. This meant shortening some notes and adjusting some of the legato runs so that the ‘player’ would appear to be breathing naturally.

The Second Act

When I started building up the second act layer by layer as I usually do, I had two ideas. Keep using the Woodwinds. They work within the feel I was going for and they’re very nimble instruments. And the second thing was, let's get some rhythm in there, without necessarily jumping straight into massive trailer impacts that wouldn’t necessarily be suitable for this kind of mood.

So let's look at the Winds. These were staccato parts, that is to say, short notes. Instead of the long melodic part, I had the flutes playing earlier, I had the winds playing particular rhythms. As you can see, I let one instrument do this for a few bars, and develop the idea further with other Wind instruments playing different but similar parts, with similar rhythms. These are designed so that the listener can audibly grab on to something so that they can stay connected to the track.

Ever noticed yourself tapping your leg to a drum beat in a popular but simple song? Same principle, (hopefully).

The Drums

With the percussion as a section, I had a few things going before I introduced this drum kit and its performance. Simple shakers, with an echo on them to make them sound more realistic and some low scrubby booms just to accentuate the beginning of certain passages of the melody.

The drum kit was useful because it was a dry kit recording, meaning it had little to no natural reverb or effects on the samples, so I could add my own reverb to it and place the kit in a side of my venue (the venue I have my virtual orchestra playing in). Again, it’s a simple part that the drums are playing, with just Kick & Snare and a few cymbals. All to keep you interested, keep the track evolving and build a little more energy slowly over the tracks natural progression.

There were some other bits of percussion I added here, to fill out the drum kits sound like a big 32” sustained cymbal sample. This instrument is used sparingly, similar to the low-end booms. Both the booms and the large crash cymbals have a dramatic effect on the sound, mood and vibe but also the frequency spectrum, so using them sparingly makes sure that the mix doesn’t get out of control and everything stays nice and pretty sounding. Again, I hope.

Scatter Brain

When listening back to the track a day later, I really didn’t like the way some of the voicings were sitting in the track. The melody was nice but it didn’t work very well on the flutes, because it was mostly copy and paste. I tried re-recording it instead of copy and pasting it and it still didn’t work. So if it doesn’t sound right, it isn’t. And I scrapped it.

I replaced it with this, nice simply melodic movement in the Violas, which leads nicely in to the second part of the track.

I then added some harmonics via the 1st Violins, which add just another texture of pure beauty, in my obviously not very humble opinion. Thank God I have access to this amazing sample library.

Moving on to the second Act…

Now this second act is where I had a lot of problems. I ended up creating two versions of it and essentially scrapped the second Act, which looked like this.

 I’ll include a bounce of the original version here, so you can hear why. I think we’ll all agree I made some booboos and 1developed upon them.

Now, the strings are essential to the first Act but in a different and far more appropriate way. They’re melodic, building, gentle and beautiful because of the ways I layered different samples and textures.

This is just an example of the melody part of the melody that I went with instead. The trick to making it beautiful though, was adding subtle-ish harmonics on top of the progression with the 1st Violins.

Moving On… Again

So the third act needed to be beautiful (again) but also calm down. Imagine the first Act is climbing, the second Act reaches the peak and then the third act brings it back down again. That kind of curvature.

Beginning with the Piano, it’s really a repeat of the first Act’s piano part but I lowered the octave so its deeper. This just sits better in this part of the track, we don’t need lots of frequency build up or tons of instruments in each frequency range so this is really enough for this part.

Next …

Because the piano part was low, I thought great, lets bring back the Violin Harmonics. They do a great job of filling in that high frequency range and add a lot of emotion and movement to the track. I wanted to bring back elements from the first Act but rather than have them build up yet again, to descend or anti-climax? Anyway, you get the idea.

Pretty things…

I also layered a Harp over this Act. But don’t worry! I’m not boring and stupid, I changed the part, added some more movement and made the part more melodic. The result is hopefully a delicate pretty Harp moving over the top of the Piano part.

The Penultimate Part…

Got to love alliteration right? No? Maybe some nice Celli & Bass playing in Octaves relative to one another. They do a great job of adding depth and warmth to this part of the track.

Finally, …

The Finale of this track is simple and understated. Remember, I wasn’t going for my usual, build, Build, BUILD AN EPIC cue or anything like that. The point was to create something beautiful that would fit nicely over a wedding video or something along those lines. And yes you could argue the track does build, but it never really goes that big. More instruments come in and take certain parts and develop certain ideas but the overall effect is supposed to be beautiful and simple.

And that is it! That is virtually every piece of the composition of 'The Big Day' covered. I hope it was interesting and I hope you'll stick around for the next 2 posts for this track.

Thanks for reading and sticking with it. As always, if you liked this post, please like it and share it, let people know you enjoyed your time reading this. And if you have any comments, please, drop them down below!

Thanks