SDO contest and "Payoff" soundtrack
June was a busy and exciting month hear at the studio. In the beginning of the month I composed and recorded an electronic score for a short film that was entered in the SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) "Capture the Sun" Contest. L.E. Spry and I took first place in our category. We were very happy with the results and it fueled our desire to do more.
The film "Payoff" came in from Jack Russo's Film School. "Payoff" is the result of students work over the semester. It was a fun film to work on. The temp track had only about 4 cues, but I saw the need for a few more. The film put me in mind of what would be the first 12 minutes of a TV crime drama. Something along the lines of a CSI or Law and Order. That feeling actually pushed me in the direction of a mixture of synthesizers, rock, and orchestral elements. Two of the cues allowed me to flex musical muscles I hadn't used in a while. The temp score had some industrial electronic or house electronic cues. So I dug deep into some synth and drum machine patches I had and dragged out the detuned Les Paul for some hard and heavy riffs.As always I was tweaking the soundtrack all the way up through the mixing process. I would hear things I wanted to change, so I was re-recording passages and changing synth patches all the way up to 1am the night before the delivery date.
Of course no recording session is complete without technology issues. The main machine was showing how Vista is NOT the OS for scoring. Most of the issues were ill written soundcard drivers for Vista. Most of my gear is about 4 years old so XP drivers were what worked best. So the machine was reformatted with XP Pro later Friday afternoon and configured as a lean mean film music machine. It worked flawlessly. Running a dozen or more instruments along with a high definition video track without a hiccup. I very confident moving forward on projects with this current setup. Of course a new studio computer with Win7 is on the to do list; but for now there's no reason to fix what isn't broken.
What's next? After a short break visiting out of town guests for Independence Day weekend; writing music for film and TV licensing continues as an ongoing activity. There are new opportunites being sent out weekly from one of the licensing companies I use. When the new "Living Dead Festival" site moves to it's permanent home; I'll be writing more music for that too.
For faster updates on my activities you can follow my tweets at: http://twitter.com/rmreifenstein
The film "Payoff" came in from Jack Russo's Film School. "Payoff" is the result of students work over the semester. It was a fun film to work on. The temp track had only about 4 cues, but I saw the need for a few more. The film put me in mind of what would be the first 12 minutes of a TV crime drama. Something along the lines of a CSI or Law and Order. That feeling actually pushed me in the direction of a mixture of synthesizers, rock, and orchestral elements. Two of the cues allowed me to flex musical muscles I hadn't used in a while. The temp score had some industrial electronic or house electronic cues. So I dug deep into some synth and drum machine patches I had and dragged out the detuned Les Paul for some hard and heavy riffs.As always I was tweaking the soundtrack all the way up through the mixing process. I would hear things I wanted to change, so I was re-recording passages and changing synth patches all the way up to 1am the night before the delivery date.
Of course no recording session is complete without technology issues. The main machine was showing how Vista is NOT the OS for scoring. Most of the issues were ill written soundcard drivers for Vista. Most of my gear is about 4 years old so XP drivers were what worked best. So the machine was reformatted with XP Pro later Friday afternoon and configured as a lean mean film music machine. It worked flawlessly. Running a dozen or more instruments along with a high definition video track without a hiccup. I very confident moving forward on projects with this current setup. Of course a new studio computer with Win7 is on the to do list; but for now there's no reason to fix what isn't broken.
What's next? After a short break visiting out of town guests for Independence Day weekend; writing music for film and TV licensing continues as an ongoing activity. There are new opportunites being sent out weekly from one of the licensing companies I use. When the new "Living Dead Festival" site moves to it's permanent home; I'll be writing more music for that too.
For faster updates on my activities you can follow my tweets at: http://twitter.com/rmreifenstein
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