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Some weeks ago, the Californian artist Susan Cornelis, featured in Goodaboom as Miki´s Enchanted Guest approached me with a view to me providing a soundtrack for her latest teaching video. I accepted, because it was a nice challenge for me. Susan sent the film short to me, complete with her already recorded vocal soundtrack. I pasted the whole thing into my virtual recording studio, which automatically separated the visuals from her vocal. This enabled me to clearly see beneath the images, exactly where my soundtrack would need to “compliment” her spoken word. Susan’s voice and mood set the mood for my piece, and along with her suggestions for some Celtic influences, the piece began to take shape. I went for a very ethereal “pad” keyboard sound for the bulk of the track, utilising a one note drone, that lasts for the duration of the piece. Occasionally, for dramatic effect, this note is augmented by cellos. Next, I began to layer the Celtic sounds, choosing deliberately evocative instruments, such as the uillean pipes, and the Celtic harp. In the place of a whistle, I used a medieval recorder, which Susan said she had liked on my Christmas song. The recorder sets the tone over the opening titles, and the uillean pipes offer a fanfare to welcome Susan on screen. Then, as the film progresses, the pipes, harp and recorder are used in varying degrees to punctuate the ebb and flow of the narrative. I noticed a section where the film skipped into double time as Susan sifted through a myriad of choices for her collage piece, and I decided to augment this with a merry jig, totally at odds with the romantic gravitas of the preceding music. I used tin whistles, the uillean pipes and the bodhran for this. Initially it felt out of kilter, but, after continuing the pad and the drone through the section, and by trial and error, pushing the jig further and further back into the overall mix, I achieved the right balance. The jig leaves centre stage abruptly, but its final note is a heavily reverberating Shetland bass drum, so it explodes into the far distance unobtrusively, and the calm of the track is immediately restored. To take Susan’s description of her collage elements one stage further, I introduced sea, bird and running water samples that pepper the rack in the later stages. I chose the Shetland bass drum again, with massive amounts of reverb to punctuate her “machine gun” reference, and used the same sound, albeit further back in the mix, to coincide with the closing of her sketchbook at the end of the film. I was really happy with the finished result, and listening to Susan’s lilting descriptions of her creative process, the bird’s cries and the seabreaking on the shore, the plaintive pipes and the romantic harp, I could only call it…  | Eire | Birthday Star | Desert Springs | | At Kev´s | The Discography | The Postermanium | The Videodrome | Kev´s Great Links | The Song of the Month | Musical Commissions | | Return Home | The Enchanted Art | The Music Box | Brushes with Musipoems | A Palette of Prose | The Blogs | The Travelogue | The Front Page | The Visitors´ Log | Contact Us | |
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