Bravestorm OST

A few people have asked me about the score I did for a film called Bravestorm, currently in theaters in Japan. I have learned there will be no official soundtrack, so I'm going to post it here. It ain't great, ain't terrible. Has a moment or two.

 

Thank you - It gets progressively more tonal and listenable as the film goes on; there were dramatic reasons for the early cues being this way. But the score reminds me of War of the Worlds in some ways where overall its not that "fun" to listen to, you know what I mean? I think for us, it's useful to study and steal things from maybe, but I prefer more tonal, structurally satisfying stuff, myself.

 

Reel 2 is up; that's where it starts to get going.

That is 100% decades of experience, period. The gulf between piano and actual sound for stuff like that is so vast, you almost have to be able to just do it "blind." Like, you can almost just tell on paper by looking at it. If you listen, it's really all quasi or pseudo aleatoric - there's always some sort of tonal component or thread, and those are the parts which serve as anchors for me, whether they're pedal tones, or some sort of string motion. But for sure, unlike virtually every other type of cue, that stuff is sort of impossible to approximate, by its nature.

 

Reel 3 is up.

 

The rest of the score is up.

In terms of "tech talk," Woods are Berlin, with Symphobia for clusters; Brass is Adventure Brass, with some Samplemodeling for solos and layers, and Metropolis Horns in a couple places; Percussion is mostly Spitfire with some other things I can't remember; Strings are mostly Hollywood, with some Symphobia and Metropolis layers. Synths are Diva. Aleatoric stuff is Symphobia. Symphobia 1 turned out to be a way more useful library than I ever imagined. Reflections done with Altiverb 7 and some ReVibe for overall verb.

Creatively, the score - not sure if you can tell or not - is a bit "tired." I did it after 4 months of doing the 5.1 sound design; thousands of robot sounds and lasers and buildings falling over - there's so much stuff in this film. And then at the end, when I was creatively and physically burned out, it was time to do nearly wall-to-wall music. It's just not the best place to be writing from. But we get it done. In the end, I think you can really tell where it gels and where it doesn't, but that may just be me. Also, goes without saying it really needed a live group, but what else is new. It is very hard for me to write under pressure without leaning on things I can expect from an orchestra which don't work so well virtually. That said, the score has the most important thing to me - end-to-end structure. It is an unfolding story in which ideas build upon each other. Oh, speaking of ideas, in 4m1 I finally got to use an idea from Horner's Star Trek III which I've always wanted to steal; maybe not the same notes, but the same concept - it's this little chromatic ascension thing near the end.

 

Can't say I know who that is, but I can attest to those few seconds being the most fun and satisfying to write

 

Thanks - I hope my influences shall be ever tasty morsels in the music for those who are musically literate, since the references will go unappreciated by the other 95%

Jeff- I know a director who's directed more than 100 films, none of them good. Number of things done is almost meaningless. To the point, I looked up Rachel Portman. Turns out I have never seen a single one of the things she's worked on, ever. So at least that explains that!

 

Glad to hear you enjoying it - the bass drum is Spitfire, yep!