Theme in Progress!

Sounds sweet ! Excellent work.

Read through the Youtube comments. Ahh.... interesting as always.
What a new paradigm we are in. 47 K listens to a sketch for a film cue for a film in pre-production.
Perhaps that will be the way of the future.

When are we going to see that composer uniform ?

I am sure you will do an outstanding job. Bravo.

 

Setting the bar pretty high for "sketch" there @Phillip J. Faddoul . Sounds good so far. Excited to see where you take it. Good luck.

 

It sounds wonderful. If this is a sketch... well, I might just as well give up any hope of competing!

(Luckily I focus mainly on game music, so I am somewhat safe from your talents).

I had to check with myself if I wasn't going to just give a comment for the sake of giving a comment. You know, it becomes much more difficult to give feedback considering how much better your production level is than my own. That said, after a couple of listens I honestly wonder if the vocals are needed as much as you use them. Especially at 0:27... maybe it's personal taste, but I think I'd dig it more if you had no vocals there and just let the cello motif be its own thing. What is your motivation for using vocals? I mean... maybe you have a really good reason why you're using them, or maybe you just think it sounds pretty. Both are good reasons to have them. I'd just ask you to seriously consider if they're needed, because I personally feel that the emotions are coming across just fine with the strings, and I would wager they might actually come across better if you cut the vocals.

That's not to say you should remove the vocals everywhere. I think it's fine up to around ~0:27. Heck, this might be one of those things where you can "save a color" as Mike would put it and just give a little kiss of it at the start of the theme. Then you will be able to have a "fuller" version of this theme with the vocals, later on in the film (I can already hear Mike saying that that wouldn't count as a development but...you know ).

I don't know, it's just a suggestion. Production-wise, I really don't have any remarks to make. It sounds gorgeous. Compositionally, the only thing I can say is that I hope that not the entire score will be as dramatic as this. Again, this could very well be personal preference, but I do find that the scores I like best have a good deal of contrast in them. This kind of uber-dramatic sound works perfectly fine, but if the entire score is like this, it soon becomes tiring.

One example I can give is the score to the videogame RIME. Beatiful music, but it's just screaming in my face to feel things all the time and I got a little annoyed playing that game because of it. Like... everything was amazing and dramatic and pretty you know? That's what I'm trying to warn you against

So again, to be perfectly clear: I don't have any issue at all with this piece on its own. I think it's beautifully made. However, I would be careful to ensure that not every piece in the score becomes as dramatic as this, because if that happens, then all those pieces lose their weight. A dramatic cue like this is only dramatic and emotional in the context of lighter themes. Hope that makes sense! And hopefully I've made clear that I don't mean to make any assumptions about what the rest of the score is going to be like, merely trying to point out a pitfall that I'd personally try to avoid.

Good luck with the score! And if you can, keep us posted! I'm very interested in hearing what other pieces you'd be writing for this film!

All the best,

-M

EDIT: Holy hell I didn't realize Risen was such a big movie. Congrats on the job man! I suppose I'm going to have to ask you for your signature shortly

 

Hey Phillip,

Great stuff. I agree with Matthias, I don't love the vocal, it almost reminds me of the Halo theme. After a couple listens, I think the main effect it leaves me with, is as the vocals are the first synthesized sound to appear, it takes away from the strength of the 808. I could see it with the thicker harmony when the Ab comes in, but I don't love it up top. Wonderful harmonic sequence movement when the Ebm comes in. Great growth and dynamics. I'm curious to see how this develops, I can hear a bit more orchestration and harmonic dissonance as the themes and pieces move on.