About this Episode
Hi all.
Yeah, I've actually posted another episode! And it hasn't been a year between the two of them! At any rate, I'm back to doing more film-ish, soundtrack/score stuff than any of that other weird crap I've been shovelling out.
*A musician's lament*
A great deal of my creative output depends on the sounds my instruments make. When I first got this Halo, I was really fired up. The sounds I was getting out of it were way better than the ESQ no matter what I did with the ESQ. That poor old thing is 20 years old. No matter how I program it, to me at least, it's going to sound like an old ESQ 1. So this Halo was quite superior in sound quality and for a while, I was enchanted. Then the enchantment wore off when I opened the manual and began to "read" their directions. Now why they chose to re-name every function and parameter (especially MIDI stuff) with their own terminology is completely beyond me, but lemme tellya, it took almost a month to figure out how to break into a voice and alter the parameters! I've read many reviews on the Halo and many others have commented on the fact that this unit has a particularly steep learning curve. Geez! I mean really! I'm no newb to electronic music and digital synths - hell, I cut my teeth on the big analogs whenever I could get a chance to play one, but this thing made me feel like a complete amateur. I've been studying the owner's manual for the Halo off and on now for years and finally am really seeing some progress in digging down deep into the workings of the machine in order to get it to make new sounds which I can use in my work. I hate to admit it, but this Halo - equipped as it is with a certain ROM card (how the presets and voices it plays are stored) seems to be optimized for rap/hip-hop performances...just about as far away from a progressive/symphonic feel as one could get. This basically means starting a new voice from a "tabula rasa" ("blank slate" for those of you who don't speak any Latin). Seeing as how a sound created on the Halo involves setting values for no less than 100 parameters (and there are four layers!) - and some of these values range from minus 256 to plus 256 (!)- it is a very time-consuming process to drag a new sound from the beast. It can be done, it's just damn difficult.
*end of lament*
As to the piece itself: well, here's a piece of news! The entire piece was played freehand. NO sequences at all were programmed into the ESQ (which is how I usually lay down bass and percussion tracks). I may be a doof when it comes to spending years trying to puzzle out how to use the instruments I have, but my actual confidence and playing ability is improving...at least a little.
The title was inspired indirectly after reading a book written by August Derleth. He was the guy who single-handedly rescued the entire collection of H.P. Lovecraft's work from dropping off into obscurity by starting a small publishing company ("Arkham House") and printing HPL's stories in hardcover book form soon after Lovecraft died of intestinal cancer in 1937. Not only did Derleth get all of HPL's finished works, he also got his unfinished stories and notes for stories he never wrote... and Derleth took it upon himself to continue HPL's work. (He called these early pieces of his "posthumous collaborations"...Yeah, right!)
Anyway, it was one of these "collaborations" - in fact, the first one Derleth wrote - which I recently read which inspired the title. In case you are at all curious, it was "The Lurker at the Threshold" Pub Carroll & Graf 2003. Original story by Derleth first published in 1945.
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This piece was created fairly rapidly. From initial idea to mastering and final mixdown was about 4 hours a day for 3 days and most of that time was spent on mastering rather than performing/recording. Recall I said this was all freehand. Yes, indeed. Nine tracks of freehand strings (various kinds)and percussion. I was trying to invoke the sinister mood of that Gothic sci fi (the only way I can think of to succinctly describe their rather unique genre) that both HPL and later Derleth create in their work.
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Some time back, I'd mentioned that fantasy film project I was involved in... well no surprise here! It failed... just faded out like a child's interest. Feh on them. I'm working on my own screenplay. (he! Caught you by surprise, did I?) Yep. I was thinking of doing a story first, but then decided with the notes I had and the stuff I've already plotted out in my head without writing it down I was pretty much ready to break it down scene by scene as I write it in screenplay format. Making progress. More to come on that later.
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Hey Mr. Benicio Del Toro, are you listening to these? I wanna score your next film.
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Thanks for listening.
Till next time, be safe. And remember: Always wear a condom when crossing the street and look both ways before sex. Her husband could come from anywhere.