Music For Animations

Steve K

There are many discussion of how music can add to a video, e.g. Spielberg originally complained that John Williams "Shark Theme" in the movie "Jaws" was ... underwhelming.  He later said the music was at least half the movie.  The "Shark Theme" has been described as possibly the most recognizable music on the planet.  Rumor has it that even the sharks swim around humming it.

I usually use my large collection of royalty free music from Digital Juice, Corel and others for short animation background music.  But occasionally I need a particular style that I can't find in those collections and I turn to composition programs, in particular algorithmic composition programs where you set parameters (style, chord progression, etc.) and the program composes the song.  In the past, these were pretty cheesy, but they've made progress.

Here is an interesting approach, the "Wintergatan - Marble Machine":

Its a little pricey at ~$100,000 at Hammacher Schlemmer, so maybe the longtime PG Music product "Band-In_A-Box" (lots of versions starting at ~$100) is more feasible:

More at:

http://www.pgmusic.com/

Of course, for you programmers who really want something like a virtual  Marble Machine, just write your own program, like this one:

Dartanbeck

When I used to write songs all the time, I began with music. Melodies. No words.

To create my initial melody I captured an emotion or a thought. I grew up with music that went through changes as the song progressed - at the very least, an intro, verse, bridge, and chorus, and the music of the verse and perhaps also the bridge and chorus would play behind guitar or keyboard solos. So all of my songs have those elements at the very least. I like how it all works out. But many of the songs I loved would go through another entire change later in the song - sometimes even a whole new intro, verse, bridge, and chorus, often returning to the original theme before ending - but not always.

As I work toward creating my movies, I've found how I can use each of those elements as an entirely separate entity - which can be played for various lengths and can also interweave with its neighboring elements from the same theme.

A while back, when I was looking into the software in which you speak of (or something similar), I wrote a thread called Carrara-esque Music Software, or something like that. During that thread I've learned some stuff from others, like kakman using Reaper, for example, Wendy recording herself and editing it together using various piece of software - these that I speak of here are known as DAW: Digital Audio Workstations. They come in many forms, each with their own claims of advantage.

The one I ended up getting was Magix Music Maker. bigh warned me that the loops available directly can getting old, and I can totally see what he means. But using Wendy's and kakman's and other's methods Music Maker also acts as a DAW in which we can acquire or record our own loops or elements for use, and then use its movie-editing-like editing tools to evolve it all into a song.

Something I love about it is that we can group portions together, copy and paste them around in different ways to make different versions of the same theme for use in various needs of the film. So I'll put together a song with an intro, verse, bridge, chorus, etc., and give it an appropriate name and save it. Then edit it into other various versions that offer the same theme - a continuity of melodies that fit coherently together, but also provide an entirely different mood. Like suspenseful edge-of-the- seat anticipation or heart-pounding thrill-ride action, sorrowful tear-jerking softness, moments of relief and happiness, romance on the waves of the sea... all within the same thematic undertone.

Loops can be used as loops or as single elements, and we can record these elements or even build them by dragging the midi notes around with a mouse, assigning the instruments (VSTs) as we go. 

Kakman is very good at this... Very good! I am still an infant in this digital realm of songwriting, but my new midi drum kit can help me to combine my organic knowledge into the digital realm - recording live into the DAW - and my drum hits may be (of course) assinged to any sound I wish, which is powerful indeed!

It's going to be some time before I get further into this though. I need to finish my movie first ;)

Dartanbeck

An example:

I used one of my themes that I made in Music Maker to work out the music track of this animation exercise, but altered it greatly to work with the video, but without spending much time on it at all

Steve K

Dartanbeck said:

When I used to write songs all the time, I began with music. Melodies. No words.

That is almost verbatim a quote from one of my alltime favorite songwriters, Paul Simon.  He said the music has to come first, but I think the exception that proves the rule is his version of "Richard Cory", a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson.  You can read the short poem here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44982/richard-cory

You can hear Simon's song here:

I got inspired by the poem to do a short animation:

But I agree, music is music and poetry is poetry.  

 

Steve K

Dartanbeck said:

An example:

I used one of my themes that I made in Music Maker to work out the music track of this animation exercise, but altered it greatly to work with the video, but without spending much time on it at all

Very nice, very spooky.  I have a version of Music Maker called "Soundtrack Edition" which is pretty good, but seems to have been discontinued.  The website shows: Free, Plus, Live and Premium., all under $100.   I think the Soundtrack Edition just had a lot of movie style loops, rather than pop music, etc.   

 

Dartanbeck

I mostly use the movie soundtrack loops, but I also find myself digging around in all of the others as well.

Yeah, when I was quite young, I wrote music around a Robert Frost peom, Love and a Question

I always like to look at my 'usual' tactics and techniques as "usual tactics and techniques" rather than hard-and-fast rules. There must always be time when normal conventions get tossed to make something work as needed ;)

Dartanbeck

That Richard Cory story kills me every time!

Dartanbeck

I haven't done it (yet), but AudioBlocks is offering a Free trial of 20 downloads/day for 7 full days - keep what you download - Forever!!!

Some pretty cool stuff there... limited trial.

 

Steve K

Dartanbeck said:

That Richard Cory story kills me every time!

Thanks, most of the credit goes to E.A. Robinson.  I always prefer stories in poetry and songs, rather than sentiment, emotion, whatever.  I'm thinking of doing a Robert Service poem like "The Cremation Of Sam Magee" - kind of long, but maybe just the Prologue.  Other story songs: "Rocky Racoon", "Duncan", "America's Favorite Pastime" (hint: its not baseball)(great lyric in this one: "But nobody was hallucinatin' that"), etc.

Steve K

Dartanbeck said:

 

Yeah, when I was quite young, I wrote music around a Robert Frost peom, Love and a Question

I never heard of it until now, but the opening does bring to mind a favorite of mine (I used to sail around in a small cruising sailboat), "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Coleridge.  

Water, water, every where, 
And all the boards did shrink; 
Water, water, every where, 
Nor any drop to drink. 

I recently watched A&E's "Longitude", (7.9 @ IMDB), about Harrison's clock which allowed determination of longitude.  Seamen really did die for lack of water because they didn't know where they were.

 

Mistara

how you go about trying to buy the rights to sing a song in our carrara movies?

would love to sing 'lean on me'

 

years ago there was an online harryfox agency.  but it was for like recording and selling up to 2,500 copies of a record.  
 

Steve K

Mistara said:

how you go about trying to buy the rights to sing a song in our carrara movies  

I don't know, but I thnk it is prohibitively difficult.  At least for amateur creators of movies and animations.

I have participated in the 48 Hour Film contest for many years, they require documented proof that you have the rights to any copyrighted content, in particular music.  I do not remember any team using any well known song in their video.  This is about 60 teams per year for a decade or more.  

OTOH, if you are Quentin Tarantino (using an alias and teasing us) ... nice work on "Pulp Fiction", especially the intro by the great Dick Dale:

WendyLuvsCatz

ohhhh come to me you beautiful moog clone  must start saving ...

cdordoni

OnlyLuvsCatz said:

ohhhh come to me you beautiful moog clone  must start saving ...

Wow, that's an 80's flashback.

Steve K

But how does it work?  What does it sound like?  Here you go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lx-9mLB1V0

(174,000 views in two days!)

WendyLuvsCatz

Lol mines a video embed too of same link

WendyLuvsCatz

nice home studio