A Medieval Score.. What could possibly go Wrong..

This one is a bit weird…

Recently my friend, Jonny Bullpit got me in contact with a few film students. The students were looking for someone to create a 7 minute 'medieval' sounding score for a Larping Film. I have since made a musical piece to accompany the rough edit of the film they sent to me but they have fallen out of contact. The students have not contacted me since last Wednesday when I asked how do they want me to submit the piece. Because of this, I am here with this musical score in which I cant send them, as it will not fit the timing of the new edit. So I am awaiting a reply to how they want the score to be sent through. If I don’t get a response, I will be sending them my rough score on Thursday, it will be the least I can do as they are not giving me any incentive to help them. Due to all of these setbacks, I figured I would reflect upon the piece I made, instead of the process of creating and communicating with the team by which you can already tell, was horrible…

That is the rough score I made for the edit the film students sent to me. How I went about creating this piece was quite simple to be honest. It started out as myself just creating a few loops and melodies that go for that 'epic medieval' feeling. These are the demo's below:

Though these Demo's are very rich in melodic content, the score took a different route. This was a direct result of my work flow and reference tracks. My writing process took the route my usual productions would, which you can see highlighted Here. The reference track I was given was their rough edit of the film, which had a score underneath the whole video. I took that rough edit, chopped it up into separate sections i.e Quite body, loud build, intense battle, etc.

This was a pretty bad route to take if I were to be completely honest. Looking back over the process I should have created multiple different tracks then mixed them into the score. This would have freed up my creativity, allowing myself to have tempo changes and key changes within the score. The end result of mine lacked those two features, in turn giving the piece the same feeling and mood throughout. I tried to achieve the same feeling as the reference track but was un-able to do so. Due to my lack of time available for the project and little room for experimentation, I couldn’t get the result I was wanting.

Due to this being my first proper 'Score' I feel as though I needed more time to get the result I was looping for.. I didn’t get time to experiment with sounds (I haven't really made anything with strings / acoustic VSTs) nor did I get the chance to find the appropriate scale for the mood (I am not very advanced or knowledgeable within the world of Music Theory).

With the end result, I wont be publishing this piece online under my own account but it is a good example for myself on communication and workflow priorities. I was contacted too late in the trimester to warrant the time I was looking for, which stopped me from being able to give this project 100%. I had already made room and accepted so many different projects that it would be unfair to those who I chose to work with, If I gave up that time to create this score.

There is a lot I can learn from this and I hope I don’t end up in this situation again.

Till Next Time.