“What I’m always trying to do in the studio, is I’m trying to write my own favourite song” - Porter Robinson 2022
My production process consists of alternating between music writing and sound design, therefore I prefer to have complete creative control over both the composition and production, ensuring flexibility and consistent evaluation of clarity and sonority.
Reflecting this creative approach, all the instrumentation and sound design uses MIDI and software effects. I wanted to have an orchestral aspect as part of the cinematic sonority, however, recording a live orchestra would have clashed with this production process. Therefore, Audio Imperia’s “Nucleus” provided the orchestral sound present in the album. Its quality compared to that of real orchestras, and its large range of instruments designed for cinematic music complimented my sound. As this tool is versatile and complex, experimenting and familiarising were required before starting the project to ensure an efficient workflow. A pre-development phase in the summer of 2023 allowed me to practise using ‘Nucleus’ and set boundaries for how the album would be produced. A recreation of the music in the scene ‘12 Years Later’ from Disney’s ‘Treasure Planet’ (2002) was a small project that familiarised articulations, dynamics, and instrumentation, generally exercising a wide range of features the VST provided. A second project was done in order to practice audio sync and original composition. This project was an original score for the introductory scene of Studio Trigger’s ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ (2022). In an interview with Anime News Network, Anime composer Kevin Penkin states artists are ‘instructed to create music away from the picture, which is then matched to the desired scene at a later stage of production’, therefore, shows like ‘Edgerunners’ have a significant lack of audio sync. This distinguished my project from the original soundtrack through the use of traditional audio sync and a tonally different EDM track. This mini-project was a great success and was what the main sound of the album was based on. I decided to use the music I produced for this scene in 'Company Policy' for the track 'Hellfire'. It showcased some great sound design and fit the narrative quite well so not making use of it would have been a shame. Being an original composition, there was no issue including it in the album.
Kevin Penkin Interview: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2017-10-04/interview-made-in-abyss-composer-kevin-penkin/.122246
Treasure Planet Project:
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Project:
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