My name is Michael and welcome to my portfolio website and blog. Here I document my adventures in cinematic music creation and more.
Hope you have a nice stay!
All tagged computer technology
I’m writing about these things because at a base level, we media composers are at least in some part observers; even nominally psychologists. It’s our job to see humans, hear stories, to imagine. We must try to understand the human experience if we are to attempt to communicate our findings through music or even sound. I’m also writing this as an antidote to my feelings of insanity on the subject, am I alone here? Is anyone else seeing or feeling this?
I'm basically in love with Spitfire Audio's samples, the textures and colours they have captured over the years have been essential in reaching my audiences and telling the right stories effectively within my film scores. It was during my usual online scout for new samples for my next projects when I stumbled across a series of videos they had published known as Creative Cribs, and I wanted to share it with you guys.
Given their outreach with film composers all over the globe, they (Spitfire Audio) have been able to get an inside look at many composers studios and give us a pretty comprehensive tour. I have embedded my three favorites below and hope you guys will take the time to check them out as well as taking a look at the vast collection Spitfire have posted...
I should imagine there comes a point in every contemporary composers career where a larger MIDI master keyboard is required, for me that day came this week. I had been flirting with the idea of upgrading for some time, but what with the vast volume of products available on the market and just sheer size of a full format keyboard in general, I found myself trawling through the internet and never really coming to any sort of conclusion on what the best solution would be.
I had been using the M-Audio Oxygen 49 for the past two years and found the assignable faders and pots very useful, especially when working with sound design and electronic based composition. The synth action keys on the other hand and general lack of them were beginning to frustrate me.
Most modern orchestral sample libraries contain patches called ‘key-switches’, essentially this enables the composer to change the articulation of the loaded instrument during the performance at the touch of a piano note; These notes are usually placed outside the playable range of the instrument. In other words, should the composer be using a solo cello for example, using a key-switched patch would provide the ability to switch between a sustained and pizzicato note articulation at the touch of key instead of having to move to a different track with the pizzicato articulation loaded in order to play that part of the composition. This makes playing ‘live’ much more of a possibility and is a great way of adding realism to your sampled instruments. I found that using a 49 key MIDI controller made using these patches very difficult to use as I had to hit the octave button down on the keyboard every time I wanted to change articulation, a frustration which is no longer an issue with an 88 key controller…
