giving something back
Sounds drives emotion.
Have you ever heard someone say life’s just not like the movies?
In truth we all at least once experience something that you could call cinematic, and possibly more that we realise. Of course, we haven’t (I presume) had an alien spaceship descend to hover over our hometown or met a knife wielding clown in our closet (you may encounter a fair few clowns if you step outside your front door) or maybe you have… No, what I am referring to is those everyday life moments in film that hold such emotion. The perfect sunset on the beach, the perfect evening, the perfect sunrise. We have all experienced those, but something was missing - however ‘perfect’ it was, it didn’t quite reach the perfection of the movie moment. So, what was missing?
Music.
Every dramatic moment in film is accompanied and underpinned with sounds and music. Every emotional moment is enhanced by the sounds we hear; the soaring strings, the melancholic piano. In fact, I would go as far to say that the images are nothing without the sound. Now, before the film connoisseur raise their pitchforks in anger – let me explain.
Let’s go back to the era of silent film. Now there is an era of film that didn’t have sound to enhance it. Well, it did. In smaller theatres there was a pianist, in larger theatres an ensemble, and in big cities potentially an orchestra. They set the emotional tone, provided pacing and highlighted the action sequences with music. I have used the example before as someone with a love for The Lord of the Rings, but take the scene where Legolas, Aragorn and Gimli are tracking the Orc band holding Merry and Pippin. Take away the soundtrack and the experiences changes from a valiant pursuit across hundreds of miles of stunning vistas to three blokes who apparently got off the bus a stop too early and can’t find their camping ground. Put sound and picture together and you have something ‘epic’.
I would argue take the picture away and you might have to employ a little imagination, but you would have a more ‘emotional’ journey than with just the pictures. To paraphrase ‘I like radio, the pictures are better’.
Sound creates images.
When I am working on my ‘projects’, creating a sound bed or piece of music, I start with an emotion. The emotion drives everything – the script, and the sounds and music that accompany it. They are inseparable parts of the whole. Often when starting to create a sound bed I find myself taken by a certain instrument or feeling that diverges from the actual project piece I intended to work on. This results in many pieces that I have no immediate use for and that do not fit in with the project. It is lucky that these are my own projects and the timescales are of my own setting, otherwise I suspect it might be an issue. However, I go with the flow, and the result is often surprising to me as the creator.
I have created ‘epic’ music worthy of a Dwarven warband, soundscapes to make you wonder what lurks in that wardrobe, tension beds that surely precede an xenomorph, and strangely in one instance something that you may like to practice yoga to. Some I file away potentially to be further worked on, and others are set aside in folders with no specific purpose in mind. There is a learning process in creating these impromptu pieces even if it is a piece of meditation music. I improve the more I create and I also find myself curating sets of sounds and instruments that fit a ‘theme’, so should I need to create something of that genre then I have a starting point.
This led to another starting point. Ah, a quick tangent having just used the word ’led’. A preview elsewhere of a scrip brought to light the misspelling of the word led, which had been spelled as ‘lead’. The perpetrator of the unforgivable deed a very successful film and radio writer and producer. Now of course as clever clogs attention was brought to the offending misspelling. The reply was to the point and to the effect that scripts (TV, Film, Radio) are rarely proofread and normally are riddled with spelling errors! This was news to me. However, I do see some light in this as firstly my spelling is often questionable to say the least, and secondly, maybe script writing was meant for me with the handicap I seem to suffer from.
After that tangent, let’s get back on track as I had cleverly used starting point to lead into a starting point, and then subsequently ruined the tenuous link.
I have over the year used many pieces of music and sound beds created by others and provided for free use under creative comms licences. Most of my past projects would have not been realised without the use of these freely provided works.
Now, however, it would seem that I am creating surplus to requirement pieces that just sit on a hard drive never to be heard or used. A conversation in strangely the same space as the script discussion led (see that’s led.. sorry it’s hard to resist…) to thoughts on making some of the pieces available for people to use in their projects. The pieces already exist and will continue to be created, some need a little polish before they can be released, and others will materialise over time. In a way it is something of a ‘no brainer’. A chance to give back to the communities that have given to me in the past and to help solo or small-scale creators.
So as of now there are four pieces available on a newly created Soundcloud account, and more pieces will be added over time. There will be different genres as emotions run driving the final piece and I never quite know what is going to come next until I play the first note.
The sound beds and music can be found on Soundcloud on the link below, and are free to download and use for non-commercial podcasts, videos or where you would like to use them, as long as a credit is given.
https://soundcloud.com/chas-creek
Happy creating!
