The piece of music featured in this episode is called Rupture. It’s a heavy and dissonant horror-inspired action soundtrack that I wrote for the choose-your-own-adventure audio drama The Culling, a story about a research intern who discovers some disturbing experiments happening at a remote space colony. My name is Randy Greer. I'm an audio drama writer and composer and this is How I Make Music.

IN THIS EPISODE

01:12 I played in a metal band for years, and I’m pretty sure I lost some hearing. My influences include cinematic horror, specifically Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky (1867), The Deadspace 2 soundtrack by Jason Graves and Joseph Bishara’s soundtrack for Insidious

02:35 Rupture is a soundtrack for the audio drama The Culling. The aim is to convey chaos breaking out at a research facility when they learn about the outbreak of a viral contagion. It accompanies a crowd stampede sequence. I wanted people to imagine what music would be playing if they had to run for their lives. The main character in the series is a character called Harker. She flown out to a quarantined remote planet. The accompanying music is textural and primal.

04:38 Atonality is when the music has neither discernible ‘home base’ note. Rupture begins as an atonal sequence. As the action of the scene develops, the music gains coherence and clarity and takes on more structure, mirroring the events in the story unravelling. Rupture begins with an atonal choir hum.

05:39 There’s a transition which I wanted to feel like passing through a membrane. Up until this point, there’s been no rhythm or meter. I wanted the listener to feel like there was nothing to hold on to. The greater the tension, the greater the ultimate resolution.

06:18 A rhythmic pulse emerges. I used distortion to play C, B and C#. It’s a chromatic motif that appears throughout the whole series.

06:51 One of my favorite instruments is called Mysteria, a choral instrument with an XY axis that allows you to drift between vocal articulations.

07:42 Synthesizers are associated with science fiction. I find them vital for carrying a sci-fi atmosphere into the score. To create a raw and primitive sound, I rely on percussion. A percussive rhythm is introduced which gives the listener some traction. The choir begins to sound almost like a swarm of bees.

09:15 To further reflect unpredictability, I use a 5/4 pattern. It feels wrong, almost as if you can’t quite get your footing.

09:50 Throughout Rupture, I use a bowed software instrument called Frendo. It’s a long, hollow wooden surface with metal strings and a lead pipe which can be freehanded to create wild, creepy and even bizarre sounds that suit the horror genre. Magma Synth is a sound design element I used to create the feel of something hatching from a fleshy membrane

11:03 Col legno bowing is where string players use the wood of the bow instead of the hair to create an aggressive snapping sound. To me, it communicates a sense that the events in the story have already snapped. The horn clusters sound wild.

SHOW NOTES

• Listen to The Culling https://feed.podbean.com/theculling/feed.xml
• Follow Randy Greer https://twitter.com/blackstaronair

MUSIC CREDITS

• Modest Mussorgsky - Night on Bald Mountain
• Jason Graves - Deadspace 2 soundtrack
• Joseph Bishara - The Insidious Plane

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How I Make Music is where behind-the-scenes musicians tell their own stories. Every Wednesday, we break apart a song, soundtrack or composition and investigate the insights into how it was made.

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The two versions of Title Theme from Observe and Report covered in this episode are soundtracks for the sci-fi audio drama Observe and Report, a story about an alien that gets stranded on earth. My name is Nate Fisher. I'm a writer and composer from Washington. I wrote the two versions of this piece to express the loneliness of an earthbound alien. The first version is a gentler solo piano piece while the second incorporates big orchestral elements for a grand cinematic feel. Let’s break it down! 

IN THIS EPISODE

01:33 My favorite score is Steve Jablonsky’s score for the first Transformers film. I’m also influenced by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori’s score for the Halo games. And, of course, Howard Shore and John Williams. 

02:26 I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s better to start with a new project instead of a template. Templates save time, but end up making your music sound the same. I sit at the piano and just noodle around until something comes out. 

03:00 Today we’ll look at two different versions of the same song. The first version (in C) is a solo piano with light orchestration. The second is bigger, with an epic cinematic sound (in G). One of my main goals with season 2 of Observe and Report was to take everything to the next level, including the theme song. 

04:05 There’s a current trend in film trailers - slowing down familiar themes and giving them a big, epic sound. Listen to the trailer for The Rise of Skywalker and hear how the recognizable melody is played back in half-time and reharmonized.

04:58 When music is made to sound really big, it creates a dimension of space that dovetails well with the sci-fi idea of space.

06:55 What is epic? Some examples of how I do it include having layering melody instruments, big brass and drums, a wide dynamic range, melodies that span multiple octaves. I love the way the french horn adds a sense of adventure to my music. 

08:10 There’s a nice chromatic descending line at this moment in the piece. 

08:45 I avoid common pop progressions when writing for sci-fi. There’s nothing wrong with them but they don’t generally lend themselves to sci-fi themes in my opinion

09:11 In the season 2 version of the theme, I decided to use the clean electric guitar to convey the loneliness of space. And also to have an instrument that could bring some meat to the song when needed! 

10:20 I had been avoiding the use of the theremin and its classic spooky sci-fi sound, but I decided I’d been staying away from it for too long and it was time to give it a spot.

10:58 There’s a nice big Hans Zimmer ‘drop’ moment where all the instruments hit together and the energy kicks in. It serves the purpose of being musical ear-candy. But it also allows a pause for when the credits begin to play. It was a balance between artistic and practical.

SHOW NOTES

• Listen to Observe and Report https://observeandreportpodcast.com
• Follow Observe and Report https://twitter.com/OARPodcast

MUSIC CREDITS

• Steve Jablonsky - Autobots 
• John Williams - Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker Trailer

ABOUT THIS SHOW

How I Make Music is where behind-the-scenes musicians tell their own stories. Every Wednesday, we break apart a song, soundtrack or composition and investigate the insights into how it was made.

• How I Make Music https://howimakemusic.com
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An immersive listening experience. Headphones recommended. Join audio drama creator and composer Gabriel Alvarez in a climactic rollercoaster soundtrack for an epic space action scene for fiction podcast Starcalled. Gabriel’s influences included 90s Australian TV series Farscape, Batman Returns and, of course, Star Wars. Let’s break it down!

TRANSCRIPT

ABOUT & INFLUENCES

Early influences for Back to the Berenian included Danny Elfman’s score for Batman Returns, Australian TV series Farscape and, of course, Star Trek and Star Wars. Before I started creating the series, there just wasn’t much out there exactly like what I wanted to hear. So you take it upon yourself to create the type of stuff you want to hear. After all, who doesn’t pretend they’re climbing into the cockpit of a spaceship?

BACK STORY

The original inspiration for doing a DIY sci-fi show came from tabletop gaming, Dungeons and Dragons and Farscape. I was living in a crummy apartment with my friends and we started making ‘a sci-fi show with a zero-dollar budget’. I just kept running with it and kinda made it up as I went along. When I write the script, I hear the music in my head. The blueprint is there. It’s just a matter of assembling everything around it.

CONTEXT

This piece comes just before a fight scene during an escape sequence by the human Osborne and his friend Oddie, a four-armed lizard alien. The scene evolves and builds, culminating in a huge, explosive spaceship battle in an asteroid field. Being able to thread the music through this diversity of moods is always the challenge. At first, I started by faking my way through it, and now I feel confident in my composition and mixing abilities. This is the moment you most enjoy as a composer!

MUSIC BREAKDOWN

Here we have a change in the time signature from 4/4 to 3/4. I was going into a fistfight sequence and wanted to slingshot the audience forward into something clipped at a faster pace. Musically, it’s just percussion - hard taiko drums, timpani, gong and cymbal. Syncopation helps disorient the listener in a sequence of ‘percussive violence.’I used a lot of leitmotif in my composition for Starcalled. A leitmotif is a piece of music attached to a character, place or concept. I have character themes for the Edari (a race of aliens) as well as the characters Oddie, Osborne, Captain Landers. There are also abstract motifs for danger, suspense and more.I love using tritones. A tritone is the perfect dissonant interval. They’re absolutely disgusting, horrid things which really want to resolve. You know we’re going somewhere but you just don’t necessarily know where we’re going. Tritones give you momentum and propel your figures forward, keeping your audience at the edge of their seat. String ostinatos give you energy, pace and inertia. I love working with them too.You want your music to resonate with the audience. I draw inspiration from Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s so hopeful and optimistic. I want to feel rewarded for hoping for those things.

SHOW NOTES

• Listen or subscribe to Starcalledhttps://starcalled.space
• Buy the Starcalled soundtrackhttps://starcalled.bandcamp.com/
• Follow Starcalled on Twitter @starcalledradioMUSIC CREDITS
• Batman Returns Main Theme by Danny Elfman
• Star Wars Main Theme by John Williams
• Theme from Farscape by Chris Neal and Braedy Neal

ABOUT THIS SHOWDiscover new fiction podcasts in an immersive, sound-designed listening experience with their music composers. In this show, we challenge audio drama music makers to break apart a song, soundtrack or composition and get into why and how it was made. Headphones recommended.

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An immersive listening experience. Headphones recommended.

Join Tin Can Audio's Scottish creator and composer David Devereux in a gentle ascent into the clouds of audio drama. For fiction podcast 'The Tower', their influences ranged from a family love of the Wurlitzer organ to games like Hyper Light Drifter. This piece 'The Fog Clears' was written as an interlude which bridges the story of Kiri, a young girl who climbs an infinite tower to escape the drudgery of her life down below. The Fog Clears is a gentle and expansive soundtrack which musically describes the moment Kiri achieves clarity, peace and the strength to continue her journey.

TIMESTAMPS

02:12 The Fog Clears was written for a narrative audio fiction series. Influences included Pink Floyd, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds and the classic ‘Studio Ghibli’ sound of Ryuchi Sakamoto.

04:30 A Wurlizter electric piano sound serves as the basis for the entire soundtrack. It can feel a bit dishonest saying you used a Wurlitzer, when you’re really using a software emulation of one. A Wurlitzer keyboard is difficult and expensive to acquire!

04:56 With this piece, I wanted to pay homage to one of my favorite pieces of music, Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence by Ryuchi Sakamoto.

05:47 Breakdown of the chords and melodies

07:00 I grew up with my uncle playing church organ. Such presence and majesty! It gives the sense that something big is happening. The thickness of the Wurlitzer sound creates a feeling of thick fog. At this point in the story, Kiri is alone on the tower, covered in fog. I was trying to create the impression that the fog is starting to shift. I used a ghostly lead synth, and a second synth which emulates the beeps of a Sega console. I also used an organ sound. I grew up with my uncle playing organ, and it really adds presence and majesty to music. I included a chiptune-sounding Nintendo synth, which was influenced by a game soundtrack called Hyper Light Drifter by Disasterpeace.

10:02 I wanted the crescendo to be really big, with the clouds clearing and the world spreading out in front of her. Very dramatic! I went for a cinematic string sound, using cello, violin. I also used a mellotron, an early prototype of the sampler which allowed tape loops to be played on a piano keyboard. For the finale, everything is revealed to Kiri and all the instruments from the bridge play together in harmony. A slow decrescendo represents a calming of Kiri’s emotions as clarity, peace and strength are achieved.

SHOW NOTES

• Download, buy or listen to ‘The Tower’ soundtrack https://tincanaudio.bandcamp.com
• Tin Can Audio is a fiction podcast production company https://tincanaudio.co.uk

MUSIC CREDITS

Jeff Wayne - The Red Weed (Part 1)Pink Floyd - Great Gig in the SkyDavid Devereux - Waking the TowerDavid Devereux - The ViewRyuichi Sakamoto - Merry Christmas, Mr LawrenceDisasterpeace - A Chorus of Tongues

ABOUT THIS SHOW

How I Make Music is where audio drama composers get to tell their own stories. Discover new fiction storytelling podcasts by their music in an immersive, sound-designed listening experience. In this show, we challenge fiction podcast music composers to break apart a song, soundtrack or composition and get into why and how it was made. Headphones recommended.

• Subscribe to How I Make Music https://pod.link/howimakemusic
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The piece of music in this week's episode is called Zimbabwe Grooving. It’s a smooth lofi deep house track. It uses an mbira to sound a bit African and a software instrument called Flesh to sound contemporary. Let’s break it down!

IN THIS EPISODE

05:20 I have an mbira which I like to combine with house grooves and more contemporary sounds. At the time of writing this, I was inspired by little-known artists like Penya from On The Corner Records.

06:17 The jazz guitar hook in this track is a simple, repetitive pentatonic line. Sometimes it’s about the notes you choose, but in this case it’s about the timbre of the instrument. A smooth, mid-tone guitar works way better with this type of smooth house music than, for example, an overdriven electric. I wanted the piece to sound smooth!

06:55 What makes it feel ‘live’?

08:30 What makes it retain attention?

09:10 What makes it so smooth?

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How I Make Music is where behind-the-scenes musicians tell their own stories. Every Wednesday, we break apart a song, soundtrack or composition and investigate the insights into how it was made.

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The piece of music in this week's episode is called African Secret. It’s a cinematic soundtrack meant to depict suspense and tension without sounding too dark and dangerous. It uses a bright Lydian mode melody to retain a sense of adventure and mystery, and a few of the instruments are African in origin. Let’s break it down!

IN THIS EPISODE

01:52 What’s it influenced by? This piece was primarily influenced by the soundtrack to the Netflix TV show Ozark. The original score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans features a lot of percussion using (what sounds like) ordinary items. I liked the boldness of using hard percussive sounds in amongst the more typical dark, brooding ambiance in TV dramas.

03:16 How is this African? The choice of computer instrument patches includes mbira, marimba and a selection of percussion instruments labelled as West African. I recorded some basic drumming on a djembe to bring some life to the piece amongst all the samples and software instruments.

05:49 How is this a secret? The classic danger and suspense sound is a dark and brooding low neutral and often arpeggiated bass monotone. I also included congas and a vibraphone-type instrument because a lot of classic spy shows and films use it to convey subterfuge. In the opening passage, EQ is used creatively to ‘open the door’ from a narrow, muffled mix to a more full-sounding mix. This is meant to convey some kind of revelation, in line with the theme of secrecy.

08:31 Why does this feel more like adventure than danger? Unusual time signatures can have an unnerving effect. This piece is in 7/4, so it never quite satisfies like a 4/4 track does. Intentional tension, meant to convey the sense of someone sneaking around, or subtle danger. But it’s not all dark and dangerous. The bright Lydian mode used in the simple melody line is associated with magic and possibility. Perhaps this music conveys a supernatural secret of some sorts!

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The soundtrack in this week's episode is called Grand Theft Auto. It’s a wonky 90s hip hop piece inspired by the West Coast hip hop sound of artists like Tupac, Dr Dre and NWA. It’s a downtempo and noticeably dated track meant to summon the spirit of games like Grand Theft Auto. It’s best suited to depictions of gangsterism and general badness. Let’s break it down!

IN THIS EPISODE

02:00 The beat is not exactly in time. This style of hip hop often involves finger-drumming without the option of quantizing the beat to perfection or applying preset groove styles. The groove was more human this way, and I joined in the fun by playing it manually and refusing to quantize it exactly.

03:25 The bass is an obviously sampled sound. The original artists of this type of music typically made it using samplers and drum machines, not instruments (with exceptions, of course. I felt it was more authentic to use a sampled bass to create a 90s sound.

05:00 The West Coast lead synth line is a total giveaway. The high portamento value gives the notes a gliding legato. This part works together with an LFO to produce an increasingly wobbly buildup to end the track.

07:21 There’s one simple electric guitar line played in a funk style. Often, samples were limited by the size of the sampler’s memory bank. This meant that if a guitarist was in a studio, they’d probably only be able to record a few seconds of audio instead of entire takes of a track. These short melodies would then be looped over and over, as it’s done in this track.

08:37 There’s an orchestral hit stab sound used percussively, It’s a sound that’s been used almost universally in pop music from the 80s and 90s.

09:40 Extras: The organ sound is a combination of two sounds - an old one and a newer one to reinforce the other. There’s a bright glassy synth swell for texture. And, of course, a layer of vinyl static to age this track to the era just before digital!

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You’re listening to How I Make Music, a soothing narrative experience for the musically curious to go behind the scenes of composition. Every Wednesday, we break apart one of my own compositions and investigate the stories and insights into how it was made and its effect on listening ears. My name is John Bartmann. I’m a music composer from South Africa and this is How I Make Music.

The soundtrack in this week's episode is called Theta Waves. It’s a dark but energetic and glitchy electronic music track with an unusual arrangement and a pretty far out palette of sounds. I was inspired to write electronic music that didn’t sound boring and typical, ideally something that wasn’t easy to classify generically. The track is best suited to the cyberpunk genre. Let’s break it down!

IN THIS EPISODE

01:47 What does it sound like if a computer takes a solo? If it tries to improvise? During the breakdown section of this track, I tried to answer this question with a plugin called LiveCut. LiveCut is a random glitch pattern generator. We used it during the breakdown to create a ‘glitch solo’ in which we mangled the rhythm with a careful balance of controlled randomness. Much of the track’s glitchy sound was made using LiveCut. There’s a subtle counter-rhythm made by a different instrument which also employs some arpeggiated randomness.

03:54 From the start, it was the 12/8 time signature that kept me feeling that I was creating a nice deviation from typical techno. Very little electronic music is in 12/8, and somehow it’s important to me to keep pioneering these unusual outcomes.

05:10 The Novation X-Station synth was the basis for this composition. We selected patches and recorded takes of our performance straight to audio in Ableton. This made each recording a finished performance which couldn’t easily be edited. It was a hands-on session, with way more playing than planning. Bouncing the recordings early in the track forced us to really commit to whatever sound we were making rather than leaving too many options open.

07:39 We played with the resonance parameter to bring out the embedded colours of a certain X-Station patch called ‘Wired’ to include the spiritual-sounding harmonic series. The harmonic series is a range of ‘peaks’ for each frequency (musical note) in the audio spectrum which sound more prominent and musical when amplified. Mostly fun!

08:56 There are two piano types in this track: a normal melody and chord stabs. The stab sounds were also the product of LiveCut and nicely demonstrate the idea of controlled randomness. I wanted a certain chord to play at the end of each 12/8 bar, so I disabled the randomness just for that section. The result is a pattern that never fully repeats again, yet remains ‘anchored’ to a certain, satisfying musical moment. For me, it’s the most optimal blend of control and chaos!

10:05 All in all, the track was sounding a little too rhythmically unpredictable, so I added a pacey marching snare sound to just nail it all down with some certainty. There’s a short sample of a crowd of people talking amongst themselves. The bass has a super-wide range of sounds, and sounds really modern.

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The soundtrack in this week's episode is called Coffee Time Rock. It’s an energetic and uplifting rock guitar piece inspired by the type of promotional soundtrack music typically used in marketing youth lifestyle products. I employed a very standard approach, but included a few weird twists of my own. The instrumentation includes a grungy guitar, electric bass, drums and vocals shouting ‘hey!’ and singing ‘doo doo doo’. My recommended usage is for moments where a sense of exuberance, glamor and craziness is required. Let’s break it down!

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ABOUT THIS SHOW

You’re listening to How I Make Music, a weekly podcast for the musically curious to go behind the scenes of composition for audio storytelling. Hey, I'm John Bartmann. I’m a composer from South Africa. My soundtracks, moods and themes have been used in podcasts, audio dramas, and also in commercial film, TV and radio. Every Wednesday, we break apart one of my own compositions and investigate the stories and insights into how it was made and its effect on listening ears. How I Make Music helps you better understand how to make, select and use music to create gripping storytelling.

The soundtrack in this week's episode is called Weird Science. It’s a dreamy and dark chillout electronica piece inspired by the lofi chillwave sounds and techniques of bands like Washed Out. The instrumentation includes a funk-sounding synth, sampler and a load of small nuanced additions to a slow hip hop beat. My recommended usage is for depictions of laboratory experiments aliens and in other sci-fi and tech noir settings. Let’s break it down!

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ABOUT THIS SHOW

You’re listening to How I Make Music, a weekly podcast for the musically curious to go behind the scenes of composition for audio storytelling. Hey, I'm John Bartmann. I’m a composer from South Africa. My soundtracks, moods and themes have been used in podcasts, audio dramas, and also in commercial film, TV and radio. Every Wednesday, we break apart one of my own compositions and investigate the stories and insights into how it was made and its effect on listening ears. How I Make Music helps you better understand how to make, select and use music to create gripping storytelling.