Descendant - Act 1 - montage

[Houston Haynes]

Hey everyone,

It\'s been a while since I\'ve had a full weekend to put something together in the studio, so I decided to scrap the mock-up work for a bit and just do something in conjunction with the better half. My wife just finished a feature screenplay entitled \"Descendant\", and she asked me to put together some music that she could use of inspiration while storyboarding. This is a quick assembly of some of the themes, which include a prologue, two different types of chase/fight scenes and a few lyrical cues as well.

Descendant - Act 1 - montage (\"http://www.hhaynes.com/docs/Descendant-thru-secrets-04.mp3\")

I also used this as a test for Kontakt 1.5.2, to see if it would hold up multiple instances while streaming an entire orchestra. I loaded up instrments from Garritan Personal Orchestra as well as a few tidbits from the bundled NI/Kontakt library and some converted GIG files from G-Town and DIVA Extended. In all, it was five fully loaded instances of Kontakt with 72K for pre-load and voice buffers with 128 voices in reserve. I was able to run everything at about 50% VST load, with a single instance of Voxengo Pristine Space running convolution more-or-less in real time (512-sample-length delay compensation, bypassed during record) with the usual GOS Hall impulses from Ernest Cholakis.

My secondary machine ran Virtual Guitarist and VG Electric Edition, as well as Groove Agent, XPhraze, Arturia\'s minimoogV. The last two didn\'t make it into this mix as I was still working on patches for each of them and was not completely happy with my results as of yet. The guitars used iZotope\'s Trash (on the electric) and Spectron (on the acoustic) with Ozone putting a polish on the entire mix.

The end result will likely be a DVD and/or streaming \"trailer\" mock up of my music and her storyboards with some voice over, foley and sound effects. As I get more feedback from my wife on developing and changing cues, I\'ll be posting periodic updates. Enjoy. images/icons/grin.gif

[Houston Haynes]

Thanks for the comments, Sharmy. You\'re exactly right. I had planned to work with some of the other vowels for the earlier section, but I didn\'t get time to go back and try on the others to see how they worked in the mix. I got hung up with VG slipping out one beat on me, and I burned a lot of time on mixing down and shifting the guitar tracks to fit. Monday\'s here and it\'s time to go to work.

The next things are to tighten up the timing without squashing the feel, adding in the synth parts, and then massaging DIVA X a bit. I made the mistake of leaning on the keyboard with some of DIVA\'s stacatto voices loaded and this cluster jumped out of the speakers to my wife\'s glee. So, now I know what she\'s looking for in the final scene to scare the tar out of \"the audience\". images/icons/smile.gif

[Joanne Babunovic]

Hi Houston,

Especially like the strum guitar towards end. Reminded me of Pat Matheney or Tommy the who. Would have like to heard this part develop more and maybe try without the voices.

[Houston Haynes]

Thanks, Joanne. It\'s gratifying that everyone I\'ve heard from has picked out something different that they liked. That was one of the purposes of the cue series.

As far as developing the \"journeyman\" cue (which is what I call it), I\'ve gotten a request for further development from my wife, and set it aside as its own piece. Oddly enough, I had some really nice changes, as well as some bass work from Scarbee J-Fingered bass as well as some brushes/sidestick meanderings courtesy of Groove Agent, but I drew all of that out for the cue. I really wanted folks to focus on a particular area for that portion of the story, which was the innocence of a young boy who realizes at some level that he\'s different and is in for a long, interesting life. The female vocal is important there, and my wife (who was the one that requested this type of tone) specifically mentioned that she *loved* the vocal interweaving with the strings. Now that I\'ve heard it a few dozen times, I\'ve become more-or-less \"married\" to it.

It will be fun to re-visit some portion of that original tune that I wrote, and perhaps insert it into later portions of the 5-minute storyboard we\'re working on. Thanks heaps for the feedback. I really appreciate it.

[Nhick Ramiro Pacis]

I agree - DIVA floats so nicely all throughout!

[Alan Lastufka]

Hey Houston,

Very nice piece! Brings to mind images of silver and blue with bold streaks of black! Can\'t wait to see the images that\'ll accompany this.

And if the story\'s even half as good as The Infinity Grid, Julie will have another winner on her hands images/icons/smile.gif .