Workflow: Trevor Morris

I'm delighted to be its first time that you and I have met yes many years of exchanging emails and you've been a supporter of ours which I really thank you for and the last time we here we did we had a look at your equipment stuff but I'm really eager to talk to you about your your workflow because you have some output yes thank you I believe you've just been working on Emerald City and yep and how many episodes was that that was ten episodes that we did actually we did it a while ago last summer we recorded it at air studios fantastic the whole score which was kind of rare for TV to have that kind of commitment to the every episode every episode we did it in a big block over a couple of days but we knew going in that we wanted the the director to our seminar had worked together before on a movie called immortals which we scored that air so he like me was the fan of that and we went into the project knowing that's what we wanted to do okay so we were committed to it in advance which was great fantastic will it be great what once we kind of get in the process to to talk about how how your work flow were you know changes for working with with live live musicians but how many minutes of music what you're talking about and it's fairly typical somewhere in the 30s you know 30 typical for them the shows that I work on anyway I'd say 32 minutes per episode 33 minutes looking like that the challenge was to figure out how to get it recorded because it's more music than you can really fit into a session you know even if you're doing six seven eight minutes an hour which is a lot into musicians in London can do it easily it's a lot it's a big ask to do a triple session and make them work that hard all day so we started to be economical about themes and reusing stuff that we could not have to tax the process that hard to have to do a half an hour of music or more in a session that was just too much even for me to conduct for nine hours so it was just about going into the idea of thematic motif based writing and how we could move things around right and I think that there's something named inherently different different about doing a large multi episodic series because with a film you can kind of cram you know into two weeks if you need to if there's there's been problems and stuff but if you don't get ahead of the game you can really come unstuck further down I totally agree the film has two kind of camps one is if you're lucky enough is you get to live in a certain space for three months or something and you come in every day and you can you know I call it fishing for ideas you catch and release you know you find something and it's not quite the right one and it's either that or it's this mad dash to the finish where there's an interesting energy that comes from making a movie scored in three weeks or two weeks or four weeks and then you just go on instinct TB is more like that except that it recurs and occurs and recur and recur so you there is no finish line like the way is with a movie you have to do it again next week and again next week and then again the week after so there's a conditioning to being able to trust your instincts and execute them in a way that you have four or five or six or seven days to do you know get a good night's sleep and do it again yeah you know and that's that's that's the game absolutely so I've I rarely get the sort of that three-month live in one space thing I'm so used to just going with the first or second idea I have and going that's what I have today and you know you kind of have to go under that naturally goes TV waits for no man that's for sure absolutely and do you also trust I don't know if this is the same for everyone but do you also trust that you've just got to get going because and you will find something and it will probably be in the last five minutes of the score but then you have to go back to the beginning and foreshadow in yeah but something will happen yeah you can faff around all day and then you know dinner is on the stove and and all of a sudden there it is and and you're okay I guess we're going back to the the fork use you just finished do you know why I think that is spoke to my therapist about that's and give me the number of successful film composition is a fantastic therapy and one is number away and he said true creativity happens in them when you're in the moment and if you're not thinking about tomorrow the past the phone call that's just happened you've actually stopped you to be in the moment and it's I find it I get up very early in the morning to work and but I find all my good ideas come at the point I'd like to go to the part to be honest yeah and I think it's like just as you're ready to leave you'll hit a note on the piano and it'll yeah cuz you're in the moment you're not anywhere else yeah I think also I mean I remember talking to Howard Shore about this at an event or something and he lives in upstate New York in this very rural area and I said so why do you live just asked you know why do you live there and he said he exists in this dreamlike state because he walks through this wooded forest he area to his composing Hut or what every room or what he could call it and he gets to stay in that dreamlike state and I kind of understand that I live kind of up in the country here and you know there's a different energy to being in London or being in Los Angeles to being someplace more where you can stay in that zone and you know you can't force the moment but you could at least put yourself into an environment that might encourage it to come you know and we both have young kids and all that entails and they barge in my door and usually at the worst possible time it's the moments coming it's almost there and then the kids come in so the joys of parenthood so what is it do you have an established workflow would you say certainly for a big series but what's your first step it's almost always being the point of entry yeah it's usually always a tune of some kind whether it be a tune for a character which is I think something I still like to do it's a bit on the old-fashioned scale but I still think you know Dorothy needs a tune that kind of thing sometimes it's an environment the cue I'm gonna play you today is the yellow brick road theme which is the idea of promise and journey and things like that as opposed to a character but that was my point of entry to Emerald City was the yellow brick road theme I knew we needed it I knew I wanted to have something that had momentum and had the promise of something taking her home and all the things that we know Wizard of Oz but deliver sure so that was my point of entry sometimes it's just it could be something sonic related it might be sculpting a world that you know through through pads or since that that's the kind of ocular you're gonna go for you know you know I know it's different every time in a way but I I don't sit at the piano as much as I used to I sit this is kind of the thing I would say the first thing my fingers sit in the morning is probably the the spitfyre ensemble string patch it just feels like their bread and butter of composing you know so I'll use the flour Tondo to write with it just has a choral quality and I think if anything sounds good on or something that's choral then it'll sound good on you by the way every huge thank you to give you which is I've been double clicking on samel strings and concertina strings at the same time so they're played together for like 10 years right and now you have a combo connoisseur do you know it's omble patch and that's that's a favorite of mine too yes that is a good one that when we recorded that with them in the same room and that's always that's always different than just so you know that is a very useful one actually absolutely so you start with that you speak of your entry point do you tend to work with a similar template that you pimp for each job or I tend to revamp the the template is basically the orchestra yeah at this point and some select sense and some select percussion okay that is in the big you know big PC that is so you have a slave yeah you know if you'd know me 10 years ago you know there never be a PC even in on the block of my Street let alone but it works great for that so basically the core template is mostly orchestral based and then I go fishing for sounds you know through the the immense contact library we all have of show interesting things but the template we revamp I'd say once a year twice here at the most okay because logistically it's too hard to go back into older projects if you keep I say with it messing with it so for example we just we just went through all of your new symphonic stuff and it's all in there and that will probably be it for she'll say six months and then if something new comes out that we think we really want to put in there we'll stop and put it in okay that's the core template that stays and we have a clone of it in my la studio and that's we kind of lock it off for six months at a times it's just too much work to chase it if you keep completely so then is this a la carte okay and come on I'm gonna get really deep and nerdy here but what is your preferred do you have a sound per track or you a key switcher or hmm why me sure you were tell you yeah let's get your screen recording one you want a quick rundown of the template sure yeah great so at this point I am I am almost exclusively all things Spitfire which is very flat you have a couple of bits and bobs from other libraries that I just like but it's really just you know so here's here's the full complement of woods okay which is the solo instruments and then the I have an ensemble as well so for example for to answer your question for flutes I'll have key switches set up for individual you know articulations which is I love okay whereas the ensemble is pretty much just the ensemble it's just it's just what it's doing same goes with the brass so for a six French horns I'll have you know four or five or six or eight articulations ready to go and so those are mapped out like that yeah and then for Strings I had two setups I had this gigantic ensemble folder where I have four of everything and this is to facilitate the idea of more of the sketching you know maybe it's low strings and high strings or it's tuned and something and so I have four of everything these are not key switched so this is Long's concert you know the blend we just spoke of flute and au harmonics so plot the whole gamut so that's a very big folder of just kind of the four of everything which are not q-switched and then below it I have the violin viola cello bass with the folder okay so so when I'm thinking sketching I'm thinking big picture I'm writing with both hands and the keyboard it's the ensemble patch I have a bra too and mod ready to go so I can expressively you know so that's the kind of jamming Jackson Pollock he kind of part of composing I know that you work the same way and once you kind of have some sort of you know group idea then it makes its way down to the individual sections here which is more thinking about detailed orchestration and that's when you would get into our articulations and that kind of thing okay Andy and Minh you go into the detail is it is it just really pick stuff out you know or do you orchestrate every every line you know it's interesting question I orchestrate every line by myself I always have and it's something that actually did get away from as as I get older and as I get more experience I'd rather start sketching and find a great Orchestrator who can take those ideas and maybe you know bring colors that I hadn't thought of yeah but as it stands like this cue I'm going to play you every single part is orchestrated in detail on the instrument it's going to be yeah and I'll use a little I called them Easter eggs for my orchestra at all right you know half trims half natural on the part yeah if that doesn't exist or all right you know a poco vibrato things like this so in this case it has destroyed sweet rubber I think it's a very important point where kind of reality is concerned and someone pointed it out does Dario Marian le pointed out to me he says you have to you have to put each part in because why would the dynamic maneuvers that you make for the top line be the same as the the middle pedaling Ryota they're not you're not know exactly so you know for example here is the group version of the tune I'm gonna show you guys so this is a very common thing for me this is just the choral string you know the choir of strings doing their cords and in some sort of a tune on top that's kind of the entry point to here's my melody and you know it sounds shouldn't make noise I'm lucky [Music] so that's kind of the sketching it's all sort of in there sure but it's in a big block thing so then from there it will come down to okay well obviously the bases are gonna probably be in octaves I imagine they show up there they are doing their things then you know their their dynamics tend to be a little bit more subdued as bases are you know whereas the tune probably has a much more you know much more shape to it that kind of thing yeah and you know that's pretty much how the process goes in terms of taking you know a piano sketch to a two-handed string part to then actually thinking about okay know you know if we're talking early about writing music on computers for computers versus writing music on computers for live musicians yeah which is different yes you know and under I hear a lot of this on TV where people are using the ensemble patch with like eight voices in there and no matter how good the string library is the harmonic content this becomes it doesn't sound as natural as it you know it's not meant to be that way you know so I find that it's and I'm guilty of it too if you're under duress you just become lazy and you go and there we go it's kind of bitching sing yeah there we go but if you had the time to detail it out I think it makes a big difference in writing a realistic mock-up that will emotive ly move your director show and your producer to go we love this and then get it into a place where it can be orchestrated and and realize through live musicians you know when I'm writing I'm on the podium in my head I see the band in front of me and I'm thinking about about visually how it looks and how it sounds and how it feels okay and having a slave sample playback machine has this great advantages but there are also pitfalls do you have to kind of reset the key switches and and the the dynamic things no it's working pretty well I mean we spent forever by we I mean my two faithful assistants or in the back of the room we spend forever setting it up and once it's working it kind of works okay there's not a lot of messing about you know so so when you're switching between cues and stuff you're not having to make sure that at the end of that thing that you've key switch you key switch it back to the default position no I mean oh I have a lot of my little cash register here so you know it these numbers move between the articulations so if I want long concert you know that's number three switches to three I'll just record it in the part okay you know just I don't remember what it was or something like okay I'm dead how are you connected to the pieces at V Pro okay so this is a dust bin Mac essentially and then the vep machine goes in through Cubase and then goes back into Pro Tools okay so it's kind of a three machine gotcha system and are you putting a little bit of reverb bit of splash on things mhm I do I have a I still love Hardware reverb just for this particular thing which is the tail can't be beat you know so the the lexicon PCM 96 which is a true 5-1 reverb tends to have everything go into it just a little it gives it a little extra homogenized now with your library being 99 percent of what I read on the dream has come true of having one really one space but before that it was six eight seven ten eleven string libraries from different places you have to somehow gentrify them into a sound that made them feel like they belong in the same space that's where that river became my best friend for all those years yeah now it's just fairy dust really absolutely no bit of emotionally and that difficult problem with you get with distraught the the long articulations where they don't sound as reverberant as the short because they always diminuendo well never stop dead yes absolutely fantastic so I'll sit back down should we have a have a look at this cue then yes see yeah yeah so this scene was dorothy going down the yellow brick road yeah and we wanted what I wanted for what I wanted for Dorothy was a simple girl and she did a simple tune almost lullaby simple to me okay but if you look at the way it's shot it's very colorful so I wanted the chord progressions to have a lot of chroma I guess would be the word you know so a simple tune with some Ratana cessation chords that felt like you were going on a journey to this what the Elba krub represented to me so that was where my head was going down the path that creatively is my my point of entry so I wanted a simple tune with something that felt complex harmonically yeah that was really the starting point for it let's see if I can remember it I wrote it like a year ago but it was something like [Music] so it's really moving around harmonically to different places from C minor C minor to D flat major yeah you know very non diatonic sure absolutely I knew that it didn't need a B section only because the amount of time it's on-screen and I had already seen it didn't call for a B section normally I'd write an a tune and a be tuned I find way harder than the a tune takes forever so luckily I only needed to go around once [Music] that's basically yet but the at the heart of it is it's almost like a lullaby you know it's something my daughter could sing yeah you know and then from there comes the the two-handed you know this [Music] we modulate [Music] and that was really the core of the writing process and now we have to orchestrate it okay we have to take into into the next place now what we knew going in was we knew which band we were writing for at era the TV project it's not the same no it's not a Nolan movie exactly so I wrote it down because I had forgotten so this band was four strings 10 10 8 6 4 yeah and woods we had 2 flutes an oboe 2 clarinets and a bassoon 4 horns and 3 trombones so that's it so I'm not gonna write this all at the same time all at the same time okay and so I'm not gonna write for trombone part so I don't have four trombones you know and with four horns it's gonna be either in unison or at the most two parts of easy sure with four bases they're probably gonna be in octaves the whole time so it's there's an efficiency going into that knowing that that's all you have to work nuts and all you have to work with that's what you have to work with do you find as the years have gone on that these kind of things I think when I was a young a composer I found really restrictive I now find them really inspire I love rules if the project doesn't give you rules make some otherwise it's just white space you're like ah you know where do I even go yeah and particularly when you're younger and you don't have a family and you can stay up to three nights in a row you know you do them because the the possibilities are infinite and I think referring back to what you were saying about hearing sample only TV music often you go guys I mean this is like yeah this is like three-mile or orchestras playing on top of each other yeah so I mean I think I think it's really worth pointing out for people thinking about using our Studios is that may seem like a sound like a medium sized band you know going down to only four bases but with those players in that room it sounds pretty enormous isn't it I think that that is a key thing which is it had to be that room yeah even if you'd offer me a beer ode would have been the wrong fit for that band yeah you know I was writing for you know Ayres little hexagonal shape or whatever it is and and Jeff Foster who's of course you know the great engineer there I knew it would sound massive and it does and I had the final sims to play for you later I wasn't worried about size I was worried about efficiency of orchestration because if you get to deviis ee with that band then you have problems yeah two players on a note or one player on a note that's not gonna work so it just meant being efficient about orchestration which is a great limitation in a way yeah you know I tend to write really thick heavy chord so I couldn't do that this time I didn't keep it tighter and do you you have a hybrid approach do you for example go well I'll let the samples do do that or the little high Dremel and or anything like that or do you try and replace I you know I I went through the Hans Zimmer school of programming so I very much program the way he taught me to and there was a mentality going in about which samples you're gonna use or blend in and that's what I did for a long time okay and now I don't unless I absolutely have to I just I've come to love I've come to love the live what the live experience brings to it and sometimes it's not as big as it you remember it being that's okay okay you know with the exception of harmonics I keep those because yours are really good yeah pain in the ass to do yeah yeah it's like that's what Jeff Vash will say just know that the use of samples so this was very much written for that studio okay from this block kind of there's our tune so it ends up coming down to this will mute that don't need you anymore and here's our violin one violin to viola celli bass so you get rid of your own samples yeah it's this it's like a map at that point or guide you know I don't return to it after there it's it's in case needed and when you're programming each each line how do you do you retain it or do you follow the school or do you follow the blocks you know it becomes kind of a sure like after a while doesn't it you know it's like it's like the matrix I see I see the the block thing more than I see the notes yeah because at the moment I've yet to find a sequencer that will do live music transcription on the fly in real time the way it would make any sense to us yeah sure when that happens I'll start moving the notes around until then I live in the block editor you know it's just life so you have the the kind of the the piano roll roll up whilst you're firing in exactly so in this case back to air studios Jeff foster wanted the violin setup and Tiffin Utley which means if you're on the podium its first to the left and seconds to the right when the cellist would be where the chalice would be viola celli and the bass from the middle at the back his theory was that it sounds flawed experience it sounds bigger and the basses come right through the middle up to the tree mics so for basis sounds like eight because there's nothing in the way of them and the wood floor and the tree okay so this was his sonic way because I said to Jeff how he make the sound as big as we can he said split the violins so I'll actually go into the BEP build and pan the second violins to the right okay to to approximate what it's gonna sound like I guess if you're writing particularly that the the second bit where you you you go back to the original melody but in octaves you suddenly have a physical distance yes you know as opposed to it being yes so it's an octave that way and an octave that way yes and so for example on the podium with the ink being the same let's say your first and second is you're doing about top of my head half trim half natural effect but both sides are doing it well what if only one side did you know did the trims once I did it all of a sudden it's a very different experience you know it depending what's going on screen so you can play with without having to change the ink you can play with articulations on the podium and go what you guys do you know half concert you know and just have fun with it you know so anyway the the template was set up to reflect that so I could hear it in the way that I envisioned the players playing it so then the block thing becomes very much just straightforward just the individual sections when you look at them together it resembles a lot with the block thing did so but only now it's really specifically thought out you know again our basis since we only have four are gonna be in octaves for efficiency yeah you know with our with our celli I think they're only two yeah two to a note that it was most I wanted it to get a full sound you know the violins have the tune of course and then so the section ends up sounding very similar but to me there's a difference between the choral string writing on the on the on the ensemble when you start to get six seven eight nine notes I came back to the harmonic thing it just becomes a little dense sure as opposed to the way you guys have mapped these out where they really start to sing which is an openness to [Music] now it sounds more like live musician yes and if I was going to air without live musicians this is what I would do okay make it the best I can sound yeah and I guess in a way there isn't a difference between that interim step between it's gonna live on a computer and go to air or it's gonna go to the live musicians I take a lot of pride in this part of it again it's just part of the craft I learned in my han's days and it just stuck in my DNA as working those controller parts for a long time until they sound musical yeah until they moved me because it doesn't move me how is it gonna move someone else you know or if it does move me should in theory move yes absolutely so then will the French horns will join at some point up here and again I had two trombones and a bass trombone and I used your six French horn patch which is very similar to what the four horns would sound like bar 18 so here's the brass ensemble that I had [Music] French horns are a little loud side but that's okay and then again woodwinds I knew I had some flutes and some these were cued mostly just to create some air in the room I think we ended up using them in the final recording okay again this this is not a this is not serve in ski it's a tune in some chord so there was a lot of in-depth orchestration it was more it's painting colors and shapes that kind of thing and then so summer back here it all plays [Music] supplier to [Music] and so from a simple tune to a grandeur of amazing synth bass is hiding in there that but I have a lot of guys making custom sounds for me too with specific emotional direction I want it to feel like this or behave like this yeah I have a patch I made I made a thousand years ago which is just basically a a Mini Moke it just sits there and it's compressed the compression goes the knob goes all the way to this far as it will go and what happens is I tuck it under here I'll show you and it's not from a real ID it so long ago I don't really remember where it came from but here I'll show it to me the emotional difference it makes which I'm all about that is it's just ever so slightly in there so I'll play it without it and I'll just blend it in you'll see what I mean [Music] particularly there Cheers without it [Music] you know the orchestra's not supposed to go down that last as a human you'll feeling I feel it yeah so almost every orchestra part I have is a little of that in there just for that last octave and it to me it moves me it's not just for a show I feel it more yeah and with those kind of sub harmonic things gee do you ever have concerns about people being able to hear it on TV and stuff you know that's a great question I came to the realization about two years ago I switched my entire template over to full surround I listen and surround eye deliverance around even if it's for computers only and I write for the highest possible common denominator musically sonically and after that it's out of my control you know and the next time you're on the subway you see them all watching you yes I remember watching a broadcast of Vikings in Canada on the CBC which is our black BBC in Canada and the broadcast is the worst soundings compress terrible sounding and I remember just hiding in shame thinking oh my god it sounds terrible but if you watch the DVDs with it's 1080p picture and it sounds fantastic so when you go to the dub stage I just have to go with that idea that we have to go as high as we can and then it's out of my I think the maximum I hide probably get myself into trouble for saying it but I think that's an American approach that or born of saying Americans as a nationality but the industry in this country is is to wane for the highest kind of technical mark whereas I find a lot of dubs that happen in in London it's very much oh well you know they aim for the Sony Trinitron with the speaker on the side of the TV and I think that's a terrible shame because it's it's stifles creativity and in Sonic Adventure and although there are exceptions yeah yeah it happens here too I mean the the dub stage for Vikings went over very well they're very good mixers there in Canada okay they have the big you know theatrical dub stage and over to the side they have a little your mom's TV flat screen with with this the the sound pumped out of the speakers and the we do check it yeah but I don't think we pander to it we just go it's a it's someone's gonna listen to it in that way yeah but we have to believe that a subsonic bass part that makes me feel something someone somewhere is gonna experience it and is worth doing absolutely it just it just kind of you know I'm a engineer record producer before I was ever a film composer so the phonic nature of things is part of my DNA I do like things that sound good it's got to be fun you got to get out I mean this is I always the question I have when I walk into a studio and I said all they've got as a pet you know a composer studio producer and all they've got a pair is a pair of so many life has got to be happier 5.1 because we're writing for it it's so much fun we've got this huge bandwidth to play with this change you know and you can dream up ideas and you know they'll mute them out at the dub but you probably can't hear it on the on the video feed but at the end of that crescendo as the entire band releases into that reverb it just washes by you it's just an emotional response you know you can't separate the sound from the acoustic space that it that it behaves in reminds me of doing drum tracking you know you see people put up the snare mic and the bass drum mic and the Tom mic it's like it's not about that put the kick up and the overheads up and you've got a drum sound yeah because the acoustic space that in that it inherently sits in is what gives you the emotional response yeah which is why we love their studios so much it's just the most amazing sonic space probably in the world that's equipped for recording at least and the musicians love it as well which means you get a better performance exactly so in this the life cycle of a cue what is your next stage before hopping on a New Zealand to Gator I prefer version the next stage will be orchestration and you know again back to the de Hans days where it was so detailed an orchestration that really became more of a midi transcription exercise and it became what we think of as orchestration being an artistic venture or painting with color you know and part of that sticks with me because I just did it with him for so long he taught me how to do that so in this case every part is on the part it's going to be on yeah there's no where should we divide the voices here I did it myself yeah what I will do is I'll leave little Easter eggs in the names half tram half natural unless there's a part in your samples dude exactly that poco vibrato or things like this yeah and then it goes on the page it comes back to me so how do you spit it out do you just send the Cubase file yeah okay great good there's no used to be a MIDI takedown interim step before it got to Sibelius or finale now that it's basically imported it works fine okay my your cursor does not work on Cubase and doesn't need to work on Cubase okay so he'll he'll put it in he'll send it back to me I'll make notes if any or if it's something where the ink is fine but I want to make a change on the stage I'll make a note for myself and not bother him because he's busy sure and if there is a problem or something I'll mark it and read it will scan it to him send it back and I see them on the stage you know it's pretty streamline these days the days of Note errors are almost over you know I can't remember the last time I had actual wrong note on the podium out oh but you guys like you know because it's it's in there yeah I find one of the dangers is what you're doing kind of multi episode but episodic you grabbing cues from here and then transposing a bit is leaving that transpose unnormalized sometimes can yeah ooh I think that's that's the only time I ever get it you got okay it happens but and and the trap wearing process are you all kind of is everything bust through into a multitrack and a what's called a playback stem how nerdy do you want to go okay because I'm it's I have a super nerdy setup that I engineered this myself so basically if you can see here at the bottom this is Cubase 9 which they actually made the window the way I've been using it for years which is I have approximately twenty or thirty stereo stems there they are okay strings along strings short French horns brass long brass short and on that is the the main food group including reverb Sens and these all go into Pro Tools let's get over to Pro Tools the exact mirror of that is right here gotcha this is that exactly so it's all busts to holy heaven and what happens is these are record enable tracks if I want to do a proper mix with an engineer they used to be this lay back phase where you have you know and have someone peel off the parts one at a time what I basically did was said okay what are the 20 or 30 most commonly used food groups and this is commit to that and never have a laid back phase ever in our lives again yeah so there it is including piano bells harps three or four percussion stems synth pads synth Arps you know sit bass and three live arbitrary live drums one of the problems I found with the lay back thing is it was like there was this mad process where you'd break your mix and and half of the engineer's time was just literally rebuilding exactly so I have some I have some mastering EQ that I do on the on the way out that goes to tape if you will so just so to speak so this twenty or thirty seven format is meant to be for an engineer to mix okay that in turn gets surround eyes through 5.1 reverbs this unwrap er right now I'm using the joke the new gen halo which I mute the left and the right it only provides the center in the surround additional material okay then in turn I deliver to the to the dub stage this 10 up to 10 5.1 stems okay the reason they're all 5.1 it used to be like 3.1 for the base 5.0 for the choir this sort of thing yeah on the dubstep move any track anywhere so whereas in fact the base only has left right in the dot one there is nothing else but it's empty tracks but it makes the logistics on the dub stage easier so I don't I don't often deliver all ten but they're ready to go and so for example Vikings or if this was going to air as such would be Orchestra and choir pianos bells and harps perk a perk be bass and drones scent pads Arps and three live tracks okay and that's it yeah we don't deviate from it hardly ever right so it's pre bust in two stages twenty or thirty stem lay back yeah it is not all-inclusive but kind of close enough yeah I know for rock and roll that goes to an engineer to mix if it goes right to air it goes then into the surround eyes ten five point one stems and they get twelve and it all happens in real time and when you say when it goes into air where that goes to mix to the dub stage okay and do you when you're recording live instruments do you work with the the large lay back and that's fine that doesn't present problems having rise so lost reliable Orchestra live orchestra live orchestra is that's another level where we do have proper mix you know have a different but I mean in the sense of what what do you prepare do you have playback stems which are a smaller number we just use yeah so you some little Redux you know so to keep it easy you know so it's just it just works for us and it's quick and it you know I I was the guy did the lay back still 5:00 in the morning and you just want to hang yourself oh yeah yeah it's the worst job in the world and like you said on top of it you take it apart to put it back together not only is it not as good it took hours and hours and hours it just seems a name to me to do that so this is the system that we developed and it works great and it also allows me one last stage of mixing let's say the whole key was done but the choir just a little too loud yeah instead of going into MIDI and had to scale the MIDI I mean the fader back yeah yeah and do you tend to do your mixes I have a great engineer that I trained I trained that he was a college student who's now a fantastic engineer Phil McGowan who works with me he mixes anything that has a lot of orchestra everything else I kind of mix myself okay fantastic and there are there any kind of pointers I think that people often make grave errors with the things like the LFA channel using that as part of your base management I believe is a bit of a no-no are there any kind of mixing for for composers who are maybe not farming out the mixing process any pitfalls that they should avoid for hanging stuff for the dub stage I'd avoid the dot one for now unless you really know what you're doing yeah your your chances for air or higher than success if you don't know what isn't how to use it you know yeah I mean I do provide some out of my room but I kind of I've experimented with it I don't know what it is yeah but I don't think it's worth it well I used to make mistake of it being literally like a crossover with the low stuff goes in the dot one and the minute they see continuous stuff mute yeah and there goes your bottom end well you know back to be said it but the high road is you have to there's a reason why no one puts the melody in the back left surround because someone in Arkansas is watching the movie theater and they're gonna hear the oboe at all right so I think that you have to treat your music as full range and the dot one is a little extra yeah that if it's not there it's not like it doesn't actually you know translate anymore I think of a sound a sound Department guy said it's just remember it's literal it's low frequency effects its foot effects yeah it's it's a fun thing you know yeah yeah I mean I have a dedicated track just for the low booms because it's such a part of the vernacular yeah and I worked with my first job in LA I work for James Newton Howard for a very brief time and we had a saying for his sonic signature which is so unique which is the the silver top and the black bottom we called it you know that silvery string thing but those booms had such gravity to them so I have a dot wand for just for that particular stem because it actually extends in a way that that I find moves yeah and dubbing engineers understand that and I can yes yeah yeah I got a bit of resistance when I first started delivering and surround I think it's more common now but I was one of the first guys to do it the track count goes up and they're all you know but what I the reason I did it was I delivered stereo stems for a main title they did this up mixing in the in the dub theater and I got the 5-1 back to have up a reference and the full done and I didn't like the way it sounded and to their defense their job is not to mix music all day their job is to dub things yeah so I had the chance to spend a lot of time on my end really finessing the five mix until I was really happy with it and checking the down mix so why wouldn't you do that you know so we spent a lot of care on that we were proud of the sonic part of it we just enjoyed and like you said if it makes you happy you know it gets you out of bed and excited to you know yeah you know my room sounds inspiring I think it's important you know it's important for me yeah absolutely a very inspiring space and so you recorded the the orchestra and how much time did you have for the to get to lay this stuff know very little it was a it was a mad dash as it always is you know I mean at this point we factor in you know cuz the last queue is finished and the orchestra sessions basically in about three days we factoring like while I'm on the plane the orchestra it can be doing X number of kids it's all it's just the way is my team that I work with no it's so well no one complains it just you put on the night-vision goggles as needed yeah and just do what you have to do my families understand this is usually understand mostly I mean air in two weeks times so I won't see you until yes at which point I'll take you to Hawaii or something no it's the the process is pretty finely tuned I mean things happen human errors is things fall through the cracks but honestly you know you just surround yourself with people that you trust people who understand how you work and having these things in place where I know that operator air is reduced because yeah I just hit record it and it all happens I think what's really inspired me here is I I think the way I work is I tend to reinvent the wheel every time I approach job and not from the point of view of the Sonics but just the process and I think that's why the errors that I do suffer unfortunately because I work in and kind of have a base in London it means it's only ever a taxi cab across London to pick up that loan oboe part yeah yes now I think it's very inspiring to see that you've you've through your experience have established the the palette the engineers Palace well it's a fine line though isn't it cuz it can become it can become stale too so I think the orchestra is always the orchestra yeah and again if I didn't say it earlier I want to say now the Spitfire what you guys have done has been the dream for as long as I've been in this business which is to have you know a flute part behave the way it does on the page which is the notes are the same you put their articulations over the top you don't have a flute flute player doesn't have six parts at one part and yes I play it like this well now through expression mapping and your stuff I have one flute part yeah it's just brilliant and everything is all there so to me that's never gonna change so that is the core of the palette because I feel like it's always gonna be around you know I think the other key thing that was a really big decision when we started this whole enterprise about ten years ago was to not stick the instruments as close to the mics as possible was to put them where they sat and I think that's that's a really tough thing I've found is if it's not positioned is getting that that idea of position and how that's gonna sound I think is very difficult yeah like in your in your tree configuration you know I have the tree in the outriggers at zero and the close mics in just down a little bit I like an ambient sound you know if you listen to Danny Elfman score if he likes a drier sound this is his style yeah I like the lushness of space and again back to the idea of making a snare drum if you listen to the individual snare drum like it's it sounds like about this big but in the room and with the sonic space it becomes an emotional response so for me I love the sound of air I love the room I use as much of the room as I can and your samples put me in that space and I have them up quite loud because I want that you know I want that I want that I want it I want to hear the distance between me and the microphones and between the musician the microphones and I I like that yeah you know and your samples do that and I tweaked them to even accentuate that even a little bit more yeah by having the tree and the outriggers up at zero and just some clothes for definition yeah honestly if I was mixing the libor castra at the end of the day my engineer will give me to faders the the everything but the close mics and the close mics and on a given Q will just go that feels about the right amount of of edge you know or it's it's quite ambient or it's very in-your-face and it's really a lot of those two element we're blending otherwise it Akane is what it is you know amazing so getting to the finish line of your life life cycle of your queue how quickly did you have to kind of get through material at their studios for this project well on top of the sonic reason to record in London which I love an LA to is the London players are so fast and they're so good and they can play the same part repeatedly with the same amount of passion with little complaint and they can move very very quickly I know I've recorded all over the world so I've learned through trial and error and a lot of error that you know I'd rather have fewer players in London and take the second take all day long than twice the players in a b-level Eastern European community where they're trying their best but for me it comes down to film score is its own language it's different than classical music yeah you know a lot of those Eastern European players play Moldova barato as their de facto position that's all they knew they're not do anything wrong it's just it's not the language that we are speaking yeah so London speaks that language a and B what they do that only other than London LA is great at it and actually Nashville is not good at it either is I think of it like a school of fish making the same shape they phrase together without me telling them to it's an amazing thing and you really realize it in the absence of it when you're at a place with orchards not phrase together and it doesn't sound like of a thing you know you're trying to aim at the same emotional point in space you're trying to get 40 players or 60 or 100 to get to this place and in London it happens very naturally so a lot of times I note as a long waited answer to your question is I know I can get through a lot of material and even what I thought was on the podium and okay take and retrospect is probably great yeah and if it's an important cue I'll get into maybe take three or four or five but that's about it it's all it needs by then it's and it's not just the phrasing together it is the they understand the the film zeitgeist this that silky top so it's not a matter of okay we want this to sound like you know we want it to sound silky on top they just know the default position and and they kind of move with the times and you know they're playing with a lot less vibrato but still very beautifully these days I also find it so it's like a graph if this axis is takes I think London it's like that and a lot of other places it's slower and then it dies off so it's like working out okay that that that take was as good as it's gonna get it's not gonna get any better yet and yeah and you delivered the flaws or the tuning or the timing and just go you know you're thinking about playing the samples and at that point aren't you because you just know that's what you've got you know whereas with the London guys here's a great example a lot of times my orchestra is working in a bubble he's learned to read my MIDI controller data which resembles the shape I'm after but sometimes just the mechanics of working it if you look at it he would literally translate the up-and-down hairpins based on the curves of the controller died on the page it looks very confusing and the players are doing their best and I'd something's not right I would say everybody everybody ignore the dynamics just played musically yeah and this happens yeah it comes back it's beautiful you know I say just give me four more phrases just whatever that means to you and all of a sudden they start scribbling out the there they're forcing the hairpins up and down because that's what's on the page I go to scratch that yeah just play beautifully and it happens and I think I noticed when you give them notes like that they just start moving in their chair it's more and this you get this this movement which is incredible yeah it's conducting you know conducting live is the ultimate rush and for me and what we do but conducting live I started conducting in the studio specifically a terror it's just there's such an amazing experience so much fun and joy and to be there when things get created and I always always encourage the director and the producers to come and they almost always do and they did in Emerald City it's always a happy day it's a happy day and all of a sudden a lot of little concerns just go away because they're there at the moment it happens you know they're there at that Genesis when when the the players I've hit that emotional point space we had some actors come by and the lead actor from the show is nearly in tears it's just the emotional response is pretty overwhelming you know so it's it's it's definitely the most enjoyable you know six months of work the best six hours of it they're good people to be around those musicians as well the so pragmatically what would you aim for a master in take three four what would you you know you we we have in our mind with our budgets and our time scale you know the average kind of take number has got to be yeah I'm more minutes per hour guy so I know that in London you can easily do six or seven you know eight yeah you know they can do more but I'm more concerned about I don't want to work them so hard that they they feel like we're rushing through it and not because I feel like they want it to be great yeah they want it to be they want to create something that is that that makes me happy makes them happy so if we just sort of go like this I find they tune out a little bit yeah even London because they're like obviously it's not that important we're just taking the first take of everything so I made me four take two take three on less complicated cues cues that are either complicated or mostly very important to me and we're looking for a performance or I conduct free then we're going to take five maybe I mean beyond that I've never had to go any further than that with London because we usually nail it yeah completely and with this band did you find yourself having to tacit sections and do them as perform them as oh yeah yeah I mean they're they're you know if air has a fault if you even use that word is that the room can get overwhelmed with the big brass yeah the mighty British brass it's very close to the walls that's the issue yeah so on on some cues we but we would track the brass because it would never mix yeah so you were hurt them all together yeah yeah and then do okay brass you sit out do everybody else Kate come join us but a cue like this we did it all together because it's it's it's television you know we have to do it with the time we were given and you know and near the end of the day Jeff Foster would be saying we should really stripe that I'm well we have 11 minutes left and two cues left so I'm gonna make a judgment to say it is what it is you know but on a film project you know the normal thing would be to go you know everybody else but the brass in the morning and the brows on their own in the evening if you're gonna have you know eight trombones and twelve French horn some sort of massive type of thing yeah they'll just kill everybody yeah the mighty trombones will eat the strings alive so I'm talking about designing out that whole thing of people sitting around for the blower's to deafen them yes a few takes yes yes we had to throw a pennies of the zoom player who only played now and then wake up but no this one we tracked a lot together and sure there's some compromises at the mixing stage you wish you had a bit more control but I just sir let go it's a performance it's beautiful and I think when you're in the moment of mixing in your forensic ly wishing you could bring back something to bring up something but the emotional response is still pretty great yeah you know as you kind of go with that fantastic so is there any chance of hearing the final yes of course so all this was an eighth of this which is the final turn you off here they are so here's what comes back from my mixing team that goes to the dub which is a little bit more of a you know selected stem format okay so in this case it was there's a piano part in here you haven't heard yet and some since and stuff like that but this is the final should be final [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Spitfire Audio

Views: 81,432

Rating: 4.9312501 out of 5

Keywords: Trevor Morris, Spitfire Audio, Music Production, Workflow, Composing, Composer, Christian Henson, Cubase, Pro Tools, Studio, Music

Id: 8PgszdNy7m4

Length: 58min 5sec (3485 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2017