This project was inspired by Gav Brown's proposed contest "Summer is the hot season".
I decided to divide music into three movements and created a following plan:
- Sultriness (hot air rising, leaves burnt) - music from far, rise (in the end), background constant rhythm, ringing.
- Heat (stove) - active rhythm, struggle, pursuit.
- Charry postapocalypsis - slow, passive, memorial.
As usual, my movements appeared to have sharp contrast between them, but in this piece I tried to make them closer to each other by making more gradual transitions and reusing material.
First movement
Section A (first two minutes) is created using new material. I created a background constant piano rhythm with first violin and added ringing of brass to represent pressure. Then I added slow melodies in woodwinds and accented them with bass drum and harp. Section A introduces new melodies, that are reused in later sections.
Section B: atmosphere is greatly relieved when first violin stops playing F starting from 2:04. I augment this effect by shifting all strings to tremolo, replacing woodwind melodies with french horns, slowing down melodies and changing harp to upper register and faster notes.
Transition (Section C): start to introduce rhythm and accelerated melodies of section A. Then more and more elements of section D start to appear.
Second movement (Section D): Heavy rhythm represents invincible power of destruction. Short and long runs in trumpet, woodwinds and violins going up represent fire. Trombone, Tuba and Flute play transformed melody from section A. Then Horn and Viola start to play parts of the same melody slower. Return to quietness is abrupt: most of instruments stop playing at the same time. For some time timpani and bass drum continue to play and fade out, representing the fire decay.
Third movement (Section E): Section starts with solo Double bass diminuendo. At the same time other strings grow from ppp to piano. This leads to dynamic balance between all strings at measure 131. To represent grief and reminiscences Harps play quartal intervals, flute plays linear melody. Then vioin plays sul ponticello chromatic rising melody, which sounds distorted, annoying and sad. After repeat all fade out.
I shot several video fragments in a style of "dynamic photo" in the Stavropolsky region for this track, where weather was hot at the time. The last video of a wall was shot in Moscow.
Libraries used:
Embertone Friedlander Violin, HZ01 Timpani and Bass drum, Spitfire Percussion Redux for Snare (used before, please read previous posts).
Native instruments Woodwind Solo, Brass Solo, Woodwind Ensemble, Brass Ensemble. Used them for the first time. Many possibilities, good legato, simple control (as usual for NI), many effects.
Light and Sound Samples - Chamber Strings. Good library, good legato, good tremolo, versatile dynamics control. Little effects.
No reverb used (only reverbs inside each instrument).
Compare sound of all the previous videos (created using DAW and virtual instruments) to simple sound by Sibelius 7 Sounds and NotePerformer for Sibelius.
c195-32.sib
c195-61.mid
virtal_-_heat.pdf