Well, it’s been a while! So, here is video blog number 14! ….or 15? No, it’s 14!
Thanks to everyone for subscribing to my youtube channel, and if you haven’t already, What ya doing? It only takes two secs!
Thanks, and enjoy!
The piano has been recorded and now I’m ready to write the drum part.
…on a side note; this video has been edited by ME!
Enjoy 
P.s; annoyingly, the video didn’t export in 16.9ths, like I told it to. Maybe it’s something to do with Sony Vegas 64bit, I don’t know why.. Joe! seems to be having the same problem.
O.k, so here is the first video of me writing a song..
Enjoy!
There is a reason why I chose to put as much music in the pilot episode as I possibly could…
For those who haven’t noticed, each piece of background music is themed on Dutch Courage song.
All of the tracks use the main melody line from Dutch Courage, or use the same chord structure..
My idea is to get the viewer familiar with the end track of the episode Dutch Courage by subliminally playing its melody line and chords in the background music, throughout the episode. So that when they hear Dutch Courage for the first time, they will already have, sort of, heard it before. Hopefully making it stick in the brain better.
It’s just a little experiment that I wanted to try out… So next time you watch the Jayme G-Show be sure to listen for the Dutch Courage melody line, in the background! There are about 23 different tracks, by the way!
So anyway, getting back to where I left off…
Now we’re in the theme park, with the big boot.
Originally I was going to have the music playing on a background fairground barrel organ, so I wrote a simple piece on the organ to simulate that.
It didn’t work as well as I thought because in order for the music to sound like it’s coming from a distant barrel organ I needed to turn it down to the right level and put a long delay on it, leaving the music very faint and well in the background. But, in order to be able to hear the melody well enough I would have to turn it up quite a lot, making it sound just horrible and confusing :s
So I scrapped that idea but kept the organ part, without the delay, then added some drums, bass, e.t.c,.. and just used it as background music.
I planned the music to end just when the shutter goes down.
Something that I am realizing now is that I have forgotten to talk about the sound fx.
It was another VERY involved job. And from now on I think that I’m going to start to point out a few.
For example; in this particular scene the footsteps on the gravel that occur when the boy crosses the screen are fake! I did them! The are also panned, starting off far left and then going over to the right, following the boys position.
I also added some background children’s voices and some fairground rides too.
The tramps footsteps on the gravel were also done by me.
Joe! played the part of that tramp. I think he sounds a bit like Bob Hoskins XD
At the end of the scene the shutter goes down and that sound was actually the plug re-wined mechanism on our vacuum cleaner. It was just the sound I was looking for, plus it meant that I didn’t have to leave the studio!
So the next scene would be Jayme and Joe! in the pet-shop. The music starts off again in the previous scene, which ends with another gag. But this time, instead of the drums complementing the joke, I went for a short guitar lick.
The music then stays the same until Jayme and Joe! are inside the pet-shop where the music then cross-fades into the background shop radio.
The handy thing about the pet-shop that we filmed in was that it had no animals in it!
They sell pet food, dog collars, e.t.c, and also wash dogs.
Having no animals meant no noise pollution! So we didn’t have to worry about cuts! You see, when you’re only filming with one camera, you can’t record all of the camera angles in one take. So you have to record it in bits and then put it all together in the editing.
But the problem with having background audio over the actors voices is that when you cut to a different shot the audio in the background also changes (because it was recorded at a different time), so when filming this way, it’s best to have just the actors audio and put the background sounds in after, in the editing.
I would just like to take the time to say thanks to ‘Paco’, the real pet-shop owner, who very kindly let us record in his pet-shop (Snoopy Mascota, in Jaén) and came in extra early to open up for us. Thanks Paco!!!
I love my helmet hair in this picture!! XD That’s Paco, on the far right.
Anyway…
The following piece of music had to have a bit more thought put in to it…
Seeing as the next scene is a flashback, with a joke between the boss and a car mechanic, I decided that the music should resolve in that same scene. So when the boss is coming up to the punchline, the music is also coming to the last bar. I think that it wraps up the scene nicely.
So, in order to write a piece of music so that it has 4 bars and finishes exactly where you need it to, it’s just a case of doing a simple sum…
Here’s an example, working with a time signature of 4/4 (4 beats to each bar):
Length of the scene = 13 seconds
4 beats x 4 bars = 16 beats
So, we go…
13 ÷ 16 = 0.8125 seconds (that’s how long each beat needs to be, to fit 16 beats into 13 seconds)
So now what we have to do is work out how many beats there are in 60 seconds, to get the bpm (beats per minute):
60 ÷ 0.8125 = 73.846 bpm
Hurrah!!!
Now that I have the bpm, I can start writing a piece of music that fits perfectly!!
There are lots of other ways to fit music perfectly to a scene, you don’t always have to do it in 4 bars, but for this particular piece that’s what I wanted.
I also ended the music on the penultimate beat, to give 1 beat of empty space (simulating an awkward silence, between the boss and the mechanic).
After that it’s back to the pet-shop radio and then to a bit of dramatic score.
“Don’t feed the exotic animals!!!”. This scene needed to give of a feeling of urgency so I decided to use drums, starting off slow and then gradually getting faster and faster as Joe! get’s nearer to the cage, simulating a ticking bomb, making you feel like you’re running out of time. But just using drums wasn’t enough, it needed more instruments to feel more busy.
So I put in some discordant strings that detune upwards, to make it feel like something scary was about to happen if he didn’t get the the cage in time.
The next bit (where you see the chimp eating something) needed some suspense, because Joe! failed to get there in time, so now we’re waiting and wondering what’s going to happen… That’s fairly strait forward; just some slightly discordant sustained strings.
In the next part, where Joe! feeds a monkey for the first time, I put together a short snippet of radio where I am the DJ, saying; “…that, but anyway, it’s one thirty and you’re listening to radio, one, derr” and then I play a record (which is the same song used for the montage, later on).
When the boss also says “DON’T FEED THE EXOTIC ANIMALS!!!” Joe! was shocked. So I used a lot of really discordant strings and drums, making it sound messy and horrible to be there.
After the flashback Joe!’s looking at the cadge and something is starting to happen the the chimp, so rising strings and more drums seemed to give the impression of something growing, or starting to happen…