Music Making for the Documentary Project

Nigel, a simple man, he claimed.

We would like to focus on one simple instrument that can create many possibilities. Like Nigel the simple guy who can do all sorts of sports, as learnt from his interview. At the start, I don't really know the exact timeline but the rough flow of it, which is: trampolining, rugby and family. Base on the rough flow I created a short sample of the music to show my group-mates the feel of it and I could modify it according to their opinions.


Main inspiration:


This is my favourite soundtrack to listen to when I am doing work at home with my computer. Since we want a serious/ emotional approach to the documentary I tried to stick with the pieces using mainly piano in the Soundtrack of The Theory of Everything.

And the outcome will be mostly similar to this one:



A celebration of the Umbro Speciali 92 collection by The Green Soccer Journal from The Green Soccer Journal on Vimeo.



Short Sample:


This short sample is made with Novation Impulse Keyboard and Garage Band. The very last bit of sound waves is something I thought would be good for the credits at the end. But then we decided not to use it because it is too synthetic that doesn't fit the theme.

Garage Band

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Then we have a more specific flow:

-Slow mo(piano keys, pauses) 30s

-training(faster)

-Match (contrast, walk out changing room, up-beat

-Game finished(kids, next generation) slowing down (piano keys)  nostalgic memories (going to bar) -make people think, soft ambient 30s

More specific timeline:

-Trampoline quiet till 30s , 2:10

-Game 

-Ambient from 2:10 to 2:35

-Big buildup to 3:38

-Then gradually slow down 

-4:10 change to homie 

-Homie 30s (able to loop) 

-Come back to game slow down bit , quiet, last 30s

So I made myself a list and timed myself while recording:

-30s quiet

-1:40s tampoline

-25s ambient

-1:03s buildup

-32s slow down 

-30s loop for home

-30s quiet

So the music is in 7 parts.

Besides piano, I added some strings when it comes to build up part with the rugby visuals. This time I am using Ableton instead of Garage Band because the sound of the Grand Piano suits better to the visuals and the strings added were softer that achieved the ambient that we want. 

Then we put it into the Premier Pro timeline and see how it goes. Turns out some parts needed to be quiet down, the last 30s needed to be 25s instead and needed to be changed to something less depressed.

So this is the 2nd Version that I made with three possible endings that we can choose from. 

When it comes to fitting the timeline, some small adjustments were made to better fit the visuals. For Example, fade outs and volume adjustments.

Final timeline

For the credits, we reused some parts of the music from the trampolining part.

The Music/Soundtrack file 

Only after the whole process I realised that there must be a way to see the timer in the applications (Garage Band and Ableton). For the whole composing process the display in the applications which I thought can only display the number of bars recorded, And since I need to time myself while recording the 7 parts of the music, I used the timer application on my smartphone to time myself which made me look stupid and busy as I need to press the "start" on the timer and "record button" on computer at the same time with two fingers on one hand.

But I am still glad and proud of my decision of doing the music because I was very enjoying the process. And I consider myself quite successful making the music for a documentary the first time with the Keyboard and composing softwares. From now on I will use the software Ableton instead of Garage Band because there are a lot more sound choices.