Aquatic (2021)
Solo vibraphone and video playback
8:50
When one considers oceanic life, it is like considering the whole of the world: massively interconnected ecosystems, staggering biodiversity, and a frightening degree of fragility, all still largely shrouded in mystery. The beings that live in the ocean can be friendly, terrifying, alien, majestic, enormous, and microscopic.
Aquatic was inspired not only by the life under the sea, but also by the media that raises awareness about that life, including Blue Planet, Planet Earth, Our Planet, My Octupus Teacher, and Subnautica. The piece uses pleasant harmonies mixed with undulating and uneven rhythms to create a sense of unfamiliarity mixed with hopefulness. A great deal of the soundtrack for this piece was written using Spitfire Audio’s Orchestral Swarm, which was featured in Blue Planet II.
Beginning-A: take care to bring out every note that is not part of the main permutation. Those melody notes should be allowed to ring clearly, while the underlying permutation should provide a rhythmic and harmonic bed without being obtrusive.
A-C: this section should have a sense of lightness and whimsy.
D: be surprising and sudden with the entrances at 120 and 125, but be careful not to overplay.
E-F: take the lack of dynamics somewhat literally. This section should feel like a slowly-evolving texture, without too much micro-phrasing.
G-I: as with the other permutation-based parts of the piece, feel free to deviate from the written music in the amount of “swing” you allow in the permutation. Open or close your swing to build and release tension.
Letter H-219: this section should feel like a warm hug, especially the bass movement into 215.
K-L: this section should have a “Jurassic Park” type of grandeur to it. Play loudly, but still with warmth.
Reflection
Aquatic shows my deep desire to someday score a nature documentary. These programs aim to instill a sense of awe and wonder in the audience, and the music must support that goal. I find myself so jealous of the composers for these programs. They get to spend all day staring at beautiful nature footage, shot on the best equipment available, and to ask themselves how the imagery makes them feel, and then to put those feelings into music… and then to have that incredible imagery supporting their music! What an incredible privilege that must be for an artist!
Writing Aquatic allowed me to provide that opportunity for myself. I hope that in performing it, you will find the same stirring of emotions that I felt during its creation.
Process
I am often asked about the process in creating a piece with so many elements, and if I had a specific order in working with the video, audio, or solo part. I won’t say that my process was particularly organized or planned in advance, but the nature of the work necessitated a certain workflow. So, if you find yourself wanting to make something like this, you might follow this approach:
Find interesting, artful stock footage. Save clips in folders based on themes.
Make decisions regarding frame rate and resolution, for artistic reasons (wanting a certain look) and practical reasons (availability of footage).
Avoid mixing frame rates. Use clips that already have your desired frame rate.
4k clips can be downscaled to 1080p, but not the other way around.
Spend hours watching your footage. Which clips are the most interesting? What music do you hear when you watch them?
Choose the clips that you find most inspiring, download them, and start working with them in editing software like Premiere or Final Cut. Put them in an order that feels right.
For this, it’s best to have a source for your stock footage that allows unlimited downloads with a subscription, rather than a pay-per-clip service. I used storyblocks.com for almost all of my pieces.
Export your rough cut, import into your DAW (most DAWs can play videos!) and start sketching out the music based on how the footage inspired you.
My process had a great deal of back-and-forth. I’d write a section of music, then export the audio and go back to my video software and adjust the timing of the various edits to fit more exactly with the music. Then I’d send the video back to Logic, and repeat. This happened countless times over the creation of each piece.
Sometimes the footage imposed limitations on the work. A clip may be too short for my musical vision of it, forcing me to re-imagine the vision or to find another clip, which often came with new musical implications. Sometimes there was simply not a lot of footage (there aren’t many stock clips of whales…especially in 4k and 30p!)