We like to give people a chance to hone their media composing skills here at Crow Hill, without it negatively affecting their career. A chance to not only practise composing chops, writing to brief, to picture. But also overcoming those annoying uncertainties of a life on the front line.
For this challenge we will be uttering a sentence that sends shudders down professionals on an almost daily basis.
Mention “Solaris” to any cinephile and they will immediately think of the Tarkovsky classic. Watch it by all means but, you’re in for a perplexing evening’s entertainment. More accessible is a lesser known version by none other than Steven Soderbergh (flexing his artistic wings in between Oceans 11,12 and 13) starring George Clooney. It’s a film few people have seen. However, the extraordinary score by Cliff Martinez has become a sync hit and (much to the chagrin of composers) a temp favourite. Cliff Martinez decided extraordinarily to use a series of steel drums to create a Reichian soundscape that perfectly fitted the dream-like world Soderbergh directed (and, by all accounts despite the pseudonyms, lit and edited). You may not have seen the film, but you’ll probably be familiar with the score, particularly this cue which we have “temped” some footage with.
The brief
Instead of using a steel drum we’d like you to feature our Free Glass Beaker to create a track that has the same expansive and haunting quality of the Solaris temp but contain none of the compositional elements nor indeed orchestration that could be considered to be “passed over” as a copy of Cliff’s score.
Made entirely with Vaults instruments - Glass Beaker, Dulcet Vocal, and Harmonium - plus effects.
For me, Cliff Martinez’s Solaris score has an emotional remoteness - a distance which I’ve tried to capture here without being too close to the original.
This definitely was a challenge, the Cliff Martinez score is incredible and it envokes just a lot of emotions. I felt something a bit hopeful in there that I felt the video amplified even more, I tried tuning my version to reflect that.
While I think I made a decent song I’m really starting to doubt it and think about if I’ve messed it up by making it a bit bombastic, what do you guys think? I guess either way this was something that helped me grow.
I’ve been learning Reaper the last few weeks, So its been a challenge within a challenge . I‘ve used Glass Beaker on four tracks, Very simple Solo Bodhran beat ( I just wanted a pulse in the background ) and Amp Bass. Used the effects that came with the instruments with a little Reaper reverb.
Just as a footnote, I composed this in musescore4 using the digital pencil, then sent it over to reaper as a midi file.
Beautiful score by Cliff Martinez and great pieces by everyone here. I had a couple of ideas which seem to work well with the Vaults Beaker and Gong instruments. Thanks Crow Hill!
Being the same but completely different is quite a hard challenge…
This was my attempt… Having listened to some of the other great stuff everyone else has produced, I’m not sure if I have strayed too far from the temp or not.
. I‘ve used Glass Beaker on four tracks, Very simple Solo Bodhran beat ( I just wanted a pulse in the background ) and Amp Bass. Used the effects that came with the instruments with a little Reaper reverb.
