Harmless Sounds

So, d'you remember that piano thing I worked on a little while back? Here's more of a full length version.  It's still pretty rough and it would be nice to get hold of one or two pianists to record this properly, I'm not too happy with having to sequence everything in. 

Again, it's very tonal, but still trying to throw tiny hints of ambiguity harmonically, just to provide that little bit of uncertainty. With the series, there are quite a lot of ideas from viewers flying around, but Dean's not confirmed anything, at least not directly, so I think trying to convey some of that ambiguity is going to be a driving feature for most of the writing of these things, lots of dissonance, a wide dynamic range, unpredictable melodies, very sparse things etc.  Someone commented on the first draft and mentioned concepts like longing and all the sadness and stuff and I thought "THEY ARE RIGHT, IT'S VERY SAD".  In my opinion: I think it's fairly haunting, sad and conveys a slight idea of loss and drama, so I decided to name it 'The Price of Pain (Is a Friend)'. Speaking with Dean, this could be the potential theme of Harmless Things. 

Thank you very much! That's good to hear. With the series having such negative connotations, I figured it would be helpful to try and put together some ideas that can portray all of those with the series, whilst making it easier to listen to in comparison to most of the stuff I've done so far. I know most people who watch Harmless Things aren't going to dig all the weird crazy sounds all the time and it does get a bit tedious, so hey, why not something tonal? The main inspiration for this was the whole 'Price of pain, loss of a friend' thing, so it's good that you got sadness from that, because I want that uneasy, sad thing with longing! DEEP! 

A lot of ideas have been flying around since last night and this morning, but a lot of it was giving me that 'one trick pony' feel, which is a difficult thing to avoid in music. A lot of musicians have a certain trademark in their writing, no matter how standardized the ideas are, you can always tell even just a tiny part who wrote it.

I wanted to try something a little different, in comparison to the track I've titled 'Harmless' so far, which you can check out on the official Tumblr for Harmless Things. There will be a post about that track on here soon, by the way!

'Harmless' was a fairly minimalist idea and is driven by it's slow harmonic development and automating things and yadayada. The sample listed here is slightly more reminiscent of the kind of classic horror film style. It consists of two pianos so far and it's probably the most tonal this stuff is going to get. It sounds more suitable for a theme as opposed to the other ideas that are more for atmosphere and ambience.  My favourite part is where the second piano comes in and it's at this point where I think it starts to sound iconic. It also starts to sound more frantic and uneasy, which is the kind of thing I wanted, keeping within the key of Dminor, but not feeling too restricted in how I reflect the chords using that second piano melody. 

There is no saying whether there will be a place for something like this, but I guess it's all up to Dean, really! That doesn't mean you can't get a word in...

What do you think of what you've heard? Do you like/hate it? What do you like/hate about it? Does it sound like it has a place for Harmless Things from what you've seen so far? - I find this an important question, considering the directions that the series might go in... In that case...  Has listening to this short idea maybe enhanced your outlook on the general series, knowing that it might develop into something more?  If there is anything you'd like to know concerning this idea, feel free to inbox me any questions. 

Since getting such a positive response from Dean letting another of my musical cats for 'Harmless Things' out of the bag on Tumblr recently, I've decided to try and set up yet another blog, all to do with the music for 'Harmless Things'.  Welcome to 'Harmless Sounds'. In this blog, I hope to talk about maybe some of the creative process of the music for the creepy as balls web series, document how things start and change. I might even educate others or be educated myself from doing this.

The main reason behind doing this is that for the past few years, I've only really had the opportunity to write 'Daniel Dobbs' songs. Pop songs, basically. Last year, I decided that I want to able to create music for other purposes other than for my own self indulgence: film, TV, video games, theatre etc. So I thought "why not document this?". This will be my first time working on a musical project outside of my comfort zone that has been revealed through media and where I really start to value the opinions and critique of others with this being a project of applied music. 

Click that ol' follow button to keep up with my work flow and hopefully, you can start to understand something new in what you're hearing in the series and not just what you can see.