To make ghosts dance, one needs music.
Not only will it set the mood of the animation, if I do it right it will tie into the various scenes. The first question I asked was “what’s the mood?” Well, this animation is for the book, so the mood should reflect how the book reads.
Hmm. The Bullet is slow and sad, so that’s not quite right. Adaptation is paced and new age. Also not right. No, this needs to be light, in that it’s not a horror book, it’s a ghost book, so that means a little bit of creepiness, and it’s vintage, a tad ye olde world.
“Danse Macabre” sprung to mind. Remember that? Ah, yes. And that brought me back to when I was practicing scales on the piano, and there were the majors and the minors, and then there were some of the ‘advanced’ ones that I (vaguely) remember. The octotonic (I admit, I had to go rifling through google for that one) scales had that sort of ‘unclean’ feel about them.
Before you open up a can of music-theory-whoop-ass on my posterior, just remember that I’m a writer, not a musician. Actually, add to that pile ‘producer’, ‘animator’, ‘sound engineer’, ‘post-producer’… Anyway, if you can bear with, I went out onto the organ in the garage – hello old friend – and fiddled about with scales, noting some of the chords that sounded about right.
Melody
The Bullet score came from a tune I had stuck in my head for years. The Adaptation ditty was inspired from a mix of “Ship To Shore” and some old piano exercises. For Grosvenor Lane Ghost, I’m going with something altogether different.
One big lesson from the previous projects was to start with the tune and leave the bass and beats and accompaniments for later. Secondly, choosing the primary instrument, while easily changed at any point using Anvil Studio, is best done early: While plotting music, if it doesn’t sound right, it could be because rather than a Honky Tonk piano, one needs a Flute.
So there’s me, sitting at work, trying to get raster images to print to thermal Epson docket printers with wonky Escpos (ask me about it sometime 🙂 ) while tumbling through random tunes in my head. No good. There’s me on the bike ride home, skipping between cars and ducking underneath trucks while pounding out ditties through my brain. No good. There’s me sitting at home, slurping on a coffee, letting my fingers practice Phrenology, forcing a brass band to make music inside my skull. No good.
It doesn’t matter how hard you squeeze the toothpaste tube, nothing will come out until you take the top off. Fine, not totally true. Squeeze it too hard and you have paste across the roof, but you get my drift. I needed to chill. And for that, I turned to a dusty bottle of Hennessy and a creaky desk chair.
K. I’m chillin’. Anything yet?
No. Mmm. No. Actually, yes. A quaff and a sit down does wonders. Tunes start to develop. Patterns. Memories.
Zig-a-zig-zig. What was that? Zig-a-zig-zig? The Spice Girls? Hmm, no. A violin? Ah. Zig-a-zig. A fiddle. Good. Fiddles are cool. What’s that? Well, that’s nice, too. A guitar. Hmm, a guitar and a fiddle. Not strummy, more folksy, more plunk-a-plink-plink.
And so, I state with honesty, I started writing the music of Grosvenor Lane Ghost with zig-a-zig and plunk-a-plink.
I think that’s the beauty of Midi – it’s like sketching or scribbling. You can start anywhere. You can work at it and refine it down, a bit at a time, cut out the bits you don’t like, add more twiddle-dee-woo or change tappa-ta-ta-tap to doomfa-doomfa with a few mouse clicks and see how it sounds.
I’ve got six tracks, now, with a lead in using a celesta and a nylon string guitar (plink-a-plink). The melody is with a flute, harmony with a cello (zig-a-zig) and a timpani and xylophone making up the bass and beat. Too much? Probably. But, going back to how Midi works, if it is, I can always mute a track and see how it sounds, or mix up the instruments, swap the cello to a fiddle, or a harmonica, or adjust the volume, or, perhaps, just hit the save button, finish the cognac and hit the hay.
Don’t want to overwork it. Don’t want to lose my chill.