You would think that with all my knowledge of sound design, and total lack of music talent that I would of just sticked to what I knew while learning some software. But I figured where is the fun in that, I have this very powerful music creation tool so why not try something out of the box for myself. I am happy that I decided to go this route, but same time wish I chose a more beat centric song.
My decision to go from Ghostbusters to The Final Countdown came from my lack of being able to teach myself the main synth part of Ghostbusters. But I was able to find an easy to follow tutorial on The Final Countdown that inspired me. After listening to The Final Countdown again, paying attention to the drone sounds that resonated in the first 30 seconds I figured this wouldn't really drive me nuts. I quickly realized that I should never be this naive when it comes to music creation.
I could not find any helpful research about the creation of the song in the actual mix other then the type of keyboards that they used for the infamous synth line. This made me pretty much attempt to create this song from ear, which with my lack of musical skill was a real challenge.
The strongest aspect of what I had going for this song was finding a Thor patch called The Valley that really was close enough sounding to the Yamaha synthesizer used in the actual song. The notes I played for this part sound fairly accurate to myself, the beat maybe off a bit, since when I tried to play with the song it would match at parts but I would quickly loose my rhythm. This resulted in me playing it in the beat that I could remember or at least sounded right to myself. Even if the rest of the beginning failed I would at least end on a fairly high note, as we all can laugh and smile at this amazing synth line.
Trying to find the correct drone sounds was a real challenge, I even tried to play around with a helicopter sample sound but it didn't end up working. Once again I used a Thor patch to help me out entitled Listening. I created one drone that would be played throughout the entire song, and in the beginning a few higher notes of this patch. It is passable for something that sounds like the original song, it doesn't quite have the same heft to it but it works for what I was attempting.
A fun fact I noticed trying to replicate the song that I never seemed to pick up on before, was the fact there are lasers being shot during the songs intro. To help my song become an epic space battle I used Malstrom synthesizer with an amazing titled patch called Terminator. I mixed these lower then my rough cut just so they weren't too overpowering.
I investigated playing around with Kong drum kit for that sound in the beginning that sounds like someone dropping a wrench in a hallway or something that nature. With some playful modification of the the pitch and decay I used a conveniently pre-reverbed sample called BigVerb.
Accompany the synth line there is this very synthy vocal sound which I recreated with the good ole NN-XT and monk choir patch. It was very tough trying to find a vocal choir sound that sounded both majestic but same time still synth. The Monkchoir gave me both of those attributes, even if it doesn't sound as big as the one in the actual song.
Out of all the tracks for me to create, the one I really don't think I nailed at all and had the most trouble with was this Grand Piano I played on an NN-19. During the main synth line and synth choir in the original song, there is a piano sound that plays sporadically. The problem that I had was since this song is so overblown with cheesy production values, it was very hard for me to monitor the exact timing on how the piano parts were played. I was able to get a ball park on when I thought it was played, but same time I felt like there were parts I was missing due to everything else going on. In addition to timing it was also hard to hear the exact notes that were being played. I had to keep experiment with octaves until I got something that sounded sort of like the same finger progression. This is one time where I really wish I found an actual source type files of this part just to isolate it.
Overall I feel fairly satisfied with my replication. I can easily say this is nowhere an exact replication, but for myself with not having much musical knowledge it at least reminds me enough of the intro to get by. I did have a tough time trying to mix all of these tracks together and it something I feel like I will keep constantly adjusting even after I turn it in. While there isn't a huge number of tracks, what is there in the intro are very bombastic sounds that are tough to balance out so one doesn't overpower the other. However I made sure that the main synth line was mixed the loudest and stood out above all the other textures, since this is the main part of the song that we all remember and hum all day long.
Jason, the timing of the main line is a little off, but it was quite brave of you to take on a song for this assignment, and I'm not judging on timing skills ;)
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