Audiocourses student Varun Nair has recently finished working on his first movie soundtrack. Varun fills us in on his work and his experiences with Audiocourses.
The Movie...
It's a mid budget mainstream 'Bollywood' movie which looks
into the lives of these few people and how they cope and come to terms
with their own lives. The movie is more about action that words!! So
the background score did play a major part in uplifting the film.
The Score...
The background score was done by this composer
duo - Nimit and Daniel. They are actually engineers themselves and
studied in the same audio school that I did and they have been doing
quite a bit of work over the past few months -ranging from jingles to
programming and song remakes. I'd earlier worked with Nimit on a few
projects - both as an engineer and musician. So when they got this
movie to score they needed someone who would do all the editing,
tracking and recording and that's when they called me.
The Work...
The budget for the background score was extremely tight so a
lot of compromises had to be made. The music is a fusion between
western and Indian styles. Its got pianos played with a very western
classical but sometimes contemporary touch, a whole string section,
Indian percussion like Tablas and Pakhawaj, Tambourines, Shakers, both
Indian and Western flutes, acoustic guitars, electric guitars and even
a whole drum kit!! Vocals too, there are both male and female vocals
singing parts in harmonies and even tunes based on Indian ragaas. So
its basically this huge mix up of styles and sounds which was good because it created variation and a lot of room to experiment. Because of the budget most of the parts were programmed. Only the
guitars, vocals, flutes and certain string and percussion parts were
recorded in a studio. So I basically saw the project from start to
finish - from the composition, arrangement, recording, editing, time
correction/pitch correction (had some great fun here) and even a bit
of the mix. The final BGM premix was done by a well known mixing
engineer here.
Overall, being my first movie it was a great experience! Got to learn
and experiment a lot. I can't wait for the next one!
Audiocourses...
I've been a member on audiocourses.com since 2004 and I must say
it has been most beneficial. Two years ago I practically knew nothing
concrete about audio - just bits and pieces. And what I found really
good about AC then was that it was very newbie friendly! Quite a bit
of my audio basics were picked up from those numerous forum posts and
articles. I think AC is a great place for someone new to audio to get
started. In fact it was one particular sentence that I had read in one
of those classroom chat sessions that got me going. I think it was
either you or Ben (or the both of you), who were telling your students
to become audio geeks - to start reading and identifying equipment
when they watch TV or read magazines and to subscribe to as many audio
mags as possible. And yeah, it is cool to be an audio geek! :) I then
joined audio school and quite a bit of the new knowledge I gained was
based on what I'd read on AC. Don't ever let this website die!!
