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 Back To Viral Video Index PAGE 3 The Tracks 02. A Gallery of Lies 03. What Once Was In Balance 04. The Council of Elders 05. Searching for Answers 06. Lynch the Cat 07. Forming a Gang 08. Viral Video Training Montage Song 09. Learning Power Reality 10. We Need Our Memories Back 11. Calm Before The Crap 12. In Time To Find All That's Lost 13. That's What She Said 14. Rex is Briefed by The Council of Elders 15. My Final Entry 16. Booshe Fighters Theme Song This track actually consists of 3 separate cues named "Dear Livejournal", "Desaturated Life", and "Richard Tuttle". Dear Livejournal is more or less the introduction of what I thought of as the "identity" themes for Tyler, Joey, and Mike. They all feel a little lacking to me, both the way they are written and being alone and surrounded by large areas of silence. I wrote them so that each person's identity melody was lacking in a way that the other two were not, albeit in an abstract way that perhaps only I would ever recognize. I let them exist in their somewhat pretentious way, overly dramatic and Thomas Newman-esque, built on larger intervals than traditional tertian harmony (3rds), and didn't give them any accompaniment both to leave them lonely and make them seem overly dramatic and artsy. Despite that I wanted these melodies to exist as their identities with or without their memories, at this point in the story they are, in fact, pretentious art students. The next cue in this track, which starts in the film at the opening credits and in track 1 of the soundtrack at the 1:56 mark, was "Desaturated Life". Early on while talking with Mike, I suggested that he desaturate the colors in the "artist's life" segments of the movie, which I not only thought would be artistic (and fitting for paralleling the current state of The Gang in film) but also representive of the mental state of despair that the characters are in and too busy trapped in their monotonous life to do anything about. I tried to write it as a horribly montonous version of some French mock-impressionist piano piece, parodying Erik Satie I suppose. The next cue, which is only briefly referenced, fading into the foreground of track 1 at 4:28, and appearing in the movie while Tyler is eating lunch in The Atrium, was called "Richard Tuttle". It consists of the ominous sound I created to represent Terry, combined with Pomeranian barks, representing Richard Tuttle, for obvious reasons. I believe this succesfully met Tyler's dare for me to put 60 Pomeranian barks into the score of the movie, so I have to figure out something to dare him to do. It's going to involve White Castle. 02. A Gallery of Lies: The first completed scene I was given to score in early April was the gallery scene (although the beginning of the scene did get edited out in the final cut, which can be seen in the deleted scenes of the DVD). I named the cue "A Gallery of Lies" for the duality of the Richard Tuttle gallery being a lie that Terry spread, and that their meeting was a gallery of the lies they themselves were living and now being exposed to. It's based off of manipulations of the percussion used in the Booshe Fighters theme, as this is the first mention made of viral videos in the movie. The arpeggiatic motif from Track 5, "Searching For Answers" makes an appearance at 1:29, which I thought was a moment in the movie that Terry comes close to inducing some sort of belief in Tyler, Mike, and Joey that what he's saying might be true. At 3:45, the part in the movie where Terry reveals his tattoo of the red eyes of the Council of Elders, I wanted to reference the Council of Elders theme with the Council of Elders main melody synthesizer sound. The snag at the moment was that I had not yet written the Elders theme nor picked the sound, since that scene would not be given to me until later. So, I made a synthesizer sound, wrote an easily adaptable and "classic" sounding melody line and threw it in. At 4:29, the choir that was made from samples of real voices enters, as Terry is going into detail about what the Elders did to the three of them. 4:41 marks the first appearance of an elusive but recurring habit I developed of writing things that reminded me of the particular actor on screen at the time. As the camera pans over Tyler, I subconsciously wrote something that sounded like a harmonic device that would be used by Porcupine Tree, one of his favorite bands. 03. What Once Was In Balance: This cue starts with a broken, almost falling apart version of "Desaturated Life", as the characters' lives are now being disturbed. I named it "What Once Was In Balance" because although the viewer may suspect or know that things are on the path to becoming better, for all concerned in the movie, things have gotten worse and life is no longer working the way it should. The music approaches the point of annoying to show this. The music which comes in at 1:27, the first sight of the Elders' thugs, was actually written in a different fashion than the rest of the music. On one of the shooting days, I got (had) to sit through Mike, Tyler, and Joey's "History of TV" class at UIC. I made use of their discussion time by writing the themes that appear from 1:27 til 2:36 in a notebook. When I first watched the movie with my brother, during this part he yelled, "Marty!!!!!!", referencing a line Ben Kingsley says in the movie Sneakers, because the low piano melody at 1:35 sounds a lot like one of the themes in the Sneakers score. It's my favorite movie, and favorite score, so that's no surprise to me, and I did notice while tracking it too, but this was one of the cues that I recorded a day or two before the premiere, so I didn't really have time to start rethinking things. The percussion used in this track is also a very very chopped up version of the Booshe Fighters percussion, as they are facing a confrontation, but not really doing so well at fighting back. At 2:18, the top piano note changes from an A (the key the song is in) to a Bb when Mike remembers Tyler (sans his name), which was something I also used in segments of "A Gallery Of Lies" when some form of comradery between the three of them is trying to develop in either scene. As I mentioned, the final goal for them is to reach the key of B, so I felt like Bb was the best reaching that they could do at this point. At 2:31, a final reference to the melody of "Desaturated Life" is made, as I felt like this was really the final turning point where their lives as independent artists would never return, after we see Mike and Joey risking their own lives to find Tyler. Tyler lamented to me after seeing the first rough cut of the footage from this scene that you can't see him jump down a second set of 7 or 8 stairs when he bursts out of the doors and that it just didn't look as cool as he thought it did when he did it. (I have to say, possibly because you're used to seeing such ridiculous things in normal movies, a few really intense things in this movie didn't seem all that intense in real life, like Joey kicking over the chair in the classroom scene just before this cue, which actually really scared me when he did it on set, not knowing he was going to knock it over.) Anyways, I told Tyler I was going to make the music there extra awesome to make up for it. Tyler sort of explained what he thought would sound cool here, not really as much of a suggestion as just him thinking outloud, so the music takes a turn here and becomes more tonal and videogame-like (based off of the things he was describing.) If the melodic reference at 2:31 is a farewell to normal life, it hands us directly over to the first welcome greeting from the new direction of the story. Whenever I would listen to the isolated music track, I would always find myself starting to sing in the segment where they regroup behind the wall to talk, and it was always a similar sort of melody, so for the soundtrack release, I decided to put a minimoog synthesizer there playing that melody. It also transitions into the Elders theme on the next track pretty well. 04. The Council Of Elders: So, I already mentioned that I wrote the melody for this in the "A Gallery of Lies" cue. This composition was pretty straight forward. In addition to being scored to picture as all but two of the cues were, I also wanted it to seem like a composition for a videogame soundtrack and to serve musically as a memorable and signature theme for the Elders in all future Gang movies. This is also the appearance of the synthesized choir sound I mentioned earlier, to counter the real choir sound used in "A Gallery of Lies". After writing a bit, I asked Tyler his thoughts for some cartoon villainy sounding videogame tracks, and (big surprise) he came back a few minutes later telling me two tracks from the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack (from the game, not Advent Children)... "Makou Reactor" and "Shinra Company". At that point, I already had a functioning version of the song, and the tubular bell sounds, tempo delayed drums, and one of my synth sounds were suspiciously similar to the sounds used in "Makou Reactor" and the main melody I had written for the cue (retroactively referenced) in "A Gallery of Lies" was also an ascending melody like the one in "Shinra Company". So, in conclusion, I think there's some common language used in music to represent cartoon villainy.c 05. Searching For Answers: While there were the black screens with white text reading "SCENE MISSING" (designating that some footage was missing) in nearly every scene of the movie until the week of the premiere, there were so many that I wasn't able to begin scoring a single scene until April, when I was given the "Gallery of Lies" scene. I had only written the Booshe Fighters theme, and I guess I was just getting impatient waiting for more scenes, and wanted to make Mike feel a little better about not beginning his usual lengthy search for other soundtracks' music to put in whatever movie he's about to start cutting, so I made this cue for him for one of the two scenes that I didn't think needed to be scored to picture. (The other being "Desaturated Life", which was written by itself and only slightly modified to fit the final cut) I actually did need to score something on top of this cue at the part for the countdown of the tape self-destruction, and then I thought it would be funny sounding if when you find out it's a joke, the entire audio file just cuts back in awkwardly. I didn't include that version of the cue on the soundtrack because it would really ruin the original composition. The composition itself utilizes an arpeggio motif that is based on a minor chord with a b6 added on top. It's a motif used in almost every movie soundtrack ever made, that elicits a mysterious mood. This one starts in A minor and actually goes, in descending half step key changes through all 12 keys twice, ending on A minor. It also starts with the piano being audible and transitioning into harp and celesta, ending on a harp chord, which I thought, at the time of writing it, would serve as a committal segue into the symphony half of the instrumentation spectrum. The actual halfway point of the composition is at 1:25, where the first cycle, which is a fantasy extension of the minimalist approach thus far, has returned to A minor and the second cycle begins, which to me was now a conservative symphonic cue. In the movie, this happens as soon as Joey receives the VHS tape in the pizza box, which is fitting enough, conceptually. In short, Mike and Tyler were both very excited when they got this, as it was the first symphonic cue they had heard me do and I think were a little more comfortable with the future of the movie, as was I. 06. Lynch The Cat: So, this isn't in the movie. (Although it did end up as the music for the bloopers feature on the DVD) After I did "Searching For Answers", I wanted to make something that would be similar to these two different cues Mike has used in many Gang movies, both which feature a vibraphone as the main instrument. I thought about doing a cross between the two of those, the jazzy and dream themes from Twin Peaks, and the Cait Sith Theme from... yep, FFVII. I actually decided relatively quickly into writing it that it probably wouldn't fit the movie, but I started really liking it, so I finished it in order to satiate my uncontrollable desire to finish something for the movie. In addition to the title referencing both Twin Peaks creator, David Lynch, and most people's inner desires of hospitality towards "fairy cat" Cait Sith, the name also is a play off of the Chicago based fusion band, "Kick the Cat" who I was just booked the night before to share the stage with in a gig coming up in July. Anyways, this is my favorite cue that isn't in the movie. The organ parts were really fun/hard to record. 07. Forming a Gang: In many ways, this was the hardest cue in the movie to write, simply from how I approached it, which was to drastically take emotional control of the scene (as opposed to drifting by somewhat unnoticed). Every note was really written not only to match what was going on in the movie at that instant, but also to give an insight to the possible changing emotions of the characters from line to line, which took a lot more work (and artistic responsibility, affecting the script that much) compared to a scene which might have one emotional sentiment for its entire duration. To write most of the large orchestral cues, I use a simple polyphonic synthesizer patch instead of loading in the symphonic sample library, which is a recording of each instrument of the orchestra playing every single note in their range, which severely cripples my computer, and when fully loaded, can take up to 15 minutes to simply load a single project file. The synth patch makes everything sound a little bit 80s, but it's never really a problem. For some reason though, this cue sounded so horribly just like something from The Terminator, or some other 80s action/sci fi movie that I was very frustrated for the entire writing process. As soon as I orchestrated it, my fears disappeared though, and it's a cue I'm extremely happy with, although it was a very very long day of composing and orchestrating. The cue features the motif from "Searching For Answers" one more time, being played by a harp in a continual ritardando (gradual slowing down) with a flute accompanying it. It's the last time we hear that motif in the movie, and I felt like it supplies a conclusion of sorts to that emotion, as the characters are now presented with all the answers they were looking for. The harp and flute also give it this very fantasy feeling, as the plot now commits itself to a similar feeling of "no turning back to plot devices that could ever happen in real life" After it was scored, Mike ended up cutting footage from them searching through their old stuff but decided to leave the cue untouched, so now it goes that much longer than it originally did. Originally, it ended just before Tyler says "I'm in." It works really well in both ways, for different reasons I think. The transition to the next scene works a lot better this way, while I miss the accented intensity of Tyler's line in the old one, over silence. 08. Viral Video Training Montage Song: No matter what I could name this song, it would always be known as "The Training Montage Song", so I just named it that. I was very much looking forward to writing this one. I actually had originally planned to have my brother sing it (who sings on Booshe Fighters) but for various reasons I just liked the way I sang it better and just used that. While driving to pick up gyros one day, I actually had my brother listen to a Dragonforce CD on his Zune Player and I gave him a notebook and instructed him to "write all of the lyrics that are missing from these songs", meaning, to write similar sounding lyrics, but all things that he didn't actually hear. I then used that notebook page as the basis for the actual lyrics I wrote for the song. So, basically everything part of the musical narrative and palette that I described earlier goes out the window for this one... it's in D minor, not A or B... it has analog synths living harmoniously alongside rock band, and introduces the Fender Rhodes piano to the instrumentation... but whatever, it rocks. The movie was originally written with the power reality scene as being part of the training montage, and I intended the song to originally fade down for the power reality section, and then fade back up for the montage to continue. Well, the power reality scene turned out to be a full scene's worth of stuff in actuality, and it was one of the first things done, and first things scored, and didn't go back to the montage. So, I just told Mike to fade it out into the Power Reality scene. When I got the cut back, I had an idea, which seemed funny to me at least, which was instead of fading the music out, to have it simply lower volume (as if it was going to come back up) which keeps the pace going through the beginning monologue of Terry explaining power reality, and simply stops when Joey interrupts him. I did realize, in suggesting this, that Mike would be tempted to insert a record scratch, but he was able to restrain himself with the support of a few of us talking him through it. 09. Learning Power Reality: So, early on, thinking that I still might have the scene as a fadeout of the training montage song, when this scene was first cut together, I didn't jump on it for scoring, at least, until Mike IM'd me one afternoon and said "I'm putting this up as the clip of the month. Can you have it scored by 2 am?" (2 am was my deadline every night for anything that I wanted to have inserted in the next day's rough cut.) So, it was a rushed day. I immediately thought of doing a Steve Vai "Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure" thing for the "Funny Bone" cue, but I didn't feel like pulling out all my guitar stuff if I didn't need to, so I thought, "What else would sound really stupid?" and I made the thing that starts at 0:04 in the track. I didn't like it though, so I got out my guitar stuff and did the guitar one. I liked that. The "Grenade" cue at 0:08 was loosely based on the military-esque sounding music in Mike's "The Hunt For The Energizer Bunny" documentary. You'll have to ask him what it's from. The grenade cue is kind of dumb, but in a good way. I think. The 00:16 "Sword" cue seems to be one of everybody's favorite cues in the movie, and I'm not entirely sure why. I mentioned in the audio commentary yesterday about how it's very suspiciously similar to a certain videogame theme, but without mentioning which one, so I'm going to continue that ambiguity and let everybody hunt it out on their own. After reading these liner notes though, it shouldn't really be that tough to find it, but it's not from the FFVII OST or Advent Children soundtrack, I'll give you that much. The 0:32 "Machinegun" music was based loosely off of vague old memories of playing Doom and Duke Nukem and what I'd imagine the music in a videogame would, or at least should be like for something like what Terry was reenacting. I did notify Mike a couple times to make sure it wasn't too loud because I really loved Terry's sound effects so much that I didn't really care how the music sounded as long as you could hear the flamethrower sound effects. It's one of my favorite things in the whole movie, but nobody else seems to think very much of it. Whatever, I'm awesome. Although they weren't finalized until the training montage transition was figured out, those power reality cues were the first things I scored to picture from the movie, and then the Batman-esque cue at 0:53 was actually the very last thing I sent Mike. The morning of the premiere, at around 3 am, he asked if I could make a Batman cue for him, since his attempt at performing an acapella one didn't work out, and it became apparent that without the movie returning to the training montage, there wasn't a good way to transition into the next scene without some sort of dissolve or effect. 10. We Need Our Memories Back: This cue was pretty straight forward, very fantasy sounding with harp and celesta doubling eachother. Done right after the "Forming a Gang" cue, this one seemed like this tiny little thing I was knocking off, but I think it's my favorite cue from the movie. I originally wrote it on guitar, and I thought it sounded like something from the Hitman 2 soundtrack by Jesper Kyd, but once it wasn't on guitar, it didn't sound anything like his stuff. Come to think of it, I've also thought his music sounds a lot like Porcupine Tree as well, so anything that I made sound like Porcupine Tree might also be influenced by him. 11. Calm Before The Crap: This was the only thing that when I hurriedly wrote it, felt like "filler music", but that's partially because it was done in the final week's rush, just before I was starting on the Rex battle scene I believe, and I just wanted to get it over with. One of the most popular cues that people mention they liked in the movie is the second half, the "sneaking" music. At this point, the movie got to the point where I thought it really would be enhanced with some cartoonish music, and I have to say that I also really love watching this scene with it. 12. In Time To Find All That's Lost: As Mike mentioned in the audio commentary, when we started the project, my only request was that they didn't film the fight scene last and send me the cut 3 days before the premiere. I was actually kidding, thinking if it was last that I'd have it at least 7 days before the premiere, but were you to tell me that Mike would still be filming things the morning of the premiere, I would have probably lowered my expectations for these cues, thinking there would be no way I could make anything that elaborate and awesome in such short time, so it's almost better that I didn't know. As I mentioned before, this entire track is in B minor, and actually consists of 3 separate cues, 0:00 to 3:05, 3:05 to 4:03, and 4:03 til the end. There were an extra few lines that happened around the 0:39 mark which got cut after it was scored, but I actually like the way the music works with Mike's cut more than in the original. A bit of trivia: the stop at 1:59 was actually a neccesary workaround for a SMPTE time code error so that the "end note" midi signal for the previous chord would be recognized, and not hold over for entire rest of the track. It actually worked out really nice. The 2:12 slow mo section was consciously inspired by (and seemed an inevitable decision to me in my mind) two things. One was the trailer Mike cut together for Viral Video, which featured a song from the new Sonic the Hedgehog game for PS3, and he cut it so that the slow mo shot of them reaching out was over this section of music with a full intensity tremolo pulsing sound. I also decided to put a low pass filter (cuts everything above a certain frequency) and automate it up very slowly like the sound in Advent Children in the track "Encounter" when Rufus falls off the building and is about to shoot at Kadaj. The 2:52 action shot was an attempt to get the sample library to imitate a John Williams-esque action scene. I give it a B-. The piano themes which start at 3:05 are of course the identity themes from the very beginning of the movie. While this is hardly a "normal life" piano scenario in the movie, I wanted it to relate very strongly to their normal lives, both in the reality of their lives being possibly over, and within the normal life moments that flashback. I took each identity theme and divided it into three parts, and then tried (in a very abstract way) to fill in each one of those thirds with an element from each of the other two, as the flashbacks of them being friends show up on screen. So, as opposed to three complete and separate identity themes in the beginning of the movie, I tried to make each of these three a compilation of one third of each of the three themes, to represent them finding strength in their own friendship with eachother. I was actually hoping this wouldn't be as pretentious as the initial introduction of these themes, and I scored it seriously (albeit in a tremendous hurry). The key change at 3:50 brings the cue into B Lydian, for the transformation sequence. As I mentioned earlier, there was a 1 in 12 chance of the NEDM music working, so that was pretty cool. For the cue I sent Mike that's in the movie, there's not really anything underneath the NEDM part, so I wrote something that makes the transition from B Lydian to B Aeolian (minor) in a different way. At 4:03, the Booshe Fighters percussion enters along with a synthesizer sequence and we're on our way into "the big cue". So, this third cue in the track was an intentional Advent Children-ism, as much so as that it uses the same instrumentation as one of the songs, One Winged Angel, which was written for symphony and rock band. This was obviously not going to be as evil sounding as One Winged Angel, but I was really thrilled with how it worked. So, for the three sections where each person uses their power reality, I subconsciously made it sound like the actor too. (Thank goodness the actors are actually playing themselves in this movie.) Mike's part at 4:49 reminded me of some Sonic music I've heard, as well as the tune he used for the Viral Video trailer, Tyler's at around 5:02 was another Porcupine Tree thing, and Joey's at 5:11 reminded me of some James Bond-esque music and for some reason I was imagining him playing 007 on an N64... so, I don't know what type of music Joey listens to, but his one is my favorite of the three actually. Mike actually trimmed out 2 beats from the cue in the section where Joey is rolling, to facilitate him cutting that much out of something a few seconds earlier, so that's kind of weird to me still, especially since it was one of my favorite things in the whole score, but it definitely works and I'm glad the pacing is better at whatever the cost. In between each one of these power reality ordeals, as Rex revitalizes himself, there's a snare drum fill, which is reminiscent the snare drum representing Rex taking care of business in earlier cues. So, from 5:33 to the end is probably the coolest backstory for the entire soundtrack, but I couldn't possibly retell the story better than in the entire featurette about this section that I made for the DVD. So, get the DVD. 13. That's What She Said: Despite what you'd think, this was one of the absolute hardest things to do in the movie, because of both some technical errors surrounding the act of making tempo changes on the first half but leaving the second half exactly where it was, as well as figuring out what to do for the second half. I tried scoring it with piano/orchestra, but it wasn't really working. It just felt really really awkward. Putting in an 80s sitcom closing theme seemed to fix that pretty well though, although it was a serious change to the movie in that section, I think it worked well at least. 14. Rex is Briefed by The Council of Elders: There were actually 4 Elders cues in the movie... The first is intact as track 4 on the soundtrack, but I decided to combine the 2nd and 3rd elders cues into this one and not include the 4th (because it seemed stupid to have 4 versions of the elders song on the soundtrack) So, this has the intro, Rex marching snare drum and general mix of the 2nd Elders cue, when Rex is actually briefed by the Elders. At 0:46 a little "blippy" sounding synthesizer comes in that is playing variations of the Searching For Answers minor b6 arpeggio, and for the whole thing there's the "bubbling jacuzzi hot tub synth" in the background, from the "Hot Tub Elders Cue". The last Elders cue just has stuff missing from it that's in the other three. So just pretend stuff isn't there in the first Elders cue and you'll get the idea. Yes, I know it's out of sequence now, all because of me. 15. My Final Entry: So, it's back to normal life for the Jerks. Here we have some normal, but hopeful, and hopefully not annoying piano music representing the normal life they've now retained. It ends with a sort of temporary sadness though, because despite what they've gone through, they actually still face the real problems that Mike, Tyler, and Joey do face at UIC... which is being fictionally personified in the film by Jennifer Montgomery. 16. Booshe Fighters Theme Song: This is obviously used as the closing credit music because it largely represents how they actually do make it through real life; making movies like Viral Video itself, which (in the past at least) were scoffed at by their classmates and teachers. Oddly enough, all the art people loved this one though. It's also the end music because that Booshe Fighters video is really the main device that drives the plot of the movie. I wrote the lyrics to this in about 2 minutes while sitting in the Atrium on the first day of filming the original script. It actually took the longest to mix, of everything, just because it's so heavily orchestrated with a million little things. You probably can't hear over half of them. But yes, it also has the internet found loops in it which I've mentioned. The whole thing was actually scored to picture, although it really just sounds like a theme song. I put the recording of Jakes in the middle for exact reasons I can't remember, but I guess I thought it'd be really cool, and it was. It also starts with the Power Rangers synth-guitar part in the right speaker, as my little tribute. The main baritone (lowest) part is sung by my brother, Justin. I'm doing the high tenor part above that, and Tyler joins in on the "Go Booshe Fighters!" part (his part is in stereo) singing the middle note, and he sings the "When evil collides..." at the end. As I mentioned in the audio commentary, I wanted there to be singing over something of the first part, because it was too boring going that long with nothing... so we tried some things, including a black metal sort of singing style, but it wasn't really fitting, so we decided to put the TV voiceover in there, and sat for maybe 30 or 40 minutes trying to figure out what fictional TV show might come after Booshe Fighters, in whatever world Booshe Fighters might exist. We finally decided to just reference our own internet show (that's not out yet) and Tyler immediately came up with a plot for an episode, which of course we're going to have to do now. Overall, this was one of the absolute coolest projects in my life and I was thrilled with how it turned out. Mike, Tyler, Joey, and Terry are possibly the most fun production team I'll ever get to work with and are each really great people in their own right, so, it couldn't have been a better experience. I was given 100% artistic freedom with the music, for better or worse, but it certainly facilitated getting it done as quickly as I did. I only had time to go with the absolute first idea I came up with for each section, so it's one of most honest and uninhibited recordings of my compositional style that exists, as I didn't get to meditate on anything for more than a few minutes. I hope you found something in these liner notes interesting or enlightening. 05.21.07 |