First Version of Soundtrack

As you can hear, I have inserted the audio from the TV play into the track. The only problem is that the sound quality isn't that good in the vocal track. This maybe due to the quality of the original or maybe its because it was ripped from youtube. This is only a minor problem anyway and I think it goes quite nicely with the track. I did the full track live, rather than do it in bits. It really allowed me to get a feeling for what I was doing and made it much more enjoyable adding bits in gradually. You will also notice I have added the bongo drum loop, which gives it a really nice sound I think. I chose to use instruments that you might not neccessarily have found in the 1500s because I wanted it to have a modern sound with a sort of underlying classical theme. This is why on top of the wobbly bass, bongo and drum loops I put a guitar over the top and made something which sounds a little bit like a lute. Why a lute? Because there is a line in that opening speech which
actually says:

"Grim-visaged War hath smoothed his wrinkled front,
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a LUTE."

Once again everything was done in midi and I used no samples or loops

Richard's Speech

I have decided to incorporate the opening soliloquy from the TV version of Richard III. The main reason for this decision is that there is no music in the background and the clip is available on youtube. This opening speech really explains Richard's character. He start by talking about the War of the Roses and their recent success against the house of Lancaster. He then goes on to speak about his deformed features and how he can't attract women or do physical things that most people can because of it. The last lines where he says "And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain And hate the idle pleasures of these days" which basically means that since he was born with the physical form of a 'monster' he is going to act as one.

Playing with Simpler

As explained in the previous post, I can't record audio, so apologies for the poor quality iPhone recording. For this I was just playing around with the Filter and LFO frequencies using a midi controller.

http://sites.google.com/site/lcogamesdesign/Memo.m4a?attredirects=0&d=1

Building My Bass

I would've liked to have the audio on this video but unfortunately my soundcard doesn't support it. It is just demonstrating how I made the wobbly bass. I first made it in midi using a guitar instrument until I got a tune I was happy with, I then dragged the simpler on to the track, then added a short waveform I got from Dubspot. From there I played around with the settings to get the right sound. The most effective dials on there are the LFO beats/freq and the filter frequency. I really want to connect these up to midi controller and operate them live as they can reallly sound good. I will do this and upload a sound file of it working later on. I actually duplicated this bass and put it up an octave or two. I then altered the LFO beats/freq, to make a more prolonged, less wobbly sound. The two went quite nicely together and I was able to make different variations, which complemented each other quite nicely.

I will say I used a tutorial for the simpler effect, which can be found here, however I spent a lot of time playing around with it and understanding what each dial and option does.

Building the drum loop

In Ableton, I spent a while getting a decent drum loop. Part of the battle was picking the right sounds for the kit and the other part was creating a decent arrangement. I know that I want to introduce some bongo sounds as well but that will be on another kit. One of the things I discovered that I thought was very useful was that below each thing in the midi track display there are some sliders to manage the velocity. If you select a few different notes, then hold control and draw a line accross the sliders you can create increasing or decreasing velocity. This is good for building momentum or taking the impact of certain sounds, which may be too loud or heavy.

Abstract Ideas

One of the ideas I recently had was to have different images of Richard, showing a different perception, surrounding the man. I was very inspired by the work of Swiss sculptor, Alberto Giacometti, as his sculptures weren't anatomically correct or naturalistic, but were instead, more representations of the subject matter. For example, Giacometti's "Dog" not only represents the physical form of the animal, but it also captures its soul. It creates a sense of movement despite its stillness to the point that it is creepy or perhaps even reminiscent of a childhood nightmare. Because I am no longer able to get footage that realistically represents the War of the Roses, I will instead approach it in a surrealist/expressionist way and Giacometti is an extremely good source of inspiration for that.

I decided to make a few drawings of how I thought Richard was perceived. I think the fact that Shakespeare wrote him as being, not only ugly as a person, but physically deformed, shows that the character of Richard III was probably a sort of warped caricature of the real man. I have tried to show this in my sketch by making his body and walking stick all part of the same form, instead of making distinguishable difference between the body, attire and other objects. As you can see I have exaggerated many features of the body, especially in the length of the limbs and shape of the joints. I gave him a crooked nose, long witch-like chin and hump back to show his deformity. On top of that I have made both his legs different sizes to show his imperfect physical shape. He is also holding a rose, which if coloured would be red, to show that although he is part of the house of York, the image is actually the way Lancastrians saw him and not necessarily how he truly was.