Allrighty then!
Here's my first ever entry in the tunes compo! Sci/Western eh? Insane!
right, here is the link to the tune;
http://www.clockworksniper2.co.uk/music/yeehaw.mp3I chose a suitably western title!
Unfortunately I didn't get to work on this at my studio, I had to use my crummy PC and a sequencer at home, so this was produced under some severe limitations!
My original idea was based on some film I saw ages ago. I can't for the life of me remember the title, but it was an extremely tacky Sci Fi / Western, it started off all Cowboys and The Wild West, then it went surreal and spacey somehow, I can vaguely remember a gunfight between Cowboys and green aliens! I recall I was somewhat under the influence at the time, hence the hazy recollections, however the one thing I remember clearly, cos it was the only good bit about the film, was the way the soundtrack was constructed.
At the start of the film, it had a very traditional, typical western type theme, but as the film got more spaced out, they used the same chord progressions and melodies, but adapted them onto spacey synths and stuff, and played around with the tempo and rhythm. So this is the sort thing I attempted.
It starts all spaghetti western, I came up with the melody line on an acoustic guitar, then worked out some chords to go underneath. The great thing about classic 1960's Westerns is that the melodies in them are quite similier to 1960's surf rock, and I love playing that sort of stuff. I was originally planning to record real guitar parts, but as I mentioned earlier, I couldn't get to the studio, so I used the really bad banjo midi sound in my sequencer! I used a vocal synth for the chord backing and programmed some galloping type percussion underneath, to try and get that typical western intro type feel. I underpinned that with some repeating bassdrums. The bassline was originally an umpah type thing, and while it sounded very funny, it didn't exactly have the feel I wanted, so I tried to make it follow the galloping rhythm, however it came out a bit more 'mambo' than I would have liked!
Then the Sci-fi bit kicks in and it all goes a bit strange! As with that film I saw, I kept the original chord progressions, but sped it all up a little and introduced some trippy synths, then re-interpreted the main melody on a monosynth, with lots of chaotic pitch bending. I would have loved to have used my theramin plugin on my studio PC, but alas again, I had to make do with what I had!
The Sci-fi bit also brings in some rock drumming, and it starts to speed up as the tune reaches a finale, then it winds down right at the end before the fade.
The overall sound is a bit messy and quite cheesey, I had to use unhealthy amounts of reverb to make some of the midi synths sound a bit more convincing, and I had to limit the B'jesus out of it to make the mix a bit louder, but I'm well happy with the finished result. It slips from Fist full of Dollars to Muse-type space rock inside 2 minutes!
Hope you dudes like it!
