Score For "Daily Praise"

I recently completed the score for a five-minute short film based on the poem "Daily Praise" by Annie Yu, directed by my friend Ian Wang. The version I've embedded here is a special score-only cut that Ian graciously allowed me to use to highlight my work on the project.

This project was somewhat unique in that it involved the creation of a musical interpretation of a visual interpretation. Both the content of the poem and Ian's filmic representation felt rooted in a sense of contemplative stillness- an introspective awe and appreciation for the everyday. I decided to go with a sparse, minimalist arrangement to try to reinforce the thoughtful aspects of the visual production without drawing too much attention to my production. The final score consists of piano, harp, and a smattering of viola over a backdrop of subtle pads and modulated white noise reminiscent of the ambience aboard a commuter train. A reversed delay on the piano line helped add a sense of complexity and movement to the relatively few notes that are played in the duration of the piece.

I ended up writing the bulk of the score over a period of two days, with some revisions made a couple of days later based on feedback from Ian. In particular he communicated to me his desire to evoke not only the tranquility of an open mind, but also the opposing oppressive chaos that can otherwise pervade life in an urban environment. I chose to begin and end the score with abstract, bassy electronics to provide a contrast between these two perspectives of life in the big city.

An interesting technical challenge presented by this project was the need to produce the score to sync with the existing, edited short film vs. the film being cut to match the timing of the score. This requirement made it impossible to maintain a consistent tempo throughout the piece; instead I used Ableton Live's tempo automation and video keyframing features to adjust the overall tempo of my MIDI events such that key moments (mostly visual cuts) "hit" at the right time. In retrospect, I think the lack of fixed tempo actually benefited the scoring process: I was forced to place notes where they sounded right instead of where they necessarily "belonged" in a metrical sense.

UPDATE: The short was accepted into the Poetry Projection Project competition, and will be screened free on April 16th at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco.

UPDATE 2: The score is now available for listening and download on Soundcloud.