Aug 08 NO comments
Diary, Music

It’s been a while

Time does fly. Seems that there’s been just too much to do. Always a good excuse.

I started working on a movie score a few months back – a movie more or less based on a yet unreleased album by Nightwish (it’s coming out in 2012, I think). The screenplay and the whole plot is just simply brilliant, and Mr. Stobe Harju, one of the manuscript writers too, directs it. You probably knew every word of this already, if you’ve been following either the news, Tuomas Holopainen’s or Stobe Harju’s twitter account or visited the Nightwish Official Website. The whole concept of this score is a bit different from everything else, a bit dogmatic as well, some might say: I’m using Nightwish’s album multitrack data as my raw material – and only a little else. I’d say the percentage is 80/20 for NW, clearly. There’s just so much to build onto, so many building bricks. The only evil thing is the toughest question I’m facing on every track: where the hell to start from? What’s the ground zero for each song? You could turn every song into a duck – or a unicorn, easily. Every piece has enough stuff for that.

I turned out every song had two or three “hooks” that seemed to talk in a clear language. They quite seldom were melodic motives, though, usually they were just some odd noisy bits and pieces that immediately triggered the train of thoughts – and sometimes I just listened to a whole orchestra track thru a double bass channel, in mono. Thru an unmerciful compressor. After making very comprehensive memos of everything, every track, every song, I had a clear picture of what’s where. The initial transfer from ProTools to Logic took a month – of course, I made my notes at the same time. Also, I created a set of Kontakt 4 instruments on the fly, grabbing a straight note there and another from here, the usual sample stuff. I’m not in my comfort zone now, as I’m depending on solely someone else’s work of art, and am willingly, knowingly, trying to steer away from the I’m-replacing-everything-with-my-output easy solution lane (which everyone, including me, would hate eventually). Everything gets treated. Really, really mangled, to find the right patina for the existing colour. I’m not destroying Tuomas’s brilliant work, I’m building something new using existing material. Call it reinterpretation, whatever, but I can guarantee they’re not just mere remixes. And there will be no dance beats. (At least not yet.)

(By the way, as a sidenote, I’d like to encourage the software developers to finally fix the frigging, effing, bugs that prevent the AAF transfer from working. Thank you. It’s not working no matter everybody tries to say. Not at least from ProTools to Logic.)

So, I’m in “under construction” mode right now. It’s a funny state of mind in which I seem to be unable to find time for shaving alone. Also, during this phase I’m also consuming vast amounts of green tea and find sleeping a hard job. I’ve been thru these phases so many times that I’m already adjusting my mind for the misery of giving up, leaving the project, you know, the moving-on-phase. Luckily, it’s still months away and I’m enjoying the energy, but I recognize the pattern.

Also, before I even started about thinking about starting to think about thinking about Imaginarium, I laid my hands on a few game soundtracks and in addition to those, I also had a chance to collaborate with my #1 person to collaborate with, DJ Orkidea, on his upcoming album. I even wrote a series of blog articles for every single track I was involved with, but decided to postpone them until the release gets closer. It’s going to be some really, really hardcore nerdy read, but I feel that opening my bag of tricks is not equal to letting my mind slip away from me. I’m using my tools my way, according to my taste – someone else will use the same exact tools in a totally different way. One shouldn’t fear sharing the knowledge (if such thing exists).

I’ll try and update this site accordingly when the time comes.

You can edit this ad by going editing the index.php file or opening /images/exampleAd.gif
Dec 28 0 comments
Music

Gamespot/Sound Byte’s Best Of 2010

Alan Wake OST was mentioned in Gamespot’s “Best Of 2010“. I value these last two sightings (SEMO and Gamespot) quite high, as I personally follow both sites for professional interest, which in turn doubles the warm feeling I’m getting from those articles. Direct quotation from Gamespot.com: “My personal favorites include Alan Wake, Nier, Super Mario Galaxy 2…” There were a few scores mentioned I hadn’t listened to yet, so I’m going to have a slightly longer listening session waiting for me.

Also, I found out there were multiple composers in many cases, under same title. I really would like to know who did what and why, how they shared the duties etc., hopefully the endless resources of googlinterwebs can shed some light on it.

Santa visited this year with nice presents, I’d say.

Read the whole article here: http://bit.ly/dQqGkG

Dec 28 0 comments
Music

SEMO awards – Alan Wake OST won “Best Score”

Square Enix Music Online awarded Alan Wake soundtrack composed by yours truly as “The Best Score – Europe“. Thanks a million for SEMO and its award board, whoever they were!

According to the site “…(AW) captured the hearts of gamers and stand-alone listeners alike with its intimate orchestrations and psychological explorations.” The runner-ups in the series were Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow and Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer among other well-known titles.

Also, worth noticing: I found out that Dynamedion got an “Outstanding Music Production – Music Studio” award. Congratulations, Tilman and Pierre! Sumthing Else Music Works got also praised in the game, in “Outstanding Music Production – Record Label” category, well done.

See whole SEMO article here: http://bit.ly/ePHB9t

Dec 09 NO comments
Sound Design

Alan Wake’s Sound Design article

Mark Yeend, the Head of Audio at Microsoft Game Studios was interviewed by designingsound.org, and what a brilliant read it is! The true audio talents are rarely exposed to the public, and their work at best goes unnoticed – mainly due to the fact that if the sound design is just right and flawless, you don’t pay any attention to it.

I think I haven’t given kudos to the three brilliant sound designers, which is unforgivable, but better late than never. I’ve played AW thru twice now, third time under its way, and finally I get to just explore and enjoy the surroundings. The woods sound particularily pleasant, if only the Taken stayed away…

Besides, AW was re-released via XBox Live – as a complete package, so grab it now. It’s winter time, nights are long, the Taken are loose. Boo!

Read the article here: http://bit.ly/g6QjGQ , it’s a long one, containing input from Mark Yeend, Peter Hajba, Michael Schwendler, Peter Comley, Alan Rankin and myself. A great and thorough article.

Oct 18 NO comments
Music

Article in Electronic Musician

Back in the early 90’s there were only a handful of pro audio magazines available in Finland. I remember spending my pocket money on Keyboard and Electronic Musician issues, the latter I bought every time it was on the magazine stand. Sometimes I had to buy a backup copy, as the original was destroyed in the reading. If the money was tight, EM won.

Now that same magazine has published an article about yours truly – which is an absolute honor, probably topped by only a Keyboard cover, but since Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock are still alive, us mere mortals have no future. :-D Meanwhile, I’m incredibly proud of my tiny article.

See the article here: http://bit.ly/b1GLbf

Wow, like, you know, sorta. OMG. LOL!

Oct 16 NO comments
Music

HMMA Nomination!

Surprises are always nice! It already feels like I’ve won, at least judging from the happy messages I’ve received – thanks for everyone! And no, I’m not practising my red carpet walk and speech. No, I’m not going to stalk Trent or Hans at the Awards. I

t would be very un-Finnish. Very uncool. Talking of which: right now I know something about coolness: it’s -1°C outside and the lawn is frozen, and the wind coming in from the sea brings some extra to it. Brrrrr.

It’s been a while since there was any action in the Alan Wake field, but right now there’s more than a lot: both DLC packages are out and both have gotten rave reviews and sold quite nicely, I’m told. I even composed some new tracks for both – actually, so much that there should be leftovers soon on Soundcloud, I guess.

If all goes well, I’ll be at the Awards sucking in the atmosphere and everything, but I’m not holding my breath, as my autumn seems to be full of action. I don’t know whether it’s the AW recoil/repercussion, but the phone’s been ringing in an accelerating tempo. Always a nice situation, isn’t it?

There are a few things going on right now, one of them being Slusnik Luna album (again, it’s not easy to arrange schedules between three people, but we’ll manage) and several tiny game projects, all very unlike AW, all very fun and laughable. The first single of the SL album is coming out soon (I hope), more details to follow. I suggest following @slusnikluna tweets for realtime info.

Aug 15 NO comments
Diary

“Thunder & lightning, very very BZZZZaargh”

Last week a thunderstorm went over Southern Finland – and without much further thinking I ran outside with a mic boom in my hands, only to remember a short while afterwards it was really a bad idea, as the boom stand was metallic, as was the mic… and we have no lightning conductor in our house – well, effectively I was that for short while – so I decided to continue with only the internal mics of a Zoom H4n. Not an obvious choice, but I didn’t want to soak my fake foam head made for OKM ortophonic microphones, and the OKM mics themselves.

So here you are, a nice August thunder in the countryside: Last week a thunderstorm went over Southern Finland - and without much further thinking I ran outside with a mic boom in my hands, only to remember a short while afterwards it was really a bad idea, as the boom stand was metallic, as was the mic... and we have no lightning conductor in our house - well, effectively I was that for short while - so I decided to continue with only the internal mics of a Zoom H4n. Not an obvious choice, but I didn't want to soak my fake foam head made for OKM ortophonic microphones, and the OKM mics themselves.

So here you are, a nice August thunder in the countryside:
Ukkonen 100810 44100 by alanko

Aug 15 0 comments
Music

G4 reviews the OST

Ah, G4tv.com points out some interesting and refreshing topics in their Alan Wake OST review and it seems Mr. Rick Damigella has dug a bit deeper into the OST tracks, as his opinions of using music are similar to mine: “Most prevalent are the melancholic piano lines throughout the album, which play with a subtle beauty despite the creepy visuals they were created for.”

Read the whole review here: http://bit.ly/b5kq9J

Well, indeed. If anyone’s ever encountered anything truly horrible or terrifying, frightening sights, the impact is more powerful when one’s not prepared for the strike. The emotional contrast is probably the most important factor, if an ultimate grasp – gameplay or movie action – is desired. Also, the usual human characteristic of adapting the surroundings plays an active role here, as a survival tool.

What really caught my attention was Mr. Damigella’s final paragraph: “…it could be interesting to hear what he and fellow-Finn and Nightwish mastermind Tuomas Holopainen could potentially co-create together. Especially since they both have creative styles which could sound interesting when combined.”

Hmm. Very, very, very interesting.

Aug 12 0 comments
Music

W0000t? A 10! 1337!

I couldn’t help myself with the headline, sorry… Soundtrackgeek.com (http://bit.ly/bXsOjd) has reviewed the Alan Wake OST album, and used probably the most lovable sentence, when stating that “(AW OST is) …a truly great score and I hope that Petri Alanko will be flooded with offers from now on.”

Well, what can I say, other that THANK YOU, GUYS and – well, I definitely hope the same, too. :-D

The only problem is that there are a few other guys as well, and some of them have a much longer track record from game music industry than myself. Although I’m easily the most persistent fellow in this galaxy when I’m in that mood, it isn’t worth a sh1t3, as I’m still relatively new to the folks in the development teams and behind the industry tables.

Yes I know, it’s a bit funny to advertise the score, but I just had to take a screenshot of it. It feels damn good to see that, I must admit, but at the same time I feel humbled to the core. The music is reaching people’s hearts, and in the end, that’s the only thing that matters.

Also, I must say with my geekier voice (pun intended), that with a thinner story and less believable characters the result would’ve sounded a lot different – and the review score would’ve been much lower, I’m sure. My train of though goes like this: a strong story feeds the characters that feed the world that feeds the music. Let’s call that an Emotional Value Chain, EVC, in which the minimum link value also provides the absolute average instead of the usual arithmetic (a+b+c…+z)/n average. Sounds illogical, but feelings often are, right, Spock? ;-)

The point is: one cannot compensate a delinguency in EVC. It’s as strong as its weakest link, whereas the technical value chain behaves somewhat differently: who cares about aliasing (or whatever) if the story grabs you and the environment puts you always in the mood?

But 10? Happy, happy, joy, joy! Yay! :-D

Aug 10 0 comments
Music

Wow. Thank you!

Tracksound.com (http://bit.ly/9LOLoN) reviewed Alan Wake OST and gave it a damn nice 9/10. Thank you, sir! Sometimes it feels just so damn nice to read a good review, although a mid-album lengthy track (Taken by the night) didn’t win their hearts over – which I understand damn well. Point taken, no more in-game action cue music included onto soundtracks, heh!

Also, what I appreciate a lot as a composer, was the separate track rating list. For me, that works as a small scale “market research”, although the target group here in question was only one reviewer. Hmm, speaking of which: I’d like to see a larger crowd rating the Alan Wake OST tracks, just to find out how different parts of world valuate certain things. On the other hand, multinational hitmakers have proved that a good melody doesn’t discriminate.

Even though composing is sometimes related to running in the dark with a dimming flashlight (heh), a good review can provide you some bullets and batteries for the next level – in the form of constructive criticism. Thanks, Mr. Masalar.