“You are making your way in a desolate post apocalyptic world. Society has collapsed. You hear of the Forest of The Sun, a place that escaped the great cataclysm, where life still flourishes, and so you decide to seek it out.”
The Concept
The Wasteland is a concept soundtrack perfect for exploring the end of the world. This is the second of these standalone EPs I have written and produced, an ode to my love of video game soundtracks and writing music to a story, in this case that of survival and hope in a post apocalyptic world.
This time I wanted to write something that was more acoustic guitar driven, as well as incorporating many other instruments you might find still around and operating after society has collapsed, so strings, percussion and old pianos. I wanted the music to be more sparse than what I had worked on in the past, and also play with key and major and monitor aspects a lot more to convey the various themes of the story.
Starting out I set the parameters:
Should be very slow and atmospheric
Include some dark country vibes
Should be a “shanty town” portion that was busier and more up beat than the exploring cues
Have a more piano driven pieces when in the shanty town
Majority of exploring cues should be in a minor key
Include a single electric instrument, a baritone semi-hollow guitar with P90 pickups
As usual I set out the outline of the story by writing the track names before I start, including a synopsis of the story elements for each track:
Just Another Day At The End of The World
You wake up to another day. Much like yesterday, much like tomorrow.
Life is monotonous, but not completely hopeless
Hitting The Road…
Desolate, lonely, there is not much life here
Not much happens, but there is always lurking danger
We Live In What’s Left
You continue to explore
An encounter with wild dogs leaves you uneasy
Shantytown
You make it to a settlement
As you walk into town you pass people selling their wares
The vibe of the town is much more upbeat, busier and more bustling compared to where you have come from
A Drink Alone With An Old Friend
A piano plays in the corner of this bar
You sit alone and drink, remembering those that are gone
It’s All A Trade In Information, You See
You have been given a task to to retrieve an object from somewhere in town
When you hand over the object you are paid in information, being told of a place, a haven, called the Forest of The Sun
Hitting The Road… Again
You head out of town again, on to another day, but now you have a destination
As you make your way though the wasteland you startle a group of birds
Surprise, You’re On The Menu
You see a car approaching. Men.. bad men
You scramble for cover, but they are on the hunt
You only just manage to escape
The Grove - The Life You Always Dreamed
You explore an old shopping centre
Passing a toy store, even it is stripped to the bone
For some reason the PA plays the melancholic yet broken melody of from a toy piano
We Love What’s Gone
Back on the street You are walking through a street art installation
Staring at the sculptures you are reminded of the world that was, and the beauty it held
The Forest of The Sun
You finally arrive at your destination and are overjoyed at the sanctuary it provides
You are finally able to let your guard down and and live in peace
The Process
As with The Derelict EP, I wanted to create this as much as I could in-the-box using software instruments as much as possible. I took this concept even further this time with the only physical instrument I played being the baritone guitar, the rest, including acoustic guitars, were all software instruments.
I wanted to give myself a time constraint on this project, so I decided I would spend a week dedicated to writing between xmas and new year of 2019, then would spend a little time each week making sure it was complete by the end of February 2020.
So lets break it down.
Guitars
I really wanted to use my PRS SE 227 Baritone Semi-Hollow guitar with P90s as a key instrument on this project. I felt that it encapsulated the vibe of this post apocalyptic setting, and figured I could justify its use within the parameters of using instruments that would be accessible in such a setting by keeping its tones to that which could conceivably be played though a battery powered amp.
Also, I love this guitar and don’t have as many opportunities to use it in other projects so wanted to find a use for it here. It is such a unique instrument having P90 pickups and being both semi-hollow and a baritone instrument that it’s just plain inspiring.
This guitar is tuned to B, so I made the key signature of all the outdoor set tracks (everything except when the character is in Shantytown) as B minor/major.
I also used my Gibson Explorer Baritone guitar with Bare Knuckle Pickups Blackhawk pickups for the heavy rhythm part in Surprise, You’re On The Menu! I had tried using the PRS but the P90s were just not sounding tight enough.
I ended up going with a software instrument for the acoustic guitars, which I detail below. But I did actually have my trusty Fender acoustic by my side the entire time as I would often compose on the guitar and then transcribe it to midi in Pro Tools.
Amp Tones - Guitar
I ran all the electric guitar tones through the Neural DSP Archetype: Plini plugin. Neural’s plugins are the best for my purposes so this was a no brainer. I also wanted to try and use the compressor, drive, reverb and delay from these plugins since they simulate pedals, rather than using standalone DAW plugins to achieve these effects. I was quite happy with the result.
Drums
For this project I decided I didn’t want drums featured too heavily throughout, but instead mostly used for creating tension when an action sequence is happening (We Live In What’s Left, Hitting The Road... Again, and Surprise, You’re On The Menu!), or to add some momentum (Just Another Day At The End Of The World and Shantytown).
I used both Superior Drummer 3.0and EZDrummer 2.0with the Post Rock EZX expansion when adding momentum to a track, and Percussion Symphony Series for the action sequences using bass and tom drums separately.
Software Instruments
As with previous projects I used Native Instruments Komplete for most of the software instruments (although this time I had upgraded to v12) played in with my Komplete Kontrol S49 keyboard.
I knew I wanted to feature a lot of acoustic guitars, and so I decided I wanted to invest in the Session Guitarist Picked Acoustic instrument for Kontact rather than play the parts on guitar myself. This gave me a few advantages:
It would mean I would have greater flexibility when composing as I could change notes and arrangements very quickly without the need to re record the guitar parts
The recorded samples would be much quicker to mix and I would save time in having to capture the recordings, especially important given I didn’t want to book studio time to record any
I wouldn’t need to spend the time perfecting the performances on acoustic guitar, which given a lot was finger picked would be handy as I’m not as proficient in playing in that style.
I used the Session Strings Pro 2 instrument for; bass, cello, viola, and violin. I went with the Eleven preset as this one had a dirty rough sort of sound to it that I thought suited the post apocalyptic setting. While not the first time I have use strings in my composing this is the most advanced I’d gotten with various playing style articulations including Trill, Pizzicato, Staccato, Legato etc.
I felt these instruments worked well as they are focus on on single (or duo) instruments, not an entire symphony’s worth which was really the vibe I was going for, a smaller scale more intimate configuration.
While large parts of this project are set out in the wasteland as it were, there are a collection of tracks that are set in a town; Shantytown, A Drink Alone With An Old Friend, and It’s All A Trade In Information. I wanted to include piano in these tracks as I felt that helped give them a more solid, fixed location feel. For this I used The Gentleman instrument based on the Harsh Upright as a starting point. I didn’t want a super pristine piano, but something that was reminiscent of an old used piano.
There is also a track that takes place in an old abandoned shopping centre, The Grove, that I wanted to include a broken piano in. This was to evoke an abandoned broken down feel, and perhaps hint that there was someone still living there playing these melancholy tones. For this I used Una Corda with a setting called Cotton - Toy Speaker that really gave this rundown broken sound that worked perfectly for this track.
Also in this scene I really wanted to double down on the broken toys from the toyshop so I used some sounds from Kinetic Toys to add to the sonic landscape
I also used a variety of other instruments, Etherial Earth from the Kontact Play Series for background ambience mainly to represent The Forest Of The Sun (or to introduce it as an idea in earlier tracks). For Surprise, You’re On The Menu! I wanted some more industrial sounds to represent the bad guys, so I added some junkyard metal sounds from Damage. Also for this track I included Evolve R2 with a String Torture preset and Prism with a haunting while sound.
Mixing, Mastering & Wrapping It All Up
As always I tracked everything in Pro Tools on a Mac. I use the iZotope plugins for mixing and mastering, Neutron and Ozone Advanced, as I find their layout and workflow really suits me. I also used various reverbs and delays from my collection.
My current studio setup can be found here.
I hope that was of interest to people. If there are any questions hit me up on Twitter @_lukejmusic or if you want to work with me on the soundtrack to your next project shoot me a message via the contact page.