I haven’t really discussed this scene because it was not in my original plan. Originally, I wanted to include the scene right before the magic carpet one (a more romantic scene) for a greater contrast between that and the action scene but it had some male and female dialogue. I wrote about this issue in one of my previous posts, about how I was planning to do some experimenting on recording dialogue with my classmates, but since everyone’s self-isolating it would just be awkward if I do it myself, I believe. My solution ended up being choosing a different scene altogether.
This new scene is the dance the princess has with a bunch of other people (including Aladdin) in the palace. I’ve been working on it all day because of how much more complicated this scene is compared to the chase one. Since it includes dancing, I can’t mess with the tempo of the music I make because, otherwise, the movement will not match up with the sound.
I’m facing some major difficulties trying to make this work. I’m trying to understand how “smart tempo” works but it is very complicated for now and nothing matches up properly. I’ve watched some Youtube tutorials but it’s still not quite clear to me so I’m just gonna keep doing it the tedious way for now (without any time quantize and keeping the tempo as accurately as I can by ear).
In the book I’ve been reading, (Arranging for Strings) I found another useful tip for this project. It mentions some scales that have an Arabic feel to them and I did some more research into the Phrygian dominant. This scale has a very interesting feeling because of that raised third. (I would include an audio of it but, apparently, it’s a premium feature). I’ve gone back quickly to my other scene (the chase) to include a melody in this scale and it definitely adds to the overall feel.
For this scene, though, I will probably use this same scale but change it up somehow so that it’s noticeably different from what I did on the last scene. It’s quite challenging because both are energetic scenes so I’m tempted to copy my own previous style. To get more ideas, I’ll be listening to a greater variety of Arabic (especially Bellydance) and other genres so that I keep that mixture of styles but make it more like something you’d dance to.
I’m trying my best to not use a lot of software instruments but it is really really hard considering the circumstances so I’ll keep discovering other objects I can make sounds with just like I did for the other scene.
I still plan to do a lot more revising on both of these scenes as I move along because I know they’re short scenes so I need to do my best to make high-quality music (to the extent that I can!)
This is a screenshot from the scene I’m currently working on!!
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