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Falcon, by Guillaume Roussel

Author andre

This is by far the best composed trailer in the electronic genre I've heard for many years. I was immediately blown away. Maybe it's just me, but it reminds me of the best moments in early electronic music around 1982-1990 and still sounds very current. Could be a movie theme. This guy really knows how to build a majestic, hymnic atmosphere - kudos!

The original video ad is no longer online. The version on SoundCloud sounds a bit muffled but still gets the thing across:

Guess what. Now I am totally teased to do something similar with Synfire ;-) If I only had the time.

As for the Falcon, I can see it certainly is a powerful instrument. Hadn't the time to test it yet, though. So please don't take this as an endorsement.

Comments

Fri, 2015-11-13 - 22:11 Permalink

As we are at it: Here's is a real falcon.

At the pool of a vacation home, 10:00 AM at 100°F in the Anza-Borrego Desert, early October. I instantly thought of it when listening to the trailer. 

Sat, 2015-11-14 - 00:30 Permalink

The composer, Guillaume Roussel, is a true pro and no stranger to the movie industry:

(https://itunes.apple.com/artist/guillaume-roussel/id561790961)

I'm sure we will hear more from him.

You know what makes this composition great? Counterpoint. No chords, just melodies. I'm pretty sure he started out with the lead melody (as many film composers seem to do), added the bass and then, maybe (maybe not), started thinking about chords. Note however, that not thinking about chords still means thinking about harmonic function, of which there is plenty in this theme. And it is evident that he was aware of them (he has formal music training for sure).

I can't stop thinking about how to resemble this "chords come last" workflow in Synfire. In Synfire, you usually start out with chords, which is not a requirement at all. Come up with a melody, a theme. Add counterpoint lines. Harmonize that. Tempo change and odd metrics/syncopation is heavily used in the trailer. Up to the point where you're totally lost and hang on to the melody to guide you -- a perfect trick to induce an uplifting, otherworldly feel.

There's so much in this 1 minute to learn from. If anyone is interested ...