![]() One of the tracks on the album is called The Rescue where a family are stranded at sea in their sailing boat that is taking on water and has lost power. The situation is dire was the storm rages and huge waves batter the boat. All they can do is stay together and hope that their Mayday call got through before the batteries shorted out! To bring a sense of realism to this track, I wanted to include some radio comms from the rescue team. This was trickier than I expected as I’d tried using this on previous tracks but it just didn’t seem to work too well in the context of the music. However, I thought it could work on this track. The first step was to work out what would be said in the radio comms. I wanted this to be as accurate as possible so I did a lot of research on this and as a budding pilot myself and having passed the radio comms exams, I already had a good idea of the terminology used. I also wanted to use accurate coordinates for a notorious stretch of sea off the south coast of Cornwall where this story plays out. Unfortunately, these lengthy co-ordinates took up too much space and didn’t work too well. Perhaps, I’ll use this if I do a narrated version in the future. ![]() In the bridge section of the music, which is called ‘searching’ the rescue helicopter has not been able to find the stricken vessel ‘Quantum Wave’ at the last known coordinates and so the rescue team have to extend the search grid. In this section we also hear a Nimrod fly overhead as these plains used to help out in Search and Rescue operations because of their advanced sensor capabilities. The rescue helicopter, Nimrod and lifeboat will all communicate with the Rescue Coordination Centre for the mission. Anyway, I digress so back to the story. I used just enough radio comms chatter to give the listener the general gist of what is going on, without it getting in the way of the music. Towards the end of this musical section, we hear the pilot say that he has visibility on a flare and that they are on their way. This then leads in to the next section of the music where there is more of a sense of urgency as the helicopter and lifeboat crews race to the site of the flare going off. Once the helicopter reaches the stricken vessel, the pilot positions for the rescue attempt. The winchman is lowered to the boat as the helicopter hovers at a safe height. This is a precision operation as sail boats have a tall mast and lots of cables that can be potentially dangerous to the helicopter and the winchman who is being lowered to the deck. The music takes on a more military feel to capture the essence of the rescue operation. I also bring some more radio comms into the music based on the chatter that goes on between the crew in these situations. The pilot may not be able to see the boat below so he relies on the winchman to provide instructions as to their position over the boat. For example there will be a steady dialogue of commands such as right 2, steady, right 1, height is good, and so on. ![]() To achieve the radio comms, I couldn’t use recordings of rescue crews in real life situations and I wanted the radio comms to be relevant to this story. Therefore, I looked at the software VSTi’s that are available on the market that would help me create the effect. I decided to use iZotope’s Trash2 software plugin as I had used their mixing software, Alloy, which I’m really impressed with. Trash2 is no exception and it gave me the sonic capabilities to take my own comms recording and process them so that they sounded like proper radio communications. After running the voice through Trash, I ran it through Alloy for some further processing with EQ, compression and an exciter! So there we have it. That is how I created the radio comms for The Rescue. You’ll be able to check it out very soon as the album will be released early May.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Tim HardwickI'm a composer, producer and author. I've been creating music for many years now and over the last 8 years, I've been focused on the fusion of electronic, orchestral and acoustic music that tells a story. Archives
April 2018
Categories |