My Composing Process: Omnia Podcast - Democracy and Decision 2024

Dear Readers,

It has been over seven months since I last wrote a blog entry. I have since relocated to Los Angeles with the goal of networking further in the entertainment industry. Over the last few months, I have worked on a number of exciting scoring projects. These include finalizing the score for Dennis Kim’s next animated short film, scoring a terrific short that was directed/written by Lucy and Max Nebeker and scoring a sequence in a Minecraft mod.

During this time, I also composed the main theme for the terrific University of Pennsylvania School of Arts & Sciences Omnia podcast series “Democracy and Decision 2024” (you can listen to the podcast here).

I got to play a lot of guitar on this one. Let’s dive into it.

Revisiting A Theme

In 2022, I was hired to score a podcast episode for Omnia about the 2022 Midterm election. You can listen to the episode here and you can listen to the main theme below:

For this theme, my goal was to create a melody with driving momentum and some tension. The first four bars look like this:

We begin with a C major chord. A nice, open sound. In the second measure, I used the fourth note in the C major scale (F) as a jumping off point to a new chord (Db major). The melody jumps up a full octave, in a somewhat jarring way. That high G is actually the raised fourth in the Db major scale, creating tension and dissonance. The line resolves down to C again (which was the first note in the melody), but what was once a calm note is now the major 7th note. The chord progression (ascending a half step) plus the key signature changes (5/4 to 6/4) plus the re-contextualization of the C note all make the beginning of this theme jarring and yet lyrical

In the B section of the theme we have now arrived in a different key (basically Bb major). We modulated (i.e. changed keys) by utilizing the Db chord. If you picture a Db (Db-F-Ab), you can essentially move the Db up to D and the Ab up to Bb and you have a Bb major chord. In this second part of the theme, we are playing with the I chord (Bb) the IV chord (Eb) and the V chord (F). But in the fifth measure, it is turned on a dime, changing from F major to F minor, then using the minor IV (Gm) to arrive at the major II of Bb major: C (which is actually the note we started the melody with!). We go through this same progression again (with added harmonies) before arriving at the major III of Bb, D major. How did this happen? Well in the first part G minor acted as the minor V of C major. In the second part, G minor acted as the minor IV of D (or we traveled to the major V of G minor).

So, all that music theory aside, the point of all this is that this theme feels off kilter because it is. It’s constantly changing the harmonic center. It changes keys, turns major chords to minor chords, doesn’t follow the same chord progression pattern and throws the listener into different musical spaces without warning. This is further shown by the third and final part of the piece:

We modulate yet again to Eb. The A natural first note is the raised fourth of Eb (just like the G natural was the raised fourth of Db). We once again hit the major 7th note (in this case D) and then the whole melody shifts down to D major.

As a counter melody, we have a dissonant F# (which is the third of Eb minor) arriving to the party. This creates a lovely clash with the Eb major chord, but it is just a passing note so it doesn’t sound too out of the ordinary. In the Midterm Elections theme, this counter melody is played by two flutes.

For the 2022 podcast, the orchestration was piano heavy with flutes (performed live by me), some metal drums from Logic’s sound library, pizzicato cello, banjo and guitar (performed live by me) and a few other elements. But the piano was the star.

Now let’s jump forward two years.

Recontextualizing and Reimagining A Theme

This summer I was approached to compose the main theme for a new Omnia podcast titled “Democracy and Decision 2024”. The podcast “examines the state of U.S. democracy in the context of the upcoming presidential election. Between now and just after Election Day, we’ll take on topics like the myths and realities of political polarization, how media is shaping our understanding of the issues and candidates, and how state voting laws have changed.”

For this podcast, producer/editor Alex Schien wanted me to use the same theme from the 2022 Midterms podcast but to adjust the orchestration. He suggested more acoustic guitar to give it an intimate and live feel. I wholeheartedly agreed and got to work on the recomposition.

I dove back into the old Logic file and used the previous composition as a framework to work in. I did not change the tempo or time signatures. The 2024 theme matches up perfectly with the 2022 theme (though I did add a longer intro for the 2024 version).

To get the acoustic sound, I focused on filling the sound scape with live acoustic guitars and live banjo. I also added in some terrific Spitfire LABS virtual instruments like the mandolin and autoharp and a powerful bass from Logic. You can listen to the isolated track below.

The acoustic section of the score, using a lot of stacked guitar recordings and also some virtual instruments

As you can hear, the structure of the 2022 theme is intact, but just with guitars and other strummed instruments replacing the piano and flutes. The hardest part of this was learning how to play the chords Eb and Bb on the guitar and playing them in time with the music. It was a good learning experience and also broadened my knowledge of guitar playing as a whole. I also enjoyed doubling a melodic line with a part playing an octave lower to really add weight to the guitar melody. As you can see by the screenshot above, there are a number of live guitar recordings. I got creative with some of the editing to perfect a few of the live takes. I also used some live tracks from the 2022 podcast theme: namely the banjo melody and the dulcimer strums. I especially love how the large, long Autoharp chords add heft to the Eb and D chords at the end

Built around this acoustic center were a variety of other instruments. A few instruments carried over from the previous theme: Spitfire LABS Gaelic Voices and Arctic String Swells. I actually didn’t edit them at all, they are the same exact performance. I did add a few more synths from the Spitfire LABS Cassette Synth and Obselete Machines libraries to fill out the big chords at the end, as well as the ethereal chords during the opening.

One of the main additions to this version of the theme were the strings. I created a much larger sounding string orchestra (using the Spitfire Studio Strings library). You can hear the isolated track below:

As you can hear, the spiccato and pizzicato strings add so much energy and momentum to the piece. Below you can see how I programmed the MIDI info for all of the string samples.

In addition to all of these new elements, I added a much more robust percussion section. We have multiple cymbals, hi-hats, a shaker, two sets of toms, and sticks. At Alex’s suggestion, I also incorporated a metal rhythmic element that harkens back to the first season of In These Times. For this piece, I once again used my Metallic Metals sound-kit from my score for Charlie Chaplin’s “The Immigrant” and created a driving rhythm that you can listen to isolated (with sticks, from the 2022 theme) below:

As you can see, the rhythm was made simply by placing a lot of tiny recordings of metal objects together to form what sounds like a live performance.

Thoughts and Reflections

It was a wonderful experience returning back to this melody after two years. When I first composed it, I felt like it was one of the more compact and interesting pieces that I’d written up to that point. This was partly due to the interesting modulation that we have discussed in this blog entry. I also just enjoyed the overall arc of the piece and felt like it showed my composition skills off fairly well. Two years on, I am still proud of that piece, and it was a lot of fun reimagining it for an acoustic guitar ensemble accompanied by a string ensemble, percussion section and lots of electric piano things. This just goes to show the power of orchestration.

Definitely take a listen to the terrific podcast. Episode 5 comes out on Election Day.

And be sure to vote!

Your’s Musically,

Nicholas

Listen To The Podcast Here