Roots

Roots is a senior film I had the pleasure of scoring in the spring of 2020. The film was written and directed by Nicole Barley, and it tells the story of a deaf boy living alone in the woods who finds comfort with the only thing that's ever been able to understand him: a tree. Nicole and I discussed how the feel of the music should reflect the environment of the woods, and that led me to write a score that features guitar and vocals.

PLANNING

The planning stage is the most important part of my process of scoring films. I need to know what emotions need to happen when. For this film, I used OneNote on my iPad to mark out which times I needed which feeling. Nicole gave me her notes in an email, so I went through and annotated it to make sure I didn't miss anything that she wanted in the music.

REFERENCES

Nicole was very clear on the overall sound she wanted to go for with the music. It was extraordinarily helpful because she made me a playlist called "For Composer," and it provided me with lots of direction so I never felt lost while creating the music.

GUITARS

In order to achieve a woodsy feel with the score, Nicole and I agreed that fingerpicking a guitar would set a very nice and natural tone from the beginning. I recorded many layers of fingerpicking with the same pattern, then I panned the guitars with one far to the left, one far to the right, and one right in the middle to create a bigger sound.

VOCALS

Another aspect of the score that adds to the natural feeling is the vocals. This is the first score I've ever used my voice in, and I do it often now because of it. I figured a female voice would compliment the woods pretty well, so I decided to hum the same melody that the guitar was playing and turn it into something pretty, light, and full.