The Jaberwocky - A piece by Hetoreyn & Laurence Gien

[hetoreyn]

Hi guys,

Well, my and Laurence have been working on this piece for some time and we thought it would be cool to put it out here for comments. Though it is not quite finished, the vocal track is only a temporary one and needs to be recorded again in higher quaiity and also the mix is not set yet. But that's due to me still spending time in Reverb hell.

However I think you'll find this piece an amusing divertion. The text is from Lewis Carolls poem .. "The Jabberwocky", written in 1872. Laurence is a fellow VSL user .. just having got his Solo strings and Special Edition VI .. before that an Opus 1 user. He is a Baritone opera singer and had said that he always wanted to sing something like this. So we sat together in my tiny studio, in Plön where I live, and just riffed together some melodies until we came up with the germs of this piece.

Since then I've added a lot of orchestration to it and tried to make it dramatic and exciting.

So you can hear the piece here at:

http://www.elvenmusic.com/public/Jab-Mix-3-Alt.mp3

This piece has been mixed using Altiverb .. although I'm not too happy with the IR's that I'm using .. may change that .. or try to add more direct signal .. I figure that's where I'm going wrong. Need to use AV as an Aux send in the future. And I also used Ozone 3 to master this bounce .. which is a new little toy for me. Cos one of the things I've been missing is a good mastering plugin. Ozone seemed to be one of the best.

Also .. here's the text of the poem for those who want to know:


The Jabberwocky - Lewis Caroll (1872)

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.


"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

So have a listen and let us know what you think. Tah very much.

[jamriding]

A very nice change: congrats to Laurence.

I've know the poem for over 40 years and still haven't a clue what it's all about.

That says something about me, I suppose [[;)]]

[hetoreyn]

Any other comments?
[:D]

[Angelo Clematide]

I like it !!!!

.

[William]

At the end I guess you are saying they weren't actually happy for killing the jabberwocky?

Wow, that is really good and crazy. Excellent work hetoreyn, and Laurence is fantastic.

[hetoreyn]

hehe, yeah. Well the feel for our Jabberwocky piece is really down to Laurence. He has a vision in mind for this piece and wants to envision an animated short to go with it. And his idea is that the Jabberwock beast (for our purposes), is more like "Industry" .. than an actual beast per se. So the point is that you can't really kill it.

Well, you can read almost anything into pieces like this. Hopefully at some point we'll be able to show you all the vision for Jabberwocky as well as the music. But we've had a lot of fun doing it. And it's been nice to write a piece where we are just making it up as we go. Laurence sings something .. then asks me what I think .. and then I make a suggestion .. and play the keyboard a little to suggest some melody .. and so on. And it's really been fun to do that.

The actiony bit near the end was just me really going for it and having a blast at creating some drama. Also the "1, 2, 1, 2, and through, and through!" whisper is my voice [:D] .. Was drawing on Jerry Goldsmiths vocal technique from "The omen" which I really love.

It is a crazy piece but certainly we've had a blast thus far. Now we just need to finish it.

[Beat Kaufmann]

Hello Hetoreyn
Nice to hear the voice of my dear friend Laurence who is somewhere in Süd Tirol at the
moment I believe.
You did a good mix > Laurence never has to fight against the orchestra but nevertheless it shows power at any time.

As you noticed perhaps I like more the lovely melodies - because I'm an oldie? 48? So some parts of this piece sound a bit too "progressiv" in my ears but I know it is on Laurence's current line [:D] ( this is not a criticism!)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By the way: I have sent twice a mail "Drizzt theme-Mix" to you, but you didn't confirm both of them. So I ask here: Have you got them?

Have a nice weekend.
Beat

[hetoreyn]

Hey Beat. Glad you liked our little project. Yeah Laurence was forever prodding me that the Vocal must be clear [[:P]] .. however I do agree with this so there was never a problem of trying to match both.

I'm afraid that I haven't receieved your Drizzt posts. Which is interesting because I was going to ask you how that was going on. [[:P]]

I'm not sure why my e-mail system would be turning it away .. perhaps the file is too big. So that's a bugger. We'll have to figure that one out. But it's good to know that it's done. [:D] Look forward to hearing it.

[JBacal]

This is great!! Loved it!

The creepy, psychotic, dramatic feel vaguely reminded me of both Britten's Peter Grimes and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.

It sounds near final to me but please post the finished work when you're done.

Best,
Jay

[hetoreyn]

Glad you liked it too Jay.

Going to hopefully have this polished up soon. I have finally got a good reverb mix that uses a mixture of space designer and AV .. although the AV is only a little .. but it works. I'll be applying this to the Jabberwocky .. and then we get the vocal redone it should rock.