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Advice for composing around narration?

dsblais

Active Member
Hello. Within the orchestral instruments, what knowledge and earned wisdom have people picked up on compositions to be played during narration? For example, would it be prudent to avoid prominent melodic lines concurrent with the narration? Thank you very much for whatever insights you might share.
 
Some random things:

1. Consider carving out some space in the center of your mix, where the narration exists.

2. Dip the 2kHz-2.5kHz range by a couple dB (general rule, make narrators will be present a bit lower)

3. Use stereo widener/delay to spread your mix out (kinda related to #1)

4. And yes, a thinner arrangement helps too
 
You could watch some of the BBC nature programmes narrated by David Attenborough. Those are very good composers and the shows are interesting as well (little bonus).

I used to worry a lot about interfering with dialogue -- no longer. The dubbing mixers can work with (nearly) anything. It's SFX (explosions) you really have to think over.
 
I would not necessarily limit this to instruments only. Here are a few of my thoughts:

1) Yes, some instruments play in a "cash register" this is close to the human voice and therefore, might create problems underneath dialogue. I'd try to not use too many instruments which have their best register in the octave starting from middle C as this is the range where the human voice is very present. However, this doesn't mean that you cannot write for these instruments underneath dialogue. The clarinet, for example, works perfectly in that register but it's kind of close to the frequencies of the human voice. And therefore, here's number 2.

2) Movement! If you want to occupy a similar frequency space between the human voice and an instrument, regard the instrument as a counterpart voice to the protagonist. Write in between the sentences and create a little overlap between those two voices when they call for attention from the listener. Or even have only little movement at all. The less your melody moves, the less it will compete with dialogue.

3) Melody complexity. Simple lines like scale tone movement tend to work better in this context. Generally, I refer to writing small adjacent intervals. In those moments where you have pauses in the human voices, go for bigger leaps and let the instrument take over the attention for a second.

4) Register. The easiest thing is to stay out of the register of the human voice and control your dynamics. Write your lines below that octave starting from middle C or above it. Either way, make sure that you don't step into the extreme registers like VERY low or VERY high as these also call for attention. Often times, these registers are used for effects like growls, runs, squeezes, etc. ... this might be distracting.

5) Changes in color. I'd be careful with bringing in different instruments and changing the color as this will be noticed by the audience. As long as the story doesn't call for a change in color, don't change it because it will confuse the listener. However, on the other hand, this is very powerful to create "musical paragraphs" to help tell the story. This concept also works beautifully with occupying different registers.

I hope that helps! Go for it! :D
 
All great advice above. Also, if the edit is locked (or more-or-less locked), just compose around the narration. That's what I used to do. This sometimes doesn't work because directors/producers want to keep fiddling around the with edit until the end. It rarely improves anything, and makes the music/picture relationship worse, IMO. I think locked picture + post scoring worked better - commit (or mostly commit) to an edit and let the composer do their thing!
 
Thank you very much to all four of you for your varied and helpful responses to my question! I am out of my element with this and really appreciate your experience and insights. Thanks again!
 
I hear all these ideas -- about register etc. -- and I don't exactly disagree; in fact, they are good suggestions.

However, it's 10x more important to write compelling music than to get too tangled up with all this other stuff. I don't mean to minimize the craft, but the main thing is to create "cool stuff" for lack of a better expression.

So, don't write fff French Horns if somebody's whispering, watch out for levels of solo woodwinds (especially clarinet and cor anglais -- English Horn) against dialogue -- mix them a lot lower than "normal."

Other than that, just write good music and forget worrying too much.
 
When I write for a HEAVY dialog project I approach it as I would arranging for a vocal song. To the director that VO is KING. Want to get your mix barely audible in the final dub? - one only needs to 'forget' the realities of 'supporting' that 'vocal track'. Make your 'arrangement' cool, interesting for sure - but continue to remind yourself you have to ALWAYS support that 'lead vocal' and NEVER EVER step on it. A few counterpoint elements at just the right time (pause in VO/SFX) and the Director will 'know' you know his/her VO is KING. :) Which hopefully leads to a call on the next project for him/her.
 
When I was programming music for TV, I would resist the temptation to mute the dialog when writing. I know that seems obvious, but it's easy to want to write with music soloed all the time!
 
My 'rules of thumb' are these:

If the narration is low, compose high. (and vice versa)
If the narration is short cyllables in quick succession, compose in long notes.
Follow the speaker's volume, but don't overrule it.
Find the narrator's rhythem of speech and use it.
The narrator is the important part, not the music. The music is the side-kick.
 
Just to clarify your question; Do you mean

A) Writing for film/TV etc...etc, where you have the dialogue and composing so it does not interfere (and ideally adds something)

or

B) Peter and the Wolf style work where the there is an actual narrator and the Orchestra has to navigate the live narration.

They are different to each other.

Hello, Doug, and thank you for your question. It's for a game, particularly cinematic sequences, and one of the difficulties I'm having is imprecise cues to match the VO with the music. Some parts I can just compose around the narrated VO, but others need to allow for game dialogue that is not able to be synchronized precisely with the music. So, it's actually a bit of both. Thanks again.
 
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