Let it Go is a music video cover entirely planned and performed in a student project setting. My tasks were to compose and arrange the song using Logic Pro X as well as helping to record it.

The idea

After completing Mirus, a student colleague of mine – Jascha Hanisch – came to me about an idea of a music video and asked me if I was interested to help her out by covering the audio. The idea was to use a grand piano playing the song “Let it go” by James Bay whilst having a student colleague – Michelle Freundlinger – as singer. After some initial drawbacks in storytelling and unclear story direction, we tackled the song creation by having the most creative freedom – and started recording using the original chords.

The setup

Since our university has both a Grand Piano in the Audimax as well as an Audio Recording Studio, we learned how to use the already existing connection between those rooms in order to record both the singer as well as the player on the piano simultaneously. Specifically, we recorded the piano near-field using the 3:1 rule as well as with two additional mid-field microphones placed to record the impuls reflections of the Audimax.

The recording

As already mentioned, we had to remain the most creative freedom in our recordings which is why we started by recording the whole piece together with the singer in order to give her the abilitiy to get everything out of her voice.

After that was done, I proposed to record the piano in several layers:

• Just chords
• Just melody
• Both chords and melody

This gave me the possibility to fade between the different layers as needed.

Composition / Arrangment

Alongside of that, I started by creating a concept in how to tell the story / emotions using different instruments and playing styles. Unfortunately, it turned out that we wouldn’t be able to record another time in the Audimax which is why – from that point – I had to completely rely on piano synthesizers using the Complete Kontrol and Kontakt 5 library.

Chords

At the beginning of the video, I wanted to highlight the emptiness inside of the male protagonist “Finn” as well as give the song time to establish itself. I achieved this by playing the chords only.

Using this approach, the chords defined the impact of emotion throughout the video – for example louder (and deeper) chords would mean more impact. On the other hand, they also would define type of emotions as in as in 03:40 where a change in chords resembles the emotion of hope.

But since this part of the video would also turn into a part of “Finn”s realisation, the amount of repeating chords would additionally crush down the hope and underline the impact the tragic result of his bad actions.

Melody

On top of the chords, I sometimes expanded the original notes with fillers depending on the emotions carried by the actors – most of the time resembling in happiness or playfullness. Automatically, the lack of those notes would mean the opposite.

Regarding the playfullness, I added a Harp during the animation part of their past to additionally highlight the positive times.

However, I felt like that the original melody itself was already written that it would express sadness which is why I used this approach when highlighting this emotion.

At the turning point of the video, I decided to underline the hidden question, the climax of their broken relationship and therefore a needed action between the couple by just playing the melody part (without chords to underline the emotion that lies in the air) and furthermore, ending with an “unhappy” note (as in 04:18).

As the couple finally communicates and saying goodbye to each other, I used the techniques mentioned above to both articulate the weight of their decision (both of them were in a long relationship and there was no turning back) as well as giving a small sad moment when both their hands released for the last time.

However, even though it might not be seen in the video, I wanted to tell that it still was a happy ending for both of them as the melody would (contrary to the original) have rising notes which get once again a little bit more playfully.

Conclusion

With this project, I got in touch with planning and composing a piece for a music video as well as covering the production process of strongly communicating with the storyboard team when there is no direct approach of either Audio-first or Visuals-first. I also strengthened my knowledge on working with actors as well as finetuning the composition to fit the emotions of the visuals as well as highlighting / showing the untold behind the pictures.

Presentation Event

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Team

• Axel Bauer (Composition, Arrangment, Piano Recording)
• Simon Freiberger (Grand Piano, Audio Recording during filming)
• Michelle Freundlinger (Singer, Story)
• Thomas Förg (Color Correction)
• Jascha Hanisch (Story, Animatic, Character Animation)
• Wolfgang Schwendtbauer (Cut)

Actors

• Nils Thomas as “Finn”
• Vero Eli Schwarz as “Eva”