The Gear I Use To Compose Music For The Happy Tree Friends

I’d like to explain a little bit more about the gear that I use – and I mean the instruments and software I actually use (though I’m always in the market for another Music Maker XT4 if you can find me one). I’m including some technical music and technical pro-audio information, in case anyone is interested.

One of my most important tools is my metronome. Since the music accompanies whatever action is on screen, the timing of the music is critical. When I compose for the Happy Tree Friends, I isolate one small section of video where the music will remain the same – it could be a 10 second portion or less, or more. I watch the video while playing a keyboard-controller-piano-thing that’s in front of my computer monitor. I either play along with the picture, or more likely hum along with what’s happening. It's probably not too pretty to watch. Once I hum a theme or decide on a feel for that section, I check what I’m humming against the metronome, and find the closest tempo in the audio software that I’m using. Very often, my music will need to adapt slightly slower or faster, and the actual metronome marking will be something like 123.45 bpm rather than 120 bpm. Thankfully, I can use the audio software to help me line up the music to picture. In the old days, I’m told that composers had to understand math and even actually cut and splice the recording tape they were using. I'll consider myself lucky that I didn't have to hone those skills!

So if you really want to geek out: for audio software, I’m currently composing in DP; and recording audio into ProTools HD. There are many other great pieces of software out there - these happen to be the ones I use right now.

Here is a partial list of some of the sounds I use. I plan to talk about orchestration and choosing instruments in a separate post. I use a bunch of current sound libraries for orchestral, jazz, world, drum and piano sounds, including Vienna Symphonic, Sonic Implants, East West, Garritan, and a handful of others.

I’m excited and generally inspired to have some great audio software and wonderful sound libraries to use with them. But those great tools are merely that – tools to help me compose. The actual composition happens with me sitting at the piano, or sometimes the “piano”. My goal is always to be so proficient with the tools that I’m working with, that the technology will “get out of the way”. It’s tempting to get lost in computer-land, sifting through sound libraries, or exploring the intricacies of software plug-ins, but when I’m composing, my focus needs to be on making actual music. Of course, that doesn’t mean that someone necessarily needs all (or any of) this technology to create great stuff. I’ve heard some wonderful music made on some pretty primitive homemade instruments.