Midi Compositions

In 2004, Simon Wood introduced me to the wonderful (and at times, delightfully frustrating) world of MIDI through his MM2G03 course.  Immense pressure came with the task of composing something new every two weeks, but I learned a tremendous amount.  For one, I previously had no idea I possessed the ability to create original songs.  I will always be grateful to Simon for the passion, humour, and care for us lowly students that he brought to his courses.

I used a Roland XP keyboard combined with Cubase to compose and arrange the following songs:

• Aftermath: My task was to compose a soundtrack for a fabricated, key scene in a movie, thereby developing my ability to create different musical "textures" to reflect various situations.  I wrote the music to fit a scene in which a man arrives at a decimated city and narrowly escapes capture by the destructive party.
  
  
• March of the Ants: I was assigned to compose a suitable soundtrack for a David Suzuki special on some phenomenon of nature.  I chose the noble journey of the Leaf Cutter Ants.
  
  
• Entrance to the Golden City: The assignment for this song was the same as that of "Aftermath," only it was required to be longer.  Read the full story I devised here.

Nightmare (Digital Video)

An ordinary, unfinished basement is transformed into a nightmarish scene with the help of some creepy sounds and lots of Premiere editing.  Oh, and Michael Roellinghoff's dramatic cameo appearance (thanks Maik!).  The purpose of this video, made for Liss Platt's MM2B03 course (Digital Media - Audio and Video), was to collect sounds from the real world and use them to create an atmosphere to match a scene of our devising.

The sounds I used include the blown air from a rotating fan, the song of crickets at night, the low thrum of pipes in the wall, and the odd, airy sound emanating from a locked door somewhere in Togo Salmon Hall (which was creepy in itself).

(The basement isn't that bad, really!  I used to take showers down there, with all the centipedes and spiders.)

All creations ©2006 Susan L. Chin


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