AFP Demo

Here is the demo I wrote for AFP. Jesse Negron is working on the second season of American Fighter Pilot, a reality show about a Navy fighter pilot training school. His original demo used Nine Inch Nails, the first season sounded like Hans Zimmer/Media Ventures, and now he’s leaning towards Evanescence for a music score. I tried to cover all of these styles in this demo.

One of the highlights was arranging a choral piece for Anna to sing. We recorded it in our living room one part at a time. She told me that the part I wrote is nearly unsingable. I’m used to writing for synthesizers, which never have to breathe. She wrote the lyrics by borrowing latin phrases from Bach masses (thank you Google). I also recorded myself playing guitar for the first time — I think the guitar parts add a lot of energy to the piece. Try to picture banking fighter jets and planes launching off of aircraft carriers during the guitar sections.

For the studio geeks out there, 90% of the orchestral and drum sounds are coming from GigaStudio 3, using libraries from Sonic Implants, Larry Seyer, Project SAM and Westgate Studios. The synth parts are mostly Alesis Andromeda, except for Super Jupiter on bass and Spectrasonics Atmosphere on voice pads. Loops are mostly Spectrasonics Stylus, and guitar was recorded direct using Nomad Factory’s Rock Amp Legends plug-in.

Oh yeah, I think I got the gig. 🙂 Wait, did I just commit to writing 10+ hours of music?

AFP Demo (5.7MB)

Comments (8)

  1. Sarah (reply)

    October 8, 2004 at 3:09 pm

    Sounds great! How did you turn Anna into a soprano?

  2. Jeff (reply)

    October 8, 2004 at 3:58 pm

    I asked her what her range was. Then I wrote a part that went a 1/2 step higher and lower than that.

  3. Sarah (reply)

    October 9, 2004 at 1:26 pm

    You did that intentionally??

  4. Jeff (reply)

    October 10, 2004 at 9:07 am

    Nah, it just worked out that way. “She said G, but F# is probably doable…”

  5. Sarah (reply)

    October 10, 2004 at 10:22 am

    Ah, I see.

    How long does it take to write 10+ hours of music? (At least 10 hours, I would suspect.)

  6. Anastasia Laity (reply)

    October 10, 2004 at 6:30 pm

    I did not, however, give you permission for the high G-sharp.

  7. Jeff (reply)

    October 10, 2004 at 7:16 pm

    It depends. If you’re writing Danny Elfman/John Williams/etc. style stuff, 5 minutes of music a day is a good pace. However, the first season of the show reused a lot of music, and looped a bunch of it with guitar solos on top. So I suspect the first two or three will be REALLY hard, but then it will get easier.

  8. Chochie Mel & Uncle Lee (reply)

    October 17, 2004 at 12:15 pm

    WOW!!! Jeff, the music is incredible and Anna’s voice is lovely. We are so
    impressed with what we have heard so far. Congratulations and good luck. Let us know when you have more for us to listen too.

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Published on: 8 October 2004
Posted by: jlaity
Discussion: 8 Comments