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Free download of soundtrack for "P"
14-May-2005 - The soundtrack to a new film "P" is available for download for free at the following website: www.phii.co.uk.
These are high-quality MP3s which are also surround encoded.
This is the story why:
In February this year, Director Paul Spurrier completed a unique project. He wrote and directed the first ever Thai film "P" (in Thai language) directed by a Westerner. This was a task that took him over three years to research, to learn the language, and to complete.
The film is playing at festivals worldwide, has won awards, and is the only Thai film selected at the prestigious New York Asian Film Festival.
But what perhaps is more interesting is the rather unique approach that was taken with the soundtrack.
Paul, the director had only childhood piano lessons to claim as musical experience, however he had quite set ideas for the film score. He has always said that he considers music to be one of the most important elements of a film, and he wanted a musical score that would be orchestral, using traditional instruments, but with a touch of Thailand. At great length, he investigated Thai composers, Thai orchestras, Thai recording stages, but he realised that to get what he wanted in Thailand would be possible, but was so new that it would be a long and risky task. Also, the average music budget on a Thai film is less than $15,000 !
Nick Elphinstone, a former musician now also based in Thailand, suggested that if Paul had such defined ideas, he should write it himself. He bought Paul a copy of Reason, being the simplest software he could think of, together with an Edirol 2-octave keyboard, and encouraged Paul to just have fun and see if anything resulted. What resulted seven weeks later was 88 minutes of music. In spite of no musical training whatsoever, Paul had produced the multi-part midi for an entire score.
The next stage was to either get this transcribed and performed, or to track it to sampled instruments. Nick and Paul spent a lot of time researching this, and eventually settled for sampled instruments, using a British composer Jack C. Arnold to produce and track with the Vienna Symphonic Library.
The midi was sent to Jack via email from Bangkok, and the separate Logic Sessions were sent back on DVD via Fedex. From there, Tim Beale at Bangkok based Hitso Digital mixed the music in surround, adding the reverb that is so important to make sampled sounds 'real'.
We feel that this has been an extremely interesting experiment, demonstrating a number of things:
1. How new software like Reason can be so intuitive that even non-musicians can produce music.
2. That with modern email technology, geographical distance between collaborators proves no obstacle.
3. That sampled instruments, whilst certainly still no match for the real thing, are coming ever closer.
We think that on the whole this has been a remarkably successful experiment.
Tuk, Asst. Music Supervisor
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