Archive 81 Trailer Music Walkthrough

In this episode I show you how I composed the track ‘Monument’ that was featured in the trailer for the Netflix show, Archive 81.

This track was one of the ten tracks written for Elephant Music’s album, Throat 4.

The focus of this album was to bring throat singing to the fore and let vocals replace the cello that had become so popular.

I sketched out the entire album using only my voice and then slowly replaced those parts with other instruments and we even got a throat singer in to really hammer home that sound.

I really enjoyed writing this album as it felt so fresh and exciting.

How I build tension in the Throat albums

So many of my Throat tracks started with me sketching the whole idea with my voice. It’s fast, it’s free, and nobody else has your voice, which makes it a ready-made signature sound. Breaths, clicks, groans and guttural noises don’t sound like much on their own, but put them in a track with some reverb and they become drones, percussion and atmosphere. I like recording those sounds close and dry, then sending them into a big space like a church, so the filthy close noises play against a huge tail.

With small ensembles, which is how I’ve always worked on the Throat series, I prefer to bring the musicians in while I’m still writing, rather than finishing a mock-up and then replacing it. Hearing the live parts changes how the track develops. If you’re not used to writing for an instrument, ask the player lots of questions about what it can do.

The tension itself comes from the build, and the build comes from the pulse. A lot of these tracks rest on something very simple, like a pitch played on my cello layered with an upright bass. Around that I add ambience, which gives a sense of scale and a landscape for everything else to sit on. Then I tell the listener something is coming: I double the pace of the rhythm, increase the frequency of the notes, layer more rhythms and textures, and let dissonance swell underneath. One of my favourite tricks is to mute the cello strings and grind on them for a gritty rhythmic effect.

At the climax, chuck everything at it. It should feel like too much, because that’s what stress feels like.

If you want to hear more of this world, the Syndrome walkthrough breaks down my track from Throat 2, and TMCP 014: Template Creation For Sound Design Cues covers how I gather sounds for organic sound design cues like these. My Trailer Music Essentials course goes through building tension in a track like this step by step.

Happy composing!Rich