hen I hear stories like Pieter Bourke’s it restores my faith in the world a little. Pieter’s music is sparse, dark, painstakingly well produced, and obviously filmic in its quality, but it’s still Wa brave Hollywood director that hands over the reins of a soundtrack to a relatively unknown composer from Melbourne. But it happened. Pieter Bourke is well known in the ambient fraternity for his project, Soma. His pairing with ex Dead Can Dance vocalist, Lisa Gerrard, led to the moody, and critically acclaimed, Duality album. Then Hollywood heavyweight, Michael Mann, got on the phone asking them to work on his film, The Insider. A Golden Globe nomination followed. Not bad work for a man who only now is deciding that he better trade in his Atari for something that can run Cubase VST. Christopher Holder: So how did the gig for The Insider eventuate? Pieter Bourke: It mainly came about through the Duality album which Lisa and I recorded in 1997. Also, Lisa had worked with Michael Mann when she contributed to the soundtrack for the film, Heat. So there was already a connection there. He approached us to license two pieces off Duality, because at that stage he had Graeme Revell working on the soundscore. Lisa and I had a meeting with Michael in Los Angeles where he gave us a detailed presenta- tion on the film and a copy of the script. When Score a major Hollywood feature film in a studio we returned to Australia we began writing, and based around a Mackie 8-bus, an Akai sampler and initially sent Michael a DAT tape with seven or eight cues which were not synced to any image an Atari running Cubase – and garner a Golden at that stage. He really loved what he heard, so he started sending videos of certain scenes for Globe nomination in the process? Christopher Holder us to work to. After a couple of months work it became obvious that we were becoming the finds out from Pieter Bourke that, yes, it can be done. major composers on the film. So eventually he asked us to relocate to LA to complete the project. CH: In the early stages, I imagine it wasn’t easy doing the work in Melbourne and com- municating across the Pacific. PB: No. But I think the fact that we were initially writing in Lisa’s home studio in Australia without any images was a good thing. A number of main themes were actually developed in that way – the music could ‘breathe’ without being restricted to any image. Once we started receiving video tapes and had everything synced via SMPTE code we developed a system for sending our music ideas to the production company in LA for appraisal and/or approval by Michael PB: Our main sound sources for the project were our Mann. Lisa and I would make a new video tape that Akai samplers. We have a huge library of sounds that we combined the image and dialogue from the original tape know really well which is essential when composing with our musical cue. This would be sent, along with a under a tight schedule. Most of my playing duties were stereo DAT mix of the cue to LA. Once a cue had been on keyboard, dealing with samples. I’m originally a per- approved we would submix it over 16 tracks on our two cussionist, but these days my hands don’t tend to touch DA88 digital multitrackers. We used a left/centre/right the skins much – it’s just faster with the samplers. For the panning configuration and kept to this set-up for every project we had my Akai 3200XL, and Lisa bought an Akai cue. Curt Sobel, the music supervisor, would receive the S6000. two DA88 tapes and transfer them to his Sonic Solutions CH: Getting a good vocal recording would have been system. critical, what did you use on Lisa’s vocal? CH: How did you sync up those tapes which got sent to PB: Lisa had been using a Neumann U87 for many years, you from The States? but for The Insider she switched to a Microtech Gefell PB: Because the tapes we received from the production valve mic. Lisa’s recently bought an Avalon mic preamp, company were in NTSC format we needed a NTSC but for The Insider we had a Bellari mic pre. Lisa has such Blackburst generator to provide a master video sync. The a great voice, my main concern was ensuring that when SMPTE sync code came directly off one audio channel inspiration hit I had all the gear purring away to capture of the video tape we received, and was fed into the the performance. DA88s and then through to the Opcode Midi/SMPTE CH: Was all the recording done from your studio or patchbay for Cubase to sync up. were there other sessions? CH: How was the LA relocation organised? PB: There were some orchestral sessions done in LA. PB: It became apparent that we needed to have hands-on That was my first experience with a real orchestra, and I interaction with the production team, so a house was was pleased with the result. It was great because much of rented for us so that we could continue working in our my music is based on a lot of drones – held string sounds own space while still being accessible. They rented or and the like. Sampled drones are great, but just to have bought all the gear and Lisa’s husband, Jacek, had it all real strings, even if they’re just holding a drone, makes it set up, synced and ready. By that stage things were getting much more interesting to the ear, because the harmonics a bit tight, so it was a case of: fly in, get off the plane and are always changing. All the orchestral pieces translated get stuck into the work. really well. CH: So was it a purpose built studio? Before an orchestral session I’d prepare a DA88 PB: It was a house in LA, in a nice part of town called backing tape which had a stereo mix of our ‘sampled’ Pacific Palisades. We were quite close to Michael’s base orchestral arrangement and another stereo mix of any of operations, so he would pop in of an evening to give other music elements. So the orchestral overdubs were us feedback on the music we’d done during the day. ‘synced’ to that DA88 backing tape. The SMPTE code CH: So what sort of gear did they get together for you? kept everything locked together, so that I could take the PB: We wanted a similar set-up to what we had in Lisa’s orchestral tapes back to our studio and they would be in studio. We got them to hire in a Korg O1/W, which I used sync with our Midi tracks. for many years and have loads of stock sounds for. They CH: And the orchestral recording worked as a straight hired a TC M5000 mainframe effects unit with two replacement for the sampled original? engines in it. That’s our main reverb, we usually use one PB: Sometimes we would do a blend, using the samples engine for vocals, the other engine for some instrument and the real recording, which worked really well. reverb. We had a couple of Tascam DA88 DTRS CH: Why do that? machines – since then we’ve moved to Cubase VST for PB: It just worked when we tried it. I didn’t push the our recording, which would have been great at the time samples up too high, and they just seemed to fill it out and for moving parts around etc. There was a Mackie 8-bus give it a thickness. When you took the samples away it was with a 24-channel expander section and the Mackie still nice but often we’d prefer it with the samples blended Ultramix automation. The automation became indispens- in. We do a lot of work on our string sounds to tailor them able for locking things in with video. We didn’t have the flexibility to move parts around on the DA88s, so we used the automation a lot to create the arrangements. We used an Opcode 128X as our main sync box, which locked the video to the DA88s, and the Mackie automation. CH: But you used more than the 01/W for sound creation? 41 BLACK BUTTA 2 wicked sequel-dope beatz, hip hop and R & B......... CD AUDIO $149.95 BIG BEAT 1300 of the fattest big beats, loops & samples. Just get it!...... CD AUDIO $149.95 and get them as articulate as possible, which meant they blended with the orchestral recording quite well. CH: What sort of work would you do on your string samples? HIP HOP MASTER PB: A lot of work with the envelopes. Rather than just having one patch that the superb hip hop flavours, freshest material..... whole piece is played through I usually separate all the lines out onto separate Midi CD AUDIO $149.95 channels. I give the lines a separate program number, sometimes I’ll even separate out individual notes and give them a separate attack or I’ll use velocities to vary modulation, which helps to achieve a more varied string section. Otherwise, if it’s just a straight patch, it sounds very blocky. So there’s a lot of tweaking gone on, even though the pieces are very minimal and it sounds like there’s not much happening, there’s a lot of tweaking to get it to sound organic.