The Making of Warriors of Gor - Music

Making the Music for the Parade of Steel - "Warriors of Gor"

Tal.  I have always felt it useful for men to enjoy dance as much as kajirae.  The purpose is more people to spend time together crafting or viewing with appreciation the deep arts of Gorean Dance.  It seems we have kajirae (and some kajiri) covered, so we now seek to inspire Free Men.

I had already composed a dance for men - the "Formation Drill."   But after moving to a new (and colder) city, I was inspired by the tall mountain cliffs - as was my tarn.   It offered a perfect setting for creating of our next dance for men.

We will share (in two parts) how the dance was made.  It took about 6 hours, but that is after 2 years of shopping and learning.   My goal is to compose custom music for dance works.  This offers several benefits.

1) It's original royalty free work (with licensed samples, if any), so would not have our machinima recordings risk being taken down by the Priest Kings.

2) We can customize all aspects of the music for the dance to fit the music, and visa versa.

I do not seek perfection in melody or harmony.  This is fortunate, because as a musician I lack many skills of the seasoned performer.  However, I can strike spear to shield as well as any Warrior.

Find the Sounds

 When you have the right sounds, the music leaps off the page.  As I searched for instruments of my favorite (and diverse) types, I hungered to put the strongest of the strong together in a composition.   So much so, that my first attempt ran too long for my marching warriors legs to keep up (4 minutes).  I took my knife to the score, and an now pleased with the resulting 3 minutes.    It saddened me to watch many of my beloved horn cries to fall silent to the floor, but this piece is a backdrop for what you will see - a band of Gorean Warriors marching - a Parade of Steel.  Let the drum call out their footfalls, and foes flee at the cry of their voices.

I chose
  • A Taiko drum - for a Tarn drum - to strike the cadence of our march.  It was 'instrumental' in that the rythms were pre memorized - all I had to do was to point a finger at each drummer. This instrument (Action Strikes), like all from Native Instruments was a joy to use due to its utter simplicity.
  • A voice of the warriors, signing in praise of honor, Home Stone, and Gor.   Their words were crafted with the 'Word Builder' feature found in the Symphonic Choir of East West Sound's virtual instrument.  The words are spelled roughly phonetically.
    "Warriors of Gor,  We fight for Callera.
    Warriors of Gor, We fight for Honor.
    Hear our Steel Ring, Warriors of Gor."
  •  The formation does not restrict it's voice to song.  It shouts warnings to ally and foe alike, using the Olympus effects virtual instrument.  It is often difficult to install, configure, and find virtual instruments.  This has the advantage of being per-packaged for easy integration..
  • Authentic War Horns from Eduardo Tarilonte's ERA plug in can be heard ringing from our cliffs.   All of Eduardo's virtual instruments are amazing and inspiring.  It is no surprise as he is also a roleplayer.   This selection samples authentic war horns as used by the Romans in Celtic lands.
  • And you will hear not just our voice, but also a taste of our metal, as we ring the alarm by striking weapon to shield.
All of these sounds were assembled in Ableton Live, then Exported to a high quality wave file, then mashed to a sufficient quality MP3 file.  The result was about 3 minutes, close the target timing for my choreographed movers and animations.   We will discuss such visual aspects in our next post (January).