So we had our developed idea and we were enthusiastic about the project which was great, we had loads of ideas with places we could take the project. I started to reach out to musicians in the University of Lincoln School of Fine and Performing Arts. I contacted Ed Wellman a lecturer of the music department within the school. When presented with our brief and he seemed very interested in our project and mentioned that he was in fact hosting a trip to Nottingham to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra perform Gustav Holsts’ ‘Planets’ and we were invited. This trip provided a very good opportunity to listen closely to the whole of his work with no distractions.

Whilst on this trip i proposed our project to all the other musicians en route to Nottingham with us, and gathered a few people interested in helping out. After this i worked up on a official project proposal to send off to the rest of the musicians to inform and remind them of some details.

Whilst all of this was in development i contacted around 6 computer science lecturers to see who would be interested in helping out with the VR side of the project. I managed to get a meeting with Dr Jussi Holopainen and we discussed my idea briefly. We agreed that it was best that anything VR related would best happen once the music was finished, he expressed that he was concerned with the amount of people on board with the project as it becomes hard to control and motivate a larger amount of people.

Throughout this whole time my job was just to be on top of my emails and influence interest in the project and see who i could get involved. Ed Wellman had agreed to mention our full project proposal in one of his lectures the week after the trip to remind the students of the project. I made it aware that i was going to organise a meeting that week to introduce myself informally to anybody interested so we could further make arrangements for the project and make clear who was able to help with music.

Unfortunately my email did not reach Ed early enough which was my fault; therefore, nobody turned up to the meeting scheduled.

So after all of my collaboration attempts, they failed due to not being quick enough with communicating our proposals. We had to start our project and it was quite late. I came to an executive decision to start some of the music myself at home by using my own mini studio. A MIDI keyboard, microphone, guitar, speakers and interface was enough to at least get the ball rolling.

Ed was kind enough to provide us with a copy of Gustav Holsts’ Planets’ Score which i printed out and started working on the first piece. My hope was that i would be able to get musicians on board to do small recordings of little motifs used by the original score. I would then be able to arrange them in our own original way. This was we could essentially create our own pieces inspired by Gustav Holsts and pay credit to his work.

Unfortunately due to lack of time left i had to crack on with a lot of the pieces myself. I managed to start each of the pieces off by using Holsts’ score and then i tailored the ends to a more abstract approach.

I created pieces from planets Mars and Venus with a little help from Jack to do guitar parts. A purchased Native Instruments virtual instrument called the string ensemble was used for many of the great string sounds which enabled the piece to breathe a bit better rather than using the standard Xpand 2 plugin for strings. Some ambiences have been recorded such as by using a fan. Recording this at a close proximity this makes a nice space shuttle ambience which is placed underneath Mars to add a desired sci-fi effect.

Sibelius has been used to recreate the start of Holst’s Venus score quite closely; however, some instrumentation has been removed and changed to make it transformative. In both Mars and Venus the tracks start with a direct tap into Gustav’s work, this is then torn apart and driven into my own compositions to create a more ambient floaty feel as if you were drifting through space past the planets. The only recorded parts in these pieces are the guitar and ambience; however, the piano was all recorded live with an Midi keyboard and adds a good human touch to the pieces. The majority of the composed sections were also composed live and improvised over current recordings after a gathered feel for what to play.

Jack and I later both hosted a studio session to crack down on the Mercury piece where we recorded a piano and timpani drum with condenser and contact mics to add an interesting flavour to the recordings. Unfortunately Jack hasn’t managed to fit in the timpani to his mix of Mercury, so i have a few short examples of the recordings linked below.

Timpani with Condenser Mic – https://drive.google.com/open?id=1PyIyiP_pZ48VDT2652loOiHKkLRbcwop

Timpani with Contact Mic – https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MirT9ASuUROzwF4PFRrkKySx_H8ESfDe

Using a contact mic was completely experimental but i feel by adding in the contact mic, a nice texture is added to the recording. With a little EQ added to the mid of the contact mic and some compression applied to the condenser recording, you receive a nice touch as you can hear…

…in this combined recording – https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QaCQ09345ofuPli9XJ8zIlCKC2zjt3he

The same technique is used with the piano to add a dampened touch to the low end by using a contact mic at the back of the piano through the wooden panels and a condenser capturing more of the high end of the acoustic piano. With regards to Mercury conforming with Holsts’ score, i dragged out a few motif’s and implemented them into the start of the piece along with the droning E note. The rest of the piece was driven into a simple chord structure surrounding the pieces key signature C Major.

The Neptune piece was completely out of my hands, composed alone by Jack.