Scoring Homer’s Odyssey — New, Updated Full Orchestral Concert Suite
As a performing musician, I’ve been getting back into composing again. I posted an earlier version here a couple of months ago, which was essentially the Logic Pro project itself. And thank you for all of the supportive comments and the previous discussions! Since then, I’ve made quite a lot of progress on the larger work for symphony orchestra. Plus, I'm almost finished with a behind-the-scenes video looking at the compositional approach in more detail, as well as showing how I’ve used the orchestral libraries in Logic to try to make the orchestral mock-up sound as realistic as possible.
As background, my passion for the Homeric epics was re-ignited by the trailers for the Odyssey film. But my project is inspired by Homer’s original Odyssey, and not a rescore of the current movie or previous motion pictures. I’ve been working through the epic poem, and one of the most interesting challenges has been deciding what not to score, and also where the same thematic material can represent different moments in the story. The Peril theme, for example, can apply to several very different episodes without needing a completely new musical idea every time. For many reasons, Odysseus does seem to end up in some ridiculously dramatic and dangerous situations a lot!
The suite here showcases four main themes from the larger work tied together in various ways by the same basic tonic–dominant interval: 1) the Wanderer (Odysseus trying to get home), 2) Ithaka, 3) Longing/Family, and 4) Peril.
The majority of the orchestral patches are EastWest Hollywood Orchestra Opus Edition; the solo violin is me. A full list of instrument plug-ins is at the end of the video. A friend also created some images that I’ve used as backdrops during the Ithaka and Peril themes, and you can see me playing the violin during the Longing Theme.
Anyway, this is where the project has got to since I last shared it here: interested to hear your comments and what you folks think for discussion!