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Laser
F/X On-line Newsletter - Special Reports
Urström
at the Stockholm Water Festival
THE
MUSIC
The music for Urström
was especially composed by Örjan Strandberg working in close association
with Jan Kriland and Bo Anderson, the artistic team and the visionaries
behind the saga. The music had to tell a story without words and enhance the
mood of the images in the show. Many months of collaborative work went into
the show design while the soundtrack for this show took about a month to
compose and orchestrate
Download
MP3 File
Örjan graciously
provided LaserFX.com with a CD of the music and has given us permission to
make an MP3 version available to our readers. You can download this file and
use an MP3 player to listen to the full 21 minute Urström soundtrack. There
are mono and stereo versions available for download.
We suggest that you begin the download now while you read
this and the next page as the file is large and will take some time to
download. Listen to the music while reading the descriptions on The
Show page.
NOTE: Due to copyright considerations, Örjan asked us to
"damage" the music so it could not be used in any other
productions. We are therefore making low resolution MP3 versions available
that were purposely recorded at a low level. If you would like to obtain a
high quality copy, please contact orjan@visionandsound.se
Örjan: "For my part, I always
have the ambition to produce for the ears, every bit of what is
being produced for the eyes. Thus, I feel it's the composers
responsibility - besides writing enjoyable music - is to also give
audible body to the creatures, objects and other things appearing in
a show."
"In this particular case we also dealt with
especially three important components in the story; time,
temperature and water. Starting off in the Great Ice Age, I tried to
provide the proper 'cold' scene up till the meeting with the heat,
where the ice melts producing the Yoldia Sea, which will by the
start for the saga about life and human civilization."
"For both the start of the show and the
start of the Palace projections later on, I made an attempt to
musically mirror a sense of religious ritual. Something out of human
reach and control. |
 |
If this could be obtained, I felt we had
the "core" or "soul" to engage people deeply. I always
appreciate it if the (show) concept allows for a strong core, inside the
more or less concrete visuals. This story sure has that."
"The challenge is then of course, to communicate the
message through all the components of the show, to a daily crowd of 35,000
individuals. You know beforehand that the message will be different to
everyone of them, but you should have provided enough LEVELS, so that
everyone will pick up something enjoyable."
Örjan at master control supervising
sound
and time code checks |
"The 'density' of the Urström
music is more than 60,000 tonal events. This means
that there are on average 3,000 notes per minute, or 50 per second,
distributed over 12 categories of instruments plus a lot of special
ones; synthesisers, SFX etc. Some people have the impression that
composing music with computers means less work than with pen and
paper. The time gain really is the performance, where everything I
just wrote is instantly audible! No rehearsals, no expenses for
conductors & musicians... Otherwise the structure of the music
is fully compatible with a traditional orchestral score, only I
address my 'musicians' digitally - but they play the same notes as
their physical counterparts would have." |
Örjan concludes, "In my case, at
least the music should be - apart from narrative - nice to listen to. I
really enjoyed writing the music to this special event."
Quick Links to Report
Pages
(TIP: If you have a slow net connection, open two copies of your browser
and download one page in the background while reading another.)
Stockholm
Water Festival Report
- Introduction
Sweden
and Stockholm -
Background and general information
The
Site - Orientation
to the show area and the challenges it presented
The
Crew - The people
who put it all together
Tech
Specs - The
equipment used in the presentation
The
Music - An
interview with the composer and MP3 file of the soundtrack
Smoke
on the water -
Covering a lake for beam effects
The
Show - A
description with many pictures
Animated
Gifs - Gifs
showing Palace projections and climatic beam effects
Stadshuset
- Stockholm City Hall tour (very large page)
Show
Diary - Day-to-day
coverage of the trials and triumphs
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