This is the music that inspired the \"Trance Noir\" name, though I'm not sure I nailed the \"Trance\" part so well. Immediately following the \"Without Heroes\" videos I explored other videos to create soundtracks for, and used it as an opportunity to dive into watching some classic films. Some of these tracks are among my favorites, some make me cringe a little, but I think all of them suitably fit the films they are set to. I put a lot of work into remastering all of these tracks as they were all a bit rough (and many had clipping issues, as \"mastering\" of any acceptable sort wasn't something I had figured out at the time). Feedback always welcome!
About the music: My method for creating tracks didn't change much in this collection, though I found a lot more samples that were free to use and abuse. They are often sliced up and reassembled using Audacity, then brought into ACID Music Studio to transpose, arrange, and add audio FX. The final mastering was done much later, after a lot of trial and error, in Reaper using a bunch of freeware plugins.
About the video: Included films in this work are all in the public domain and were selected for having cool scenes that I could imagine a certain sound for. Movies were first watched (mostly, some of these I would not consider \"classics\" but had scenes that were great), then sliced down to about 10-15 minutes of usable scenes often rearranged to tell a story.
Mesmer - White Zombie (1932)
Considered the first full-length zombie film, I chose to focus on only the opening act for the track and remains one of my favorites, even if its a little uneven I think it has some great pacing.
Of The Night - The Devil Bat (1940)
Although not made at the same time as Mesmer, this is another film starring Bela Lugosi and focuses on only the first act, as I found the rest of it extremely dull. The mad scientist vibe is exactly what I was looking for though.
The Doctor - Shock (1946)
Vincent Price plays a role that would end up defining a lot of his future career here, though it's hard to tell if the film was appreciated on initial release. It's sometimes classified as Film Noir nowadays but was solidly labelled horror originally. Included in the sounds is a beating heart merged with a bass drum and layered with distortion.
Dusty Road - The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
Considered the first mainstream Film Noir movie, the villain takes his two victims through hell and is based on a true story. I gave this track more of an industrial feel and really liked the combination with the spacey guitar lead, though the composition always felt a bit off.
Nightwalker - He Walked By Night (1948)
A great Noir film with so many excellent scenes I found it difficult to cut down for the track. I opted to tell a very abridged version of the whole film for this one, and the visuals work perfectly at describing the action. This was first track made for this set, and still one of my favorites. You can probably pick out a few sounds also used in the Without Heroes tracks.
Hidden - The Amazing Transparent Man (1960)
Not really Noir (at all) but a fun film with some early special effects. Also featured in an episode of MST3K.
Indestructible - Indestructible Man (1956)
This science fiction film was originally paired with Invasion of the Body Snatchers in some areas, and fit nicely into the Villainy theme of mad scientists I was looking for. I found the film awkward and dull but it did inspire me, though I think the track is one of my weakest.
Burden - The Screaming Skull (1958)
A very B-grade horror film that was so cheesy it drove the track. I originally thought it was interesting that I opened with a typical house riff but slowly transformed it into cheesy horror, but I'm not sure that worked well. I still like it though.
Lost - Detour (1945)
Back to Noir for this great film but doesn't involve many interesting scenes to make for a cool music video. Most of what I used was the framing shots at the beginning and end, and decided to keep the story of what happened open for interpretation. For the track I played around with morphing a couple sounds from a relatively light and happy mood into a dark one, with only a bass line differing between the two. Seemed like a neat concept but not sure it made for a great track.
