1. Recording the
MATRIX
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Defining
the Future
of Recording

2. Talk BoxN E W F R O N T I E R S
Hello, and welcome to the new EQ! We’re new because of you —
the forward-thinkers who have brought sweeping change to our
industry. Computer-based recording technology has advanced
exponentially in power and popularity, and the vast majority of
you have embraced these changes by marrying the best of
analog with the powerful new breed of digital tools. It’s great
to see so many stellar recordings coming from your pro
project studios!
The magazine you’re holding marks the beginning of a bold
new chapter in EQ’s 14-year history — and we’re very excited to
present you with the first and only mag in the States designed
to meet your “new recording” needs head on! Defining the
future of recording is our new tagline, as well as our promise.
Cover to cover, we will blanket what’s happening in the world of
recording today and tomorrow. As you peruse this issue, you’ll
see that we’ve retooled every page, refocused our content,
doubled our resources, and positioned ourselves at the cutting
edge of recording and music technology. EQ is on the move!
Check out this month’s cover story on the Matrix Reloaded.
It’s a Hollywood blockbuster as big and glamorous as they come.
But behind the Tinseltown glitz is a story of four computer-savvy
producer/musicians who used their pro project studios to bring
this epic to life. Power to the EQ reader! And don’t miss our
feature on future-proofing your studio, where today’s most
relevant topics are brought to the fore, examined, and explained.
Up front you’ll find two lively new sections chock full of tips,
gear announcements, and news. Our review section is packed
with products, both hardware and software, and be sure to visit
Power App Alley, where software apps are demystified in a
unique, friendly visual format. Finally, you’ll find three familiar
favorites in the new EQ: Session File, Roger Nichols, and Room
with a VU — all with a stylish new graphics makeover courtesy
of Doug Gordon, EQ’s art director extraordinaire.
So with no further ado, all of us at EQ invite you to pore
through this milestone issue and the many to come. We look
forward to keeping you on top of the rapid developments in the
new world of recording.
—Greg Rule, Executive Editor
Executive Editor: Greg Rule, gregrule@musicplayer.com
Editor: Mitch Gallagher, mgallagher@musicplayer.com
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dgreenberg@musicplayer.com
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EQ JUNE 2003 www.eqmag.com4
Vol. 14, No. 6
June 2003
What’s the oldest and newest piece of gear in your studio?
The BAND STAND
Greg Rule,
Executive Editor
Oldest: my trusty
Shure SM57
microphone. Newest:
my Mac G4 1.2 GHz
dual tower with OS
X. Love its speed and
stability, but it will
soon be receiving
Apple’s fan-noise
retrofit. Currently,
when all five fans
kick in, the thing
sounds like a
vacuum cleaner!
John Krogh,
Technical Editor
Oldest: a 1968
Hammond A-105
organ. It’s in mint
condition, and I
picked it up from a
sweet old church
organist for less than
500 bucks. Newest:
my Universal Audio
2-610 2-channel mic
pre with EQ —
everything passes
through this before I
do a final mix.
Craig Anderton,
Editor at Large
Oldest: a late ’60s
Clyde McCoy VOX
wah-wah pedal, with
a few mods to
reduce pot crackles.
Newest: an HP
DVD300i DVD+R/RW
drive, but after
installing its bundled
software, Wavelab
and CD Architect
stopped being able
to burn CDs — not a
good tradeoff.
Mitch Gallagher,
Editor
Oldest: Strat-style
guitar assembled
from parts in 1978. I
hollowed out the
body to make
installing
pickups/controls
easier; now it
resonates like an
acoustic. Newest:
Mac OS 10.2.4,
purchased for my
review of Pro Tools
6. OS X rocks!

3. www.eqmag.com JUNE 2003 EQ 19
INSIDE THE
MATRIX
RELOADED
Talk about a batting average, Don Davis came
straight out of the UCLA music program and
started hitting Hollywood home runs. As an
orchestrator, he lent his pen to The Incredible Hulk,
Apollo 13, Legends of the Fall, Pleasantville, A
Bug’s Life, Toy Story, and the Oscar-winning
Titanic. As a composer, he secured his place in
Tinseltown history with Beauty and the Beast (TV
series), Star Trek: The Next Generation, Bound,
Behind Enemy Lines, Jurassic Park 3,The Matrix, and now The Matrix
Reloaded (to name just a few). As deeply rooted in tradition as Davis
is, he has made the leap to cutting-edge computer-based writing,
scoring, and recording. In his home studio, his sheet music is often
digital, and his orchestra is a wall of samplers and Gigastudio-
equipped PCs under the control of MOTU Digital Performer.
Davis scored the Matrix Reloaded in the Southern California
home studio you see pictured on page 22, decked out with four
brand new Yamaha 02R96s. It was there where he mocked up the
massive Matrix orchestrations in 5.1 surround. Along the way he
collaborated with electronica guru Ben Watkins on several key
action sequences (see page 22), and ultimately conducted and
recorded live orchestra and choir at the legendary 20th Century
Fox soundstage.
Davis’s success on the original Matrix put him firmly in the
composer’s seat for the subsequent thrillers. “The Wachowski
brothers had conceived The Matrix as a trilogy from the very
beginning,” he tells us. “I knew they had the intention of doing screen-
ings in the future of all three films together, so they wanted to have
continuity between the three pictures that was palpable. So you
might say I approached Reloaded as the second movement of a
3-movement symphony.”
Before a note of music was recorded with live orchestra, Davis
sequenced realistic mock-ups at home with his virtual orchestra.
“Having orchestral mockups is essential to the brothers,” says Don,
“so they can be part of the collaboration as well.” The orchestra
consists of two Gigastudios along with banks of Roland S-760s,
“which I still use extensively, and still sound great.” Don is quick
to point out, however, that his transition to the digital world
was a bit rough at first. “It took me quite a while to come to terms
with it, to be honest. It wasn’t until the first Matrix that I got it
going, and it was something of a baptism by fire at that. But I’ve
determined that the best way to write is at the sequencer, and
pop it in there as I would on a piece of paper. Then I work to get
it to sound as convincing as possible.”
There are certain elements that Don chooses not to labor over,
however. “Some samples don’t sound that well or function the same
as a live instrument — woodwind ensemble writing, for example.
In a big tutti orchestral situation, I’ll lay down the brass and the strings
and percussion, but the woodwinds, when they’re sampled, don’t
quite function the same way. They don’t really support the way real
woodwinds do in an acoustical space. It’s a subtle thing, but if you
have a big tutti, and the woodwinds are filling in a thick sound in
the middle, you don’t quite hear it, but if it were gone you’d miss
it. So to mock it up is kind of a waste of time.”
Star Wars, Star Trek — now The Matrix is on its way to
becoming the next great sci-fi film franchise. The new Matrix
Reloaded sequel is packing theaters around the world, and for good
reason. It’s a full-scale, epic thriller that reunites the same celebrated
cast and crew from the groundbreaking original. And, sooner than
fans can say “white rabbit,” a third Matrix is due to hit theaters in
November: The Matrix Revolutions. If that isn’t enough, a series of
licensed products are appearing as well:The Enter the Matrix video
game, a series of comic books, and nine animated Animatrix
shorts, due out on DVD.
When press releases started to appear that touted the
composers, producers, and engineers hard at work on the new
Matrix projects, the EQ machine sprang into action. In all, we
were able to meet up with four key figures from the Matrix
musical camp: chief composer Don Davis, co-composer/
electronica specialist Ben Watkins, engineer Larry Mah,
and musician/producer Chris Vrenna.We probed into
their home studios, and discovered the inspiring
details of how they helped bring this landmark
extravaganza to life.
Recording and
Mixing a Blockbuster
Don Davis
EQ JUNE 2003 www.eqmag.com18
√
by Greg Rule

4. EQ JUNE 2003 www.eqmag.com20
To start each cue, Don opens a template in
Digital Performer, which houses hundreds of empty
tracks for his banks of sampled instruments. “There
are probably over 300 tracks,” laughs Don. “The
reason there are so many is that I don’t like to go
scrambling around for things as I’m writing. If a sound
proves useful, I try to keep it around all the time.” The
Digital Performer screenshot below shows a condensed
version of Don’s sequence for the “Burly Brawl” scene.
Note the instrument and device names along the left ver-
tical strip, and the video window, which displays the 30-
frame Quicktime movie. (For more on how Don and Ben
started each writing session in Digital Performer, see the
“How To” sidebar on page 24.)
To create his Reloaded orchestral mockups,
Don used samples from a variety of sources,
both custom and commercial. “I have the
Kirk Hunter library, which I’ve found quite
useful. And I’m still using some things
from the Miroslav Vitous and Peter
Siedlaczek libraries. I even use some
of the early Prosonus libraries.
There are certain things in that
collection that nobody else has
done better.” Such as . . . “The
high violin harmonics are
ver y, ver y useful, and I
haven’t seen that in other
libraries. Also, there are a
number of string effects I
find useful. Whoever was
doing those samples just knew
what to go for. The ‘firebird
harmonic’ effects in the strings
and random pizzicato things work
nicely. They also have samples of
all the strings playing glissandos
up and glissandos down, and
something they call ‘high string
effects,’ which is all the strings
playing their highest possible notes.
That has become something of a
new music cliché ever since Penderecki
did it in his Threnody to the Victims of
Hiroshima, but it’s something that
works very well in a lot of different
film situations.”
Don’s right-hand man, ace engineer Larry Mah, staged some
creative sampling sessions for Reloaded. Don explains: “Larry, along
with Mark Zimoski, who’s one of my percussionists, made some
very interesting recordings using dry ice on metallic instruments.
We got the idea from Dane Davis, the sound-effects designer for
The Matrix. He would get aluminum boats, and put dry ice on them.
The ice would excite the metal, and he would record that and pitch
it down. So when he told me about it, I thought, ‘Why not try that
with tam-tams, cymbals, the inside of a piano?’”
“Anything metal was fair game,” adds Larry, “and Mark has a
lot of percussion instruments. One of the most interesting sounds
was when we scraped the ice slowly across the strings of the piano,
a 7-foot grand. It would melt the ice as we scraped, causing the
string to excite and vibrate in interesting ways. We tried scraping
every metal object we could find, even furniture.” Don says his
goal was to get “strange ambiences and creepy, scary sounds that
weren’t part of someone else’s library.” You can hear the ice effects
in Reloaded, most often when a villain is onscreen. “It’s happening
almost always under Agent Smith,” Don reveals. “Also, Smith imbues
his personality into a character named Bain, and after that happens
you hear it often under Bain. It became part of the villain motif.”
Unlike the original Matrix, where Davis’s orchestral cues were
interspersed with licensed tracks, Reloaded married the two
styles. “Larry and Andy were very interested in having a fusion of
orchestral music and electronica,” says Don, “and that’s what led
to my collaboration with Ben Watkins on the two key action
sequences: the ‘Freeway Chase’ and the ‘Burly Brawl,’ which is the
big confrontation between Neo and the replicated Smiths. When
I was first presented with that situation, I was scratching my
head as to how it would work, and I think Ben was as well. But we
evolved pretty quickly into a good working situation, and it turned
out remarkably well. The end result was that we got the best of
both worlds. Ben’s proficiency on electronica is second to none,
and so we could rely on that when the picture needed that kind
of rhythmic intensity. And my forte of course is the orchestra,
so we were able to let that take over when it needed that kind
of energy.”
Helping ease the Davis/Watkins collaboration was the fact
that both used MOTU Digital Performer. As a result, they were able
to exchange files with the greatest of ease. “For the ‘Burly Brawl’
sequence,” says Don, “Ben took the orchestral cue I had written
and kind of broke it up, used parts of it, compressed it, and
actually treated it as a sampled element. Then the files came back
to me, and I scored some additional orchestral elements to what he
had done.” At one point during the sequence the tempo races to over
200 bpm, and then accelerates from 200 to over 300 (!) within
four bars. “The brothers asked me if the orchestra could handle it,
and I said no,” laughs Don, “unless we record the orchestra at the
original tempo and then have Ben manipulate it in Digital Performer,
which is what we did.”
As smooth as the collaboration between Davis and Watkins was,
there were a few wrinkles to iron out. “I had to adapt Ben’s conductor
tracks to my way of working, so I could give the orchestra a steady
click. His ideas of what a click can do are rather fluid, and there are
certain things he would do with the clicks that I knew I couldn’t throw
at an orchestra — that kind of rapid shifting in tempo.” The solution?
“I ended up breaking the pieces into sections, so when there was
a new tempo, I’d have a new start for the orchestra. I’d end up
taking fragments of his conductor tracks, and also taking the audio
tracks and pasting fragments of them into a new file.”
With the sample tracks sequenced, approved, and orchestrated,
it was time to replace the mockups with the living, breathing
orchestra at Fox. As Don conducted, Armin Steiner performed a 5.1
MATRIX RELOADED

5. mix in real time. “Armin is so experienced,” says Larry. “He knows
what’s going to work in the theater, and he nails it right there live.”
“His real gift is being able to read a room when he hears it,” adds
Don, “and knowing where to place the instruments and microphones.
Once he has it set up, there really isn’t much more he has to do.”
As Steiner hovered over the console, Larry captured the 6-chan-
nel surround mix in Pro Tools. In addition, a 16-track mix was
recorded for backup purposes. “Those were submixes of violins 1,
violins 2, basses, cellos, etc,” says Larry. “Armin has more than 16
mics out there, but he busses them to 16 channels. So, in addition
to the 6-track surround mix, you get another 16, which are really
only for emergency. I think we only had to access those split-outs
once, for the ‘Burly Brawl.’”
As expected, the recorded results were explosive. “20th
Century Fox is a very ambient space,” Larry enthuses. “It has a very
nice room sound. Armin did enhance it with a bit of echo — an old
Roland box [Dimension-D]. So the material had a good full quality,
but it didn’t drip.”
Additional tone-sculpting after the fact wasn’t necessary, as Larry
was able to run the surround mix as-is. “The reason I like working
with Armin,” says Don “is because he hears the orchestra the way
I hear it. I don’t think he ever does much in the way of EQing or any-
thing like that. So I’m confident when I’m out there conducting that
once I balance the orchestra the way I want it, that’s the way it’s
going to get recorded.
“When it comes to orchestra,” Don continues, “I’m a big
believer in that organic, natural sound, and I don’t go for a lot of
manipulation of that sound. If you have an orchestra,
it should sound like an orchestra. And if I want to
support it with some synthesizer sounds or manipulated
elements, then that exists within its realm. I really
dislike the sound of orchestras that are doubled with
synthesizers. I use samples and synths to mock up
orchestral parts for demo purposes, but anything too
far beyond that is just mimicry and not innovation. It’s
really the worst way to utilize that technology. I think
the real innovation with electronic music is not in
mimicry but in discovering new worlds.”
Having said that, Davis did use a few instances of sampled horns
and strings to help punctuate key phrases. “I typically don’t like to
do that, but there were some situations where it helped bring things
out front in the mix: staccato trumpets, for example. The live
parts were perfectly fine, but the way they were sitting in the back
of the room, the ambience, it was necessary to push them out front
in the mix a few times, and supplementing the live with the
sampled trumpets was the best way to do it. And every once in a
while, when a string line got buried, Larry and I brought in the
sampled strings just to help them penetrate the mix a little bit.” There
were also ambient and processed sample tracks in addition to the
orchestra tracks that were added to a number of cues. “Those were
often big slams and pile-driver effects — Larry would mix them so
the sounds would originate in the center speaker, and then they
would spread around to the surrounds.”
At the dubbing sessions, Larry and Don supplied three layers
of digital audio. “We gave them stems for the orchestra, choir, and
the synths,” says Don, “so they had the three elements there,
which, if they put up straight-line, would be our mix of it. But then
the directors could have the option to raise or lower the various
elements as the need may arise.”
With Reloaded now in theaters, Don reflects on what he’s
accomplished with the project. “This is the pinnacle of what I’ve
done so far,” he says, “and the great thing about it is the fact that
there are three of these — I think all of us realized that it probably
isn’t going to be better than this, ever, no matter what we do. So
luckily we get to enjoy this three times over.” Don is set to start
working on the third, Matrix Revolutions, by the time you
read this. Will there be more orchestral meets electronica
in store? “That’s up to the directors, but I’m looking forward
to whatever challenges they throw my way.”
BEN WATKINS (a.k.a. Juno Reactor)
For over a decade, Juno Reactor has been at the forefront
of cutting-edge electronic music. Juno mastermind Ben
Watkins was putting the finishing touches on an 11-song
retrospective collection called Odyssey when his phone
EQ JUNE 2003 www.eqmag.com22
MATRIX RELOADED
Behold the spread ofYamaha 02R96s. “It’s a sensational board,” says
Don Davis. “It really is.The 02Rs were fantastic, but as an upgrade, the
96s are an exponential leap.”“I think they’ve taken a lot of suggestions
from users, in terms of things that were frustrating on the old boards,”
adds Larry Mah, pictured above. “Things like being able to tie all eight
aux sends across the boards, which gives you more flexibility. For us,
having four might look like a lot, with 56 inputs per board, but we use
them all.”“The bottom line in a studio like this is inputs,” says Don,“and
a lot of inputs. So the fact that there are more is a big improvement.
But aside from that, the ability to go at 96k is a major sound
improvement, and the A/Ds are better, as is the EQ and built-in
effects.All around it’s a big step up.” Genelec 1032As are used for main
monitoring; Event 20/20s are used for surrounds.

6. www.eqmag.com JUNE 2003 EQ 25
Ben then sampled the classical clips into MOTU Digital Performer,
time-compressed and pitch-shifted them to fit his song template, and
created a hybrid demo to play for Davis and the brothers. “My demo had
my electronic ideas mixed with orchestral samples in much the same
way their temp had Don’s orchestral work mixed with my [Juno] tracks.”
The scene shifted in January when Ben packed up a container-load
of gear from his studio (“my computer, my favorite analog keyboards
and effects”) and flew out to Los Angeles. Working side by side with
Davis, Ben found that some of his original demo material was perfect,
but a fair amount was stripped out or replaced. “I don’t think I changed
much during the first two and a half minutes, but the brothers would
often suggest certain things. ‘Take this out, ‘cause it will interfere with
the sound effects,’ and so on. With Juno Reactor music, whenever I
write an album, I always think of it as a little story or film in itself, so
it has lots of atmospheric noises and effects sounds, and I found that
I had to take all of those out, which was weird for me. Suddenly you’re
left with what they really want, which is down to the bone and
muscle. They want only the elements that really make the track
work, and they aren’t interested in all the other stuff that we put on
albums because the [Foley and sound design] effects go in, and they’re
really loud, so what you put in has to be the essential raw material.”
With tracks stripped to the bone, Ben describes his mental state
at the time as “a bemused sheep in the headlights. The music had
a shape, but I wasn’t quite getting it at the time. So, with everything
stripped down, I started adding some analog synth.” Ben brought his
beloved Alesis Andromeda, Sequential Pro-One, and Korg MonoPoly.
“The MonoPoly is my favorite analog synth, because it has this
twang quality like a guitar.” When recording “I generally go for a flat,
clean sound. No compression, no EQ. The board I use in England,
and brought to America as well, is an Amek Media 5.1 board,
which is a brilliant analog 5.1 console. All processing generally
happens after everything is recorded in Digital Performer.” ➤
EQ JUNE 2003 www.eqmag.com24
rang. “‘Do you fancy coming over for a chat, having a look at
some [Matrix Reloaded] footage, and seeing if you want to write
something for it?’ You could say it was one of those magical nail-
your-boots-to-the-floor moments to keep from flying away. So I met
up with the team, saw the ‘Freeway Chase,’ and it all started
from there.” Turns out that four Juno Reactor tracks had been
used in the temp score for that long, dramatic chase scene, so it
made perfect sense to go right to the source. “When I first met
the Wachowski brothers,” says Ben, “what they really wanted
was someone who could come in and work with Don [Davis] —
someone to bring hard electronica and orchestra together, and to
make the two worlds feel like they were meant to live in the
same space. They were very specific about what they wanted, what
they were looking for.”
The initial meeting between Davis and Watkins went well. “I
met up with Don,” says Ben, “and it felt really easy, despite the
fact that we came from two very different worlds musically. I knew
he had his reservations about working with a ‘knob twiddler’
[laughs]. But luckily I think I have a slightly deeper knowledge than
your average electronica producer.”
Ben’s first order of business was to create a demo for afore-
mentioned chase scene, “which, in its entirety, is about 15 minutes
long. The section I was writing for is about ten and a half minutes
long. When they played me the temp, it had four Juno Reactor tracks
in it. I thought, ‘Bollocks, those four tunes are some of the best
we’ve ever done, and they took ages to put together!’“ Ages was
something Ben didn’t have. Days was more like it.
“I did a lot of research on the types of classical things I
wanted,” says Ben. He devoured his classical music collection,
scoured CD shops for additional material, and eventually selected
a few pre-recorded passages for demo purposes, knowing that
original orchestral music would be written and recorded by Davis.
Don Davis and Ben Watkins received their
Matrix Reloaded footage as Quicktime files,
which they imported into MOTU Digital
Performer. How did they get the footage into
their sessions, sync to tempo, enter hit
points, and exchange conductor tracks?
Here’s how:
Importing a QuickTime movie or DV-format-
ted digital video clip into a DP4 project.
■ Choose Movie from the Project menu.
■ Make sure the DP project frame rate
matches the imported movie. Composer Don
Davis tells us that the Matrix Reloaded
videoclips he received from Warner Brothers
were digitized at 30 frames per second (fps). So
Don would choose Setup menu > Frame Rate >
30 fps. This is a crucial step. It’s important to
match the clip’s frame rate, especially with
29.97 fps drop and non-drop video rates.
■ Set the movie start time and sequence
start time. Most often, digitized film cues are
supplied with a timecode start frame. Don tells
us that his Matrix Reloaded cues all started
at frame zero (0:00:00:00). On other projects,
cues would have other start times (such as
2:13:37:05). To set the movie start time, choose
Set Movie Start Time from the Movie window
mini-menu. This ensures that Digital
Performer’s markers and hit points accurately
match the frame times used by the film’s sound
effects editors and music editors.
■ To set the sequence start time, click the
Start Times button in the Tempo Control section
of DP4’s control panel. If no pre-roll is neces-
sary, you can make the sequence start time
match the movie start time. If pre-roll is
needed, set the sequence start time earlier
by the desired amount.
■ If the imported movie is a DV-formatted
digital video clip, you can view it on a separate
full-screen video monitor via FireWire. To do
so, connect a FireWire video camera or
FireWire-to-video converter to your Mac’s
FireWire port. Turn it on. If possible, check the
connection with iMovie or Final Cut Pro to
make sure the FireWire video connection is
working properly. Then, back in DP4, go to the
movie window mini-menu (in the title bar),
choose Video Output, and choose your
FireWire device from the sub-menu.
■ If you want to view the movie on a timeline
side by side with hit points, meter changes,
and tempo map, open the Sequence Editor
(Project menu), click the Track List button in
the title bar and click the movie track to
highlight it and display it.
Spotting hits and building a tempo map in
Digital Performer.
The backbone of any musical score are the
“hit points” — edits and other notable instants
in the picture — along with the tempo and
meter changes used to match up the music
with the hit points. Hit points serve as a
framework for a meter and tempo map, which
in turn serves as a framework for the music.
Digital Performer lets you identify hit points
with Markers and then build a tempo and
meter map called a Conductor Track.
DP4 provides many powerful ways to
spot Markers and build a Conductor Track for
a movie cue. Here are just a few.
Importing a Conductor Track.
■ Don received Opcode Cue files from the
Matrix Reloaded music editors. These files
already contain markers (timing notes) for
each cue. He built his conductor track in Cue,
exported it from Cue as a standard MIDI file,
opened the MIDI file in Digital Performer, and
then copied and pasted the entire conductor
track (including markers, tempo changes and
meter changes) into the Conductor track for
his Digital Performer scoring template. After
opening the movie clip as described earlier,
he’s ready to write music.
Spotting hits (markers).
■ To create a marker (hit) list, open the
Markers window (Project menu).
■ Press the space bar to begin playback, and
while watching the movie, press control-M
(this hot key can be customized in the
Commands window) to add a marker at any
notable hit points. No need to be exact —
just let the movie roll and crank out the
markers.
■ You can edit their precise location later, as
follows: choose Setup menu > Time Formats
and choose Frames as the global time format.
Open the Conductor Track graphic editor and
set the edit grid to 1 SMPTE frame. As you drag
markers left or right, the movie window chases
your edit, so you can watch the movie frame
by frame to easily drag the marker to the
exact hit point.
Programming a fixed tempo over a specific
section.
If the cue calls for a steady tempo, such as a
driving techno mix for a chase scene, you can
easily program a constant tempo between any
two points in the cue.
■ To do so, choose Preferences from the Setup
menu and turn off the Fix Partial Measures
Automatically option. Now open the event list
for the conductor track and insert a 4/4 meter
change (using the Insert menu) where you
wish the music to start. Cue the movie to the
end of the section (using the arrow keys if
necessary to nudge the movie window to the
exact frame). Note the SMPTE frame time in
the main counter.
■ Now choose Project menu > Modify
Conductor Track > Change Tempo.
■ Make sure the start measure matches where
the 4/4 meter is.
■ Click the Options button and enter the current
main counter frame time in the Change Tempo
End time field.
■ Now enter an end measure that approximates
the length of the music for the section — say
eight bars. As soon as you do, the tempo will
be calculated automatically. Add or subtract
bars to increase or decrease the tempo.
■ When you have the tempo you want, click
OK. Now the sequence plays the specified
number of measures at exactly the specified
tempo for the entire section, with the final
downbeat landing precisely on the hit you
indicated.
■ You can use a similar technique to program
gradual tempo changes over short — or even
longer — passages using the other tempo
curves provided in the Change Tempo window.
Searching for a tempo based on multiple
hit points.
Digital Performer’s Markers window has a
powerful feature that can automatically find a
tempo that matches multiple hit points. In other
words, it can find the tempo that lands the most
downbeats on markers.
■ First lock the markers you wish to include in
the search, and click a check mark next to
their name in the Find column in the Markers
window. Be sure to include one at the very
beginning (downbeat) of the section you are
searching for. If desired, you can give each
marker a level if importance (weight), hit range
(if it is more than one frame), and position
(skew) within that range.
■ Choose Find Tempo For Locked Markers from
the Markers window mini-menu.
■ In the Find Tempo window (below), choose
the range of tempos you would like to consider
at the top of the window.
The list of resulting tempos dynamically
updates as you change the settings. You can
even make changes to the marker list and it
will update on the fly.
■ To find the tempo with the most hits, click
the Total Hits column heading. For a more
detailed view of exactly which hits a certain
tempo successfully makes, click the tempo, and
view each marker in the section at the bottom
of the window. This powerful tool can help you
zero in on the perfect tempo in minutes.
HOW-TO!
Score to Film, Matrix style
MATRIX RELOADED

7. Ben can program drums with the best of them, but “after hav-
ing done years of drum programming, I now prefer to get in a real
drummer and have them bash away. When I listen to electronic drums
now, they sound dead and boring, although I still have to use
them for effect. But in all honesty, I think I much prefer the sound
of a real percussionist or drummer sweating over a drum kit.”
When Ben is called upon to program percussion, his “machine” of
choice is Native Instruments’ Reaktor, “which I think is capable of
some of the most mad sounds out there.”
During the Matrix sessions, Ben tried to bring a percussion
ensemble over from Capetown. “I’d worked with them as Juno
Reactor, and really wanted to get them over here. But we kept
running into problems, mainly that the main percussionist had gone
missing [laughs]. So we couldn’t get him on it, which was a real shame,
but actually he ended being on it because I had some previous
material that I just had to time-stretch a bit.”
TASCAM Gigastudios and Roland samplers were used to add
orchestral elements to the demos. I’d grab some horns and various
samples,” says Ben, “and Don would say, ‘Good, let’s use these
as temp ideas, run with them, take them as influences, and see
where they lead us.’ Then he’d fill in all of the sections that didn’t
have my parts. We did many revisions for the brothers, and before
we knew it, our orchestra dates were in front of us.”
Those sessions would produce the source material that replaced
all mock-ups on the demos. “We recorded the orchestra,” says Ben,
“then went about going through all the takes, picking out which ones
were good. On rare occasions we’d cut up bits here and there to
make them fit, but not too often. Then we went in and recorded
an 80-piece choir, and by this time you realize you’re getting
very close to the final deadline to deliver everything in 5.1.”
With layers of pounding electronica tracks, walls of percussion,
80-piece choirs, and huge symphonic mixes to sift through, the
task of final editing and mixing was daunting to say the least.
“What we did at that point was make stems and pass data back
and forth. I’d make stereo tracks of the drums, synths, and
everything from my session files, and give them to Don along
with the conductor track. I’d then go back to my studio with
submixed tracks of the orchestra and his conductor track.”
Once the orchestral and electronic tracks were approved,
all material was shuttled to O’Henry in Burbank, “where
they have the most amazing 5.1 room,” says Ben, “although
I’m not a fan of SSL boards. But it’s a great room, and we
did the mixes there. In all we ran over 88 channels through
that SSL board. At times we’d have three, four, or five 5.1
stems. We’d split the orchestra up. . . . For some of the takes,
Don would separate the strings and brass, for example, so
each could be manipulated.”
The end result, as you’ll hear in the film, is an ultra-dramatic
cue that occurs about 70 minutes into the film. “The cue is
sort of split up into two sections,” says Ben. “The first part
is slower and groovier, which I call ‘Dante.’ That has more of
a rock/dub-vibe to it, running at about 78 bpm. That’s the two
and a half minutes before the chase itself. Then, as soon as you
kick onto the freeway, bang, you’re at 137 bpm. For the next eight
minutes or so you have stops, where the electronica drops
out and Don’s thing is going. Meanwhile, you’re seeing these
cars mashing up and flying and doing things you’ve never
seen before, then the electronica kicks back in during the
most important punctuation points.” Clearly this collaboration
has made an impression on Watkins. “The music is all over the
place. It’s like a journey, not one of these boring DJ tracks or
electronica pieces made for the morons. It’s electronica and
orchestra that travels.”
Another Davis/Watkins collaboration appears 50 minutes into
the film. It’s referred to as the “Burly Brawl” sequence, and Ben
equates the music to a “weird Frank Zappa tune. Where the
orchestra is running at 150 bpm, my tracks are running [in tandem]
at 175. Then, at one point, I go up to around 200 bpm, and he’s still
running at 150. And then in the space of four or five bars, I speed
up from 200 to 250, then there’s a little break, and everything goes
to 304 bpm. We got the choir to do things, which we later chopped
up into little tiny bits. So in the same way that the film presents
things that are impossible to do, so too does our music. I think ‘Burly
Brawl’ is interesting in that sense, and I feel it reflects what the
brothers were really pushing us to get.”
If you haven’t delved into music-for-picture, don’t be intimidated.
Even Watkins struggled early on in this project. “I was really a
novice at this, but luckily I had a music editor, Zig Grön, who was an
enormous help. He would show me things, how to read the film, how
to get a better idea of what the brothers were looking for, etc. I was
doing everything by eye, and only later did I learn there are programs
specifically for this task, like [Opcode] Cue. All the same, everything
worked well doing it the way we did.
“It was an immense honor to come over and work on this
film,” Ben concludes. “And just to survive it, and be able to turn out
something that the guys were happy with, was the icing on the cake.”
Survival is right. It’s no secret that the Wachowski brothers are
a demanding duo to work for. “They just keep pushing the envelope,”
says Ben. “It seemed like everyone I was working with kept
telling me, ‘Look, don’t think anyone else is like this in L.A. These
guys are unusual in how incredibly focused they are. After two
months, I was completely knackered by this level of focus. And you
think about what they’re doing — looking after everything from the
visual effects, the music, the editing, the film as a whole, plus the
games, the Animatrix, the next film. . . . You think, ‘My God how
do they keep their brains together?’ I don’t know.”
The Reloaded soundtrack will be available on CD (Warner
Brothers) by the time you read this.
CHRIS VRENNA
The Matrix story doesn’t end in movie
theaters. The Animatrix series and Enter
The Matrix videogame are much more
than mere add-ons. Enter The Matrix is a
“story-within-the-story,” which weaves
in and out with the movie’s storyline.
“Developed under the creative direction
of Matrix filmmakers Larry and Andy
Wachowski,” say Warner Brothers, “the
game features insane car stunts and gravity-defying martial arts that
bend the rules of the Matrix. This game isn’t just set in the Matrix
universe — it’s an integral part of the entire Matrix experience.”
The Wachowski brothers have a reputation for hiring great
music, so it’s no surprise that Grammy-winner Chris Vrenna was
commissioned to write and record one of the game’s key action
tracks. Chris was a founding member of Nine Inch Nails, and has
since worked with an impressive list of artists, including Smashing
Pumpkins, Marilyn Manson, Hole, Wallflowers, Green Day, POD,
and more.
When Vrenna got the call from the Matrix game liaison at
Shiny Entertainment, he dropped everything to take the project.
“They were looking for some original electro-rock pieces for the
game,” says Chris. “They wanted something fast and hard, no
vocals and breakdowns. It was pure action, which made it challenging
because I’m used to doing songs. I’m used to leaving space for a
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MATRIX RELOADED

8. vocal, a chorus, kicking things up for a bridge, and none of that was
going on here. It needed to be one continuous piece that could play
from beginning to end, but each section had to sound logical
when looped. I believe they were planning to break every song
up into 2-, 4-, or 8-bar pieces. When you triggered every piece
consecutively, the song would play as written. But, depending
on what the game action was doing, they could stop at a section
and loop it, and then eventually move on.”
Because of this, Chris had to be cautious of where sustained
material was placed in the song. “As long as it didn’t go over a log-
ical bar break, then it was cool. But I avoided doing things like a
[cymbal] crash on an upbeat before a major change to a downbeat.”
As he was mixing, Chris would select sections in his Pro Tools files
and activate loop-playback, “just to make sure everything would work
when looped in the game.”
The turnaround time for the project was “less than a week. My
guitar player Clint [from Chris’s band Tweaker] came in to play
guitar, and that was it. We had to crank that puppy out fast.”
Here’s how “Take the Pill” came together:
“The whole thing started with the guitar riff,” Chris explains, “a
big heavy metal-sounding thing. We basically got a click going, then
we recorded the riff. I like tube gear, so I use a Mesa/Boogie
TriAxis for the big sounds, and also a Marshall JMP-1 [both rack
modules]. They’re the best sounding and most natural recording
boxes I’ve found for guitar. I use a Line 6 Pod too, but more for the
clean stuff.” For this track, the guitar was recorded through theTriAxis
into a Neve mic pre, into a Yamaha 02R, and onto the Apogee
Rosetta AD en route to Pro Tools. “I tend to use the Neve channel
for guitars,” says Chris, “the APIs for drums, and the SummitTD-100s
and GMLs for synths.”
The guitar riff on “Take the Pill” is locked airtight to the track,
but Chris doesn’t edit his live-played parts too heavily. “I go for
performance takes usually, because lately, in the last year and a
half or so, I’ve heard so many records that are chopped to the point
of no soul. I’m trying to get away from that. So I’ll have Clint play
a pass or two until we get one, rather than chopping every 16th-note.
Then, we’ll solo it, and double to the solo.”
If you examine the Pro Tools file for this song, you’ll notice
several guitar layers, labeled Mesa, Mesa-Dbl, Mesa-Paul, Paul,
and Paul Dbl.
“We always do the first main guitar take until we get it perfect,”
says Chris, “then we go back and do a double of it for that super-wide
stereo effect. You really can’t get that sound any other way than by
double-playing the part and panning them hard right and left. Then
I’ll add a new track in the middle. I tend to layer things by frequency.
In this case my Mesas were providing the big lower tone, and I filled
in the middle with a mid-tone. If you’re going for a super metal
scooped sound, you can put your scoop sound on the outside
[hard right and left] and a nice midrange track in the middle.”
Chris is famous for his hard-hitting drumming in Nine Inch
Nails, so it’s not surprising to hear the pile-driving grooves in
“Take the Pill.” “Even though I’m a drummer, I often do drums last,”
Chris admits, “because it’s more about the melodic content first
and foremost.” The drumming on this song consisted of
“Spectrasonics Stylus through a BombFactory 1176 plug-in, which
I was hitting pretty hard. I love that the loops in Stylus are Groove
Controlled, so I can put them up, find a cool bank of sounds, and make
my own beats out of them. It’s like having everything pre-ReCycled.”
Chris also used IK Multimedia’s SampleTank for additional drum and
percussion layers.
Metric Halo Channel Strip was used to make what Chris describes
as “a baby guitar.” It’s what starts the song. “It’s my favorite effect.
I love that plug-in. It does ‘radio EQ’ better than anything else.” ➤
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Chris’s audio rack is packed.Which piece is most valuable to him? “Oh,
man, that’s tough to answer. I love them all, but probably my vintage API
pre’s and the API Lunchbox. If I could only have one pair of hardware
compressors for recording, the dbx 160s would be the ones.”

9. The spooky synth pad was created with Spectrasonics
Atmosphere — Chris’s favorite soft synth. The percolating synth line
was sequenced with an Access Virus plug-in, which you’ll see in
the VS Arp MIDI track below.
There are non-synth pulsing effects in the song as well.
“The chopped guitar effects parts you hear started out as straight,
sustained guitar chords through an Electrix Filter Factory. Then
I put up a 32nd-note grid in Pro Tools, started chopping out slices,
and added a small 3ms fade at the head and tail of each piece. It’s
the best way to get super-tight tremolo-type patterns.” The song
features two such sliced guitar parts: One is a straight 16th-note
pattern, the other is the syncopated riff shown here:
For mixing, Chris relied on his trusty Yamaha 02R. “I like to
keep a one-to-one output from ProTools to the console,” he explains.
“I have three [Digidesign] 888s going digitally into the 02R, so
everything is submixed down to 24 outs into the 02R. I do my
automation moves in Pro Tools, otherwise I try to leave all my Pro
Tools faders at zero, and I set levels on the 02R. When I need to
recall a mix, I can just recall the scene on the 02R, put the Pro Tools
session back up, and there I go.”
Once the song was tracked and tweaked, Chris pumped the
mix from the 02R’s analog stereo outs through a rented SSL bus
compressor, into a [Apogee] Rosetta AD, and into an awaiting stereo
track in Pro Tools. “Since there are two AESs [on the Rosetta], I
usually send one pair to Pro Tools and another to CD as a backup.”
Even though Chris plans to upgrade his 02R soon, he has
some fond parting words for the old workhorse. “I’ve owned a lot
of gear, but only two pieces of gear have done a consistently
perfect job for me, and those are my Mac 9600 and the 02R.
Both have been the most stable, solid, and efficient gear I’ve
owned, so I’m pretty committed to the 02 format. I’ve listened to
the 02R96, and it sounds pretty good. I like the new feature set,
and I like that they’ve included a Pro Tools HUI-emulation layer.”
And about that old Mac, “I ran that 9600 for five years before
I finally upgraded. Up until recently, before people started making
RTAS stuff, your processor didn’t really matter that much because
it was all on the [Digidesign DSP] cards. But then I got my first native
software synth, got it going, and [makes screeching noise] . . . it
brought the 9600 to its knees. ‘If I’m gonna go into this software synth
world, it’s time to upgrade my machine,’” which he did to a G4 933.
For more, visit Chris online at www.tweaker.net. And to get a
closer look at the game, go to www.enterthematrixgame.com.
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