The most important thing I learned listening to Thomas Bergerson's music is that there is
always another layer. Just when you think you're hearing everything, go back and listen again and
you will hear some element you didn't catch the first time. For example in colors of love
from the album 'Sun' at first it sounds like a pretty simple texture on orchestral strings.
But then you realize that there's this bubbling synth underneath everything.
There's also a warm, smooth pad providing ambience
and sustain and there's even a low drum accenting the very first beat.
So even the simplest most basic part of the track is already at least four layers deep.
When I think of epic trailer music there is no artist even close to the top of the
game as Two Steps From Hell. Nick Phoenix and Thomas Bergerson are masters of that
huge cinematic style and at the request of Wade Smith, who won our first composing competition,
I've been specifically listening to Thomas Bergerson's work to figure out how he pulls it off
so well. Today I'm going to share with you three things I've noticed Bergerson does to make his
music so awesome and thank you to Wade for getting me to pay attention because they're so good I plan
on incorporating them into my own work. So I'm going to say that first one again
because I think it is that important - There's always another layer.
Here's a section from the track 'Dragonborn' from their latest album 'Myth'
There's a melody on the middle strings, a counter line in the high string,
bass and harmony in the low strings, piano in the background, flute runs in some of the
gaps and with all of that going on wasn't until going back and listening again that
I realize there's also a french horn on that melody line with the cellos and Brass
supporting the background harmony as well. It's not super easy to hear but I'll try
to EQ out some of the highs and lows so you can focus more on that french horn register.
I was working on music for a corporate video recently and it got into a place where I was
happy with it and about to send it to the client when I suddenly remembered this idea there's
always another layer so I went back and added some more pads on the chords for fullness and a simple
flute part and a high register that was repetitive enough to recede into the background but filled in
that otherwise empty pitch range and a few other textural elements I didn't really change the
music at all but these extra layers made it even Fuller and richer and it totally worked the client
is always happy with what I send but this time the feedback was WOW. When I interviewed Wade,
who you'll remember inspired this video, he mentioned how he incorporated some of these
layering ideas in his competition entry: "It's all about the subtleties right,
it's all about being an artist right, adding like the small little details."
I think the production, you know, is probably what put this over the edge."
Speaking of the competitions, our next one will be announced at the end of the year and it's
going to be video game themed. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the announcement.
Let's move on to lesson number two: It's possible to be big the
whole time and still have room to grow. Now that kind of seems like a paradox but
Thomas Bergerson manages to make his tracks sound huge and powerful right from the start.
Jump to only about a minute into the track 'New Life' and the sound is freaking huge!
I would be so satisfied to achieve a massive sound like that. Jump ahead
to four minutes in and holy s@#& it's insane!
But that earlier section was also full and Powerful so how's he pulling that off? So
one way is by making use of the full range of registers from down low to way up high. Back
to that earlier section in 'New Life' he's got the women's voices in a middle register, brass
in that warm tenor range, strings below behind and above the voices, including in a very high range,
big deep drums, a mid-high instrument that might be a dulcimer. Essentially he's leaving
no blank space on the canvas. Of course this does not apply to every track in every style,
but when your goal is to specifically achieve a massive full sound making use of the full
spectrum of registers will help you get there. I think another way he pulls off that sense of
fullness is with this sort of rule of three when it comes to rhythm. It's very common in
Bergerson's music to always have three layers of rhythmic activity: a long slow background rhythm:
like one chord for the whole bar often with sustained pads or strings or brass,
a middle layer at roughly the pace of the tempo: usually with more variety than just taking off
the beats but quarter and eighth notes is the general pace. This will usually be the featured
melodic instrument, and then a third layer that is rhythmically very fast: like 16th notes or
constant eighth no pulse. Usually arpeggios or an ostinato figure on strings or synths. 'Evergreen'
from the album 'Vanquish' is a good example. Early in the track it's at a pretty low energy relative
to where the track is going but he still gets a very full sound with this rhythmic stacking.
We have an active ostinato part on the piano and celesta, a slow background rhythm with the bass
and sustained chords, and then a melodic line on the choir and violins that's somewhere in between.
When I spell it out like this it feels like 'yeah, that's a fairly standard arranging technique,
so what?' But it's such a reliably consistent part of his style that I think is worth keeping
in mind. Just like he has vertical fullness by using the full register of low to high,
he's achieving horizontal fullness with a different pacing of rhythmic layers. Again
the main point was that he's able to pull off a big full sound even in his relatively quieter
sections because of how he takes advantage of all the available space. Another thing that stood out
to me about Thomas Bergerson's style wasn't immediately apparent until I realized how hard
it was to find examples that didn't have it so one idea I had for this video was to try to recreate
one of tracks completely in the DAW: trying to capture every instrument and drum part and counter
line and so on. It was something I immediately regretted as soon as I got started. But anyway,
while looking for a good track to do a sound alike of I kept finding example after example
where there were prominently featured vocals and I thought that'll be way too hard to recreate
I'll just move on and look for a track that doesn't have vocals. I kept looking and looking,
I even got Wade's input who knows this music deeply, and it was really hard to find candidates
for a remake that didn't have vocals. So I thought 'hmm, maybe that's not a coincidence,
maybe the human voice is one of the secrets to that epic cinematic sound?' So I could
literally pick almost any Thomas Bergerson track to illustrate my point here because that is the
point so how about 'Creation of Earth' another one from 'Sun' and yeah the drums and Brass are
huge two but try to imagine how much less impactful this would be without the voices.
An interesting thing is that I made a video recently about the music from Ori and the
blind forest and how the composer Gareth Coker also used human voices to breathe life into that
score. If you're trying to unlock the secrets to a lush and rich sound with your music like
Thomas Bergerson and Gareth Coker and you need to watch that video next where you'll learn the three
different elements that make music feel alive. Thanks for watching, I'll see you in the next one.