The Music of Ball Don't Lie

Making music is one of my favourite hobbies, and so I knew I wanted to have some fun with the 'Ball Don't Lie' soundtrack. Sadly, I ran out of time to make it as good (and as original) as I wanted it to be, but I'm still happy with the result. Here was the process:

Creating the Soundtrack.

Both tracks were entirely produced on my trusty Roland SP 404 MKII. This is a sampler, and creating the soundtrack solely using sampling was important to me as the technique is a staple of hip-hop, which is heavily intertwined with basketball.

My Roland SP 404 MKII

Opening Montage

For this, I directly sampled Flying Lotus' 'More', looping a one bar section from a version I found with isolated drums in a Vice video. Admittedly, I didn't change much. 

First, I added a Warm Saturator to the whole track to make it sound just a little bit beefier and punchier.

 

I then knew I wanted some effects at the end of sections that acted like fills, and so I went with an isolator for the last beat of the first 8 bars, and a delay on the last beat of the last bar which I could edit to. 

I also needed a way to build it up before the 'drop', and so added a simple low pass filter which I manually adjusted to higher and higher frequencies before it cuts out and CD Chris presses 'play'.

The last thing I did was chop the first beat of the sample, add reverb, and then play that kick four times to transition out of the song and into a dialogue section. 

Final Track

Conflict

For the main conflict's soundtrack I wanted something gritty and almost relentless. 

I first sampled the opening guitar section of Force of Nature's 'Deathwish', from the 'Samurai Champloo' OST. Then I played my own drums over that and added a subtle vinyl sim over the whole track (to give it a slightly grittier feel). 

Final Track

Recording into the timeline

With my music, I took a slightly unique approach to adding it into my editing timeline. There are quite a lot of dynamic changes and effects in my tracks that were hard to time without watching the film simultaneously. 

To get past this, I first recorded a rough copy into Audacity, which I then placed into the timeline. I then did a rough edit around that to better understand the timing of the entire scene. 

Once I had this rough edit in place, I utilised the USB audio on my 404 to play and record directly into my editing software Davinci. Every effect and change you hear in the music was me playing live into Davinci resolve while following along the movie. 

A track that didn't make it

My favourite of the tracks I produced for this film actually never made it into the final cut.  

It was supposed to be the music that closed the film, and I had the rough copy ready. However, when I tried to edit the ending on the park bench around it, I just felt it ended up being too tonally dissonant. If a key aspect of the film is that the framing story is objective reality and the flashback is subjective retelling, then why is this almost romanticised 'Goodbye' music playing over the framing story's lowkey end?

It just didn't quite work, and as much as it pained me to do so, I had to cut it in the end. 

Final Track, sampling 'I Wish You Love' by The Singers Unlimited.