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DeFord Scores Indie Thriller

Randy DeFord Scoring Indie Movie Goss Acres profiled in Mix magazine

Randy DeFord of Oak Road Multimedia

Filmmaker/musician Randy DeFord of Oak Road MultiMedia (Monticello, Ind.) has been in the studio scoring the latest independent film from 25 North Filmwurks, Goss Acres. DeFord composed an opening theme that is reminiscent of 1960s horror movies for the film, which he says is a crime drama/thriller.

DeFord uses a Dell 4600 Windows-based workstation running Power Tracks Pro 12.0 MIDI sequencing. He generated all of the sounds for the theme using vintage Roland GS64 and E-mu Proteus 1 sound modules. Final mixes come from a Mackie Onyx 1640 analog mixer and a Peavey Addverb III for reverbs. He monitors via Alesis Monitor 2s.

“The [opening] song combines classical guitar with strings and punctuations with harpsichord, timpani and low Taiko drum patches,” DeFord says. “The song modulates about midstream and brings in standard drum kits to keep the pace, and then adds high-octave strings to reinforce the low, melodic orchestration.”

DeFord says that to create the right mood, he needed a soprano siren-quality voice for melody tracking with the strings; this was provided by singer Julie Powers. “A dual vocal was tracked for the introductory melody, and then a high soprano part was used after the modulation to get the siren qualities needed,” he says. “One of the trademarks of the ’60s-type horror films was their use of high female voice. Star Trek was another theme that utilized a high soprano voice that’s become a trademark for that original series. The qualities of human voice could not be tracked with synthesis or sampling. I had to have that human element to emulate that era, and Julie created that.”

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