Jerry and the Goddesses has a Theme Song

Go ahead and give it a listen:

I worked on this for about two weeks, and then I sat on it for another week, listening to it occasionally before I was finally sure this was it.

I think the sound of it may come as a bit of a surprise to some people, especially if you’re aware of my musical tastes. I tend towards the heavy-metal side of things, and to be fair, there’s some distorted guitars in this, too. But this is written like the main score of a movie or television show. It’s orchestral, epic and has different, identifiable parts to it.

The parts, of course, have little micro-titles. Because that’s how I thought of them while assembling them.

The first part, the piano bit, that’s Jerry’s Life So Far. Then, we come into the little guitar-backed first rendition of the main theme, which is Jerry and Inanna. After that comes the quiet, sinister part, that I call The Threat. The horn that comes in over that brings us to Astoram, which then crescendos into The Quest. Finally, at the very end, we get Jerry and the Goddesses, the main theme played at full, epic proportions.

I hope this does the story justice. I hope you all like it.

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Technical Information about the Production

I made this using FL Studio. Most of the instruments you hear are part of the BBC Symphony Orchestra pack from Spitfire Audio. I used the Discover version, which is free. But some of the instruments come from an orchestral pack I bought many years ago and have been using for a while.

The violin you hear during Jerry and Inanna is actually a custom-recorded one by a gentleman who’s name is lost to time and my poor memory. He had a website advertising his skills as a violinist, so I emailed him and politely asked him to make an MSI pack of his violin. He obliged me, putting no constraints on the use of the sounds.

The guitar leading into the same part was recorded by me as an MSI, using a Yamaha LL56 and (I kid you not) a $20 condenser mic I bought off Amazon and an ultra-cheap, 1990’s era computer mic tossed inside the body of the guitar. I blended them with a very slight preference for the inside mic, and a low-pass/high-pass setup, getting my low-end from the condenser and my high-end from the computer mic.

The oboe playing Astoram is a truly unique instrument. It’s MIDI. Specifically, the Microsoft GS wavetable, which is actually a Roland-developed MIDI instrumentation. Yup. It’s just a MIDI instrument played with some bends. I think it sounds pretty good. Certainly it sounds a lot less artificial than my first attempt using an MSI oboe. It’s weird, but I always keep my MIDI channels on board, because you never know when it’s going to sound great.

The electric guitars you hear are a Schecter Omen 7-string going through the PRS Archon VST (part of the PRS All-In-One, which I highly recommend). I’m using the Archon’s built in cabinet impulses, as well, at least this time. They’re the only live instrument in the whole track.

The Piano at the beginning is MIDI as well, but I think if you’re reading this part, you know as well as I do that a MIDI piano is almost as good as the real thing, these days. It’s one instrument that MIDI actually does justice to.