The Making Of: “The Second Melodic Dawn” by Lionel Schmitt
After the successful first instalment, composer Lionel Schmitt executes a poignant, powerful and masterfully melodic second chapter in the Melodic Dawn series. A timeless goosebumps-inducing euphoric classic for trailer makers and fans alike. We spoke to him about his processes and reflect on his latest offering in the trailer world.
With an album focused on emotional melody, how do you begin to formulate musical ideas? With a single melody or building upwards from chord progressions?
- Usually everything comes at once as one uniform idea. Although often without a clear arrangement/instrumentation, which often takes a long time to get right.
This album varies quite a bit in emotional mood. Do you have a particular emotion you feel most comfortable writing with?
- I’m the most comfortable with variance. That’s why the album varies in many ways. I didn’t really consciously try to create a wide range of moods, it’s just what I gravitated towards. I think the result is a fairly even play between dark, light and undefinable things in between.
Exploring a wide range of different emotions and styles keeps the mind fresh for each of them I think. I’d probably struggle staying fully involved and fresh when only working on very dark or very uplifting or any other type of very specific types of tracks for months.
What are your favourite tracks on this album and why?
- Force Majeure. One of the very few tracks I’ve written that turned out pretty much like I wanted/imagined it. Although I’ll probably think differently about that in a few weeks and hate it, as usual haha. It’s inspired by natural catastrophes. From the early onset to the full blown destruction and tragedy. Possibly the most dramatic piece I’ve written so far.
Approaching The End is another one that just turned out in a way that mostly feels deeply “right”. It’s an extremely personal one with a source of inspiration no-one would ever guess.
Also, Breaking Through Reality. I’m particularly happy with the filmic section in the middle as it builds towards the climax. Probably my favourite orchestral writing/mixing/programming I’ve done. While there are live strings in some tracks this one is 100% sample based and I worked quite obsessively on the programming and mixing.
You’ve mentioned before you like to revisit and change tracks right up until the deadline, was this the case with this album and how much changed in the tracks as you revisited them?
- There is always a ton of change happening until the final exports for mastering. There have been 2 stages of me sending in my tracks for review before the final exports and at no point did I actually consider them finished. So, changes were constant and great. Everything from orchestration, instrumentation, mixing, effects, programming was in constant motion up until the final bounce. And now when listening back I want to revisit all of them for another couple of weeks, but it seems like it’s game-over now haha.
Do you take inspiration from current trends in the trailer or soundtrack world?
- I actually listen to fairly few soundtracks (going to increase soon) and I’m not aware of the trends in trailers and soundtracks, so I couldn’t really take inspiration from them. I’m inspired by anything that musically intrigues or moves me, whether it’s a trend or not.
So far in your career you’ve focused on trailers, would any other aspect of the industry interest you in the future, ie. TV, Video Games?
- I’ve always been doing TV and trailer music, although I mostly didn’t really think much about the mediums themselves, so it’s a pretty relative thing. I’m moving more in the TV direction though since the range of styles to be explored there is extremely wide and even includes trailer-style music.
I’ll focus 100% on library music though, whether trailer or TV.
The Second Melodic Dawn is now available for industry use, with a full public release coming soon.
