Waveform Studios, the Dublin-based music and audio post production outfit, has moved from Stephen’s Green to new larger premises on Merrion Row, Dublin 2. This new premises, comprised of two studio spaces, will allow the company to expand its audio post-production services. IFTN chatted to Giles Packham and Karl Burke, the creative duo behind the company, as it celebrates its fifth birthday.
Waveform provides original music and sound design for all types of media - film, TV and radio, including radio and TV advertising, as well as providing audio post-production services including voice over recording.
Waveform’s high-profile projects include the theme tunes for ‘I’m an Adult Get Me Out of Here’, ‘House Hunters’, and most recently ‘The Sunday Game’. The team has composed music for several ad campaigns for companies including Lucozade, Vivas Health and Xtravision. They have also composed soundtracks for several TV series, short films and documentaries, and have recently finished working on the music for 'Three 60', an eight-part magazine programme about disability issues. This is the team's fourth year with the series, but the first year they have completed the audio post as well as the music.
Three 60 |
“We are the only company that has been mixing television programmes and documentaries as well as writing original music for them,” says Packham.
Packham, creative director of Waveform, is a classically trained musician who has studied piano, clarinet, guitar and double bass. Holding an M.Phil in Music and Media Technologies from Trinity College Dublin, he formerly worked at Windmill Lane's Number 4 Studios, before taking the leap and setting up Waveform. "I was getting asked more and more to write music for projects," he explains. "I was fresh out of college and saw the possibilities a business like this could have, so I decided to do business training before starting up with Karl in 2002."
Giles Packham |
Karl Burke is the company's guitar, bass and piano playing managing director, who began working with programming effects and synthesisers in the early 90's. A former solicitor, he decided to abandon a law career for a more directly creative outlet, teaming up with Packham for the creation of Waveform in 2002.
The fact that both Burke and Packham play several instruments means they can perform the music themselves.
"It's mostly us playing the instrumentals," says Burke. "When we hire musicians, we get key soloists and singers mainly. Giles has also undertaken training in orchestration over the last five years with Screen Training Ireland/ UCLA's programme."
The team approaches the creative process from different angles, depending on the brief their client gives them.
"Sometimes it's a process of running everything live, recording everything and then fixing it up afterwards," explains Packham. "The other way we do it is in layers-we might start with a rhythm or metronome mark and build on that continually adding new melodies and textures."
"My own background musically, I started by learning piano from an early age, but set it aside after a few years," adds Burke. "When I got back into music it was very much from an experimental, electronic, sound design background and we sort of met in the middle since then.
“When we're writing, sometimes it can be a very old fashioned type of thing, we pick up instruments in the studio, the machine is running and we play live, improvise, I suppose like jazz musicians. Then afterwards you can go back into the studio and isolate the good bits and build them into something else. Another way is the traditional thing, you write a piano piece or a piece for a string quartet, decide on the key, then you can end up with sheet music that can be handed to players or you can get the computer to play it for you."
Karl Burke |
Last year the company invested in a Vienna Symphonic Library, the premier official orchestral package used for scores on Hollywood feature films.
"It creates something that sounds very rich, because very few people are going to have the budget for a real orchestra, or even a chamber orchestra or string quartet," says Burke. "The quality of what you can do with this technology as a replica has increased exponentially over the last year."
Waveform also uses Digital Performer, an integrated MIDI and audio sequence geared towards writing music. The team has recently installed a new Pro-Tools system for facilitating post-production work. Their studios also house a range of keyboard, synthesisers and outboard equipment, as well as a wide selection of percussion, wind and string instruments. Packham and Burke believe that the real thing is better than a simulated version, reaching for the 'authentic' sound wherever possible.
"Myself and Karl have been collecting bits and bobs since the early 90's, we have a huge array of instruments and sounds," says Packham. "I've done quite a bit of traveling and every country I've ever been to I've picked up an instrument and recorded sounds on my MiniDisc recorder. I've got Indonesian Flutes, and an Iraqi Ney, which is a bamboo flute, several different guitars and lots of percussive shakey things.
“The trend in studios nowadays, whether they are compositional or post-production, is towards the all embracing computer solution, because it's convenient. We have that as well, but we also have the old style equipment to go back to if we want to recreate a specific sound.”
One of Waveform's projects 'Feast of the Dying Sun/ Feile na Samhna', a feature documentary about Halloween released in 2004 in English, Irish and Welsh, produced a soundtrack album, which is available to download on i-Tunes.
"Theme tunes are hard to do. We always try and write something that isn't going to sound completely naff and cheesy in a few years time, something that has some longevity built into it. I would hope that ‘The Sunday Game’ tune will be one of those as well, that was something we were aiming for."
Blind Man's Eye |
In July, Waveform completed work on a Frameworks animation called 'Blind Man's Eye', by Matthew Talbot-Kelly. A combination of motion control, camera shots and computer animation, 'Blind Man's Eye' was screened at the Galway Film Fleadh this July and was the only Irish film to be invited to the Venice film festival this September. Burke and Packham created an entire soundscape for the imaginary city of the film, creating a dense multi-layered feel. They are very proud of the end result.
"We brought over a composer/fiddler from Vancouver called Oliver Schroer, who created some incredible violin work for the film. We took out source material from that, and created a lot of other sounds. We did the post and most of the sound design and in terms of the complexity of the film both visually and sonically, it was a big amount of work. I think it's really going to blow people away when they see it."
Packham is also responsible for the music for 'Teeth', a short film screening with ‘Hallam Foe’ nationwide after winning at a number of festivals including the Tiernan McBride award at Galway this July. It is also nominated for an award in Japan and will screen next week at the Palm Springs Film Festival.
With a prolific creative output and list of clients that span television, film and radio, Burke feels confident about Waveform's future:
"As long as people are watching television, listening to the radio and watching films there will be a requirement for what we do, it's as simple as that. As the industry changes and expands to new devices like mobile TV and i-Pods, we are adapting to the new media. It's still all about the skill sets of people, it always has been. Anyone in this industry, writers, editors, directors, cameramen, composers - as long as you can offer your client a high quality service, be reliable and easy to work with and be able to offer them the music or services they need, at the right price to make their end product sound good, then there's no limits to what we can do."
- Giles Packham & Karl Burke. Waveform Studios Ltd, 5 Merrion Row, Dublin 2
- Phone: +353 1 678 9995
- www.waveformstudios.com
By Angela Mullin
