Comparing My Animation Soundtrack to Its Reference

For the first project this trimester, I made a soundtrack for a 1-min animation, which I ended up making it into a two-part soundtrack as there were two different moods presented in the animation. At first, the animator approached me saying that he wanted a chill vibe soundtrack to suit the beach atmosphere and the characters hanging out by the water. He sent me a reference track which suited the first scene well. Have a listen to the reference track as well as my own soundtrack below:

Reference Track

My Soundtrack (First part of the two-part track)

Key

I liked the use of the dominant chord (D7) in the reference track as it created a relaxing vibe but also sounded strange as if something was going to happen. I thought that would suit my own soundtrack as the mood of the animation changes halfway through. I used that same key but also added G9 and just repeated it throughout the whole track, as I thought having one dominant chord wouldn't be interesting.

Tempo

In terms of tempo, I thought both my track and the reference track were very similar. The tempo was not too fast and not too slow for the beach, relaxed, feeling of the scene so I made sure to have a similar tempo to the reference track which was about 120BPM.

Instrumentation

The reference track had a lot staccato notes for the melody, as well as tight sounding instruments/percussion, which suited its track. It also used trap-sounding drums, which I wouldn't use as it didn't match the beach feeling. For my soundtrack, I used long sustained notes for the piano, loose and light sounding percussion such as maracas and a loose snare, and a walking bass line, to compliment the laidback feeling of the beach hangout scene.

Texture

I wanted to keep my soundtrack very simple and use a few instruments, to not disturb the animation as my track was only going to be playing in the background. The reference track had a pretty thick texture, mainly because the reference track was produced for the purpose of a being a track, and not to compliment another media form. If I were to release my soundtrack, I'd be able to add more instruments to make it fuller but because it was for an animation, I didn't want to take the audience's attention away from the animation so I kept the texture thin.

Rhythm

The reference track was very tight sounding compared to my soundtrack, mainly because of the instrumentation that was used as well as how they were played, which were sort of short and sharp notes/hits. With my soundtrack, I wanted to make it sound laidback so I delayed the snare and the maracas by a couple of milliseconds, the bass sounded a bit delayed as well, and the sustained piano notes just helped glue the swing-ness to make sure all instruments were in time.

Making this track from a reference track has helped me improve my critical listening skills, which has helped me compose a track very similar to the reference, while still being able to make my soundtrack suit the context, which is the animation. Now when listening to reference tracks to compose new tracks, I'm much more aware of the little things such as instrumentation, rhythm, texture, and key, which helps with planning the base of my track, as I normally need inspiration or some sort of base layer to start my compositions.