Herr Vogler's Rants, Ramblings and Drivel

Alan Silvestri's Captain America

2011-08-01T11:54:00.000-05:00

Alan Silvestri is nothing if not ~~predictable~~ consistent. If someone had asked me to write a score that sounded like it was written by Alan Silvestri, this is pretty much what I would've come up with. It's the familiarity factor. It may not even be his fault. It's just what the people he works for ~~ask~~ expect him to do. I for one can't stand his sappy romantic/comedy scores but there's something about his action scores that I just can't help enjoying (for the most part). I think it's because he's still willing to go for a certain old-school dramatic flair and play big moments, well, big.

If you're a fan of Alan Silvestri's action music (as I am) there's a lot to enjoy here.

Big brass, pounding percussion and swirling strings and woodwinds. Everything you've come to expect is here. If, however, you're expecting something fresh and groundbreaking and you're a fan of Alan Silvestri, well, you should know better. It's still fun to listen to and it's been interesting listening to Silvestri streamline his action scoring over the course of the last ten years eliminating pretty much everything that's unnecessary. Back to the Future, Predator, Judge Dredd, The Mummy Returns, Van Helsing; they're all here.

There was something oddly familiar about the main theme. Here it is:

And what it reminds me of can be found here (sorry, embedding was disabled).

I'm not saying Silvestri stole the theme because this is actually pretty standard fare if you're going for that "modern" Americana sound (and it's easy to sound like this). I just find the similarities striking.

A few thoughts on the film itself. This may be the best of the Avenger films. I think that perhaps one of the reasons for this is that it wasn't made by a young director. Joe Johnston's films have always had more than a hint of nostalgia and old-Hollywood to them (The Rocketeer, Jumanji). I think that had a younger director attempted to make this film there would have been a great temptation to try to be a little ironic about capturing the spirit of America during WWII. This is also why I think that Alan Silvestri's score is pitch perfect for the film. It captures that Americana spirit with an exceptionally bold - if somewhat unoriginal - theme and Johnston seems to encourage it throughout the film. The album is a generous 74+ minutes and is a lot of fun to listen to. Basically, if you're a fan of Silvestri's work, you'll love this score. If you find his music insipid and dumb, you're not going to like it.

And just to finish off, here's the end credits march:

Death Star PR

2011-07-19T10:38:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you guys know about this, but I thought that I'd pass it along. The PR Wing of the Emperor's Death Star. Seriously funny stuff.

Herrmann at 100

2011-06-30T10:39:00.000-05:00

How the heck did I miss the memo that yesterday was Benny's hundredth birthday?!?
Bernard Herrmann is widely considered one of the greatest film composers ever. He revolutionized film music and created damn near all the things that are now considered cliche'. He wrote with incredible speed, composed directly into full score - in ink - and left such an indelible impression that many people cannot think of Alfred Hitchcock's American films and not immediately think of Herrmann's music. He once famously quipped that "Hitch only finishes a picture fifty percent; I have to finish it for him."

I shall celebrate belatedly with some of my faves:

North by Northwest
The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

NPR.org » Bernard Herrmann At 100: Master Of The Movie Score

Curtain Call - The Score

2011-06-22T13:34:00.003-05:00

Mike Stromenger's Curtain Call is a 17-part murder mystery web series from this spring that garnered positive reviews and a fairly sizable audience. The score is an orchestral/electronic amalgam composed by Benjamin Emory Larson and Reed Reimer.

In the interest of full disclosure, Reed is a friend of mine. That being said this isn't necessarily going to be a session of sunshine-blowing, pixies and unicorns. That would be irresponsible.

The album opens with the song "Dawn" sung onstage by the victim just prior to her untimely demise. The song serves as the driving force behind much of the musical material for the score. In that respect it functions like the better Bond songs (in fact, it somewhat reminds me of some of David Arnold's work for that series). There are two other themes throughout the score including a love theme for Jennifer and Matthew and a four-note “death” motif.

One can hear in the score an overall affinity and appreciation of good film music without necessarily trying to retread the same ground. The influences I hear in the score include:

Orchestral and harmonic tendencies of Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard
Piano writing of Michael Giacchino à la Lost.
The percussiveness of Bear McCreary’s Battlestar Galactica score (though that tends to be more subtle in nature) and the electronic percussion of John Powell’s Bourne scores.

What we have here in Ben Larson and Reed Reimer is a young composing duo that is sure of their craft. We may recognize where they are coming from but for the most part I rarely felt like they were trying to consciously imitate other composers’ sounds or styles (the one notable exception is that “Across the Stage” is pretty obviously based on John Williams’ “Across the Stars” from Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones). To me, standout tracks include: Dawn (Cassie’s Song), Curtain Rises, Across the Stage, Jennifer, Confession, Unrequited, Pat the Liar, Confront and Center, Little Things, The Dance and Curtain Falls. Despite the episodic nature of the series (even though it's really a two-hour movie broken up into seventeen parts), there's a cohesiveness to the score that is occasionally lacking in film music. Very few elements of this score feel out of place timbrally and those that are out of place have a positively jarring effect.

There are only a few criticisms that one might have of the music for Curtain Call. There is perhaps an over-reliance on the percussion to drive the score and that may very well be my own personal taste. The only other criticism I might have is the album presentation itself. I wonder if combining cues together (like John Williams might do) wasn’t a hindrance in some cases. While having a large number of tracks (like a Thomas Newman score) can be a little maddening, I think some cues might have been better experienced on their own.

There’s a lot to like on this album and a generous helping of it, too. The album clocks in at just under 75 minutes (74 if you must be precise). It’s a well-thought, excellently synthestrated (not my term) and richly varied score that, by-and-large, maintains its unity through texture and the use of a handful of well-developed themes. One is left to ruminate on the possibilities of what Larson and Reimer might accomplish with a project that has a budget large enough for the hiring of live musicians...say about 65 of them.

Buy it from iTunes
Buy it from CDBaby
Buy it from Reed's store

Capsule Review: Source Code

2011-04-11T16:01:00.000-05:00

Source Code reminds me of the kind of score that James Newton Howard might write if he were scoring The Fugitive in 2011 instead of 1993. And why not? Chris Bacon worked alongside Howard for some time before striking out on his own.

My first take on the score was that it was a little on the conventional side; somewhat derivative. As I began paying closer attention I started having a little fun trying to pick out the influences on it. It seems to me that there might've been a lot of things on the temp track for the film. Danny Elfman (Mission: Impossible), James Newton Howard (King Kong), John Powell (the Bourne scores, Paycheck), Michael Giacchino (Mission: Impossible 3, Star Trek) and Alexandre Desplat (The Ghost Writer) seem to all bring their influences to bear on this score. All this with the spectre of Bernard Herrmann hanging over much of it (the same way he does - in the best of ways - over so many of Danny Elfman's scores).

Musically, the score hinges on a couple of primary motives. The first of which is a chromatic figure that isn't all that dissimilar to one of the primary motives in John Powell's Paycheck score. The other bears more than a passing resemblance to the rising-falling theme in James Newton Howard's King Kong. The score bristles with tension but never to the point of overdoing it. On the album at least there seems to be a slow and steady building of this tension that sustains one's listening interest.

As derivative as elements of Source Code may be, there's something fresh about it and there are many things to admire. First and foremost is the score's orchestration. Bacon has the audacity to utilize the entire orchestra augmented by minimal electronics and a keen sense of how not to overuse the percussion, both acoustic and electronic (Adroitly handled by the experience of lead orchestrator and conductor Pete Anthony). The music seems to follow the ebb-and-flow of the drama in the film itself instead of trying to play against it or above it. There's a sense of shape and drama to the album that makes it a nice listen, too. If the album is sequenced in film order then that means that perhaps Mr. Bacon had the opportunity to think about how the score is structured and this is an encouraging thought.

Overall, I find much that is enjoyable about this score for what should be a breakout effort for a young composer that may have interesting things to say in the future as he continues to develop his overall sound.

The good fight

2011-03-17T11:43:00.000-05:00

As many of us know, there is a common misconception among folks that don't do it that somehow the act of composition is "easy" or that the music "flows from inspiration."

Many of us that compose know differently.

For some the music does come. I read a story about how Alan Hovhaness could compose anywhere and that one of his favorite spots was a local diner. One of the longtime waitresses of this establishment was amazed that it just flowed out of his pen. It's said that Bernard Herrmann would often compose his film scores directly into full score - in pen.

For me it's a different story. I have to false-start on a piece at least twice. It ain't pretty. You put in all this work only to realize that this is nowhere near what you want. Or maybe a better idea comes along.

Either way, you just keep slogging through until you find something that sounds "right" to your ear and go with it.

Where's the line? - Update

2011-03-03T12:14:00.000-06:00

I've changed my mind from my previous post. In it I wrote:

"One of the nominees this year is John Powell's terrific score for How To Train Your Dragon. It's a really fun listen but ultimately I don't feel like it's an Oscarworthy score."

I've changed my mind. I do believe it was Oscar worthy. In fact, I think it should've won. This of course reflects my own biases towards certain film scoring tendencies - namely that of the big, old-fashioned orchestral score. So there. I've corrected the record.

Where's the line?

2011-02-22T23:15:00.000-06:00

So those of us that follow film music and the Academy Awards know that the music branch of the AMPAS has some pretty silly rules about what qualifies a score for consideration. We saw this a few years ago with The Dark Knight when it was originally disqualified due to questions regarding how many composers were involved. Ugh.

Obviously it has reared its ugly head again this year. Carter Burwell's excellent and thoughtful score for the Coen Brothers' remake of True Grit was disqualified for taking its basis 19th century American hymn tunes. Never mind that it's a terrifically effective score. I'm sure the rule is based on some instance in which a composer won the best original score statuette for not actually writing a lot of music. This, however, was the m.o. of a lot of composers in Hollywood's Golden Age (It was basically Max Steiner's bread and butter. See: Casablanca).

But here's my question: in contemporary Hollywood film scoring, where is the line? One of the nominees this year is John Powell's terrific score for How To Train Your Dragon. It's a really fun listen but ultimately I don't feel like it's an Oscarworthy score. The thing is that the main themes almost all seem to be based on Celtic folk tunes (if not directly taken from them).

Here's the first track from the album (the particular passage in question happens right around 1:10):

So I guess the rules are different if you're using preexisting material that has an author (even though he's dead and so are all of his grandchildren) and that which doesn't, like a folk tune?

Transitional Period

2011-02-10T11:34:00.000-06:00

When I write a transition, it's usually the barest minimum that I need to get myself from one section to the next. I was in a master class in grad school once where the guest composer (a student of some rather well-known folks) offered the following "advice": "Spend your time practicing writing transitions." Even then I raised an eyebrow and thought to myself, "But, why?" I didn't know why I felt this way at the time. On reflection I think that many years of listening to and absorbing heaps of film music and realising that some of my favorite composers - like Stravinsky - seemed to have very little use for transitional material.To me it seems like a great deal of the affect of music like his is that it's more visceral - by design - without those transitions. That's one of the many things that actually makes it interesting to listen to. Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians? Few - if any - transitions. Just ideas butting themselves up to one another in a really logical and - to me, pleasing - way.

Long ago a friend quoted to me something to the effect of the following:
"Transitions are for people who don't know how to write music"
I may be misquoting and I can't remember who said it. I don't know if this particular person meant it literally that all transitions are useless, but I get the spirit of it. Don't spend all your time getting from one part of the piece to the next. You don't have to be in a constant state of flux. If you have a good idea, try to stick with it and see where it goes. And that's what I try to do.

Debunktion Junction

2011-02-08T12:34:00.000-06:00

...what's my function?*

I got this forward today. Oddly enough, it didn't come to me from anyone with whom I have any regular interaction. The only thing I can think of is that this person received the e-mail as a forward then decided to blast it off to everyone on their contact list.

"Subject: DON'T BUY PEPSI IN THE NEW CAN!
Don't buy Pepsi in the new can. Pepsi has a new 'patriotic' can coming out with pictures of the Empire State Building , and the Pledge of Allegiance on them. However, Pepsi left out two little words on the pledge, 'Under God.' Pepsi said they didn't want to offend anyone. In that case, we don't want to offend anyone at the Pepsi corporate office, either! So if we don't buy any Pepsi products, they will not be offended when they don't receive our money that has the words 'In God We Trust' on it. HOW FAST CAN YOU FORWARD THIS ONE?

Pretty darn fast!!"

A few quick tidbits:

This rumor has been floating around the internet since 2002 and, although sort of based in a factual event, was quickly debunked. One can find information that deflates it both here and here.
One apparently does have to be a scholar these days to know that the phrase "under God" was not in the original Pledge of Allegiance. A quick search of the internets reveals that, despite the fact that the pledge was written in 1892, the words "under God" were not added until 1954 when it was signed into law by President Eisenhower.

Now I love a good e-mail hoax as much as anyone - mostly because it tells you as much about the person who forwarded it to you as the content of the hoax itself - but this sort of thing is just silly. If people would stop and do a quick Google search they could discover very quickly if they're being had. But then again, the language of the forward is meant to appeal to a visceral sense of patriotism rather than any sense of reason. I find the line, "However, Pepsi left out two little words on the pledge, 'Under God...' really telling of what the people who created this are actually focused on. Even if this were true, they left out 16 other words besides those two in the pledge.

Personally, I think this is very funny but I also know that there are people who take this sort of thing very seriously; as if the future of this - or any - nation depends on what a soda company chooses to put on their cans.

Anyway, it's not much but I thought I would share.

*Yeah, I totally stole the title of this post from the regular segment on The Rachel Maddow Show.

STS-51L

2011-01-28T23:14:00.001-06:00

January 28th, 1986. I was 8 years old and in Mrs. Monahan's second grade class. For as long as I could read - which is as long as I can remember - I'd been fascinated by the stars and the space program. I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up (I even had a distant uncle who worked for NASA in the 1960s). This was still at a time when being an astronaut was something really to aspire to.

We were watching that day, as I suspect many of you were, too, in our classroom. It was the first time a civilian had gone into space. An elementary school teacher.

I'd watched a lot of shuttle launches as a kid. They were among my very favorite things. I read voraciously anything I could get my hands about space.This one seemed special, different. There was someone who represented the "everyday person" on board.

I remember watching the takeoff like so many before. Then, 73 seconds into its mission, there was a ball of, well, it wasn't fire - at first. At first it looked like a cloud. Then the solid rocket boosters continued flying on and crossed each other in midair. I think I knew immediately what had happened. It made me sick. Like, for real sick and I remember having to go home.

It's hard to believe it's been 25 years but this was the first "Where were you when?" moment of my life.

Gregory Jarvis
Christa McAuliffe
Ronald McNair
Ellison Onizuka
Judith Resnik
Dick Scobee

Michael J Smith

Living Inside The Music

2011-01-27T23:38:00.001-06:00

There are just certain pieces of music that stay with you. They work their way under your skin. You live with them and, for better or worse, they become a part of you. There's a lot of music I love and I'm not trying to create a "desert island" list.

I bought John Adams' Naive and Sentimental Music when it was first released on CD in 2002. I bought it on a whim and was immediately taken with it. I had been enamored of Adams' music for quite some time and I'd been buying a lot of it for some time. I liked the piece a lot for a time but I don't think I really "got" it and more-or-less kind of shelved it, listening to it every once in a while.

Then - in 2006 I think - I bought the score. I've been reading it for over four years now and it's slowly revealing itself. Yes, it's a "desert island" piece but for me it's so much more than that. It's a piece that I could just crawl into and live inside for a while. I dare say that this piece might have changed my life. It never gets old, never grows tired. In a way it nurtures me. (It's a little disheartening to know that I'll probably never hear it in my hometown unless it's being played by a touring group.)

There are a handful of other pieces like this but Naive and Sentimental Music is probably the piece that means the most to me in this way.

What do you think? What pieces go beyond being "desert island pieces" for you? What works are a part of you?

Bested by a toddler

2011-01-03T10:23:00.000-06:00

Last week die Frau, tyttäreni (Aislinn) and I were having dinner. I had fixed hamburgers for die Frau and I to enjoy while tyttäreni was eating whatever sloppy goo she was ingesting that particular night. Anyhow, dinner was simple: hamburgers, baked beans and potato chips. Not the world's healthiest meal, but you only live once, right? Anyway, Aislinn saw that we were eating potato chips (The baked kind. I can't stand any other kind anymore) pointed to one of our plates and asked, "Chip?"

Uh-huh. No problem, I thought to myself. I've got this.

"You can have some chips when you're finished," I declared in my best P.A.T.*

And then she beat me.

Without eating another bite, she moved her plate - still full with food - to the table and declared, "Done!" (Those of you with little ones of your own probably saw where this was going and the mistake that I made.)

You little stinker. That's what I get, I suppose, for not being clear. What happened next? We distracted her with yogurt, of course!

*P.A.T.: Parental Authority Tone

Bloggity Blog

2011-01-01T15:20:00.000-06:00

I'm beginning to wonder if Facebook has killed our ability to blog. Most of the readers here are Facebook friends (if not friends in real life) and The Warrior Bard and Reed seem to be the only ones blogging with any frequency (and that's nowhere near as much as all of us used to). The Bard has just recently mused on the fact that "life" takes over. This is true, but I'm also nowhere near as angry as I used to be. Well, not angry enough to find the time to post about it. Hell, I'm not even sure that anyone reads this anymore (Though there is movement based on site traffic info. People seem to be interested in the film music posts).

I don't really have much to offer today. I just wanted to post. Life has been bumpy for the last year (year-and-a-half, really) and it doesn't show much in the way of improvement. But I have a beautiful family for which I'm truly grateful and we're not homeless, so I guess that's saying something. But I'm beginning to reach the point where something professional is going to have to go my way. Yes, I had two performances this past year and I'll hopefully have at least one more this year, but that's dangerously close to living on bread and water.

As with last year I plan to write more about music - specifically film music - more. I think I started out doing a better job last year but then the blog started to get away from me again (I have a tendency to overrefine). I still like the medium. There are things here that can't be conveyed through a Facebook post (Or even a Note on FB for that matter because of its length restrictions) and I like the fact that if we get going on a good topic we can have a good conversation.

For those of you that read but never weigh in, now's the time, right?

Happy New Year.

On the interpretation of dreams

2010-11-09T12:23:00.001-06:00

I was at the ballet. Except it wasn't the ballet. I was in a theatre. Suddenly I was plucked from the audience with someone else (don't ask me. I don't have a clue). We were each handed a puppet that looked like a fish. And, yeah, it was Nemo and Dory. I have no idea where that came from. Die Frau and I haven't yet attempted watching Finding Nemo with the kiddo. Anyway, these puppet fish were large and appeared to be designed by Julie Taymor - which I'm totally fine with. Then the music began. It was Stravinsky's The Firebird. I don't remember if it was the suite or the complete ballet but it was there. So this other person and I were "swimming" around the stage in a way that seemed to to make total sense with the music.

Then came the weird part.

I was dreaming (Duh. You knew that part, right?). The strange part was that my conscious self knew I was dreaming. I knew both that I was in a dream and that I was lying there in my bed. The strange part is that I knew what was coming next. I awoke on the downbeat of 'The Infernal Dance of all King Kaschei's Subjects."

Even in my dream it was one of the loudest things I've ever heard.

Things are looking up...

2010-10-01T16:26:00.003-05:00

Ryan Oelke is a friend of mine from my college days at Missouri Western State University¹. He is a part-time poet, full-time renaissance man (Seriously, you can check out his bio here). Recently I had the idea to set some of his poetry. Several of them spoke to me as having great musical potential. I don't know a whole lot about poetry (as much as I enjoyed the language arts, in school poetry always eluded me; probably how it was taught) but I know when I have a visceral response to something. Ryan's poems - posted here - have what I think is a stark, direct, sensual quality that communicate immediately to the reader. I also think that many of them capture a single moment about love - physical, emotional or universal - and stretch that moment into something where time seems to stand still.

Anyway, as I mentioned to Ryan, this idea just kind of popped into my head as I was reading some of his writings one day and one of them exploded into a now-forgotten song in my head. It seemed like a logical next step.

This is going to be a long process. I haven't decided what approach I want to take. Hell, I haven't even decided what poems or how many I want to set. This could be an interesting ride.

UPDATE:

Additionally, through correspondence Ryan has decided he wants me to score his next short film which I think is going to be a lot of fun. He's also posted a handful of my pieces (for those of you who haven't heard these already) on his website.

1. It was just "College" when he, the Pikey and I were there. They've grown up a bit since then (the university, not the Pikey).

I knew it

2010-09-30T15:32:00.000-05:00

The Pikey's abandoned us again. Already. Three posts in a week. We should've known. Jerk.

Goldsmith in session

2010-09-17T11:37:00.000-05:00

I came across this yesterday and thought it was pretty interesting. The scoring session is from The River Wild and two things are readily apparent: 1. studio musicians do make mistakes (though not often) and 2. just because Jerry's music is simple doesn't mean it's easy to play. I think for a lot of his music it's because there's so much space in it that requires that you actually, I don't know, count. Anyway. It's a rare and interesting look into the process even though that process has evolved somewhat since.

Also, check out the look that Goldsmith gives the orchestra at 2:36. Priceless.

Expectation

2010-09-13T15:21:00.000-05:00

For a few days now I've been listening to the scores I own of John Ottman. Admittedly this isn't a large collection and consists of Halloween: H20 (well, his rejected score), Superman Returns, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and X2: X-Men United. For four years I've wanted to love his Superman Returns score. I just can't bring myself to love it. I love that he wove John Williams' original themes into his own. This is always a dangerous proposition (Just check out Don Davis' somewhat more successful take on it for Jurassic Park III) as those themes are almost always so strong that they're going to overwhelm any new material by a different composer (Christopher Young was moderately successful in the otherwise messy Spider-Man 3). I love John Williams' Superman music. It's what I grew up on. It - not Star Wars - is the reason that I'm a musician at all. My very first memory of a live orchestral performance is hearing the Superman March performed live when I was 6 or 7 years old. I wore out the first six minutes of a videotape I had of Superman: The Movie when I was a little older. All this to say that, basically, I had High Hopes. His music is nice enough but it doesn't really do anything out of the ordinary.

Anyway, this post was originally going to be about how I've really wanted to like Ottman's music in general and his Superman Returns score specifically. But I soon realized while thinking about it that there are a number of composers over the years that I've had high hopes for only to see them not pan out to much worth speaking about. Younger and older alike, there are several that - for me - fall into this category. Brian Tyler, Klaus Badelt, John Ottman, Steve Jablonsky are those who have partial memberships in my collection who I feel haven't "fulfilled" some kind of arbitrary "potential." This isn't to say that each of these composers hasn't had great moments or even great scores. It's just that none of them seems to have developed a "sound."

But, Herr...film scoring is about being a chameleon!

Rubbish.

Film scoring isn't about being a chameleon. It's about being flexible. That doesn't mean you can't have your own sound. Personally I think that film scoring is more akin to speaking multiple languages. You can speak them, but it's okay if you have an accent. Jerry Goldsmith had a sound. John Williams, James Horner and Hans Zimmer all have a sound. Even Alan Silvestri has a sound, for crying out loud!

What's the point? The point is that - to my ears - none of these have fulfilled the promise of their early days. These guys - and so many others - keep getting work because the people that hire them know what to expect from them (that they're probably not going to do anything unexpected). To be fair, this is to a certain degree the reason any composer gets hired in Hollywood. No one hires Elliot Goldenthal without expecting that you're probably going to get the unexpected. But he has a sound, too, and his music has a certain sense of theatricality and play to it that few others have.

As I was once told by a man who was a Hollywood music insider for a very long time: "In Hollywood, familiarity breeds content."

The Film Composer's Bookshelf

2010-08-30T13:46:00.001-05:00

(Updated below)

In a recent discussion the question of what books would be of use to the budding film composer came up and I needed some time to think about it and gather some information together. The following is by no means exhaustive. I also think that having a well-rounded library is important. To that end, I've included not just books about the technical aspects of film scoring, but also selections dealing with aesthetics, case studies and anecdotal evidence.

Karlin, Fred and Wright, Rayburn. On The Track: A Guide To Contemporary Film Scoring: This text is invaluable. The music examples alone are worth the price of the book but there's so much more than that. Every aspect of scoring a film is discussed from sending out demos to getting a gig to meeting with the director and producer to knowing what the hierarchy is on the mixing stage. The second edition (which is what I have) has a lot of updated musical examples with a special emphasis on James Newton Howard. There are a lot of Jerry Goldsmith examples, too. The first edition of the book had a click book as an appendix. This would've been pretty invaluable at the time, but as computers have taken a much larger role in laying out timings, it has become somewhat antiquated. That being said, I still think having a click book - or at the very least understanding how click timings work, which is still covered in the book - is a pretty valuable tool. If you only get one book about film scoring technique, this is the one to have.

Burt, George, The Art of Film Music: George Burt is a composer who attempts to take a deeper look into film/music interaction with a special emphasis on the music of David Raksin, Hugo Friedhofer, Alex North and Leonard Rosenman (somewhat offputtingly, he also uses examples of his own scores alongside these guys). This is the sort of text that, as much as the author tries, is largely accessible only to those who are musically literate.

Prendergast, Roy M. Film Music: A Neglected Art: This was the first book I ever owned about film music. It was pretty out-of-date then (in the late '90s) and to my knowledge has never really been revised. It provides a pretty good overview of the history of film music, but there are a lot of places where he gets into specific cases of how film music functions in a given context. A fair number of musical examples but almost nothing contemporary. Prendergast has strong opinions and isn't afraid to share them. Some of which he's taken to task by...

Brown, Royal S., Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music: I picked this up several years back. It largely deals with aesthetics and can occasionally be dense and can get bogged down in film and music theory, but it can be insightful, too. There are several scores that are considered somewhat more in depth (among others, The Sea Hawk, Laura, and Double Indemnity. A significant portion is also given over to Hitchcock/Herrmann).

Adorno, Theodor and Eislier, Hanns. Composing for the Films. I'm still working through this for the first time myself, but it seems to come up - along with Claudia Gorbman's maddeningly out-of-print Unheard Melodies - in damned near every bibliography of every film music study I come across (not a small number anymore). It's an interesting - though occasionally dense - read and is the first attempt (in 1947!) of a codification of the aesthetics of music in film. Many of its ideas are wrapped up in the socialism vs. capitalism debate so consider yourself warned.

Davis, Richard. Complete Guide to Film Scoring. This book was given to me and is really just an overview of the business side of scoring. There's very little in it that deals with technique and craft. Basically, "Get it done. Get it done one time." Duh. But there are some really great interviews in the book as well.

Halfyard, Janet. Danny Elfman's Batman: A Film Score Guide: This is a terrific little read and is a more-or-less exhaustive case study of Elfman's momentous and far-reaching score.

Henderson, Sanya Shoilevska. Alex North, Film Composer: This was pretty clearly Ms. Henderson's doctoral dissertation. It's valuable for its inclusion of scores that cut a wide swath across North's career in Hollywood including A Streetcar Named Desire, Spartacus, and The Misfits (with a few others). She discusses in detail the interactions of North's music with the films he scored and how he "got inside" the character of those films.

Morgan, David. Knowing the Score: Film Composers Talk About the Art, Craft, Blood, Sweat, and Tears of Writing for Cinema: This little tome is basically a series of interviews. Jerry Goldsmith, Michael Kamen, Elliot Goldenthal, John Corigliano and others offer up surprisingly frank anecdotes and the ups and downs of their lives in the film business. It's an interesting insight into their ideas about writing music for films. Anyone who has never scored a film, reads this and still wants to score films may have the temperament needed for the occupation.

Rózsa, Miklós. A Double Life: This is Rózsa's autobiography. It is fantastically entertaining and it's almost difficult to believe that one person did so much. Then one has to remember that the man moved in a lot of artistic circles in his lifetime. It's amazing to read about how much the man looked down on Hollywood and was a bit of a culture snob. There are several really entertaining stories including one about Stravinsky refusing to acknowledge a piece of his own and a scene in Ben-Hur that was original supposed to be shot with topless women for "authenticity."

Smith, Steve. A Heart At Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann: Apparently no one knows more about Bernard Herrmann than Steve Smith. This intelligent and literate biography portrays Benny in all his brilliance, his fiery personality, and all his contradictions. Worth the read about the guy who is largely responsible for and the forerunner of modern American film music¹.

I've intentionally chosen to leave scores out of the discussion. It's too messy a subject and is becoming less and less important in contemporary film scoring unless you wind up spending more time as an orchestrator (which isn't a bad thing - those folks make pretty good money). I will however mention this: if it's at all possible you should attend one of Steven Scott Smalley's film orchestration seminars. It's four hundred bucks for the seminar, plus plane tickets and lodging (unless you know somebody who lives there), but it's just about the best four hundred bucks you'll ever spend. two days of intense discussion and score study and nearly 400 pages of scores and sketches. I would imagine that they haven't updated many of the score samples since 2003, owing to the fact that Scott hasn't worked much lately (because he's, well, kind of a hippie and tried to cram 40 years worth of work into 20 years so that he could retire and live off the land) but it's still worth the trip². Yes, I do reference the scores. A lot.

1. Yeah. That last bit is solely an opinion of my own. But maybe a topic worth exploring in the future.

2. Though if you do attend, particularly in L.A., you have to be prepared for a couple things. First, if you're a classically trained composer, you're going to bang your head on the table a fair bit because of the pop musicians that raise their hands when Scott starts talking about the octatonic scale. Second, you'll most likely be one of the youngest people in the room (out of one hundred people, the only person younger than me was a Brazilian kid named Thiago who was a student at UNC-Greensboro).

Krull, Part 2: Under the Influence

2010-08-23T11:04:00.006-05:00

Previously, I waxed rhapsodic regarding James Horner's score for Krull and how it's one of my very favorite film scores (I'm a brass player. Sue me.).

Awhile back something occurred to me about this particular score. One of the criticisms of James Horner's technique is that he's a little too liberal with his tendency to borrow from himself and others, past and present. Which is totally legitimate. He does it. A lot. Over the course of his career he's cribbed from a lot of folks (Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Pärt, Goldsmith and Horner, to name only a few). Krull represents something relatively unique in Horner's output. So far as I can tell, he doesn't make any direct quotations of other works. There are a lot of allusions to other works but since the history of music is built on such allusions, we can't fault Horner too much for this.

Before we get going, let's take another listen to the first cue from the film. This encompasses not only the title sequence (about the first three-and-a-half minutes) but the series of sequences that follows for the next four minutes):

This sequence is great in that it sets up nearly all of the thematic material for the entire score. In order of appearance, these themes/motifs are:

Women's chorus motif (0'17)
Four-note fanfare for the main character, Colwyn (1'11)
Colwyn's theme (1'48)
Rising four-note broken triad representing the Glaive (2'36)
Material for the Beast and his Slayers, mostly textural in nature (3'37)
Bits of the Love Theme which will be further elaborated in the next cue (5'01)

Those things in mind, let's break down the influences of those themes.

Gustav Holst - The Planets - At first glance this might seem somewhat obvious, but not necessarily in the ways that you'd expect. Much has been made about Horner's driving rhythms suggesting those of 'Mars'. The driving rhythms of 'Mars' are echoes through much of the score, though Horner never quotes anything directly¹. After 'Mars' the movement of The Planets that really get pressed into service is (as far as I can tell) 'Neptune', with its arpeggiated chords, mediant relationships, bitonality and wordless female chorus (more on that later).

Erich Wolfgang Korngold - The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood - Okay. so I suppose these might seem a bit obvious or unfair, but they are the archetypal Hollywood swashbuckler scores. Here are a couple of examples of what I mean though.

You can hear a similarity in both the bold, brassy fanfares and the long-line melody that characterizes both scores and how Horner's themes (though with somewhat more modern orchestration) place the heroic themes of Krull squarely within the Korngoldian (Classical film score) tradition².

Wagner - "Zauberfeuer," Die Walküre ("Magic Fire," The Valkyrie, Für Menschen, die nicht Deutsch sprechen.) - This particular piece comes into play as an influence on the score when Colwyn is retrieving the Glaive from a river of lava (in the highest cave in the tallest mountain...). The "sparkling" or "effervescent" nature of the orchestration along with striking harmonic and rhythmic similarities make for an interesting comparison and I think Horner both captures and modernizes it rather nicely.

"But Herr," you say, "What about the women's chorus?" I'm glad you asked. The material performed by the women's chorus seems to have its origin in several works. Most notably it seems to be derived from Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, Debussy's "Sirènes" from Images, Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 7, Sinfonia Antartica, and Holst's "Neptune" from The Planets.
So there you have it. What my ears hear when I listen to Krull. Actually that's not true. What I hear is Horner filtering other works through and weaving it with his own musical language.

1. The primary driving rhythm of the score is dotted-quarter/sixteenth/eighth/eighth cell. Though on it's own a fairly banal figure, it can be traced (among other things I'm sure) to the third movement March of Holst's First Suite in E-flat for Military Band. Don't forget that Horner spent a good deal of time in England as a youngster and even studied at the Royal Academy of Music for a time. The English are pretty proud of their music and Horner would've heard a lot of it.

2. Many (critics mostly) have complained over the years that Korngold's music "sounded like Hollywood." You can imagine why this is a flat and feckless case against his music as there was no such thing as a "Hollywood sound" until Erich Korngold and Max Steiner came along. Korngold doesn't sound like Hollywood. Hollywood sounded like Korngold!

The Best of the Best of the Best...SIR! The Jerry Goldsmith Edition

2010-08-18T11:13:00.018-05:00

So our own Reed posed the following question on my Facebook page and I thought this would be a good forum to elaborate.

"A question for those concerned: what, in your opinion, is Goldsmith's best Fantasy score? What is his best sci-fi score? What is his best score not in those two genres? Same question for James Horner? Same question for one film composer of your choosing."

First of all, Reed, you're a dirty bastard. Second of all, a great set of questions that may actually (*gasp!*) generate some honest-to-goodness discussion (though I won't be holding my breath).

Today I'm just going to focus on the Jerry Goldsmith question. I figure that's enough to get us started.

By my count, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 scores that one could classify as "science fiction". Among these are: Alien, Chain Reaction, Coma, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Explorers, The Illustrated Man, Hollow Man, Logan's Run, Outland, Planet of the Apes, Runaway, The Satan Bug, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, Star Trek: Nemesis, Total Recall. The fantasy genre, as we all know, is more difficult to pin down because of the various blendings that can happen with so many other genres. Among others, I have: Baby: Secret of the Lost, Legend, Gremlins, The Haunting, Legend, The Omen Trilogy, Poltergeist, Poltergeist II, The Mummy, Powder, The Secret of NIMH, Small Soldiers, The Star Trek films (they fit both genres) Supergirl.

Before getting started though we have to address some problems that are central to trying to pick a series of "best of" scores by someone like Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith wrote music for film and television for nearly fifty(!) years beginning in the early days of television at CBS in the 1950s and scoring his first feature film in 1957. One of the main problems is that as the technique of film scoring changed over time, so did certain aspects of Goldsmith's scoring technique (pre- and post-Star Wars). In my view Goldsmith had essentially 3 compositional periods (with some line-blurring between periods). The 1960s and '70s more-or-less fall into a period of their own (I am, however, going to divide them by decade into two subcategories, because it's my blog.). The 1980s (what one might term Goldsmith's musical Wanderjahre because of the way film music was starting to change/be invaded by rock and pop musicians). Finally there was basically 1990-2004, during which he spent a few more years whittling his sound down to the essentials. Couple these with the fact that Goldsmith wrote great scores in literally every genre of film. Westerns? Check. Horror? Sports films? Check. Sci-Fi, fantasy, period film and drama? Check, check, check, check. Porn? How about Basic Instinct?

So by dividing his career into these discreet periods, I submit for your approval the following:

The 1960s:

Best science fiction score: Planet of the Apes. Yeah. You should've seen this one coming. Goldsmith wrote a lot of scores utilizing twelve-tone technique throughout the '60s and '70s including The Illustrated Man and The Satan Bug. This is his best sci-fi score of the '60s. Hands down, bar none. There are a lot of other good scores, but this is the pinnacle of his sci-fi work for the 1960s. In fact, Planet of the Apes may arguably be (one of) the finest example(s) of what concert composers of the time had been wrestling with for almost twenty years. Someone managed to combine Schoenberg's technique (freely adapted, like so many others) with Stravinskyian and Bartókian rhythmic inflections. It's possible that until John Corigliano scored Altered States that Planet of the Apes was the wildest orchestral film score ever written. The only use of electronics is the echoplex on the strings¹.

At this point, though, I don't really have a fantasy score to pick because it hadn't become institutionalized in Hollywood the way it seems to be now. I could be wrong - my knowledge of the genre is pretty limited, actually - but it seems that at this point in time, "fantasy" meant Anything Ray Harryhausen Is Attached To such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, The Mysterious Island, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Okay, so that's a bit of an exaggeration. A bit.

The 1970s saw an influx of science fiction-oriented films and certainly an increase in the fantasy element (though, to be fair, isn't all science fiction fantasy to some extent?).

The 1970s:

My pick for Goldsmith's best sci-fi score of the 1970s is actually a draw. I couldn't choose between Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Alien. I realize this may be cheating the rules a bit but, again, my blog. It also just happens that they were both made in the same year. If you really forced to pick, I'd have to go with Alien. Blasphemy, I know. But it's the more compositionally interesting of the two; and for me, compositionally interesting trumps more often than not. My runner up is Logan's Run, with its deft use of much of the same sort of elements that made Planet of the Apes so interesting plus heavy doses of electronic mayhem of the time.

As far as fantasy is concerned, I think I have to pick The Omen. But, Herr, it's a horror film. Okay, well it's not so horrifying anymore but I've heard it got the blood pumping back in the day. It's what would now be called a supernatural thriller more than an out-and-out horror film but it's about the Antichrist for cryin' out loud. It doesn't get much more fantastical than that! Besides, Jerry's score basically updated Bernard Herrmann's take on the horror film, adding - again - Bartókian and Stravinskyian rhythmic devices.

The 1980s:

The 1980s saw both the sci-fi and fantasy genres take off like a rocket as we became a post-Star Wars world. I think Goldsmith's best sci-fi score of the 1980s actually came in 1980 with Peter Hyams's Outland. It's a testament to the composer when three such distinct takes on the sci-fi genre can be rattled off in relatively quick succession when you put Outland together with Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It helps to reinforce what Goldsmith always said about trying to find the humanity in the film rather than rely on any gimmickery. Explorers is a really wonderful score, full of a youthful buoyancy.

In the 1980s the fantasy genre seemed to inspire some of Goldsmith's richest and most imaginative writing. The Final Conflict (the final installment of The Omen Trilogy) is rich with both music of light and darkness. The Secret of N.I.M.H. contains some of his most hauntingly lyrical writing. Both Poltergeist films let Goldsmith both reach back to his days in television (scoring several fantastic episodes of The Twilight Zone) and stretch his orchestral chops, creating music that is dense and terrifying yet never loses sight of the humanity of the story, embodied in the theme for the little girl, Carol Anne, and her mother who tries to retrieve her². So what's my favorite? Legend. It was a toss-up between that and Poltergeist but there's something so...magical about this score. It simply shimmers and to my ear is probably Goldsmith's first truly successful blending of orchestra and electronics where you don't really "hear the seams" as it were. It also lays bare the fact that Bartók and Stravinsky weren't the only composers important to Goldsmith. If Legend - and Poltergeist for that matter - has a concert hall cousin, I would hazard a guess that it would be Ravel's Daphnis Et Chloé (not the suites, but the whole damned thing³.

The 1990s:

From 1990 to his death in 2004 my favorite sci-fi score of the period is a no-brainer. Total Recall. Is it completely over the top? Yes. Is it a great film? Maybe. Maybe not. Does it take a lot of liberties with Philip K. Dick's original story, rendering it nearly unrecognizeable? Pretty much. It also happens to be one of the most solidly developed scores in Goldsmith's entire career with nearly every cue developed from a single, audaciously simple musical idea and functions on multiple levels within the film⁴. My other favorite sci-fi score for this final period is Hollow Man (also directed by Paul Verhoeven). Compositionally, though, Hollow Man doesn't really sustain its musical interest beyond the first hour or so. Once everything goes to hell Goldsmith basically turns on the blood and guts scoring and goes straight for the musical throat of the film (It's still a wonderfully constructed score).

At first I was tempted to choose The Mummy as my favorite fantasy score of Goldsmith's final period. And I do love. How I love it so. I bought this score album the same day as Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Guess which one got more play time in my CD player that summer? As I've mentioned before, it was reported that Goldsmith hated this score and the fact that director Stephen Sommers wanted him to keep going over the top musically and basically wanted Jerry to abandon all subtlety. Which he did. So I'm going to change midstream. The Mummy is my favorite over-the-top fantasy score of the period. My favorite subtle fantasy score? Powder. Nobody saw the film, and I'm not going to comment here about the "extracurricular activities" of the film's director, but it has a beautiful and tender score that just warmly draws you into the story of a boy who is an outcast because he looks different and has a unique gift.

So there you have it, dear reader(s). Feel free to weigh in as you see fit.

1. Even then, Goldsmith's score is far more listenable and - I think - more involved with the film's diegesis on a subtextual level).

2. Astute observers will note the similarities between Poltergeist and an episode of the original Twilight Zone series entitled "Little Girl Lost", in which a girl falls through her bedroom wall into another dimension - scored by Bernard Herrmann.

3. You don't know it? Go check it out. Right now.

4. One day I hope to get to that blog post.

Batman to the Rescue

2010-08-13T22:18:00.004-05:00

I grew up listening to the music of movies by watching the movies. I wasn't able to listen to film music away from films until I was sixteen, got a job and started to have my own disposable income. I nearly wore out VHS copies of Superman, The Ten Commandments (yeah, seriously; as a ten-year-old), episodes of the late-eighties reboot of Mission: Impossible and today's particular special, Batman. My ears perked up the very first time I saw Batman. I didn't know why it resonated with me so much, but it did. (Interestingly, this is another one of those scores that's been on my regular playlist ever since I bought it in 1994). Perhaps even then I was able to subconsciously connect the gothic nature of both music and image.

So, as with Krull, the folks at La-la-land Records have seen fit to not only release Danny Elfman's complete score to Batman, they were good enough to include a second disc that was the original album release and scads of extras (including one very funny hidden track).

For over twenty years now there's been one cue I've been dying to hear separate from the film. It's the point in the film where Batman comes crashing through the skylight of the Flugelheim Museum Restaurant to rescue Vicky Vale from the Joker (the first time). It's the first truly bold statement of the Bat-Theme on its own, separated from being embedded in another musical context and is performed largely in the brass with powerful accompaniment from the strings and percussion. (You can watch the video here.) Sadly, it sounds like this particular cue was recorded in a hurry. Something sounds..."off" about it. There's a particular moment around 0:15 where the horns sound almost as if they're playing the wrong key. It's either scored badly, performed badly, or both. It's still one of my favorite scores ever and I would like to think it - along with a handful of other scores - was instrumental in the development of my musical awareness.

Krull, Part I

2010-08-07T12:59:00.002-05:00

I saw Krull for the first time my freshman year in college. My roommate was a Star Wars guy and one day asked if I'd ever seen it. Once he got over the astonishment of it, he immediately pulled out his VHS copy of Krull and we watched it right then and there. I was enthralled (sometimes it doesn't take much). I realized that there was a great deal in common with Star Wars but mostly the ways that it incorporates so many aspects of Arthurian legend (not to mention various other archetypes). Did the film have its weaknesses? Absolutely. Did it aspire to be greater than its budget allowed? Definitely. In the long run, it seems to have aged comparatively well when you place it up against many of the other post-Star Wars films of the time. This probably owes to the fact that it doesn't take place on Earth and its setting owes a great deal to the highly romanticized versions of the medieval Arthurian legends.

But I digress.

I don't remember how, but I acquired my own VHS copy as soon as I could. I even pre-ordered the DVD pretty much as soon as its released was announced. But the coup was when I was browsing at a Barnes and Noble (a Barnes and Noble!) and happened across the Southern Cross pressing of the score:

I was unbelieveably stoked. For the next 45 minutes I walked around the store, clinging to that CD like Gollum to his Preciousss. It quickly went on my playlist and I listened to it over and over again. As a matter of fact, it's been part of my regular listening rotation consistently since the day I bought it. At some point during college the now defunct Super Collector somehow acquired a set of master tapes from Krull and pressed their own release that was a more-or-less complete score for the film. The sound quality was no different from the the Southern Cross release, just double the music!

Then it finally happened.

The good folks at La-la-land Records (increasingly becoming the Little Label that Could) saw fit to release their own complete score (with a few bonuses) that seems to be mastered from newly recovered elements. The quality is much, much better. They seem to have removed the artificial sounding reverb from the original release(s) and applied a more natural-sounding reverb. The score is still bright and powerful, and the producers seem to have smoothed off some of the rough passages - of which there were many. For a lot of film music lovers this has been one of those "holy grail" scores. It has a bold main theme for the film's male protagonist, Colwyn, muscular action music for the adventure aspects of the score, brazen moments of pure orchestration that remind you that Horner is, in fact, a highly-trained, highly-skilled composer and a beautiful and yearning love theme for Colwyn and Lyssa - held captive by The Beast for the majority of the film - that in some distant way seems reminiscent to me of British folk song.

It's a fun film and, as I remarked to a friend, probably my favorite of the post-Star Wars fantasy failures. In recent years, though, it seems to have gained somewhat of a cult following. I would like to think that the terrific efforts of James Horner have something to do with it, but I also know that it's largely because - like Star Wars - the film remains largely upbeat for its duration (also a credit to Horner).

This is all prelude, though. There's more to come. Meantime, check out the first cue in the film, "Main Title and Colwyn's Arrival". Great swashbuckling stuff!

Tax Evasion

2010-07-26T22:09:00.003-05:00

Updated below.

I've become quite tired of hearing about how people think their taxes are too high. I don't necessarily like paying my taxes, but at least I understand what they're for.

To that end I would like to profer a solution:

If you don't like paying your taxes, you shouldn't have to anymore.

You read that right. You should be able to opt out of paying your taxes.

A few quick notes about your tax-free existence:

You'll no longer be allowed to utilize a service or work for a business, company or institution that receives or is paid for through tax dollars. In the event of a health or safety emergency, don't bother calling 911. You don't contribute. Are you a teacher at a public school or university? You're going to have to find a new job. You're now mooching off the state. You are also now going to have to send your kids to private school (again, make sure that it's one that doesn't receive any public funds) or you're going to have to educate them yourself. And then there's the food. It looks like you're going to have to grow your own food and maybe even raise your own livestock. Either that or you're going to have to make sure that you buy all of your food from growers who don't receive government subsidies, either to grow a certain crop or, as in the case of many, not to farm all of their land. The little things? Sports? They're most likely out as many of your favorite franchises either receive some sort of finanical backing from local or state governments or they play on land that is either owned by or whose construction was funded by the public. The arts? We won't even GO there.

Finally, all of this is moot as you'll not be able to utilize any roads, highways or interstates that are built or maintained under the auspices of government funding.

I would like to apologize for this little diversion, but it's just something that was welling up inside of me for a long time now. It seems absurd that people have no idea what their taxes pay for. Is there a tremendous amount of waste? Of course. No system is perfect when you've got 535 basically speaking for 350 million.

It's a travesty that we value an education so little in this country that schools everywhere, at every level, are being "forced" to cut programs, curricula and activities. Naturally, there is plenty of blame to go around. Administration, municipalities, unions, teachers and, of course, ordinary tax-paying citizens all shoulder part of the responsibility for the failures of education. And my solution isn't just throw money at it blindly. The way I see it is that somebody (or, rather a large group of somebodies) paid their taxes when I was a kid to make sure that I had educational opportunities even though I grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in my home town. I would be willing to gamble that at least 50% of my elementary school (possibly much, much more) were on free or reduced lunch. What happens when we no longer want to help these kids get at least one solid meal a day? Do we say "Sorry, kid, but it's your own fault you're poor" or even more sinister, "This is God's punishment for ____." That's a load of bunk.

This is a pretty raw post. I just wanted to, in the words of a friend of mine, "Crap it out." Feel free to comment, debate, excoriate (me, not each other), whatever.

A Very Good Year

2010-06-24T08:32:00.002-05:00

When you compose 4-6 scores a year, you're bound to run up against a few films that test the limits of your inspiration. Jerry Goldsmith was known for being prolific and speedy. I once read the phrase "Mozartean swiftness" in relation to how quickly he could write. During the sixties he averaged four films a year (bearing in mind that from 1960-1962 he only wrote five scores but he also wrote a pile of television music).

In the 1990s he composed - among others - Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Rudy, The Shadow, The River Wild, First Knight, Star Trek: First Contact, The Ghost and the Darkness, Air Force One, The Edge, L.A. Confidential, Mulan, Star Trek: Insurrection, The Mummy and The 13th Warrior.

1997 saw only three scores (only!), but all of them quality and what I see as the coalescence of what one might call Goldsmith's "late" period. (I have no empirical evidence for this, just my ears.) Air Force One, L.A. Confidential, and The Edge were all released in the same summer (AFO released first but scored last owing to Goldsmith replacing Randy Newman's score at the last minute). All three are diverse and top-notch scores. Air Force One is Goldsmith's first full-throated action outing since Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall (1990). Apparently Wolfgang Petersen wanted a full-blooded action score with a hyperpatriotic sound. Goldsmith delivered in spades. L.A. Confidential is a rich fusion of modern orchestral techniques and jazz-inflected trumpet solos (performed expertly by longtime session player Malcolm McNab) evoking a 1950s "cool jazz" ethos. I'm also firmly convinced that in any other year Jerry would've finally won another much-deserved Oscar for L.A. Confidential had it not been for That One Movie¹.

The Edge, though...

The Edge is an interesting outdoor adventure yarn written by David Mamet and superbly acted by Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin². Any movie where Anthony Hopkins gets to utter the line (regarding the bear who tracks the pair), "Today...I'm gonna kill the motherfucker!" automatically gets my vote for awesome. I bought the score based on the recommendation of a filmmaking friend who actually wasn't big into the music of Jerry Goldsmith. At the time I also hadn't realized that Jerry Goldsmith was my composer of choice. So I bought the score and was instantly in love with it. It's a long-line, broad and expressive melody that is surprisingly malleable in how it's able to be used in the film. The entire score is an exercise in the clarity and restraint that are hallmarks of Goldsmith's style (I know it's difficult to think of a score like Air Force One or Total Recall as restrained but they're really very "spacious" scores). The score is rich and varied and utilizes several themes but "The Edge" theme is dominant throughout.

Interestingly, The Edge is the only score that I know of from the last twenty years of Goldsmith's career - that's orchestral - where he actually took an orchestration credit (alongside longtime collaborator Alexander Courage). It's been oft remarked that being an orchestrator for Jerry Goldsmith was like being a glorified copyist. I seem to remember reading that either Arthur Morton or Alexander Courage said something about "taking the music on the green paper and putting it on the blue paper" (or vice versa). Basically you're a glorifed copyist. One might be tempted to think that they're massively understating their importance; until you listen. I can't tell you who did what. Seriously. I can't. I have over a hundred Goldsmith scores and have listened to this one regularly since I bought it all those years ago. When the orchestration is that seamless, you know the orchestrator is practically invisible.

Anyway, it's a terrific score.

More to follow. Maybe.

1. Seriously. How did it happen that he only ever won ONE Oscar? Oh, right. The Academy doesn't know shit about what it does.

2. Arrec Barrwin!!!

REEEEEEEEEEEEEjected!!!

2010-06-04T12:38:00.002-05:00

Alan Silvestri wrote the original score for Brian DePalma's Mission: Impossible (1996). His score was thrown out and Danny Elfman (probably considered by many a strange choice at the time) was hired to compose a new score in about three weeks(!). Mission: Impossible represents a huge step forward for Danny Elfman as a composer. The discerning listener will note that Elfman's music changed quite alot right around this time and his music became more compact, with a more concentrated focus on smaller motivic material

Interestingly, after listening to the Silvestri version of this cue I much prefer Elfman's. It's more intricate, percussive, less overblown and doesn't try to compete with the sound effects.

I couldn't find Elfman's version of this cue on YouTube, otherwise I would've posted it for a side-by-side comparison.

Life and Death

2010-05-21T23:32:00.002-05:00

There is a legend about the buddha that one night, on the cusp of attaining enlightenment, he waged a great battle with (Devaputra) Mara, the chief of all demons and master of all human passions. Mara conjured all manner of things to distract Siddhartha. When he fired arrows at Siddhartha they became nothing more than harmless lotus blossoms, showering him. Mara's final test was to ask why he, Siddhartha, deserved enlightenment. Siddhartha said nothing. Still deep in meditation, he stretched out his hand and touched the earth beneath him with the tips of his fingers. The Earth acknowledged Siddhartha and trembled and shook with mighty force, bearing witness to Siddhartha's awakening. Mara had no choice but to abandon his quest and Siddhartha rose that morning the Buddha; the awakened one.

Why is this relevant to the discussion? I'm not sure. But something about the touching of the earth suddenly spoke to me. When we touch the earth beneath us, we touch the edge of the universe figuratively and maybe even literally. Cosmology has recently inferred the existence of dark matter. Nobody is sure why it's there or what it does but one thing is sure: it is the most abundant of all "stuff" in the universe. It can be thought of as an interconnected web that scientists quite literally believe binds the universe together.

I don't know why these thoughts occurred to me while thinking about my recently deceased grandfather (other than the fact that it's a perfectly natural course when someone familiar dies) but, rather than fill me with a sense of dread or existentialism about my own existence, I found it a calming, peaceful thought. In that moment I thought to myself "When I touch the ground beneath me - and know that I am touching the ground beneath me - I am touching the whole of creation. From the big bang fourteen billion years ago to Jesus' walk in Galilee some two millenia ago to a galaxy a trillion trillion miles away; they are all at my fingertips. At that moment, the whole existence of the universe is for me to understand that it is there." This isn't meant to be thought of egocentrically; but merely that in this moment, the entire existence of the universe has - for me - come down to this moment of understanding.

Life doesn't have to have a point or a meaning, just the understanding that it is amazing.

So does this make any sense at all?

In Brief

2010-05-06T12:35:00.002-05:00

Boxers or briefs?

Playing Favorites

2010-03-31T19:55:00.004-05:00

As I've been preparing for a series of posts based on James Horner's Avatar, I've been listening to a lot of his scores. In the process I've been rediscovering a lot of the music that sustained me through high school and college and it's kind of like I'm returning to them with fresh ears. I was hoping to have a different post up today but it'll have to wait until tomorrow or the next day.

In the meantime, what's your favorite James Horner score and why?

Hearing Voices

2010-03-22T13:25:00.001-05:00

Or: How to have your political point-of-view taken seriously.

1. Don't wear silly hats. Nobody takes a person seriously when they're wearing a silly hat. Even if your points have some validity, all they can see is your silly hat.

2. Don't portray the President of the United States as a villain. There's no free pass here for liberals, either. They did the same thing to GWB. It wasn't right then, it isn't right now.

3. "It is better to keep one's mouth shut..." Argue the facts. If you don't know the facts, you should probably not open your mouth to argue. I have fallen victim to this myself from time to time. I do try to be as informed as possible, though, when discussing things of a political nature. I know that occasionally my right brain gets in the way of my left brain. Increasingly, though, I try to use both to come to an informed decision.

4. As a corollary to number 3, if you want to be taken seriously, you can't reduce your argument to name calling. Yes, liberals did this to GWB, too, but I can't recall anything of the magnitude of "Kill the bill then kill the [n-word]!" (Here.)

5. And when all else fails, Godwin's Law applies. (You can google the pictures yourself.)

Choose My Adventure For Me

2010-03-17T13:37:00.002-05:00

So I've got a bunch of posts in the works and I can't decide which one to finish first. So I'm putting it to you, my good readers. Which of the following would you like to read?

A series of posts breaking down the score to Avatar on CD and how it fits into James Horner's total oeuvre. (This would probably be at least three posts). I realize this is a long time coming from my "First listen" post back in December, but I didn't even see the movie until mid-January so cut me some slack!

A discussion of a potential film music canon (as suggested long ago by The Temp Track)

The postminimalist nature of Don Davis's score for The Matrix (an extension of a paper I wrote years ago).

Your 10 (or so) favorite film music moments ever (courtesy of the Pikey's recent post)

And, finally, thoughts on the best film scores of the first decade of this millenium.

So there you have it. And remember...Your opinion counts!

Little Pleasures

2010-03-16T11:19:00.001-05:00

My drive home lends itself rather well to the ebb and flow of a well-planned film music playlist.

I take I-35 most of the way home but I take a circuitous route to get there that requires me at one point to be on I-29 south to take I-35 north (in order to avoid construction on this). The merge ramp from I-29 south to I-35 north is a single-lane brdige that actually crosses over itself to go north. Traffic often slows to a crawl - if not a complete standstill - on this bridge/merge depending on the time of day (usually by the time I'm on it).

As I merged onto the ramp yesterday, traffic slowed just as "The Asteroid Field" from The Empire Strikes Back came on. The music paced the external action perfectly. As traffic began to speed up, so also did the tempo. Once I merged fully onto I-35 and was back up to speed, the cue locked into its tempo and carried me through the next four miles of weaving in and out of the "interstate asteroids" beautifully.

Some people would say this was luck, but in my experience there's no such thing as luck.

The Battle Rages On

2010-02-26T21:46:00.000-06:00

After five years of searching I think I've finally discovered my least favorite type of customer:

The little old lady who has nothing better to do than call and complain about our modern music programming. More on her in a minute.

Last weekend's program was:

Overture to La scala di seta - Rossini
Symphony No. 8 - Beethoven
Concerto in E for Flute and Orchestra - Luca Lombardi (Emmanuel Pahud, soloist)
Overture to Francesca da Rimini - Tchaikovsky

On Wednesday afternoon I received a phone call from a patron similar to the one described above. She wanted to register her complaint about the flute concerto. I did my best to convey to her that her opinions would be heard and carried on to the next level but that part of our mission statement includes the bringing of the best of music both new and old to a wider audience. She said she understood. I listened to her concerns. (That's what I do; and I'm damned good at what I do.) At no point, however, did I agree with her about her. I simply couldn't; and if I can't do my job in good conscience, then I can't do my job to the best of my ability.

Here are some of the phrases she used to describe the piece:

"not enjoyable"
"not music"
"a waste of Emmanuel Pahud's talent"
"not something to be listened to but to be endured"

I've posted about the customer always being right before and for the most part I was able to grin and bear it. But then she said this:

"If the Symphony commissioned that piece then it was a waste of money."

At this point I had to shut down. If I hadn't, I would've gone into full-on I'm-going-to-dismantle-you-now mode (and that's good for no one). I didn't share with her that I'm a composer. I didn't share with her that two of my colleagues are also composers. I didn't share with her that no matter how good or bad a piece of music ever is, if someone was paid to create art of any kind, it's never a waste of money.

It must have become apparent that I wasn't going to agree with her. At this point she basically went looking for an argument because she simply wouldn't let it go. I knew I couldn't allow myself to be pulled into an argument. I knew it would do no good to let her know that if I had any reservations or issues with the piece they were musical and not aesthetic like her own. She would only hear that "he didn't like it, either" which was not the case.

She did share that she liked the rest of the concert very much, particularly the Tchaikosvky (to be fair, I don't know it) and had the audacity to ask why "no one can write a melody like that anymore?" I couldn't help myself. Before I even realised what I'd said it was already out of my mouth: "Because they'd be laughed out of the concert hall." (Shit.) Oh well. It was out there and I wasn't about to take it back.

By the time the call was finally ended I'm not sure which one of us was more frustrated. I can, however, tell you which one of us had a right to be more justifiably angry with the other when it was over.

Raise A Glass

2010-02-10T15:08:00.003-06:00

Happy Birthday, Jerry Goldsmith.

Last year I lamented that it's sometimes still difficult to accept that there would never be another new Goldsmith score. The last twelve months, though, have seen a flood of releases of Goldsmith scores in expanded or previously unreleased form that amounts to an embarrassment of riches, including:

The Boys from Brazil
Cain's Hundred (t.v. series from the early 1960s)
Escape from the Planet of the Apes
Freud
I.Q./Seconds
In Harm's Way
Innerspace
Islands in the Stream
Lonely are the Brave
One Little Indian
Rent-A-Cop
Sebastian (with additional music by Tristram Cary)
Twilight Zone: The Movie

The Pikey will let me know if I've forgotten anything. Most of these I haven't been able to acquire (legitimately) due to the lack of necessary funds but they're out there in one form or another and will be for awhile so I'm not too worried about it. The Pikey and I have discussed how it's quite likely that, at this rate, nearly all of Goldsmith's scores will be available commercially in the next few years. And why not, when there are folks like me clamoring for the stuff?

One score in particular that I'm looking forward to the prospect of is that of an early John Frankenheimer film called Seven Days In May, a taut political thriller wherein a cabal of generals threatens to overthrow the president because he supports nuclear disarmament. Goldsmith chose to score the film using only pianos and percussion and with typical sparse spotting. I think the score totals less than 30 minutes.

So there it is. Once again we mark the anniversary of the birth of the great Jerry Goldsmith.

How does this happen?

2010-02-08T21:46:00.003-06:00

My wife and I each have health insurance through our employers. It's too expensive for either one of us to be on the other's plan. It's also too expensive for either one of us to carry our daughter on our respective plans (Prohibitively so). We cover her privately because we found a good plan that we could afford with a decent deductible amount.

We received a letter in the mail on Saturday.

Her monthly premiums are going up 61%, from $140 a month to $230.

There are no frills. So now it looks like we're going to be facing even more cutbacks at the homestead. This on the heels of a new report detailing just how much of our GDP is spent on health care. And it's only going to up if nothing is done about it. The worst part is the helpless feeling of knowing there's nothing you can do about it.

I just wonder how an insurance company can justify an increase that is nearly twenty times(!) the current U.S. inflation rate. Can you imagine the outrage if you were to go to the grocery store and all of a sudden a gallon of milk was no longer $3.50 but, rather, $70???

I realize that the point of being in business is to make money. That's why it's call for profit. But I think it might be time that our elected leaders start to play hardball with these companies. There are only two businesses in this country that have an antitrust exemption from the our government: Major League Baseball and Health Insurance Companies. It would be nice to see that change for the latter. I understand that many of the insurance companies are arguing that removing the antitrust exemption may have unintended negative consequences. While I understand that this is surely a possibility, I'm thinking they're referring to their profits and not our interests as consumers.

Okay, so I'm not crazy

2010-02-05T12:12:00.001-06:00

Well, maybe a little bit, but not about this.

During the presentation of the Cecile B. DeMille award to Martin Scorsese at the Golden Globes they played a montage of clips from all of his films. It ended, naturally, enough, with scenes from his upcoming Shutter Island. Under the scenes from Shutter Island I heard something familiar. A bass line and rising chromatic figure that I knew all too well. I actually backed it up just to make sure I'd heard it correctly. Yep, there it was. Plain as day. The passacaglia from the Penderecki Third Symphony. I immediately became intrigued and found that there was no composer credit for the film. Apparently Scorsese uses all found music for this particular film. People who know his films know that this isn't anything new and that he oftentimes treats the original scores composed for his films in a similar manner.

Anyway, the list of works/composers is actually pretty damned impressive. Penderecki, Giacinto Scelsi, John Adams, Ingram Marshall, Ligeti, Morton Feldman, Lou Harrison and others.

Check out the track listing for the soundtrack to Shutter Island.

Ahhh, New Music

2010-02-04T13:59:00.001-06:00

I had a piece premiered this last Friday afternoon at the Missouri Music Educators Association meeting. (Osage Beach is so lovely this time of year. Except not.) Anyway, I wrote a brief Magnificat a few months back and the choir that gave its premiere did a really great job with it; especially considering it's a difficult piece (so I'm told). It's only about two-and-a-half minutes but it has a great deal of rhythmic complexity which was fun to work out. Many folks were very complimentary of the piece and much to my surprise several even expressed interest in performing it. So that's nice. Hopefully soon I'll figure out a way to embed the piece here on the old blog. I guess I need to get me one of those website thingies.

Interestingly, no one asked why I only set the first two lines of the Magnificat text.

Of Hacks, Delusion and Religionists

2010-01-04T21:35:00.000-06:00

I don't care about Tiger Woods. Others have already discussed this. I've chimed in enough to say my piece.

HOWEVER...

Brit Hume, who presumably was once upon a time a respected reporter for ABC News had this to say yesterday morning on his Sunday "News" Program regarding one Eldrick "Tiger" Woods:

Now you're entitled to believe whatever it is you want to believe, so long as your beliefs aren't responsible directly or indirectly for harm done to another human being*; but saying that another person's faith has no redemptive value is stupid; stupid, mindless, ignorant, illiterate, obtuse, nescient and downright thick. Even Bill Kristol seems taken a little aback at Hume's statement. At the same time, if you pay close enough attention to Brit Hume's facial expression, there is no facial expression. He looks like even he doesn't believe the words coming out of his mouth, just that he's pandering to the average Fox viewer by saying the things management knows they want to hear.

You know you've messed up when you're being corrected by Don Freaking IMUS:

You first have to wade through Imus' man crush on Brit Hume. You've been warned.

Hopefully at this point you've gotten a glass of water after throwing up a little bit in the back of your mouth. At what point have you fallen so far away from reason and understanding that you are corrected about religion by DON IMUS? I particularly enjoy how Imus' sidekick tries to spin Hume's words, "the kind of path to redemption...". Well of course it doesn't offer the kind of path to redemption that Christianity does. Neither does Islam. Nor does the Baha'i Faith. Nor does Shinto. Nor does Hinduism. They all offer a path to redemption and enlightenment in their own way. Nice try. Douche.

And here is where we quote Mr. George Carlin:

Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.

*Which means a lot of people aren't actually entitled to their religious beliefs.

The Demise of the Title Sequence

2010-01-01T20:04:00.000-06:00

I was trolling around the internets and stumbled upon this article about the demise of the title sequence in film. A great title sequence can jumpstart a film or provide a subtle look into what the film is about before it even gets going. I found the following which I found to be pretty entertaining:

Anyway, I got to thinking about how few films have title sequences anymore. As a composer, I'm highly interested in the title sequence for several reasons, not the least of which is that if the filmmaker has an original score this is an excellent opportunity for the composer and director to set the tone of the film. It also got me thinking about the Grand Master of film title designers, Saul Bass and some of the incredible title sequences he designed.

One of my favorites, North by Northwest:

While the title sequence seems to have gone the way of the dodo, there are some recent entries that are nice:

But the title sequence that really stands out in recent memory as capturing that sense of Saul Bass's animation style and setting the tone is Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can:

So my question to you, dear reader(s), what's your favorite title sequence, new or old?

Avatar: First Listen

2009-12-21T21:22:00.005-06:00

Disclaimer: I meant to post this last Thursday. I still haven't seen the movie and probably won't for another week.

Perhaps James Horner's great gift as a composer is being able to synthesize so many disparate musical influences and bring them together in a way that seems perfectly natural. He's been doing this for years; since the beginning of his film career, really. But I don't think he's ever brought a western orchestra together with all of his world music influences like this before. Avatar has clearly afforded him one of the largest canvases ever to put music to. Are there echoes of past scores? Naturally. A lot of people (crazed fanboys mostly) have hinged their entire argument for disliking Horner's music on the fact that he recycles his own music or steals from others then recycles it. You'll get no argument from me about the amount of music he reuses. I think, however, that one has to examine a little more closely the music before dismissing it altogether.

First the score is, as you would expect, exceptionally performed and slickly produced so there are no issues there. The things that appear from other scores are more like Horner's musical thumbprints. There is a chord progression that has appeared in several scores before. More often than not this progression appears as the "B-half" of a chord melody. Most prominently this progression has appeared in Glory and Apollo 13. For example, if we were in F, this progression would be: I6-4, iii 6-4, VII 6-4, ii 6-4, V (F/C, A-/E, Eb/Bb, G-/D, C).

Then there's the danger motif.

Sometimes I think Horner uses his "danger motif" (two ascending half-steps and a descending half-step. e.g. C-C#-D-C#) just to tweak people. I think that if I'd gotten to the point he has in his career, I'd do it just to annoy folks. I mean, really, it's a four-note motive that you can't really copyright. So it's kind of like his calling card. (Hell, the best use of it is 'Achilles Leads the Myrmidons' in Troy where he steadily builds upon it for a solid eight minutes.) It's appearances on the album are someone fleeting but you do hear it for the first time at less than a minute in.

As I stated earlier, I think Horner's gift as a composer is drawing together musical influences from all over the globe and incorporating them in a seemless and organic way. Almost everything he's ever used is here: qena, whistles of all kinds, shakuhachi, chorus, boy choir, vocal soloists both "classically" and "ethnically" mannered, electronics, instrumental solos from the orchestra and enough percussion to give Hans Zimmer a headache and I could swear at one point I actually heard flamenco dancing a la The Mask of Zorro. (Actually the percussion writing reminds me a lot of Jerry Goldsmith's for Congo on steroids). At first the main theme doesn't seem particularly strong or memorable. Then it gradually weaves its way through the entire score. The one complaint about the tune is that its shape is just a little too similar to his theme from Titanic. It's difficult to separate the two when the first two intervals/chords of each are the same but from there it takes off its own way.

One thing that stands out is Horner's mastery of orchestral color, balance and blend. He manages to come up with more striking colors and has a better sense of color than just about every composer working in Hollywood not named John Williams.

Overall, the album is a little long and there's the obligatory pop song (Horner's continuing attempt to recapture the success of "My Heart Will Go On"). It's not exactly a bad song but it isn't great either. For all the non-traditional elements of this score it's still firmly grounded in the traditional big Hollywood film score. And it's not a stretch to say that we haven't had a score like this in some time.

Star Wars: In Concert

2009-12-16T11:20:00.001-06:00

Last Wednesday night the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra was here performing the music of Star Wars (website here). The following was the program order:

Main Theme
Duel of the Fates
Anakin's Theme
The Little People (concert version)
The Flag Parade
Across the Stars
Battle of the Heroes
The Imperial March

-intermission-

Entr'acte (consisting of a highly edited version of 'The Clash of Lightsabers' from The Empire Strikes Back)
The Asteroid Field (this seemed like a hybrid of both the film and concert versions)
Princess Leia's Theme
Binary Sunset/Cantina Band
Yoda's Theme
Here They Come! (The concert version of "TIE Fighter Attack")
Luke and Leia
The Forest Battle (concert version)
Light of the Force
The Throne Room and End Title (concert version)

The presentation was an entertaining multimedia experience. The HD screen on which clips of the movies were shown was absolutely huge and fantastic. The laser programming was highly polished and, not unlike the video clips, highly choreographed to the music itself. At the end of 'Battle of the Heroes' there was fire. Lots of it. I had to check to make sure my eyebrows were still intact (yes, we were that close). The narrator for the program was Anthony Daniels and when you watch his facial gestures while acting you begin to understand why his value is in his voice.

The performance by the orchestra was absolutely first rate. It was terrific. For the first time in my life I heard this music performed live by professionals playing the music professionally. There's something about the sound of the brass section in British orchestras that is practically unrivaled by anyone. Their sound is so huge, warm and round that it's difficult to beat. Most of the tempi corresponded roughly to their film versions. The only exception was "Here They Come!" in which the tempo is much slower and actually closer to that which Williams took when he recorded themes from the Star War Trilogy with the Skywalker Symphony on Sony back in the early 1990s. Conspicuously missing is the 'Parade of the Ewoks'. I suppose they thought they could represent both the forest battle and the Ewok theme by using the concert version of 'The Forest Battle'. One of the interesting things for me was that I could see the conductor's monitor from my seat and I could watch the series of streamers and hits on his screen as he was conducting the music.

My complaints about the presentation are few. The one thing I disliked was the cutting in of so much dialogue from the films. George Lucas has claimed that he's always thought of the Star Wars films largely as silent films. If that were the case the images alone would have sufficed. Also, one day I would like to see a presentation of the music that is more like what Howard Shore created for his Lord of the Ring Symphony (which, admittedly, isn't a symphony but is still damn cool) that reflects more the ebb and flow of the story using the actual score rather than trying to communicate the story through just the themes.

Still. Those are minor quibbles. The performance was terrific and I'm glad I got to experience it.

(More) Adventures In Customer Service

2009-12-08T13:24:00.001-06:00

Whoever coined the phrase "The customer is always right" probably never knew how badly that phrase would be taken advantage of by the customer.

Many of you know that I have a second job on the weekends as a short-order breakfast cook. This job is something I've been doing off and on since I was 16 years old. Since it's a grocery store, you cut a much wider swath of people from various socio-economic backgrounds.

So I'm taking a guy's order Saturday morning. He orders oatmeal (who the fuck goes out and orders oatmeal?) and two coffees. The customer is always right. He asked that I not charge him for the coffee because he was going to use our honor box for coffee, which is perfectly fine. The customer is always right. Then he proceeds to say, "I figure I'll screw the Democrats out of sixteen cents*. I think I already pay enough."

I said nothing. Because the customer is always right.

And herein lies the rub. Because the customer is always right, I am not allowed to engage him. I am not allowed to say anything. Because (say it with me kids) the customer is always right.

I continued to say nothing though I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to say anything with as tightly as my jaw was clenched. I fully believe that if I had the power to set someone ablaze just by thinking about it the guy would've bypassed the burning and would merely have been a smouldering pile of ashes. Though the following is roughly what I was saying on the inside and for all I know it was loud enough that he might've been able to hear me:

"Sir. You do know that the majority of those taxes stay in this municipality, right? I just want to know: Why do you hate children? Why do you hate law enforcement and other emergency responders? What do you have against quality infrastructure? Why do you hate America???"

I figured that if I'd actually said those things two things would have happened. First his head would have exploded because of my cunning use of True Statements and second I would've lost my job. Though I'm not sure that I would've lost my job so much for expressing the facts to this apparent Teabagger so much as causing the death of a (paying) customer due to their head exploding. And do you know how difficult it is to get brain matter out of your clothing?

*the tax on two cups of $0.99 coffee

Lost Souls

2009-11-25T17:32:00.001-06:00

This past weekend the symphony gave the premiere performances of a piano concerto we commissioned, Lost Souls, by an Israeli composer named Avner Dorman. Before we announced our season I'd never heard of Dorman.

The piece began with the soloist absent from the piano. The strings began by playing a series of high, sustained harmonics with something that sounded like it could become a theme in the orchestral piano part being doubled by celeste. Then the lights began to dim. Then they got dimmer. Then they went out completely.

Now it's at this point that I immediately flashed back to our performance a nearly two years ago of Christopher Rouse's percussion concerto, Der Gerettete Alberich (which should have been subtitled Ein Stück Scheiße* but, unfortunately, that describes most of Rouse's music), where the soloist enters the stage dramatically representing Alberich from Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. I hate this kind of meaningless theatricality in contemporary music. If it serves the purpose of the music, fine; but if it doesn't then it's empty.

But back to the piece.

The soloist strikes his first notes and immediately the stage lights return to normal. It was at this point that I thought to myself that, with a little thought, I could have made 10 minutes of music out of that first 2 1/2.Ultimately, for the sake of giving the piece a chance, I decide to get over it. It's now at this point that I should probably give a little background into the work and its title, Lost Souls. Mr. Dorman (only 2 years my senior) told the audience that the inspiration for the piece actually came from the playing of his friend, Alon Goldstein, for whom the concerto was written and who was our soloist for the evening. He mentioned that Mr. Goldstein's playing seemed "from another time" when he was playing Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, etc. but very modern and edgy when he played more contemporary music. It was this idea, that of pianists and composers long gone hanging over and interacting with the composition as "ghosts" coupled with "edgy" and "modern" music combining with music of another time.

The piece was your basic fast-slow-fast format, was occasionally clangorous, occasionally wistful and largely unmemorable. How's that for a description? Forget it. The best way for me to describe the piece is to say that it sounded like the composer sat down and thought to himself, "You know, Leonard Bernstein never wrote a piano concerto. I wonder what that might sound like punched up with more "modern" harmonies and contemporary orchestration technique." And you can definitely tell that Dorman studied with John Corigliano, as you can tell every person who's ever studied with Corigliano. The only student that's ever transcended that is Elliot Goldenthal (but that's another post). The piece seemed to be short on melodic/motivic development or, for that matter, interconnectedness. The orchestral textures are oftentimes dense without any sense of clarity. It felt to me that his goal was to try to combine Old-World post tonal harmonies with the rhythmic drive of pop and rock music. I can totally get behind this. It's something like what Esa-Pekka Salonen does in his own music, only far more successfully because that "pop/rock" influence is heavily filtered and far more subtle (and even for all that harmonic and rhythmic complexity there's some sort of melodic idea that the listener can hang their ear on, even if it's not easily distinguished at first).

As I was driving home and thinking more about the piece I began to get really annoyed. I got annoyed because I could have written a piece that sounded like this**. You, dear reader, could have written this. Do you know why? Because it takes a lot of training (as most of you have) to write this music. It does not, however, require a great deal of imagination.

*A piece of shit

**To be clear: I have very little interest in writing music like this; music that's flashy, all surface features, and requires little or no thought on the part of the listener.

The Star Trek Drinking Game

2009-11-18T14:10:00.002-06:00

So I was watching a bit of the Star Trek reboot this morning and it occurred to me that it should have a drinking game to go along with it. I've only managed a handful of rules so far but I'm thinking that with the aid of you, the Loyal Reader, that we might be able to expand this into a full-fledged game.

1. Every time Kirk checks a girl out, drink.
2. Twice is she's not human.
3. Every time there's a lens flare, drink.
4. Every time there's some sort of inside reference to the series or the other films, drink.
5. Every time Bones complains about something, drink.
6. Every time someone (or something) doesn't understand Chekov, drink.

That's all I've got for now. Suggestions?

Decorum

2009-11-16T23:21:00.003-06:00

There is an old saying that I'm sure many of you know. It goes: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." This isn't a new saying (etymology here) but it does seem appropriate to the following.

Some of you may know that the president is in Asia this week for a series of meetings with various heads of state. He was in Japan early today where he met with the Emperor (as I understand it a largely ceremonial position not unlike the English crown and the Swedish monarch). It was here that he committed a terrible faux pas. Something so unforgivable that perhaps he should consider never coming home? What did he do? You haven't heard???

He bowed.

That's right. He bowed. He decided to show a courtesy to the (ceremonial) emperor of another nation. In contrast, Dick Cheney met with the emperor twice. No bow. And since Obama did it and Cheney didn't (twice) Obama must be wrong. And you may not have noticed but, apparently, the world has come to an end (and it isn't even 2012 yet).

I suppose, in the interest of fairness, when one looks at the photos, it does rather look like a deep bow. But let's also not forget that the president is well over six feet tall and the emperor appears to be about, well, let's face it, he could be on TLC's Little People, Big World.

So the president bowed. It's being treated like the first time a sitting president has ever bowed to another head of state. Nixon bowed to Hirohito (Hirohito!!!) in 1971 (on U.S. soil no less), Eisenhower bowed to Charles De Gaulle in 1959 and let's not forget previous president and the Saudi king. It's called being polite. This is why the rest of the world might have been as happy as many of us were to sweep away the previous administration and "Cowboy diplomacy*". We don't have to show the rest of the world at all times that we are their superior in every aspect. Why don't people get this? Why is there this whole sect of people who believe that, because we're America, we are better than everyone else?

*Cowboy diplomacy = shoot first and don't bother asking questions because we're 'Merica and ain't gotta ask questions.

Half-Empty

2009-10-28T15:16:00.000-05:00

I walked by a coworker's unoccupied desk today. She had been away long enough that her screensaver came on. It was a sign that read, "Think good thoughts and good things will happen to you." I put a Post-It note on her monitor that read, "This is such a load of crap*". We have a similar disposition so she thought it was pretty funny.

*The universe doesn't care.

Shameless Promotion

2009-09-25T16:33:00.001-05:00

I've got a guest column over on Michael's blog at The Temp Track. He does his nifty Film Score Friday Top 5 lists and he asked me to contribute. So I did. Check it out and leave some feedback.

More Fun With Revisionist History

2009-09-16T10:49:00.000-05:00

So there I was, minding my own business. I was have a perfectly pleasant drive to work this morning getting my Teutonic Triskaidekan on when I see the following on the back of the vehicle in front of me:

(For those that need a refresher, the mortgage system crumbled in September 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Bros. and much of the rest of the mortgage industry teetering on the brink after that and sending the economy into a tailspin. It was then that Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson along with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke requested $700 billion to rescue these corporations so that the economy didn't collapse completely. With no questions asked and no legal recourse and no congressional oversight.)

Returning to the above bumper sticker, you'll notice that the "O" in "honk" utilizes the campaign symbol of Presidential bid. Could someone refresh my memory and tell me who was the President of these United States of America for ALL of 2008? I'm pretty sure it wasn't Barack Hussein Obama. Not yet anyway.

I suppose this is reflective of the success of neoconservatives at revising history and making people believe that the mortgage bailout occurred under the Obama administration. The economic stimulus bill happened on Obama's watch, but not the mortgage bailout. Get your history right.

Minimalism and Beyond

2009-09-15T21:01:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Second International Conference on Minimalist Music, brilliantly coordinated by David McIntire and Kyle Gann (both of whom are linked to their blogs on the sidebar). Luckily it was here in Kansas City so I didn't have to travel. Five days of (largely) fascinating paper sessions and brilliant concerts of beautiful music (much of it from composers whose music I'd never heard). For me the real highlights were hearing Sarah Cahill perform a concert of works I'd never heard (except for John Adams' China Gates) and hearing Charlemagne Palestine perform his organ work Schlingen-Blängen which, sadly, lasted less than two hours. I could easily have listened for another two hours. It was that amazing.

One of the paper sessions proved particularly relevant as the presenter gave a paper on minimalism in The Truman Show. It was actually a great thing for me because it helped me to think about how I wanted to approach film music research. I downloaded the author's dissertation and am slowly working my way through it and - in particular - the bibliography. Yes. I am a serious nerd.

Overall it was really great to be in an environment of collegiality and scholarship with a common interest and was another kick in the pants to get my ass back in school.

Otherwise, not much is new. The munchkin is now four months old; smiley and bubbly (most of the time) and fantastic. We haven't been to the movies since Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (which I found to be far better than its predecessor, Nicholas Hooper's score included). Recently, though, we did watch Bill Maher's Religulous and I have to say I was actually pretty impressed with the restraint he showed. As anyone who has watched his show can attest to, he has a general animus toward religion. However, for the documentary, he seemed genuinely interested in why people feel the way they do about religion and managed to do it with a little less mockery.

That's it. It's not exciting, but that's what it is.

Musings

2009-09-02T22:17:00.005-05:00

So Pat Robertson had heart surgery. Who knew he had a still-beating heart?

I was chatting a while back with the Warrior Bard and he mentioned that his father actually referred to Dick Cheney as a "hero". I mentioned that it's mind-boggling that the kind of person that could call Dick Cheney a hero is the same kind of person that couldn't possibly fathom, if the Bible were true, why someone would follow the "Antichrist". Look. You already do.

Speaking of Dick Cheney, he keeps saying that another terror attack U.S. soil would vindicate him and the torture techniques authorized by the Bush Administration. Really? Taken the opposite way, it looks like Dick Cheney really wants another terrorist attack on our country. He's practically hoping for it. That doesn't strike me as very patriotic that you want potentially thousands of American citizens to lose their lives just so you can be "right".

The week before he died, some Senate Republicans actually had the audacity to say that the health care debate in the senate would be much different (and more civilized) if Ted Kennedy were there. Nice. You slyly make it the fault of a man dying of brain cancer that the republicans are a bunch of stonewalling, poor people-hating trolls.

On a not dissimilar note, the president needs to lead. That's what those of us who voted for him elected him to do. I realize that he likes to "stay above the fray" but that's not an option with some of the things he's trying to do. I know that part of the reason that we elected him is his cool, calm and collected demeanor. That's fine. But he needs to weigh in and drag congress with him kicking and screaming.

Death Panels. Really? This is going to turn into some weird take on Logan's Run?

I think the old people who are against a public option but don't want the government to mess with their health care are both entertaining and saddening. Um, excuse me Granny, but, um, who pays for your Medicare?

Glenn Beck is fomenting revolution on his show. It's that simple. Some of the things he's saying are maddening. Go find them and watch them on youtube. If you have the stomach for it. If a liberal talk show host had done this during the Bush Administration, they probably would have received a visit by some of those nice fellas that work at the Treasury Department. You know the ones; dark sunglasses, earpieces, never smile. Even Beck, with as retarded as he is, can't be completely oblivious to impact the words coming out of his mouth could potentially have. Well, maybe.

All those folks out there who keep invoking Nazis and Hitler in the "debate" about health care need to be punched in the face. Comparing anything to these is nonsensical and demonstrates how completely they misunderstand the difference between "we're going to fix health care" and "we're going to systematically murder as many human beings as possible just because they're different from us."

Oh. Jerry Falwell is still dead. Thank God.

System Down / G.I. Joe

2009-08-11T14:04:00.000-05:00

You know that something is wrong with the current state of film music when Alan Silvestri's score to G.I. Joe: The Rise of C.O.B.R.A. sounds refreshing. I don't mean to disparage Mr. Silvestri. I like a lot of his music. There's nothing new in it; but for the summer action flick, it's a bit of fresh air.

It does, I think, say something about Stephen Sommers as a director though. I do wonder if, to a certain degree, he's somewhat more musically aware than a lot of his contemporaries. With the exception of his first film, all the films he has directed have been scored by old-school guys: Bill Conti, Basil Poledouris, Jerry Goldsmith and Alan Silvestri. I think he doesn't want that "Hans Zimmer" sound in his films. I think he knows that that sound doesn't work for his films (it probably would've worked in G.I. Joe but I don't know...yet). I think he likes the old-fashioned big orchestra score. So kudos to him for that.

Anyway, the album is a fun listen in which Silvestri gives us another example of how he continues to pare down his style to its essentials. (Jerry Goldsmith went through the same thing after scoring Total Recall). Yeah it's big and it's loud, but from a scoring standpoint, there doesn't seem to be a lot of excess. All of Silvestri's action music fingerprints are there. The pounding percussion, the martial rhythms, the bold brass, everything. It's nothing "new" but it is a lot of fun for a guy who sometimes just likes his music to be fun.

Something Borrowed

2009-08-10T15:05:00.000-05:00

In keeping with the Pikey's latest post about the Twitter-downing last week, he mentions how retarded some of the things you can do with your phone are. (Go ahead and snipe; like me, as soon as you get your first smart phone you'll wonder what life was like before it.) While I'm not going to lie, some of these things are utterly idiotic (I don't have time to list them) there was one thing.

We were watching something on the Food Network (you want to fight about it?) and a Pizza Hut commercial came on advertising the relaunch of their "crustless" pizza, The Edge (gosh, that sounds so extreme). At the end of the commercial is a quick promo saying "Now you can use your iPhone to order Pizza Hut pizza". No shit? Really? I can order Pizza Hut pizza with my iPhone? What about those of us that have a Blackberry? Are we unable to order a pizza on our phone? I have no idea how one would've done that before? I mean, how could you possibly order pizza on your phone without the app??? Wait! It's a freakin' PHONE!!! You use your FINGER to dial the number and force a real person to do their JOB!!!

Loop

2009-07-31T06:57:00.001-05:00

I have no idea why but recently I've had Alan Silvestri's theme from Eraser stuck in my head. It probably has something to do with the fact that his G.I. Joe score comes out next week. Anyway, who wants a little overblown Silvestri?

Jerry Goldsmith Remembrance Day

2009-07-21T10:30:00.000-05:00

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the man who is arguably the greatest composer of music for films.

Since Goldsmith's passing there have been loads of his scores that have finally seen a commercial release. Only yesterday I received in the mail The Boys From Brazil, Lonely are the Brave (Jerry's first important film score for the development of his career) and In Harm's Way.

So I have a pile of Jerry Goldsmith CDs sitting on my desk consisting of the following:

Lonely are the Brave
Rio Conchos
In Harm's Way
The Omen
The Boys From Brazil
Lionheart
Total Recall
Basic Instinct
Rudy
The Ghost and the Darkness
The 13th Warrior

How will you spend your Jerry Goldsmith Remembrance Day?

More Going Boldly...

2009-07-20T20:59:00.002-05:00

Those bastards at Film Score Monthly are at it again!

Don't color me ungrateful, but I just dropped $80 on new Jerry Goldsmith releases! Wouldn't they be better served to spread these things out????

Jablonsky Variations

2009-07-05T16:47:00.003-05:00

To me there's something slightly "off" about Steve Jablonsky's score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. For awhile I couldn't put my finger on it but I think I've figured it out. More on that later though.

Jablonsky's score functions well in the film which is its primary - and arguably its only - job. It punctuates the film in all the ways we've come to expect from years of Zimmer training and, like the film, occasionally takes itself a little too seriously. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it.

The old themes that reappear are clearly developed rather than merely cut-and-pasted onto the film. Nowhere is this more evident than in the theme for Optimus Prime. Not only is it much more elegiac (appropriately) this time around it is also elaborated upon and altered slightly to represent the history of the Primes. Lisbeth Scott once again is called upon to deliver her "vaguely ethnic wailing" for a Remote Control score. However it occasionally treads dangerously close to lines of questionable taste. I do miss the theme for the All Spark from the first film. I thought that it had transferred to Bumblebee during the downtown battle at the end of the first film but I guess not.*

As far as new themes are concerned I find the theme for The Fallen to be, well, a bit simplistic. I realise it doesn't have to be overly complex; all he has to do is be the really bad guy (though to be honest I never felt like the danger was that great with this character). I guess my issue with it is that it sounds like music leftover from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.

At first I wasn't wild about the album but it has since grown on me. There don't seem to be any real standout cues the way "Arrival to Earth" and "Scorponok" are on the first album/film. I don't think I'll ever find it the rollicking good time the first is, but it's still a lot of fun (which, I suppose, is unfair because the first album/film is an embarrassment of musical riches for film music lovers). It's a little uneven but there are several really nice moments on the album (I've recently come to particularly enjoy "Einstein's Wrong" and "Tomb of the Primes"). I do wish the album had been sequenced better. Most of the action cues seem to be situated on the back end of the disc and it doesn't make for quality ebb-and-flow. I think a simple matter of reordering could have made the disc better.

As far as the "off" element of the score, I think the problem is actually Hans Zimmer himself. In both the CD insert and the end of the credits in the film there's a big "thank you" to Hans. Although he is uncredited, Hans Zimmer apparently produced a large chunk of the score for the film, which is not difficult to surmise simply by listening to it. I think I know why. The score for the first Transformers is fantastic. The problem is it was for a Michael Bay film; it constantly lost out to over-the-top, amped-up sound effects. I think that Steve Jablonsky asked Zimmer to produce the score so that he wouldn't "overcompose". To be fair I think it's a perfectly legitimate concern. If you're scoring a Michael Bay film, half of your music probably won't be heard over the thunderous sound design so you may as well reign it in a bit. Perhaps Jablonsky didn't know exactly how to do that so he asked Hans for help**. I also think that Zimmer was able to bring some "darker" aspects to Jablonsky's score. These things being said, I miss all those tiny little details from the first score.

Overall I enjoyed the score and think it functioned well in the film. I just miss the abundance of thematic writing that characterizes the first score.

*In retrospect it seems plausible that this might have been Jablonsky's original intention. This would make sense since Bumblebee is the only one of the Autobots or the Decepticons that has direct contact with the All Spark (until Sam uses it to kill Megatron). Perhaps I'm giving the composer too much credit for possibly putting that much thought into it. I might be wrong but it seems that from listening to "Bumblebee" on the album (which is denoted as "different version in film") that it was more-or-less intended for use during the downtown battle when Mikaela drives the attached-to-a-tow-truck Bumblee through the streets so he can help his fellow Autobots. However, after consulting the film and listening also to the album that shall not be named this intention was never carried through. Perhaps, if this was the intent, its intelligence was lost on the director.

**Please note: I'm not denying the craftsmanship of Steve Jablonsky here, just saying that perhaps he didn't know how to write less and keep it functional and good. Hans, as we all know, has become a master of drawing on the smallest amount of material.

Abandonment

2009-06-21T21:46:00.002-05:00

No. Actually I haven't abandoned the blog. There's a post coming.

I swear.

Meanwhile, if you have an entire day of nothing planned to do, might I suggest this or this if you're having a Paranoid Android moment. Combine with a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster or two and you've got the makings of an entertaining day at the end of which you might feel the desire to end it all.

That is all.

Science Experiments

2009-06-05T16:01:00.002-05:00

That's what children are, right? I mean, you can look up anything you could possibly want to know in a book or online but the fact of the matter is that every baby is different.

I don't want to talk about that right now. What I want to talk about is the dirty little secret that nobody wants you to know about babies. They way your relationship changes after the birth of your child(ren).

That's right. I'm talking about poop.

When you're at the hospital they tell you what you should expect as far as what a "good poop" is. For example: my wife is breastfeeding so the poop should be a little watery, light green in color and slightly seedy (I have yet to figure out where the seeds come from). I've found myself changing my daughter's diaper and saying - out loud with no other adult present - "Hey, that's a really great poopy!" And the kid just looks up at me like Eddie Izzard's cat thinking, "Interesting words."

Anyway I've reached the point where I feel like I should have a lab coat, a pair of goggles and a clipboard when changing a diaper. "So, let's just start with what we have. What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity so be honest. How do you feel? " Or perhaps turning to an assistant (might I suggest Liz Vassey from C.S.I. if your wife isn't available) and saying, "Get this back to the lab for analysis right away. We need to know exactly what we're dealing with here."

Actually it's been more like, "Ooh, congratulations, sweetie. That's got good consistency and perfect coloring throughout. Let's take a picture of it and mark it on the graph."

I Am So Far Behind

2009-05-23T21:10:00.002-05:00

So I'm a dad now.

Our little girl, Aislinn Morgan, was born at 9:33 pm on Tuesday May 12th. This picture was taken the morning after she was born.

Star Trek: First Listen

2009-05-05T13:03:00.003-05:00

Unlike The Warrior Bard, I sometimes prefer listening to a new score before I hear it attached to the film, try to make it a "pure music" experience. I still try to have few, if any, preconceived notions about any aspect of the film. So if you don't want to know anything you should probably move along. And remember: this is my first listen. I just wanted to get some initial reactions and elaborations out.

I never watched Alias and I don't watch Lost so my only exposure to Michael Giacchino's music is through The Incredibles and Mission: Impossible III (both scores I like). I think the writing is mostly elegant though, as in the case of the aforementioned, it can be a little less than subtle. To me, though, this actually sets his music apart from a lot of other composers. I think a lot of composers might have gone the opposite direction musically and I actually commend Giacchino for it.

The main theme is nice, if somewhat generic. The Pikey mentioned that the theme sounds more like a counterline to a main theme (more on this in a moment) . While I'm not going to dispute this point, I think the greater thing to keep in mind is that, while it isn't terrific, it is versatile. One of the things that immediately strikes me about this score is that Giacchino seems to be channeling the sonic world of James Horner's Star Trek scores; rather craftily in some places. I particularly enjoy his clever deployment of a chromatic tail that travels through the same mediant relationships as Horner's theme (Cliff Eidelman's theme for The Undiscovered Country is similar in this respect). Elaborating on a previous point, track 4, "Hella Bar Talk" seems to expose the theme for what it is: an extension and elaboration of Horner's thematic material.

It might also be of interest to mention another parallel here. One of Giacchino's orchestrators is Jack Hayes (who turned 90 in February). Jack Hayes orchestrated The Wrath of Khan (how's that for a game of connect the dots?). Surely the sonic similarities are no accident.

Anyway, the first listen is delicious! I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of the score in the film.

The Nightmare Scenario

2009-04-23T21:19:00.003-05:00

I was watching Hardball with Chris Matthews the other day (because it's good to keep your heart rate up while working out and nothing seems to do that better than politicians saying stupid things) and his guest panel was discussing whether torture works. Over the course of the discussion Tom Tancredo (former Republican congressman from Colorado) actually uttered something along the lines of the following regarding the so-called "Ticking Time Bomb" or "Nightmare Scenario":

"In that situation, I'm looking around for Jack Bauer."

You should probably read that again before you go on.

Did these people not get the memo? Jack Bauer is fictional. Made up. Not real. Entertainment.

Now, I've never watched 24, and probably never will, but there's a point that has to be made here (beyond the fact that Jack Bauer and 24 are fiction). If Jack Bauer is willing to do whatever it takes, regardless of the legality, doesn't that make him ideologically no better than the terrorists he's combating? Depending on your point-of-view he is either a hero or a criminal.

So what I want to know is, where does this Republican wet dream come from? These guys clearly need to be paying more for their sex if this is what they fantasize about. The idea that we need to be able to use torture as a means of getting useful information is preposterous. And why is it that it's just the politicians stepping forward saying (or mumbling in the case of Dick Cheney), "These techniques have yielded us information that has kept us safe". Why is it that none of the interrogators who have come forward are telling us that these methods - torture - yielded useful information that made us safer? Now, admittedly, I have liberal tendencies, but I try to get my news and information from multiple sources even if it means I have to strap on a helmet to protect myself and others while doing it (Fox News). One government official (a Bush appointee, no less) has stated that torture hasn't foiled any plots. Interrogators that have been willing to step out of the shadows say it doesn't work any better than traditional interrogation techniques.

Let me set up the "nightmare scenario" in a way that is probably more realistic. A committed radical (let's not forget that in the last 20 years not all of the attacks on American soil have been committed by those that are foreign-born) has, on his own or as part of a team, set a weapon of mass destruction (nuclear or otherwise) on a timer in an obviously undisclosed location. Said terrorist is apparently intelligent enough to steal a WMD and hide it in a major metropolitan area but is stupid enough to get caught. Do you think that a terrorist who is willing to go through all of those things is actually going to give up before dying under the duress of torture? Hardly. Furthermore someone who is that committed would never get caught. Do you know why? Because he would blow himself up just to make sure it occurs the way he plans that it does.

So the "ticking time bomb" scenario is a straw man. The point is moot. We can't say that it would never happen. We also can't say that it would ever happen.

The fact of the matter is the terrorists (whoever they are) didn't beat us on 9/11. Instead they beat us when we waterboarded (tortured) our first prisoner of war. Of course, the term "Enemy Combatant" seems to have been invented to skirt the rights of P.O.W.s according to the Geneva Convention. We sold our souls for it and in getting it back there will be hell to pay.

How Lucky Can One Guy Be?

2009-04-21T15:00:00.000-05:00

Die Frau and I were watching a baseball game last week and the TV spot for Star Trek came on.

I'm not gonna lie, every time I see it I get a little more excited for the film. What was funny, though, was that Die Frau, who was half paying attention, asked when it came out.

It comes out the day before the baby is due.

I mentioned that this might have to be our first post-baby date. To my surprise she suggested that if she hadn't gone into labor yet we should probably go see it on opening night. Then she reminded me that Wolverine comes out the week before and that we should make plans to see that, too. How awesome is my wife?

Who was that?

2009-04-07T16:21:00.001-05:00

I was out for a walk with a coworker earlier this afternoon and our unplanned route took us past the Midland Theatre. As we were walking past a group of people got off of a tour bus. On the sidewalk in front of us were a couple of people who started snapping photos of those exiting the tour bus (with Levi and I in the background). We realised what was happening and I asked, "Did we just walk past somebody famous?". We weren't sure so we asked the people snapping the photos. "That was Morrissey!" they exclaimed with all the delight of having suddenly reverted to their teenage years. Evidently he's performing at the Midland tonight.

I had to look him up when we got back to the office.

Checking In

2009-04-02T12:36:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile and this isn't really going to be a substantive post.

It's been a crazy couple months as I've been holed up in my studio orchestrating 20+ showtunes for an upcoming concert. Luckily there's not too much Andrew Lloyd Webber on the program or I might very well have to start banging my head against the wall. It's been an interesting project, though, because many of the songs are in styles/genres that I'm largely unfamiliar with. The missus has mentioned that it's a little like living alone these last couple weeks, though. I'm preparing everything and conducting the concert, too, so the sooner I get this part finished, the better.

We're at T-minus 5 weeks or so on baby watch. A friend of mine recently asked if I was ready. I asked if anyone is ever "ready". She suggested then that the more appropriate question was "Are you eager?" Absolutely. I can not wait to hold my baby girl in my arms.

I've also started trying to figure out what it would take to start doing some serious film music research. I've got a couple of ideas. As I mentioned before, no one seems to have gotten in depth in the music of Jerry Goldsmith so I just thought I would go for it there. Obsessive listening when I can.

Meantime I've been thinking a whole lot more about school. I miss it. A lot. So that's hanging around at the back of my mind...

Beyond that, not much else. Just looking forward to the start of baseball season. The Cardinals home opener is the 6th and the Royals' the 10th. Die Frau suggested getting mlb.tv(!) so we can watch the Cards play. How awesome is that?

Watchmen...

2009-03-17T11:41:00.001-05:00

So we finally saw Watchmen last Friday. I suppose my expectations were a little high.

From a visual standpoint the film was absolutely fantastic. For the most part I think the writers did a good job of adapting what is an incredibly dense and complex story. Some things fall by the wayside, but that's Hollywood, baby.

My biggest gripes are with the song selections and Tyler Bates' horrifically bland score. Can someone tell me why the songs were cranked up so effing loud???

In the graphic novel songs are quoted throughout. It seems pretty clear that these songs were important to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in how they related to the story. So why is it that more of them weren't used in the film? As far as the songs go, I found their usage juvenile and overly obvious. I mean the Dies irae from the Mozart Requiem? Seriously? It also seems there was a great unwillingness on the part of Zack Snyder and his editor to cut the songs down as you would find in any other film. It seems that the montage sequences were cut to the songs rather than the other way round as you would expect. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy having my expectations in film denied when it works; but when it doesn't it's just grating. This sort of editing is tricky. If it works, it works. If it doesn't work, you can sabotage your own sequence (and possibly the film) no matter how well constructed it is. Case in point: Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin' " bordered on interminable during the main title sequence. I realize that they were trying to pack a lot of information into this sequence but gaw-haw-hawwwd it went on for-ev-er.

As far as the score is concerned, it's my belief that Tyler Bates is a hack (we can smell our own). A hack with some nifty toys, but a hack nonetheless.

Halfway through the film I found myself longing for a Hans Zimmer score.

What does it say about a score when one of the finest musical moments in the film is composed of preexisting music by Philip Glass? I also found myself thinking about what the film would've been like if Philip Glass had been asked to score the film. Why not, right? His music was terrific with the Dr. Manhattan montage. It could've lent the film the gravitas it desperately needed, and in my opinion, didn't receive.

I mostly enjoyed the movie, but I think in the future Zack Snyder should hire a music supervisor.

I also think Tyler Bates should give his fee back.

From the Archive: The Lord of the Rings Symphony

2009-03-04T12:56:00.001-06:00

This post was originally intended for publication shortly after my wife and I attended the St. Louis Symphony's performance of Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings Symphony in September of last year. I figured that since the Kansas City Symphony will be presenting it in May, I'd take the liberty of finally posting this.

Last Friday (September 19), die Frau and I had the opportunity to attend the St. Louis Symphony's performance of Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings Symphony.

For those interested in making your own playlist on your iPod, the track titles correspond pretty much exactly to the original commercial releases, not the complete recordings.

The Fellowship of the Ring:

Movement One

The Prophecy-Concerning Hobbits-The Shadow of the Past-A Short Cut to Mushrooms-The Old Forest-A Knife in the Dark

Movement Two

Many Meetings-The Rings Goes South-A Journey in the Dark-The Bridge of Khazad-dûm-Lothlórien-Gandalf's Lament-Farewell to Lórien-The Great River-The Breaking of the Fellowship

The Two Towers:

Movement Three

Foundations of Stone-The Taming of Sméagol-The Riders of Rohan-The Black Gate is Closed-Evenstar-The White Rider-Treebeard-The Forbidden Pool

Movement Four

The Hornburg-Forth Eorlingas-Isengard Unleashed-Gollum's Song

The Return of the King:

Movement Five

Hope and Memory-The White Tree-The Steward of Gondor-Cirith Ungol-Andúril

Movement Six

The End of All Things-The Return of the King-The Grey Havens-Into the West

The one thing that caught me a little off guard was how some of the passages were edited. For example, The Two Towers' "Foundations of Stone" ("Glamdring" on the Complete Recordings) ends abruptly and segues immediately to "The Taming of Sméagol" before the chorus enters with its goodness. For the life of me I can't figure out why Shore cut it this way, but he did so that's how it is. Personally I think it would've played much better had he allowed the passage to conclude in its film form.

There were minor quibbles about the performance. From my own experience with this sort of thing I think the percussion parts are largely notated at least one dynamic too loud throughout. When the percussion section were playing full-out they were overpowering the entire orchestra and that's never a good idea (unless that's the idea).

The young lady who performed the vocal solos had a very nice tone though she didn't seem to be giving full breath support and pitch occasionally (a little too frequently actually) sagged. That being said, one has to remember that Shore's music for these films, while very lyrical, isn't always vocally friendly (you trying singing some of those lines without taking a breath!). She also did a nice job modifying her voice for each solo. Just as each of Tolkien's races has its own language and manner of speech, Shore effectively mirrors him giving each race its own music. So, too, does each of the vocal solos have to be conveyed in the spirit of each race's music and I feel like the soloists did a good job of doing that.

In the film/album version of "Gandalf's Lament" there's a part where there's a solo vocal performed by Elizabeth Fraser (former frontgal for Cocteau Twins). There's also a violin solo played senza vibrato along with it. The problem is that the violinist was always a half-count behind to vocalist (who was in time). While this created a disturbing sense of instability and added greatly to the affect of the passage, I don't think that's what Howard Shore had in mind (though it does give me a few ideas).

What impressed me most was how good the chorus sounded. Singing in an invented language is difficult enough; singing well in an invented language is beyond difficult.

I must confess that I was actually pretty impressed with the way the orchestra played. "But, Herr, you're always going on about how the SLSO always plays well." This is true, but one has to remember that professional orchestral musicians play a lot of film music on pops concerts, they don't always respect film music. They played like they respected the music; and even if they didn't like it, the important thing is that they sold it like they did.

Hearing Gotham

2009-02-24T15:21:00.006-06:00

As I mentioned earlier, I've become more interested in putting my interest/knowledge/love of film music to use (beyond composing). So I've begun some preliminary work on a project or two that 1) gives me something to do and 2) forces me to listen more attentively to my favorite music.

I've decided that these projects are going to deal with Jerry Goldsmith because 1) he's my favorite, 2) he's one of the best ever and 3) astonishingly, there seems to be very little in the way of actual research out there regarding his music (most film music researchers tend to focus on "old" film music). Meantime I've been trying to figure out how to approach this whole concept of 'Writing About Music'. Further complicating the issue is that writing about film music is its own entirely different animal. Film music has its own sets of traditions, expectations and gestures that can be reinforced, broken or rewritten at any time. Oh yes: there's also that whole "It's connected to the film" thing which one has to have some kind of understanding of how it works in theory. I guess I'll be brushing up on that, too.

One of the things I've been reading in order to gain a greater understanding of writing about film music is Danny Elfman's Batman: A Film Score Guide, pictured above. (I also have a host of film music books that I'll be diving back into once I get them back from a friend of mine). There are other volumes in this series but I figured starting with a score I know well (and dearly love) was best. Ms. Halfyard's reading of the film provides a healthy (and useful) analysis of both film and score and how they interact. The analysis is largely specialised and the discussion is long on both musical examples and terminology. Ms. Halfyard's discussion of the score, its context, the film and certain aspects of the comic mythology of Batman over his many incarnations (and especially the view of the '60s television show as an aberration) is quite interesting. She brings to light interesting facets of the score's composition that I'm quite certain Danny Elfman had no real idea he was doing (that being said, there's quite a lot of unity in the score). She also discusses the controversy surrounding Elfman's composition technique and through the cunning use of logic quite brilliantly puts it to rest. (Some, though, will never be convinced even if they sat in his studio and watched him compose an entire film's score).

One thing reading this text has done is cause me to reexamine my Batman scores in all of their incarnations. When I was a kid I thought that Danny Elfman's Batman scores were far superior to those of Elliot Goldenthal. When I found out that Hans Zimmer was going to be involved in Batman Begins I was horrified. Sure, James Newton Howard was there, too, but we all knew which musical personality was really going to dominate. Over the years, though, I've learned to appreciate them all as their own completely separate takes on the Batman mythology. There is much stylistic diversity in all of these, but, interestingly, each of the films got a score appropriate to it. Through a friend I also recently acquired the La-La-Land release of the two-disc set of music from Batman: The Animated Series. It's good stuff that carries on the same tone that Elfman set. I haven't listened to all of it but will soon.

Michael over at The Temp Track suggested I write a paper comparing and contrasting the Elfman and Goldenthal approaches to Gotham City and the Dark Knight. While it's an excellent idea, I have other plans. Quantum phase shift anyone?

The Temp Track

2009-02-20T11:55:00.001-06:00

Just thought you all should know that I've added my friend Michael to the blogroll.

Michael is studying musicology at the University of Colorado. He keeps an interesting blog regarding music for film, t.v., and games as an extension of his area of emphasis.

He Would've Been 80 Today

2009-02-10T13:04:00.000-06:00

Jerry Goldsmith, that is.

Nearly 5 years after his death it's still sometimes difficult to accept that there won't ever be another new Jerry Goldsmith score. I used to get so excited at the prospect of a new score by him. The day he died I got a call from the Pikey. I hadn't turned on the news yet and I had no idea. I kind of went around in a stupor for the rest of the day.

In the last ten years of his life (1994-2004) his music became increasingly focused, pared down, linear and, in many cases, more muscular (I often wonder if Goldsmith was an admirer of Miles Davis because of these aspects). The last ten years gave us notable scores (if not films) as The Shadow, Rudy, First Knight (a favorite of Goldsmith's, as I understand it), The Ghost and the Darkness, Air Force One (like most of W.P.'s films it's trash, but it's fun), L.A. Confidential, The Edge, Mulan, The Mummy (supposedly Jerry hated this movie, which doesn't explain why the score rocks so hard other than the fact that he was a consummate professional), The 13th Warrior, Hollow Man, The Sum of all Fears and Star Trek: First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis. And that's leaving out at least a dozen films not worth mentioning.

I've been thinking a lot about his music for a long time now. In my opinion he was the innovator at the leading edge of film music for 30 or so years. He was the first to use electronics extensively as more than a novelty or "weird" sound. They were a part of his orchestra if the film required it. He was also one of the first in film to use the studio as a musical instrument.

More than anything there are two things I miss. The first is a sense of musical "space" that Jerry had. He could create more music out of fewer materials than pretty much any other composer. And unlike many other composers, he knew the value of silence. He didn't just spray music on a sequence like fire retardant foam. Some of my favorite suspense sequences are those where, for example, you get a dense string chord (or short series of chords) followed by a silence. To me this has a much eerier effect than pouring on some sort of run-of-the-mill electronic effect.

The second is his sense of rhythm. Nobody else could build entire cues out of mixed/asymmetric meters the way he did and keep it fresh and interesting. And he did it in such a way where he didn't necessarily feel the need to hit every single agogic accent within the rhythmic cell (ex: 7/8 bar wherein the composer strikes every instrument in the orchestra at the same time with a hammer on eighths 1, 3, 5 and 7).

Since I've spent all of my life as a composer straddling the twin worlds of film and concert music I've had to contend with those who patently dismiss film music as "derivative dreck" (unless, of course, it was composed by a composer who writes the majority of their music for the concert hall. Somehow, then, their music is "better"). Increasingly this view is dying but only because those who hold it are, too. (I enjoy pointing out to those folks that the vast majority of contemporary concert music could also be classified as "derivative dreck").

I learned a lot about composing from listening to his music. Probably more, in fact, than listening to just about any other composer save a handful.

I guess what has surprised me in the time since his passing is that no one has stepped forward to fill the void left behind. Maybe there is no void. Maybe Jerry Goldsmith was a singular entity.

What Do You Mean 'You're not sure he's the President?'

2009-01-22T10:28:00.003-06:00

Okay, so Keith Olbermann calls out the three worst persons in the world each day on his newscast. It's meant to be somewhat lighthearted but, at the same time, draw attention to daily absurdities of our country. Obviously Keith's show has a more liberal slant, which is why I'm drawn to it, but it also has actual news content.

Pay particular attention to what caused #1 to be #1.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here She Comes...

2009-01-21T14:41:00.002-06:00

So, yeah, it occurred to me that I haven't shared with all who read the blog (though most of you have probably found out one way or the other). My wife and I are having a little girl in May (wOOt!). This image was taken Christmas Eve. At this point she was about 16.5 cm long but she's about doubled in size now. She's due in May.

Inauguration Day

2009-01-20T16:07:00.000-06:00

Good speech.

Hyvää joulua!

2008-12-25T10:49:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas.

Homage

2008-12-11T13:51:00.002-06:00

Did anyone else notice that the opening shot of The Dark Knight is the same as the aerial tracking shot that opens Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho?

What...shall we talk about?

2008-11-28T15:07:00.000-06:00

I miss talking about music on my blog. Naturally I realise that the only person stopping me from doing so is...well...me.

So I'm going to talk about music a little more. It really is that simple. My goal is to use this as a laboratory for writing about music in order to get a little better at it. Why? Because one day I'm going back to school and I'm going to have to do it anyway; so I may as well get a head start. To that end I'm going to try and right the ship, as it were. Along the way I'll hopefully take a little closer look at anything that strikes my interest without limitation to date of composition, style or genre.

But don't worry; we'll continue talking about movies and politics and all that other stuff, too. We wouldn't want things to get boring, now would we?

From the Archive: Turangalîla

2008-11-12T16:21:00.001-06:00

This post was originally meant for publication last February after the Elusive 4th Tenor and I attended the St. Louis Symphony performance of Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony.

I've been trying to think of the best way to write about the experience of hearing Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony live for the first (and dear God please don't let it be the last) time.

For me, Turangalîla is one of those desert island pieces along with The Rite of Spring, La Mer, the 3rd Symphony of Sibelius and a handful of others. It's endlessly fascinating and, for the attentive listener it reveals something new with each hearing. Strains of birdsong, Hindu and Greek rhythms, imaginary echoes of a long-forgotten gamelan, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and, to my ear, a certain Gershwinesque kind of song-and-dance joie de vivre; this wrapped up in Messiaen's truly original way of thinking musically and a brilliant sense of orchestration all inform Turangalîla's sense of rhythm and drive.

The genius of the way the St. Louis Symphony presented Turangalîla was to make it accessible. It was designed as a lecture-performance. The first half of the program the conductor, David Robertson, talked about Messiaen and the piece and conducted the orchestra in excerpts of each movement. The second half was the performance itself.

And what a performance.

The orchestra navigated the piece terrifically. I never felt a sense of "Oh god, I hope we get through this next passage!". It was also nice to hear the ondes martenot in such a way that it neither played over nor under the orchestra. Elusive 4th Tenor and I also discussed that it sounded as though David Robertson is attempting to cultivate an "English" sound to the orchestra. Truly a memorable performance.

Ministry of Language

2008-11-10T12:23:00.001-06:00

One of the underreported results of last Tuesday's election was a ballot issue here in the state of Missouri:

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT NO. 1

Proposed by the 94th General Assembly (First Regular Session) HJR 7

Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to add a statement that English shall be the language of all governmental meetings at which any public business is discussed, decided, or public policy is formulated whether conducted in person or by communication equipment including conference calls, video conferences, or Internet chat or message board?

I don't like this for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I find it to be nationalist and xenophobic.

I am curious if anyone in this state has ever been to an official government meeting which wasn't conducted in English. Anyone?

Those things aside, the real problem is that if you make English the official language of state business, those poor folks in the Boot Heel and the Ozarks are actually going to have to learn to speak it!

At Last We Come To It...

2008-11-04T06:00:00.000-06:00

...the Great Doom of our Time.

Do your civic responsibility and vote today.

The "Real" America

2008-10-29T15:12:00.001-05:00

One could say I'm a bit of a political junkie these days; nervously waiting out the final days of the campaign (as we Democrats tend to do).

Of all the recent tactics employed by the McCain campaign the one that really seems to bother me is the talk of a "Real" America. To me this is dangerous. Talk of the "Real" America tends to bring out the basest, most primitive senses of "patriotism" in people. Moreover, when they speak of this "real" America, they're usually pandering to a crowd of small-town people.

Saying small-town America is greater than any other part of America is akin to those that spout on about how "America is the Greatest Nation on Earth" except that they've never been to another country (or only just got their first passport last year at the age of 43).

I've lived in both small towns and big(ger) cities. In my experience it's people in small towns who tend to be more likely to judge you based on nothing, more likely to be racist and more likely to be exclusive. If that's the 'real' America I want no part of that.

Then again I live in the city, so maybe I don't have to worry about that.

Tenuous At Best

2008-10-07T13:30:00.000-05:00

So, according to the McCain campaign, Barack Obama is a terrorist sympathizer because he and William Ayers have been in the same room together.

That means that, because I've shaken his hand, I'm a student of Krzyzstof Penderecki, right?

We're Saved!

2008-09-26T14:16:00.001-05:00

John McCain will attend the debate!

That means he saved the universe, right?

This Just In...

2008-09-17T14:09:00.001-05:00

"And now, Mr. Salonen, we will discuss the location of your hidden rebel base..."

Makes Sense to Somebody...

2008-09-11T14:45:00.000-05:00

see Sarah Palin pictures

Special Comment

2008-09-09T15:40:00.002-05:00

(I posted this on my Facebook page, but I thought it pertinent enough to share here as well.)

In a thoughtful and engaging note by my friend Jeff I commented that I believed that we were very nearly at a "point of no return" with respect to our government. I have been asked by my friend Tracy to elaborate and he is absolutely right. I should clarify my statement as these are indeed Strong Words but, without explication, devoid of meaning. Doubtless there are many honest, hard-working Americans, such as myself, who believe the very same thing; that our government teeters precipitously on the edge of disaster, though from quite the opposite perspective of my own.

In order to more fully explain how I feel I must first list some of the things that have become norms within the manner in which our government treats We the People. I'm not trying to convert anybody for "It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing" (John Henry Cardinal Newman).

I’m tired of our leaders telling their international counterparts that invading a sovereign nation is bad; unless of course it’s us doing the invading.

I’m tired that people of ineptitude are placed into major government positions then become the scapegoat of the administration when something goes wrong (e.g.: Michael Brown, head of FEMA during Katrina).

I’m tired of being told, “So?” by our administration when they are told that 80% of Americans disagree with them regarding the occupation of Iraq. (See: Dick Cheney interview, ’60 Minutes’).
I’m tired of an administration that believes we are a nation of men rather than John Adams’ Nation of Laws (e.g.: “Scooter” Libby’s commutation). It is as though we have been descended upon by the Borgias in modern form. The Rule of Law is what makes us Equal, not the rule of lesser beings like men.

I’m tired of constitutional lawyers (like John Yoo) applying hocus-pocus and Omega Codes to the Constitution to propose frightening ideas like the Unitary Executive Theory. They declare from on High that the Executive has always been the most powerful branch; that its coequal branches are, according to what the Framers 'actually meant', subservient to the Will of the Executive and, in fact, NOT coequal. The Executive is evidently not accountable to the Legislative or Judicial branches. This is what they meant about limited, delegated, enumerated powers, right?

I’m tired of being lied to by liars so unconvincing that the only conclusion one can intelligently draw is that they think we are ALL very stupid. (See: any press conference the late Tony Snow ever gave).

I’m tired of issues that are not important being trotted out as if they really matter. The role of government is not about dictating social values or religion. Extreme politicization is responsible for infusing divisive social issues and values into the business of government. Gun rights, gay marriage, abortion, etc., these issues without doubt have their place but they are inapposite to the Fabric of America. But we’ve been collectively duped into believing they are.

I’m tired of the hypocrisy of those that moralize vociferously about family and social values; especially by those who condemn certain behaviors then proceed to engage in the very same (and then are hypocritically shunned by their communities, e.g.: Ted Haggard). Look no further than those who have nominated for the two highest offices of This Land a divorcé and a woman whose 17-year old unmarried daughter is pregnant. Again, “Do as we say, not as we do.” (You can bet that if these had happened to any Democrats running that they would be crucified by the Opposition; though ultimately these “issues” should be irrelevant to the role of government).

Speaking of the economy, I’m tired of being told by our leaders that our economy is “fine” and everything is going just swimmingly when the evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary.

I’m tired of the childish behavior of our administration. This administration’s reckless and scandalous comportment (e.g.: the invasion of Iraq, Valerie Plame, ‘Scooter’ Libby, Alberto Gonzales, Abu Ghraib, hurricane Katrina mismanagement, veterans’ treatment and on and on and on) makes Tammany Hall and Teapot Dome (and perhaps even Iran/Contra) look like ice cream socials.

I’m tired of politicians flouting their ignorance of American history. This GOP invokes the Hallowed names of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt as the great forebears of their Party. Lincoln fought the Civil War for the supremacy of a strong national government. Teddy Roosevelt fought AGAINST big business and the corporate corruption of his day. Doubtless these two giants of Our history would not recognize “their” party today; nor is it likely that they would be welcome in it.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I’m tired of people of Extreme Belief, be it religious, political or social, right OR left, checking their brains at the door and swallowing entirely what their leaders tell them. We have been seen fit by nature to have evolved highly developed cognitive abilities. Let us use them.

These things and countless others have worn us down as a people. They make many of us that feel that something is wrong but that we are so insignificant that there is nothing we can do but accept it. So we distract ourselves with cheap and mindless diversions like the latest ‘Guitar Hero’ or who got voted off ‘American Idol’ last night. If we’re going to pay attention to something that doesn’t matter, it may as well be entertaining, right?

Throughout American history there seems to have been a regular swinging to and fro of the Political Pendulum, if you’ll permit the metaphor. We grow tired of an old regime, sweep it away and supplant it anew. Tracy put it well in response to Jeff's note when he commented that “each side helps keep the other in check”. But something seems recently to have gone awry in the process; the pendulum seems to be stuck. There are those who have spoken of a “Permanent Majority” in our government (Karl Rove). Nevermind that this is an extraordinarily frightening image of a country whose only destiny is that of a Police State, the concept is Wholly Anathema to Democracy. Anyone who is able to think in these terms about America - to my mind - clearly has a flawed view of what America is capable of being. Don’t ask me, I don’t know.

I think part of the problem is that those of us who fall close to the Vast Center are caught in the political crosshairs of two Warring Factions that disagree on the future direction of this Nation. One Party wants to rush madly and wide-eyed into the future with almost reckless abandon. The Other looks forlornly at an imaginary past and says things like, “Wasn’t it great when…?” Meanwhile they have the rest of us so divided over non-issues that collectively we’re too paralyzed with fear as an Electorate to do anything but maintain the status quo.

As I previously intimated, one of my great fears is that my children will be born into a legacy of Imperial Presidencies in which the “We know what’s best for you” attitude is all that prevails; a world bereft of a people’s ability to affect change toward the betterment of all rather than maintenance of the status quo for a narrow few.

If I have been over long making my point, then my summation shall be mercifully brief. This odious “point of no return” is that in which We the Accountable Electorate have done nothing for so long that we waken one day to find that We the People are impotent and irrelevant.

Orientations

2008-08-25T21:29:00.001-05:00

Moo.

Challenge

2008-08-18T15:01:00.002-05:00

Alright, so Clone Wars came out last weekend. I haven't seen it, but I have heard the score and really all I can say is, "Eh?".

Anyway, the thought occurred to me that many of the readers of this blog are film music lovers/part-time film composers/etc. So I thought about a challenge.

Compose a 2'30-3'30 cue to accompany a Star Wars scene.

1. You may invent the scenario for the scene, or you may use a scene from the films or the expanded universe as a basis. However, concepts utilising the expanded universe must be kept to the timeline beginning with The Phantom Menace and ending with Return of the Jedi.

2. You may use any of John Williams' themes at any time for points of reference but they cannot be the actual basis for the cue.

3. The point of the exercise is to write a Star Wars cue. To that end, you're supposed to sound like John Williams.

Whaddya think? As far as I can tell it's loose enough that it can work for anyone. I don't have a deadline in mind but I do think that you shouldn't spend any great amount of time on it, either.

So who's in?

Don't Sully the Olympics

2008-08-11T09:39:00.002-05:00

It has been a longstanding tradition that competitors in the Olympic games not use the Games as a platform for political or social statement. It's not perfect and it's really more of a guideline but it is a testament to the ideals which the Games are founded on (backroom politics notwithstanding).

I wish our own politicians could do the same as each Summer Olympic Games coincides with our own Presidential Election.

But alas, it is not to be.

I don't remember whose campaign fired first during Friday's stunning opening ceremonies but I'm already tired of seeing McCain's:

So I have a few questions regarding the way McCain's campaign has twisted Obama's talking points.

1. Is McCain ever going to address the honesty of his claim that Obama wants to raise taxes?

The reason I ask is that it is no secret that Obama wants to raise taxes. Unfortunately because most of the Neocon base is intellectually stunted, they won't listen when you tell them, "Yeah. It's true; but only if you make more than $200,000 a year. Is that you?". I'm sure all of McCain's claims are based in trickle-down economics which doesn't work because most corporate hogs are entirely too greedy to let it work.

2. McCain claims that Obama is going to "Increase government spending". I'm curious. What counts as "More government spending" when you're following Eight Freaking Years of rampant, wasteful, runaway spending? We've gone from a projected $1.2888 trillion budget surplus (2001-2004) to an estimated deficit of $8.5 trillion in 2006 (Current estimates for next year place the estimated deficit for next year at well over $9 billion).

Given that John McCain has done nothing to distance his policies from those of the current administration, why should I feel that he has my interests as an average American citizen at heart? Hmmmm?

Drive Time

2008-07-29T16:55:00.001-05:00

Just thought I'd list what's circulating through my iPod regularly these days on the trip to and from work. The only rule for this list is that each track has to be less than ten minutes. Arbitrary, I know, but it works for the drive.

(Format: Track Title - Album - Composer/Band)

"New Adventures" - Doctor Who - The New Series (Murray Gold)
"Original Blend" - Blurred (Billband/Bill Ryan)
"Cock/Ver 10" - Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound plays Aphex Twin (Richard D. James)
"Lollapalooza" - Century Rolls (John Adams)
"Molossus" - Batman Begins (Hans Zimmer/James Newton Howard)
"Helix" - LAPhil/Salonen (Esa-Pekka Salonen)
"Tangiers" - The Bourne Ultimatum (John Powell)
"Pencil Stick" - Stick Music (Clogs)
"Who's Down Now?" - Lullaby for Sue (Clogs)
"imreadywhenyouare" - Light Is Calling (Michael Gordon)
"Gloria" - König Der Letzten Tage (Wojciech Kilar)
"Balin's Tomb/Khazad-Dûm" - The Fellowship of the Ring: Complete Recordings (Howard Shore)
"Intervention" - Neon Bible (The Arcade Fire)
"Last Train Home" - The Road to You (Live) (Pat Metheny)
"Duel of the Fates" - Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (John Williams)
"Pompeii" - Unearthed (E.S. Posthumus)
"G-Spot Tornado" - The Yellow Shark: Ensemble Modern plays Frank Zappa (Frank Zappa)

Yeah. It's a total hodge-podge.

Hans and James Do It Again

2008-07-16T06:53:00.001-05:00

I picked up the score for The Dark Knight last night.

Oh...my...god.

More later but if you liked the first one, go get it.

In Time Of Great Need, A Hero Will Rise

2008-07-14T21:37:00.002-05:00

You'll Need Chest-Waders For This One

2008-07-10T09:27:00.003-05:00

I was picking up my research into graduate programs recently when I came across the this:

I guess what bothers me most is how the document seems to talk out both sides of its mouth. It's littered with ambiguity, pretentiousness, absolutism and broad, sweeping statements without context.

Creative work...is directed to an audience; but its proper role is to define an audience, not to respond to one.

I thought we had gotten past this. I thought the creator/audience dynamic was, to a certain extent, a give-and-take situation. Even Pierre Boulez recently admitted that, in retrospect, perhaps they (the Darmstadt crowd) should have taken their audience into greater account.

I understand what is being got at in many cases here; it just seems that the wrong path is being trod in order to get there. Additionally the thesaurus seems to have been open for the duration.

It's okay to take seriously what you do; just don't be so damned serious about what you do.

We're composers. We move blocks of sounds, no, the representations of sounds, around on a piece of staff paper, a notation program or a digital music creation program. We do this in a manner that is pleasing to ourselves and, if we're lucky, others as well.

Feel free to argue, disagree, enhance, etc. I leave you to it.

Film Score Friday: 4th of July Edition

2008-07-03T09:31:00.002-05:00

It seems that every year about this time Hollywood sees fit to try to destroy our little planet. Be it by disaster or alien invasion one can almost always count on popcorn munching, soda guzzling good times when the end of the world is nigh.

Today we celebrate the fun that the Destruction of the World can be.

Today's playlist will be chosen from the following:

Mars Attacks! - Danny Elfman
Signs - James Newton Howard
Transformers - Steve Jablonsky
Starship Troopers - Basil Poledouris
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - Elliot Goldenthal
War of the Worlds - John Williams
Stargate - David Arnold
Independence Day - David Arnold
Men In Black - Danny Elfman

Smear Campaign

2008-06-18T11:30:00.003-05:00

My mother believes that Barack Obama is the antichrist.

I'll repeat that.

My mother believes that Barack Obama is the antichrist!!!

She and I are going to have a little chat.

This Is Science

2008-06-10T11:01:00.002-05:00

Exactly what kind of research are they doing at the South Pole?

The First Horseman Has Arrived...

2008-06-06T10:14:00.000-05:00

Big Damn John Williams Day

2008-05-23T10:02:00.000-05:00

It's a big day for John Williams, so let's get to it.

Today's listening list will be chosen from the following:

Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones and Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Herr Vogler out.

First Listen: Indiana Jones

2008-05-20T13:32:00.001-05:00

Thanks to my friend 'Red' I acquired a copy of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a day early. I've listened to it a couple times now and have a few observations. Obviously I haven't seen the film so these are related solely to the album.

Alright. So. New themes:

There's a twistedly chromatic theme for Cate Blanchett's 'Irina' that is both sinister and evocative of her Russian character. It took me two listens to realise just how much it's peppered throughout the score.

There's a theme for the Crystal Skulls themselves. Actually it's more like an obsessive motive that's a study in building tension through the use of orchestral color. But from what I can glean about the story that makes sense. It's kind of a simple little piece, actually, that's probably very effective in the film.

There's some new music for the adventures of Shia LeBeouf's character. It's mostly energetic music that displays some of the orchestral muscle (and playfulness) for which Williams is so well-known with some of the Indiana Jones theme interpolated. For my own tastes though I wish that he had developed the music that appears in 'Keeping up with the Joneses' on The Last Crusade album instead of the Prokofiev-esque music he wrote. That would have made for terrific continuity on multiple psychological and storytelling levels. I do like how Williams kind of reassigned elements of the 'Indy Theme' to fit this character. There's a similar shape to the line, but it's not quite the same.

There are certainly nice touches in the score. Williams includes the complete 'Raiders March' (with the love theme, though I don't remember hearing it anywhere else on the album). He evokes the feeling of some older action cues in a few places. Most notably there's a cue called 'The Jungle Chase' that is a kissin' cousin to 'The Desert Chase' in Raiders. He also pushes the 'Indy Theme' a lot more throughout the score than he did in Last Crusade. This is interesting because in Spielberg's note in the liner of that album he wrote that he and John felt that they didn't need to "lean on that button" so much because they thought the films had "grown up" to the point that that wasn't needed as much.

Conspicuously absent from this album is a standout action cue. In all of the other films (and subsequent albums) there is a standout action set piece/cue. Raiders has 'The Desert Chase'; Temple of Doom has 'The Mine Car Chase'; The Last Crusade has the 'Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra'. All are terrific. There's nothing like that here. The closest anything here comes is 'The Jungle Chase' (track 10).

The one thing that's always bothered me about the scores for the entire series is that, beyond the main Indiana Jones theme, there's little in the way of continuity. This is certainly understandable in that each is its own self-contained story. There is little need to reference the other films. That being said, if Williams is going to borrow from himself, then he should at least reference the other Indiana Jones films. There's a lot of cutting-and-pasting-and-reworking from Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban ('The Snowball Fight') and Revenge of the Sith (General Grievous) into the action sequences.

For all my issues there is a great variety to the album with a lot of action music and a lot of mysterious music, as one would expect. The problem is, we've heard it all before. Now, as someone who has made the study of film music important this isn't exactly a revelation. Composers repeat themselves all the time (please note that I didn't condescendingly write "film composers").

John Williams is the best alive at what he does (writing music for film). That being said I can't help but wonder if he's done. I feel like this score was a little phoned-in (not quite like Attack of the Clones, but close). Perhaps I'm being a little harsh but there's a higher expectation of John Williams writing music for one of these films. Maybe that's not fair but that's the way it is. It's well-crafted but there doesn't seem to be a direction; it seems to be lacking a dramatic arc, but that may only be the album.

Iron Man

2008-05-02T09:35:00.001-05:00

Awesome

The Thick Black Storm

2008-04-24T14:55:00.001-05:00

I love a good thunderstorm.

I especially like driving in them. I am neither careless nor overly cautious (each is dangerous).

I left the gym last night to one of those spring thunderstorms that is both cold and humid; a glorious torrent of a downpour with thick, dark billowing clouds that seemed to stretch to the edge of the world, brilliant flashes of lightning and the cracks and rumbles of thunder both near and far.

But what to listen to on the way home?

After a few moments I cued up my iPod to Hans Zimmer's The Thin Red Line and rolled out of the parking garage. Everything fell into place from there. The music seemed to embody with precision and perfection the atmosphere of it all. Naturally that's just me trying to make sense of my universe by creating meaning where there might be none. We're all human; that's what we do.

I cruised home making it through the first half of the album (the better half of a very good album); thirty minutes of aural/climatic symbiosis. It actually made for a terrifically relaxing drive bringing me to a near Zenlike state with my automobile.

At least from my vantage point.