Composing LA

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Young British Composer Tarik O’ Regan tells the story of how the tradition of Western classical music, its composers and maestros, underpinned the golden age of Hollywood film score.

More or less the entire Hollywood music scene, as it blossomed in the 1930s, looked to serious European and Russian composers for film score composition. Stravinsky, Schoenberg, two of the greatest composers of ‘serious’ 20th century music, both lived and worked in LA – much to the consternation of the European classical music establishment.

Many composers on the run from Europe in the 1930s would arrive in New York and, failing to make inroads into the concert scene or Broadway (as Kurt Weil had done), continued their journey West. Even as early cinema flourished, America was still struggling to find its own authentic ‘classical’ music – one that strived to be equal to the European symphonic sound but that had its own voice too. The film score was precisely that.

Meanwhile most of the Hollywood film orchestras were filled with British and European émigré musicians who taught American musicians the European symphonic style that became the hallmark of Hollywood film music. This programme also explores how some of the most successful soundtrack composers today – John Williams and others – are completely caught up in that sound-world.

Presented by Tarik O’Regan, an émigré composer himself who moved to the US, with contributors including Andre Previn, Larry Schoenberg, conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen and music writer Alex Ross.

Produced by Simon Hollis
A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4.

INTERSTELLAR – drowning in sound

I watched INTERSTELLAR last night. The soundtrack was (as you would expect from a Christopher Nolan film) electrifying.

Music was composed by Nolan’s composer of choice Hans Zimmer.

As I watched I realised that the predominant instruments were strings and what sounded like the biggest church organ in the world!. I wasn’t far wrong it seems.

“Over the course of the film, the core five-note melody (the soundtrack is released on November 17th, but for a taste listen to Trailer #3) is expressed in different ways. The score is an ensemble effort combining 34 strings, 24 woodwinds, four pianos, and 60 choir singers, all of which get their time to sound off. But the starring, and most meaningful voice, is the 1926 four-manual Harrison & Harrison organ, currently housed at the 12th-century Temple Church in London and played in the movie by its director of music, Roger Sayer”(i)

What also became apparent is that on many occasions the audio track was so loud that at times when actors were speaking you could not hear clearly what they were saying. As I watched, my sound editor’s head said to myself “this must be deliberate, Nolan must WANT US to be straining to hear what they’re saying, to make the scene tense, threatening or downright overwhelming. I certainly thought at times that the cinema sound system was going to blow. I was being affected physiologically, my heart-rate was increasing. At other times however, quieter times, The main dialogue was relatively low in level – almost hard to hear what people were saying. This huge dynamic range (only available in cinemas) made me wonder how it will sound on DVD/streaming etc. You cant really watch a Nolan film anywhere other than the cinema it seems to me.

Afterwards some research into the sound led me to an article on this very subject, which confirms much of what I thought and far more.

https://soundcloud.com/zimmer-fans/hans-zimmer-our-destiny-lies

Here’s more from the article:-

Hans Zimmer’s score drowns out dialogue and has already broken an Imax theater, but there’s thematic significance in all that noise

“As Zimmer recently told the Film Music Society, the organ was chosen for its significance to science: From the 17th century to the time of the telephone exchange, the pipe organ was known as the most complex man-made device ever invented. Its physical appearance reminded him of space ship afterburners. And the airiness of the sound slipping through pipes replicates the experience of suited astronauts, where every breath is precious (a usual preoccupation with sci-fi movies that is taken very literally in Zimmer’s music, which also features the exhalations of his human choir).

Zimmer’s score—which alternates between a 19th-century Romanticism and 20th-century Minimalism—of course has an element of spirituality to it. But the organ does more than just recall churches. From the movie’s earliest moments, it performs some very necessary narrative legwork for the overburdened screenplay. When it kicks in as Cooper chases down an Indian surveillance drone, a light touch on the organ keys, paired with rousing strings, creates a whirling, ethereal sound that channels Cooper’s interior life. The giddy tone it sets demonstrates that Cooper is a risk-taker and adventurer, which solves the screenplay’s early problem of establishing emotional motive for Cooper to leave his children.

As organs are wont to do, this one resonates. And there are moments when the decibels at which it does can only be described as an action-movie crutch. The organ gets a noticeably more heavy-handed touch as the plot becomes ever-more preposterous. It blasts when the elder Professor Brand, played by Michael Caine, hands over the keys to the spaceship—and his life’s work—to a farmer (Cooper) who presumably hasn’t piloted anything except a plow in a while. It booms when Ann Hathaway’s younger Dr. Brand shakes hands with “Them,” heavily foreshadowing events to come. Some of these moments necessitate the extra spiritualistic oomph, but it’s often the case that when the plot turns implausible, Nolan and Zimmer ramp up the organ.”(i)

(i)http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/11/why-interstellars-organ-needs-to-be-so-loud/382619/

Animation/Audio Festival Screenings in the USA and UK

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Blog post by RW.

Animation student Daniel Escobar’s Luma St. with music and sound by 2014 Audio Production Graduate Nathan Lewis has been selected for Festimation – an International Animation & New Media Arts Festival, which is on this month in Montana, USA. Festimation is an event for screening and showcasing ‘up-and-coming independent, narrative, documentary and experimental animated films.’ Luma St. is summed up as a short that “revolves around the idea of people missing the beauty in everyday life.” LSFM Senior Lecturer Sultan Efe: It’s great to see that the organisers used snapshots from Luma St. as part of their poster for the festival. Daniel has sent the film to several animation competitions and festivals and I am sure we will be hearing good news in the next 12 months.”

Luma St. will be screened at Lincoln Shorts film festival along with a hugely diverse, eclectic and entertaining mix of locally-made short films at Lincoln Drill Hall on 18th October at 7pm. Admission’s £5 and you can book tickets online.

Also, Audio Production alumna Danielle Crooks created the soundtrack for animation project, Lullaby, which was led by Lucy Clay and Amy Fairclough. Lullaby was nominated in the Student Competition at Animasyros 7.0 International Animation Festival this month.

Sultan said: We have yet to hear results of both competitions but so far it has been great to see our student films have had exposure in China, Greece, UK and US.

Watch Luma St here.

Music & Video Games

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Games Designer Paul Bennun explores the growing popularity and ambition of music composed for video games.

Video games now have the resources to match that of the big Hollywood orchestral film scores. But it’s not just commercially that video game soundtracks are taken seriously. Composers are becoming more interested in it artistically and BAFTA and the Ivor Novellos have recently recognised the form with their own award categories.

Bennun traces the development of this new genre and finds out how it is changing the way music is made and consumed. Has it now left behind bleeps and bloops and arrived at the brink of artistic respectability?

Producer: Russell Finch

Listen to The BBC Radio 4 programme here:

Pauline Oliveros – Pioneer of Electronic Classical Music

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Pauline Oliveros is an American improvisor, accordionist and composer who is considered a pioneer of electronic classical music in 20th century America. At 81 years old, her career spans some fifty years of boundary breaking music-making, and she has been the recipient of numerous awards. On April 1st 2014, she performs a real-time improvised performance linking musicians in Stanford (California), Troy (New York) and Montreal. This is the first performance of this kind in the UK at the Birmingham Conservatoire.

The performance forms part of Frontiers: Extraordinary Music from Downtown New York & Birmingham, a major festival of music presented by Birmingham Conservatoire and Third Ear.

Listen to Pauline being interviewed for BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour here:

Who Killed Classical Music?

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The Composer Gabriel Prokofiev (grandson of Sergei Prokofiev) looks at the increasing disconnection between classical music and its audience. He investigates the argument that composers such as Schoenberg killed off 20th century classical music for all but a small elite audience.

Until the early 20th century, each composer of classical music developed his own style built on the traditions of previous composers. Then Arnold Schoenberg changed all this, by devising ‘Serialism’ where melodies were no longer allowed.

In the 1950s, composers such as Pierre Boulez created ‘Total Serialism’. Every aspect of a piece of music – rhythms and loudness as well as notes – was rigidly controlled by a fixed formula.

And the sense of composers being remote from their audience was exacerbated by the elevation of musical performance to a kind of ritual.

But even at a time when Serialism gripped major parts of the classical music establishment, music that was overtly emotional was still being written by composers such as Shostakovich and Prokofiev in Russia. Ironically, in these countries, the State continued to support classical music, whereas in more liberal regimes in Europe it retreated to the intellectual margins.

Now the Serialist experiment has been largely abandoned and a whole new generation of composers – including Gabriel himself – is embracing popular culture, just as composers used to in the past when folk music or dance music were a major source of inspiration.

So has the death of classical music been exaggerated? Will it find new homes and new means of expression to attract the audiences of the future?

With contributions from Arnold Whittall, Stephen Johnson, Alexander Goehr, David Matthews, Ivan Hewett and Tansy Davies

Listen to the BBC Radio 4 programme here:

 

Björk Tackles The Grid

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When using a DAW for electronic music production, it is often frustrating to be shackled to the grid as it often dictates the feel in the rhythmic elements of a composition.

In the songs and apps for Biophilia, Björk tackles this problem of the rigidity of the grid in her exploration of nature, music and technology.

In the very interesting clip below, she describes a much more fluid approach made possible by today’s sophisticated technology and its ability to behave in a much more organic way.

Listen to the short clip from the BBC 6 Music programme ‘The First Time’ here:

Foghorn Requiem

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There used to be more than a hundred foghorns stationed around the British Isles but now there are fewer than 30. The BBC’s arts correspondent Rebecca Jones reports that a special requiem has been written which will be performed by ships at sea, three brass bands on the shore and the Souter Lighthouse foghorn near South Shields to mark the demise of the foghorn.
Listen to the BBC Radio 4 clip here

Update: please read Robin The Fog’s excellent account of the performance and listen to recordings here.

Oblique Strategies

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‘Infinitesimal gradations’, ‘Repetition is a form of change’, ‘Bridges -build-burn’ – just three of the gnomic aphorisms contained in the Oblique Strategies cards devised in the early 1970s by artists Peter Schmidt and Brian Eno. The cards were aimed at providing a creative jolt to artists who were either stuck or searching for new directions for their work. Most famously, Eno and David Bowie used the cards during the making of the now infamous set of albums known as the Berlin trilogy.

Simon Armitage first came across them as a student, but has never actually owned or used a pack himself. Now he sets out to tell the story of the cards, talk to some of those who’ve used them (across the fields of music, writing, cooking, business and more) and also find out whether the cards will take his own writing in a new direction. Among those he’ll speak with are Carlos Alomar (the guitarist on those Bowie albums), user Paul Morley, chef Ian Knauer and creativity guru Professor Tudor Rickards. He’ll also use the cards to try and help him track down the elusive Brian Eno himself.

Listen to the BBC Radio 4 programme here

Collaborations with Animation

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Blog post by level 2 AP student Nathan Lewis.

Earlier this year, an opportunity arose for Audio Production students to collaborate with the final year Animation students, who needed an original soundtrack design for their films. With the chance to enhance my learning experience and add to the repertoire of short films for my portfolio, I gladly attended the meeting to pitch my musical stylings to the groups in a rather professional manner (I hope). I was aware that each filmmaker required a specific style of artist for their film and was therefore delighted that my music captured the interests of two of the groups, which turned out to be amongst my favourite of the films.

With a rather jolly disposition, I took out my laptop and asked as many questions as I could about what they required from me. Both films required music and sound effects intertwined under a three dimensional, naturalistic, yet dreamy umbrella of auditory experience. I immediately got to work!

After uploading the animatics, I began composing the music. My method is to let the story play a few times till the required vibe is discovered for which I then perform the indicated melodies on a MIDI keyboard to depict the mood on screen. Because the animatics mainly consist of pencil outlines; imagination and foresight is very much required, hence it being a good idea to ask any key questions integral to understanding the plot, early as possible.

In total, I must have had about four pieces of music rejected, which taught me not only to keep my cool, but also a lot about catering for someone else’s design and vision, as usually the boot is on the other foot. Through many edits and adjustments, I eventually earned the trust of my teams and they allowed me to work more autonomously towards the final stages.

Highlights included the enlisting of my father as “incoherent quip” actor to perform some grunts, screams, oohs and aahs in one of the more acrobatic films. I originally attempted this myself only to rapidly discover my voice being not of the masculine persuasion required of the character.

Upon mutual satisfaction, the animatics were finally replaced with the fully animated versions where the stenciled in biros were replaced with beautiful colourings and HD frameworks. With these versions being less sporadic and more, well, animated, I was able to perform and record the foley which consisted mainly of footsteps and clothing rustles to bring the picture to life. The final versions were met with enthusiasm and sincere collaboration prospects for the future.

I recommend and advise any Audio Production student to get involved as it’s not only experience towards the field you are in, but also of the animation process itself; hence providing you with a wealth of invaluable industry experience upon graduation.

The two films complete with my composition and sound design can be seen here: River Man and here: Snowblind