The premiere of Paul Keew’s A Christmas Carol is over but the recording is now being made available on sacredaudio.com. Listen to samples and download the original cast recording here.
I’ve been involved with working on another Performance Hall play being put on this Christmas season.
A Christmas Carol, based off the classic Dickens’ novel, is a new musical with original songs by Paul Keew and directed by Laura Spencer. It may be one of the larger productions put on in the hall with nearly 10 musicians being crammed into the backstage area and a full cast of actors and stage crew. Hearing the final product after spending many a long night pouring over them was extremely rewarding. I’m so thrilled to be a part of such an venture.
Ticket’s sold out very quickly and lines were long with people trying to get it but there is also an original cast recording that was quickly put together. It is available to those who were not able to attend, more on that later… I’ll try and get some audio samples up here as well.
I realize this is a little late in coming and seems a little after the fact but over the past several months I have been working on music for a play called Shadow of Doubt, written by Stephanie Connors and directed by Anne Cleland. It’s been marketed really well on Facebook which helped to cover my lack of mentioning it on budafulmusic.
Below are some audio clips that I have composed specifically for the play. Another piano-only track can be found on the fb fan page. I’m thrilled that it meshed so well with the production and I’m also very grateful to the musicians who gave life to the music.
I admit, I’m a little obsessive when it comes to film music.
Are you the type of person that, after a films conclusion, ‘stays with it’ and listened to the entire end credit (EC) music? Most people, once the credits come, leave the theater or turn off the tv and move on. But what actually goes into the making of the EC music? Can it be/is it done with intent and style? What can/does the composer do while the names go up?
Several methods of filling the EC space come to mind:
1) Stick in existing score from the film. Use highlights of the music that come from key plot points. Many films do this effectively enough, though it often doesn’t showcase the composers’ intent for the music (which may or may not be a bad thing) as it could be left to a video editor to splice the music into the credits just to fill a certain period of time. It would likely save some valuable hours of studio time and seems to be the most common method.
2) Use even more original music. The EC gives the composer the opportunity to score music free from the bonds of the film and to pay more attention to form and flow of thought. Timed exactly right with the credits length, it sends the final logos off with style. One thing several popular film composers do is arrange concert versions of the themes they write to give it a more enjoyable listen on album. The concert adaptation would fit well in the EC as it wouldn’t be necessary to follow the film as closely. (This is perhaps best seen in the Star Wars films. SW: Episode I has one of the most interesting closers, with Episode II following closely behind.)
3) Make the credits pop… literally. Probably one of the most popular (and expensive) choices is for the marketing department to hire a well known singer or group usually apart from the composer, though not always, and have them record a song or two to play while the credits flow. This type of EC is good for cross marketing… but isn’t always good for the listenability of the score. (Hurray for the digital age where we can load only the songs we prefer onto our ipods!!)
So, lots of choices. None of them being exactly right or wrong. Honestly, it all depends on the film, it’s director’s and composer’s aesthetic. A comic book action film would likely do well with a score only approach, though not always is this the case anymore. A chick-flick would do better with, say, several sickening sweet, flavor-of-the-day songs.
Oh-boy! Sugar rush!
A friend of mine recently lent me several film scores that have a rural sound and/or story to them. What I found after listening to them was interesting. There were several commonalities over a large span of genres while each score defined itself indifferent ways. The focus of this post will briefly discuss these findings. I hope that you find them as interesting as I did. I’d encourage you to take the opportunity to give one or two of these a listen or two. Keep in mind that these thoughts are about the music on album and don’t necessarily reflect my opinion about the films themselves.
I’ll start with one of my favorites from this list though they are alphabetically arranged by title.
A River Runs Through It - The peaceful and flowing score by Mark Isham is very simplistic in nature and makes effective use of solo folk instruments and tunes. The title theme is fairly memorable. It reminds me of the old cowboy song, The Streets of Laredo.
Avalon – A sentimental score by Randy Newman. He often uses piano as the dominant instrument with an orchestra to back it up. Newman has a knack for putting a tear in your eye that continues to this day. Put on top of that his wonderful usage of jazz as period pieces. What fun!
The Babe - More of a parody score, this Elmer Bernstein OST is more comical than serious and who can blame it? John Goodman’s character as a famous baseball player is indeed comic. Some interesting usage of a capella men’s groups. Another of my favorite scores by Bernstein that better represents his work would be his classic To Kill a Mockingbird.
Cobb - WOW! I wasn’t expecting this to be so wonderful. Elliot Goldenthal says it just right in the CD’s incipits: “Cobb’s classical, scientific approach to baseball both collided and cohabited with his irrational, almost transcendent abandon in the game. These opposing forces in him gave [Goldenthal] the key to composing the score: composition as collision.” Fascinating! A fun recording of Sister Wynona Carr singing The Ball Game is also featured at the end of the score. Add this one to my list of must-get recordings. (Oh, and the main theme is taken from an “old Baptist hymn“!)
Fried Green Tomatoes – Thomas Newman is a master at getting unique sounds from instruments. Any and everything is able to produce a musical, especially percussive, sound. The slides on his guitars are so amazingly hic. They make me smile. Throughout there are vocal period pieces that obviously have a place in the film, although they occasionally they detract from the listenability of the album. He sets up just the right emotion for each scene. Several cues feature a ragtime, Scott Joplin sound. Honky-tonk is in. 
The Man in the Moon – This is an older James Newton Howard score. I unfortunately have not heard much of his pre-2000 scores… but I’m working on that. (I’m super pumped about his score for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender but I digress). There are some amazing solo instrument passages featuring the fiddle, steel guitar, pan-flute and hammered dulcimer. Needless to say, this score has some spectacular bluegrass grooves going for it. I also have grown to appreciate Howard’s sensitive string arrangements and his surprisingly simple solo piano. The integration of all these musical elements (and more) provide for a very enjoyable listen and, undoubtedly, for an enjoyable film.
Miller’s Crossing – I’m not that familiar with Carter Burtwell but this score was pleasant. Many period pieces with singers and jazz throughout. Rather short (under 30 minutes).
The Natural – The only academy award winner in this group! Randy Newman once again provides the musical landscape to a baseball film. Though I can’t help but think that it mimics close behind then success of Chariots of Fire with a couple cues implementing that ‘catchy’ beat that has become so famous. The most exciting cues are during the game where the heroic theme plays. It really catches the spirit of the game and is quite memorable. Wish the film were as much.
Of Mice and Men – A classic tale. I love Mark Isham’s ear-pleasing folk sound. The music was likely very effective in the film, but can’t judge from experience considering I haven’t seen it.
The Whole Wide World – Hans Zimmer and his colleague, Harry Gregson-Williams, put this score together. Of the scores in this list, The Whole Wide World is the most varied and different sounding by making much use of organic and synthetic combinations and/or mixing techniques. It is also the most heavily-mixed score in this list making it feel less folksy and more in your face, despite it’s various solo passages and folk rhythms. At the same time, this is also not a stereotypical Zimmer score either, the vast majority of the music being rather subdued in nature. Whenever there are two names on the front of a Soundtrack, I often wonder who had the most weight in deciding artistic direction, obviously in this case, Zimmer had the most say while Gregson-Williams arranged and orchestrated the cues that came from Zimmer’s hand.
Implications?
Basically, each composer makes different artisic descisions based upon his training, personal experiences and needs and limitations of the film. In spight of various composers scoring the music for these films, several elements remained constant: the use of folk, jazz, bluegrass and period pieces all strengthening the core of the message of each of these rural scores. (Solo instruments and simplistic orchestral instrumentation were also a common characteristic.)
Do you ever wonder how the tracks found on soundtracks got their names?
The art of assigning track names in a soundtrack recording is a unique and sometimes challenging task. There seem to be at least three different existing ways of naming individual tracks on a soundtrack recording.
1. The John Williams method. (Let me first say that John Williams is my hero! This method does not intend to be derogatory to the Maestro in any way. But back to the methods…) The JW method of naming tracks is rather obvious. It assigns names to each track in such a way that you can determine the plot of the whole movie by just reading the back of the CD. For example, from ‘Return of the Jedi‘ like: ‘The Death of Yoda, The Emperor’s Death, and Darth Vader’s Death all seem to oh-so-subtly hint to a certain ending. (A lot of people must die. 
)There are other less obvious and more effective ways of implementing this method but over all, it remains the least creative of the methods.
2. The Howard Shore method. Similar to method 1, it also names each track related to it’s place in the movie. However, this method has much more finesse and subtlety. Rather than spoil the plot by a simple flip of a CD case, it disguises the story line by making an abstract reference to the movie, naming the track after a certain character, or even using the actual chapter titles from its corresponding book as tracks names. Take ‘The Two Towers‘ : ‘Foundations Of Stone‘, ‘The Rider’s of Rohan‘, and ‘The White Rider‘, for example. Unless you have a very good memory, you likely would have a more difficult time deriving the actual plot from this method of track naming. Overall, it’s a bit more creative than method 1.
Perhaps an example of why this is important could be illustrated in a case of the opposite. Hans Zimmer’s/James Newton Howard’s Batman Begins soundtrack was very difficult to assimilate because the name of each track didn’t correspond with material from the film– but after a different species of bat (…wait for it…) in Latin. ["So, what's your favorite track in Batman Begins?" "um..." Exactly]
And finally:
3. The Michael Giacchino method. This method, my personal favorite, is hugely satirical and punny in nature and more often than not carries a double meaning. One is able to be a music nerd and get away with it because most people will not notice the jokes or better yet, they enjoy them. Giacchino’s scores for the Lost TV series had some very creative names from the onset: ‘The Eyeland‘ ‘Departing Sun‘ & ‘Thinking Clairely‘.
Even his more recent score for Star Trek had some very interesting track titles. Particularly track 3′s ‘Labor of Love‘ & 4′s ‘Hella Bar Talk‘, which bears striking resemblance to 20th century composer, Bela Bartok. A close second would be track 3 from John Debney’s Cutthroat Island, ‘Purcell Snatcher‘, where a main character nabs a purse during a baroque-esque dance.
(And you thought composers didn’t have a sense of humor…)
Did I miss a method or two? Sound out another method of track naming (both serious or funny) in the comments…
It’s been a busy start to the new year. Here are some of the things that I’ve been doing musically over the past month and a half of blog silence:
I recently had the privilege to compose incidental music for an upcoming Graduate speech recital. Sounds really academic, huh? Well don’t take it too seriously. This program is not for the long of face. In short, the extremely talented Allisha Sperr will be performing a series of short, absolutely hysterical comedy routines. I cannot begin to describe how funny this recital is going to be. You just have to see it for yourself to believe it.
This program takes place in Stratton Hall on the campus of BJU this Saturday, December the 5th at 7 o’ clock pm. Here are some audio samples:
Break their hearts, All is ha!
Recently, I’ve been seeing a few top 10 favorites lists so I’m going to give it a go. OST stands for Original Soundtrack, that is, a soundtrack to a film. Parameters for this list are as foll0ws: 1 best score from 10 of the best film composers, no repeats of composers.
1. Signs by James Newton Howard, more about how one family copes with pain and trouble than about aliens, this OST is not for the faint of heart. It quite possible could be one of the most unnerving soundtracks I’ve heard but the final two tracks are worth the dissonance (aka set theory). Continue reading