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One thing that became clear while working on Silkboy was that melody and the function of a scene are intertwined.

Some scenes are more important than others in a movie: some scenes are big, important, flashy scenes, while others are transitory, functional scenes that take you from point A to point B so that the story makes sense.

Both of course are important and part of storytelling, and very often the skill of actors and directors shine the brightest in making those functional scenes become interesting and alive and not simply functional.

Since Silkboy was animated, that meant wall to wall music, and I had to navigate these transitional scenes musically. For advice I turned to the master of themes, John Williams, especially the Harry Potter and Indiana Jones films, both of which had a similar musical approach to the score I was writing.

The bottom line is this:

Giving a big thematic moment to a transitional scene goes against the grain. It is better to write transitional music instead, e.g.: a bridge in a song, or an episode in a fugue or invention.

The transition scene can use secondary musical material, development of main material or simply a sequence (a musical one) or something that leads to the next scene. It is a case where musical structure again supports film structure!

Cheers,

Alain

When composing it is normal to have doubts about the quality of your ideas, but in the business of music on demand and tight schedules, you need an approach to deal with that and make the best decisions.

This is how I deal with it

1. I brainstorm.

I have a variety of ways of doing this: at the keys, the guitar, often just walking around the house or my studio or, if ideas are slow in coming, I do laundry or a few chin-ups, anything to clear my mind and get into “play mode”. When brainstorming I find it important to just have fun.

Figuring out under what circumstances I get my best ideas is something I spent quite a lot of time figuring out, and it was not time ill spent. I never get the blank page syndrome anymore.

2. Pick your favourite.

I do this right away and I don’t wait for the next day. I make a few choices and if I have doubts about the best one to choose as I play through them, I will do a rough sequence and then sit back and listen.

If I still have doubts I will stop for a bit, do something completely unrelated to clear my head and get some distance from it, then I come back in 10 minutes or so and sit back and listen.

Even with tight deadlines, taking a short break is important, it makes everything else go much, much faster and smoother.

And let’s face it, if you have doubts about the quality of your idea, it will nag at you as you work.

Furthermore, I am sure this has happened to you; you think your idea is great, you write the whole thing in a heat of passion only to find that it is quite lame when you listen again the next day. Time completely wasted.

Having experienced that a few times, even when I think I am sure I have doubts!

So even when you think you are sure, taking a few minutes or a day to get distance and the come back to your idea with a fresh ear is an important part of the process.

Today I am writing a little 45 second ditty for my next project (more on that soon) and I had to take a break, get some distance from two ideas that I have to choose from – so I wrote this post!

Later,

Alain

A new article in Variety online hits the nail on the head about the modern state of film scoring. One of the best, most succinct pieces I have read on the subject.

Read it.

The I ask you, what kind of director are you? One that realizes the power that music and melody can have on the emotional response to your film, or one that thinks no one cares anyway.

Would Psycho have been Psycho, Jaws been Jaws, Indiana Jones been so exciting and The Magnificent Seven been as magnificent without the music?

No. I am sure of it. No.

Oh, they would still have been good films, but music is that magic ingredient that makes everything come alive. Steven Spielberg was right, music is the soul of a movie, and to capture that soul you need a special kind of composer, not someone who, as Richard Bellis says in the Variety Article “selects music.”

You need a composer.

With this diary it was my goal to write about the process of composing the score for Silk Boy, including all the ups and downs in such musical creation.

Here’s the thing; I have not started the orchestral underscore yet.

I am still waiting on the first act to get going, and have not seen any of the other animation.

Now, I am not blaming anyone for this. Without going into details, let’s just say they had some problems and are running behind schedule.

So I have laid low and let them work things out, doing whatever work I could in the meantime: working out themes and doing some work with the rough cut of the first act. I need to be a help, not a hindrance.

The way I see it is simple; I am a member of the film making team and I am in charge of making the score an asset to the film. That means making a great score that is delivered on time and on budget.

So now, in order to deliver on time and to have the score ready for the recording date of January 18, I cannot lay low any longer. I am already behind schedule!

There is a lot of music to write and it’s all cartoon action fantasy stuff. That means lots of orchestra and lots of timings to hit!

Just to give you some perspective; Carl Stalling, the composer of most of the great Warner Brothers Cartoons, wrote the music for one 6 minute short every week for 22 years. That averages to about 1 minute of writing a day, and he already had all the timings and wrote only for piano!

I am not Carl Stalling, I do not yet have his experience and if I start this Monday (Sept. 28) I will have to do 1′30″ everyday, fully orchestrated music ready for the copyist, including a mock-up for the director!

This amount of music is still something I can manage, but if things start getting much later it will be difficult to deliver a score of consistent quality.

So, as a member of the film making team, it is my duty to make sure that the rest of the team is aware of the music production schedule. I have drawn up a calendar with the important dates and a countdown, which is now in the hands of the director and production manager.

Actually, this role of “music production manager” is something I have never had to do, but animation is a different beast altogether. So it makes sense to me to do this, and I actually wish I had done this sooner. (In my defense, I was supposed to get the first act in final cut a few weeks back.)

In big Hollywood productions, films go over their production schedules consistently, which shaves time off the music side of things. But they have money for orchestrators and music editors and an army of copyists.

On this film, I am composer and orchestrator and I have one copyist. (Something I am quite proud of, actually. No Remote Control Productions here! It’s Golden Age all the way for me!)

So it’s time to kick it up to Warp 9!

As I continue this journey into animation scoring, I am very thankful for the internet!

Here as some things I have been reading:

Music Timing Rediscovered: from the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive

and

Malotte on Music

Wow, things have changed…

What is fluency?

You have to be in touch with your muse, of course, know how to call her at will, and have the musical knowledge, skill and experience to do something with it.

Like Brahms said:

“Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind”

But an important and seldom discussed aspect of fluency is the ability to self-edit on the spot.

Here is a great read on this very subject.

I enjoy reading about copy writing because there are many parallels between copy writing and composing for film.

I have gained many insights reading about copy writing that I have applied to composition, and also to my writing of words, which I also enjoy doing.

And of course, fluency requires that you put your nose to the grindstone, as the saying goes, which is where I should be right this minute instead of writing this post!

So off I go.

Themes, themes, themes. I am days away from embarking on the score (I hope…), so I am now finding the final versions of my themes, when possible.

You see, it’s been really, really hard to write themes that match the film with any kind of certainty, because all I have to go on is the script and early character designs.

I didn’t get to see how they move, and film has a rhythm to it, something I am more aware now than ever, this being animation and all.

It reminds me of John Williams explaining what he and Spielberg talk about during their spotting sessions, and he said a big subject of discussion is rhythm. (Or perhaps I should say tempo,  I forget which word he used.)

I received the animation for the first act last week. The editing needs to be tightened up, but now I get to see what the characters look like and how they move.

I had written many bad guy themes, and had great concepts for his personality, but they didn’t work, tempo-wise. Too fast or too slow.

So I went back and wrote something based on the tempo of the footsteps when he first appears, and things clicked perfectly.

The tempo, or rhythm, calls to mind a certain kind of melody, so it makes sense to start with the tempo!

I admit that, years ago, when I saw that documentary and heard William say that they spoke about the tempo of a scene, I thought it was an odd thing to talk about.

But now, it makes complete sense to me.

However, I still have many characters that I have yet to see, and I have to write some kind of themes for them.

But that’s OK. The general mood and musical materials used in the bad guy’s theme were on the nose, so I applied them to the new tempo and it all worked great! (Well, it was not that simple, but that’s the general idea.)

Now off to write some more bad guy themes; my favourite! I sent the director a ton of stuff today for him to review. Gotta get that score started!

Well, this is taking a while, isn’t it? I never imagined for a second that the last song would be hard to write at all.

But it is.

The first thing was finding a style of music that both me and the director were happy with, something that has a big finale feel to it. A nice big happy party.

I remember this video on Jerry Goldsmith where he talks about spending a week just listening to Native Indian music as he got ready to score a film. Just immersing himself in the sounds and colours before he started writing.

So that is what I am doing now. Not Indian music of course, but rock, rockabilly and funk.

There are a lot of ideas written down right now and piling up fast, but for this song I have to go with the great idea. The great, simple idea.

“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” – Frederic Chopin

I am looking for that idea that makes me go “aha”,the idea that fits the many criteria required, and I didn’t get that yet, not quite. I feel myself getting closer, though.

And the funny thing is, that once the song is done, it will feel so easy and natural.

I also need to get started on the underscore soon!

Pre-production music was still the goal this week. Having completed the first song with great success things were off to a great start.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I was having trouble with the second song, a big production number for the ending. But I finally completed it and sent it over.

The director (David) didn’t like it as much however. I mean, he liked the song, especially the ending of it, though, but wasn’t sure about the start of it. He was hoping for something a little bit more jazz as well.

There was a little bit of miscommunication with that one, and that is fine, because that will happen, it’s part of the process. It’s how you deal with it that makes a difference and our discussion went very smoothly. David is a great guy.

But then David called me up a few days later saying that the producer and others in his team liked the song a lot and thought it captured the feel of a big ending perfectly. So David was changing his mind about it, although he still felt the beginning to be a little weak, which I agreed that it was.

I’ll get back to that one after a little break from it. I am jotting down ideas in my note book as they come in the meantime as my subconscious keeps working on it.

On Wednesday I recorded a short rock-hero guitar number for a scene in the film at Josh’s place. (Josh Rosario will be mixing the music for the film.)

We recorded the guitar parts and I got to do some fancy shredding on his nice Gibson SG with custom EMG humbuckers. I got a really nice, meaty hard rock sound out of that. Man, I need a new guitar…

I sent it to David and he listened to it while I was on the phone with him. He laughed out loud and that was that, approved on the spot. Easy! So now Josh needs to fix up that mix a little and we move on.

Then I tackled the third and last song for pre-production. I can’t reveal a lot here, but after reading the script and seeing the character designs, I came up with a piece that combines war chants, Chinese war drums and other big drums, surf rock music, hard rock and Chinese traditional. (Does that pique your interest?)

And it rocks! I sketched it out real quick, a fast MIDI sequence in Cubase with rough guitar tracks, and that was enough to get me laughing out loud and dancing like a fool around my studio!

You know you did something right when your own music gives you that kind of reaction.

So I made a better sequence out of it, mixed it and sent it to David who loved it right away! He emailed me saying that is was sooooo cool and that it was the best present he received on his birthday!

Wow, what an overwhelming compliment…

This is why I love writing film music. How often do you get to combine all of these musical elements, have so much fun writing, get paid for it and then be told your music is a gift?

Next week: arranging song #1, completing song #3, thinking about song #2 and hopefully be ready to start the underscore. I got about 100 minutes of music to write, so I need to get going!