Week 1 - Orientation, Classes Start & The Commute From Hell

What a crazy week! Twenty hours of class and 15 hours of commute. First I'll tell you a bit about the reason behind the crazy commute, then I'll get into some actual cool school stuff. There will be some technobabble, I will explain as I go. This is going to be a mind dump and there may not be much cohesion in the presentation. If you have specific questions, please ask in a comment, I'm happy to answer.

Classes started Monday September 18th. The original plan when we first moved to Seattle was to find a place close enough with a reasonable commute to school. Our apartment in Burien was about a 25 minute drive from campus. Not bad. Unfortunately, as the end of our lease approached, we started looking for a new place, and since our son was going to move to Seattle to live with us, we needed a 4 bedroom (or three with a big enough living room I could set up my studio). Well, places to rent meeting the criteria within 30 minutes of school are not cheap. So we looked to buy instead of rent and Fife was as close as we could get on our budget. Fife is a mere 30 miles from school, however, thanks to traffic on I-5, is a 2-hour commute to and an hour from.

Luckily, SFI offers a low-residency option. The first week of the year, plus the last week of each quarter requires an on-campus residency, the rest is all taught via Zoom. This was week 1 so I had to drive to school each morning. Let's just say the week could not be over quickly enough.

Despite the shitty commute, classes have been amazing! I can't believe how good it feels to be back in school and being all nerdy about music!

Here is a breakdown of the week:

Monday: Orientation, there are 10 students in the program this year, took a campus tour, (The entire music department is a single classroom in the only building on campus - Smol! so the tour didn't last long) here's the syllabi, here are the places to eat, don't eat at that place, smol fridge (keep it clean), coffee here, garbage, recycle, don't park at the QFC or they will tow your car.

Tuesday: Finale & Conducting / Ear Training

Wednesday: Digital Performer & Film Music History

Thursday: Foundations in Film Scoring & Conducting

Friday: Applied Composition & Theory

 

Alright, details.

Monday: Not much more I can say.

Tuesday:

Finale: 

Finale is a music notation software. Basically, play the keyboard (hopefully with more finesse than Susan Dey) notes appear on screen; clicky clicky click, add some other notation stuff, layout the staves so everything is legible, check your work, check your work again, have somebody else check your work, check it one last time, print, and viola! Sheet music. 

Notation software is a must in the film scoring world. Unless you are John Williams, you have to do your own music prep, which means after you compose, and edit, and orchestrate your masterpiece, you have to create sheet music for the studio musicians. These people get paid north of $300 an hour so you cannot afford to waste time when recording. The music must be meticulously prepared and easy to read. 

If you are not a musician, pretend you are for just a moment. When you prepare to perform, you are almost always given sheet music well in advance of the performance. You can practice, ask questions, write notes on the music, you spend hours rehearsing and preparing to perform. Studio musicians don't get that, they don't even get to see the sheet music until they show up for the gig. Most of the film / tv music you hear is recorded in 1-2 takes. They literally record as they are reading the music for the first time. So the sheet music has to be perfect, clean, easy to read, and flawless. Nothing makes a music producer turn red in the face faster than a wrong note in the flute part. Each click of the clock costs somebody money. The fact they can perform and record without practicing is why they are paid so well.

Conducting: 

One of the benefits of the program is I will get to conduct the various ensembles during recording sessions. Conducting a studio orchestra is different than conducting a performing ensemble. In a performing ensemble, the conductor can manipulate the tempo (speed) of the performance at will. He might play a passage one tempo during rehearsal, and change it slightly during a performance, the musicians watch the baton to see the tempo the conductor wants. In a studio setting, the conductor and musicians all wear headphones and play along to a pre-recorded click track. 

Let's talk about timing for a minute. Film and television scores are specifically written to set an emotional tone for the viewer. In most movies, the emotional tone changes fairly rapidly, from suspenseful, to tragic, to mournful, all in a matter of minutes. Film music is written to change when the on-screen action or emotional tone changes, and there is a strict tolerance when the music changes. In order for the music to change along with the picture, sudden changes in tone and tempo are common and set in stone, there is no room for personal interpretation on the part o the conductor. A particular emotional tone lasts for a very precise number of minutes, seconds and frames. The pre-recorded clicks follow that map perfectly, the conductor basically aids the ensemble in maintaining volume ad balance, and can indicate style, but the tempo is the tempo is the tempo.

Ear Training:

An important skill for any composer to have is the ability to identify chords, harmony, rhythms and melodies simply by hearing them. We do a lot of dictation, teacher plays intervals, chords or a melody and we have to write it down. This is a necessary evil, not particularly fun to do. Like anything else, the more you do it the better you get. 

Wednesday: 

Digital Performer:

Digital Performer is a DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation. It does many things; records and edits audio, has basic notation capabilities, but the aspect that is most useful to a film composer is its ability to sync music to film. Import a video file and record music while the video plays. It allows you to see in real time how the music lines up with the onscreen emotion or action. DAWs are fun to play with, you can import existing audio, record sounds from an instrument or voice, or play new music into it using a variety of sampled sounds. Mix everything together with the video and bang! you have a movie.

 Film Music History:

This class rocks! You watch movies and talk about how affective the music works with the film. Since this was the first week, we only watched clips instead of entire movies. The class is taught chronologically so we watched clips from Nosferatu and Metropolis to get started. NExt week, we will screen a full movie then spend 2 hours discussing the music. This makes the music nerd in me very happy! 

The best part is that even though there is a general consensus among composers whether or not a score is affective, there are always different opinions when it comes to the nuances. It's similar to watching 'At The Movies' (if you are old enough to remember Siskel and Ebert). There can be rational for opinions as to why a particular cue (piece of music) works ro doesn't work. 

Since my schedule is the same every week this quarter, I'll save my thoughts on Thursday and Friday for the next post. By then there will more personable stuff to share, I'l talk more about my partners in crime as well. All the teachers are good, some are amazing!