Week 2 Monday - Wednesday

Monday:

This was my first day of class without the commute. So much better! 

Foundations of Film Scoring:

More in depth look at Hollywood and the film industry. Most important to the composer is the Spotting Session. The music team and production team meet with a version of the film (Preferably 'locked' which means there will be no more timing edits made to the print) and discuss which scenes need music and why.

The best example I can give you of the results of a spotting session are in Forrest Gump. Watch the scene where Forrest is called home because Momma is dying. As Forrest and Momma are talking, notice when you first start to hear music. Ask yourself, 'Why did it come in there and not earlier or later?' The answer to that question is found in the spotting session between Robert Zemeckis and Alan Silvestri.

Film music can have a profound effect on the viewer experience. It can be used to support emotion, redirect motion, support pacing, or define a location or era. It might do one or more of these at the same time. If the actor(s) on screen are not doing a good job of emoting, music can help bring the emotional context up or down to adjust. If the pacing is off, rather than reshoot the scene, there's musical trickery that can be employed to speed it up or slow it down. 

Music is commonly used to define an era, just watch any contemporary western to hear examples. It is also used to define locations. If you've watched either Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, you'll notice that many geographical locations have their own theme music, the most prominent being the Shire and Rohan. When those locations are on screen, you usually hear the theme music, even if characters are talking about that location ,you will hear the music. When Frodo and Sam mention the Shire, you hear the Shire theme is some variation.

If you have any doubt about music's ability to change the way you feel about a movie, just watch Jaws with the sound turned down. John Williams straight up saved that movie! 

There are basically 4 'types; of music you hear in a film:

• Dramatic Underscore - Raiders of the Lost Ark, any MCU movie, etc
• Source Music - If there is a football game on screen and you can hear but not see a marching band, that is source music. Same as with a radio, if you hear music that is obviously coming from a radio that is source music 
• Songs - 'My Heart Will Go On' from Titanic or 'Kiss From a Rose' from Batman Forever are 'songs'. Well, they're obviously dongs, but in a film score sense, they are music with words that are sung that are not performed by onscreen actors. 'My Heart Will go On' was specifically written for Titanic by James Horner and Will Jennings.  "Kiss from a Rose' was written by Seal and only used in Batman Forever, not specifically written for the movie.
• Production Music - My Fair Lady or any musical for that matter are examples of production music, as long as onscreen actors are singing / playing the music, it's production. 

 Applied Composition:

Harmonic vocabulary and richness. I'm going to get a bit nerdy here but I hope I explain it in a way those with no music background can understand.

Below are the chords available in the key of C:

There are 7 possible chords in any given key without 'borrowing' them. Above each chord is a letter,:

• T = Tonic, chords that sound most at rest, there is nothing going on with that chord that compels a listener to want to move away from it, very stable.
• SD = Sub Dominant, chords that are less stable than Tonic, there is something about the chord that the listener wants to move away from, this is the state of some tension and is how forward motion is created.
• D = Dominant, chords that are the least stable and want to 'resolve' or move to a stable chord, this is the state of most tension. 

Music is propelled forward through the use of tension and release, this creates a sense of movement or motion. Tonic chords move to Sub Dominant chords which in turn move to Dominant chords, then back to Tonic (at rest, some tension, most tension, at rest) 

Most common 'three chord' music makes use of the '1' chord, or C Maj7 in this example, the '4' chord or F Maj7 and the '5' chord, G7. You can use the 1, 4, and 5 in any key to the same effect. This is an example of 1-4-5-1 or at rest-some tension-most tension-at rest. However, hearing those same three chords used over and over again is tedious, hence the negative connotation of a '3 chord song'. 

This is where 'Functional Substitution' come in. In the music example above, there are 3 chords with a 'function' of Tonic, C Maj7, E min7 and A min7. There are 2 with Sub Dominant Function, D min7 and F Maj7, and 2 with Dominant Function, G7 and B min7(b5). Chords with the same function are interchangeable, which is how you get variety in music without changing the T-SD-D drive that pushes music forward.

So if you have this progression:  C Maj7 - F Maj7 - G7 - C Maj7 - you have the following functions: Tonic - Sub Dominant - Dominant - Tonic.  

To add some variety or flavor to those changes, you can use the following (just one example of many possibilities) :  A min 7 - D min 7 - B min 7(b5) - E min 7. Same functions as before (Tonic - Sub Dominant - Dominant - Tonic) but now with different harmony. 

 

Tuesday:

Film Music History:

I'm really starting to like this class! This week we watched The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) staring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, music by Erich Korngold. I was never in to movies made before 1970, they were just not on my radar. This film is amazing! Other than the fact that it 'looks' like it was made in the 30's, I would have never known. The score is as good as anything John Williams has produced. Korngold is considered one of the 3 'Grandfathers of Film Scoring' the others being Max Steiner and Alfred Newman. 

Now I get to watch Citizen Kane staring Orson Welles with music composed by Bernard Herrmann, who, if you follow my Patreon Musicast you will remember, also wrote the music for Hitchcock's North by Northwest. Citizen Kane was Herrmann's first film score. 

It's easy now for me to see the influence Korngold, Steiner, Newman and Herrmann have on recent film composers, they really set the foundations for what a dramatic film score should sound like!