My first two films were Indulgence (Leo Maselli) and The Third Harmony (Michael Nagler).

For those of you not familiar with how a composer creates music for a film, I thought I’d go thru how Kip and I collaborated to put music to this story.

Scoring the Film — How we Started

Kip and I had a chat about music for her film months before anything was shot. Late in 2020, the shots were all “in the can“ (with COVID protocols on the set) and Kip gave me an early rough cut of the then 24-minute film. The editor, Charles Anderson, had done an excellent job cutting and assembling the scenes, and honestly there was very little that changed in terms of scene lengths between then and the final version. At this early stage the final colors weren’t set — the film looked somewhat grayish — and the dialog was basically unedited, requiring selection from among multiple microphones, and sometimes a bit of sonic cleaning up. But the sequence of shots was close to final in this case, and the story line was clear. (Not every filmmaker works this way.)

At any given time I have dozens of songs or musical ideas just waiting to be used in films. So I pointed Kip at my online music bin and said “Listen to everything — at least the first 20 seconds of each — and then let me know what pieces of music you feel might work in the film. Based on her suggestions, I then refined (and added) what I thought might work, but mostly we worked from her selections.

Interestingly, a large percentage of what she liked had already been used in films. This is actually no problem, because it helps me understand what she was reacting to.

I then took a set of about eight of these and positioned them within the rough-cut film, so we could review the film with dialog and with my suggested music.

Making the Music Fit the Film

My digital audio workstation [DAW] is the Logic Pro X app (from Apple), which allows me to view the film second by second, and directly position the music against each cue in the film.

In the screen shot above, the film runs left to right on the timeline, and below it are the various pieces of music looking like a colorful waterfall. Each is positioned where it’s going to go time wise in the film. The goldenrod colored bars are the sound effects and the dialog of the film, which run its entire length.

Wherever music needed to be stretched, I just wrote more music — basically I had all of the instruments available to me there in real time and I just write and tailored the music to each scene. A couple of pieces of music I adapted to be shorter. As composer, of course, I have complete flexibility to do anything I want to the music, and I do not have to worry about whether Beethoven or Mozart would complain. I just make whatever changes I wish to make.

The 25-minute film ended up having 10 music cues by the time we finished. Very little silence, and honestly almost wall-to-wall music. In some films I add “designed sound” to scenes, but in this one we remained melodic and instrumental instead.

The “Alexa” Segments

Most of the music in the film is “movie music” — the kind you’re used to from many films. But, also for this film we needed three very short (10-second) pieces of diegetic music. Diegetic means it’s part of the action in the scene. In this case our heroine asks Alexa to play some music. We needed 80’s pop, classical, and jazz. Rather than license from someone, I wrote the jazz, asked another SFCM composer (David Tippie) to write an 80’s pop soundalike, and paraphrased Erik Satie for the classical (out of copyright) segments.

So What’s New?

This is the first time any of this music has appeared in any film or album.

Only one piece of music was written specifically for this film. Everything else was waiting for the right time and the right film. All of them were written in the last 3 years.

Once the entire arc of the music for the film was completed, and after a small number of revision rounds, we were set to go. For this film, I provided the sound mixer with three “stems.” These are audio files that run the entire length of the film; in parallel; and the volume of each can be adjusted based on what’s needed at any instant. In this case, I provided a finished “mix” with all of the instruments at the volumes I felt were best at every second in the film; but I also provided a full-length file consisting of the music without any drums; and finally a full-length file with only the drums. It’s the job of the film’s sound mixer to use these along with dialog and sound effects to make the finished audio for the film. I get to listen to it and comment, but I don’t play a direct role in its construction once I’ve turned over the stems.

The Trailer

The one original “song” was the most emotive and wrought-up of the group, and it fit the mood of the trailer perfectly. (Charles Anderson, the film’s editor, did a terrific job piecing together that trailer) The music was actually significantly longer than the trailer, so much as I did for the film, I placed the trailer visual in my DAW and then stripped and recomposed to get the effect I wanted for the trailer. I could literally work down to the precise frame in the video. The drummer in the trailer actually is a different drummer than was used in the film…for emphasis…I love those huge taiko drums and so that’s what I wanted at the end of the trailer. In the film itself there’s some quasi-taiko drumming, but not quite that much.

The Album

After the film was fully locked and music was mixed, I took the music itself, which spanned the 25 minutes of the film, and created a new project in my DAW just for the audio. The film had scenes with no music, so I expanded the music to be end-to-end 25 minutes, by adding and extending some of the selections. I also created a broader sonic spectrum and changed some of the instruments. Music sounds different when standing on its own (that is, when “supporting” action and dialog). This somewhat richer version of the soundtrack then becomes the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album. This goes into the queue at CDBaby for distribution to all of the streaming services. Once it’s distributed, it can be played or downloaded online. SkyHi Digital has a page with links to the album on the various streams.

The interaction with the film’s producer, and the film and sound editors, was very good. Feedback usually makes huge improvements. It’s good to have many ears listening to the music when it’s being refined. Collaboration works wonders.

The post I’m Fine appeared first on Sky's Blog.

The team completed the shooting of Indulgence early in 2019 (after postponement due to too much smoke in the air late in 2018). This week I saw the first rough cut of the film. I already wrote most of the music for Indulgence, and the next task is to cut-to-fit and add incidental music for this segment.

As part of the promotion and documentation of how we made the film, Erik Parker interviewed me about the creation of the music for Indulgence. Without comment, here’s that interview that he and cameraman Jason Fassler captured.

A Sonic Indulgence from Erik C. Parker on Vimeo.

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“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” — Chuck Close

I refer to (music) composition as “design and engineering” which reflects my experience that ideas are the easy part, but the hard part is then designing and building the product. I say “product” here quite intentionally. As an engineer, I spent many years building software products. In software, the idea may be subtle and tricky, but it’s still the easy part compared to the design and then the hard work of building — which is where the real time is spent.

And to a great extent, if you’ve studied and trained and understand how to use the tools available to you, and if you just show up and start working on your product, you usually (already) have what you need to accomplish your goal.

So for years I did this in software. And then in 2015 I started doing it in music.

Yeah, yeah, sometimes I get inspired and I write and write furiously late into the night. The endorphins tell me it was a great work. And frequently I then put aside my product, take a rest, then pick it up later on and yeegads(!) it sounds terrible to me. (Inspiration can be delusional.) And then there’s just lots more work to do. But that work is required to achieve the payoff. And if I do the work, the piece becomes so much better!

In my days in software I’d have people pitch me software ideas many times a year. My reaction was frequently, “Well, that’s a nice idea, but have you written the program?” I guess I was a bit brash, but many times I’d continue “Your idea is nice, but it probably represents less than 10% of a product, which requires hundreds if not thousands of hours of engineering.”

Another thing I’m fond of saying is “When you have a novel idea, you can bet that 8,000 people got up this morning and had that same idea; then 80 of them did something about it, like pulling together a team; then 8 of them will bring your product to market within the same two weeks.” That’s kind of hard for an inspired ideas person to hear, but it represents the harsh truth of the world of commercial software. Ideas come from lots of experience, and from creative responses, but they’re seldom completely unique.

Chuck Close is quoted in Inside the Painter’s Studio, a book by Joe Fig. A review of this book goes on to say “Inside an art gallery, it is easy to forget that the paintings there are the end products of a process involving not only creative inspiration, but also plenty of physical and logistical details.”

Those of us who do this kind of design and engineering, understand and appreciate the fundamental truth of this statement.

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The next step after that is to hear someone humming your melody while walking down the street.

And extending that, the ultimate compliment  might be when it becomes someone’s ringtone?

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I’m hearing some improvement. Particularly learning where the notes are on the fingerboard. And learning to press all those fingers down and keep them down. Learning legato playing. Able to get the bow positioned better, but not perfect yet.

The most important thing from my third lesson was learning that I really have to press that bow against the strings as if I meant it. This gives a much better tone. (I keep forgetting.) Much better tone. And you’ll see those little silver strips across the fingerboard up near my hand — they’re there to remind me exactly where to put the fingers down to get the right pitches. (And there’s a little felt piece on the back of the cello neck where my thumb has to go.) It’s easy to forget, but when I do remember, I can actually sometimes his the right note the first time.

Ummm, did I say that the reason I’m learning cello is to understand what the string players have to do in order to play my compositions? Gaining empathy for sure.

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One is this idea that I have to change hand position to a new string to play more notes. I’m used to being able to slide my hands left or right on the keyboard with the notes just kind of laid out one after another. The idea that they might be side-by-side — more like “overlapping” — is challenging. Not phased too much by having to do different things with left hand and right hand — that’s something we also learn in piano 101. Though I’ve never played a guitar, I can imagine that it would be way easier to “hit the right note” if there were frets on the fingerboard. The cello is truly a challenge in terms of intonation. There’s nothing telling me in advance I’m going to put my fingers in exactly the right spot to hit that desired note. I hear it “after” I make my selection of position. Yikes!

I made a short recording improvising on the cello, in Logic Pro (think GarageBand) and then threw it away. I’ll document that kind of thing later on. It was truly terrible.

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“Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.” – Aldous Huxley

Another year will soon start. Lucky to have made it through this one. Huxley’s thought (above) is certainly what I feel tonight. This past week I’ve gone through a fascinating medical procedure (where the sedative didn’t do as I had expected…and so I had some experiences I had not forecast), and I’ve written more music (extended both Beings of Light and Darkness and my Dakini Dances). I want to focus on more music every day. So for the last day of this year I’m going to commit to focusing on writing new music that whole day. And on into whatever my future is.

And in addition to that, I intend to keep my eyes open and work with those who would support the preservation of our freedoms and rights. I have a new appreciation of the US Constitution and its protections—and the underlying fact that power is given to government by the people—power is vested in the people, not the government. And also how fragile this relationship can be.

So we have our road rising up ahead of us. We can kind of see it through the haze. We have glimpses of what’s coming. But we have to take each turn in the road as it arises. Let’s go!

° ° ° ° °

(If you’ve already listened to the playlists below, the new music is at the end of each playlist. You can mouseover each list, scroll downward, and click to play the more recent additions. The last movement of Beings is new. The last two Dakini Dances segments are new.)

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/234883930″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/132507989″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

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Light, as you know, is energy. Photons flying through space. Our sun, like most stars, emits photons, which rush outward from its surface, and many of them strike the Earth, where they warm our clouds, oceans and surface. But without humans, those photons are just energy transfer mechanisms. They have no inherent meaning.

Humans often attribute meaning to light. Daytime is light and pleasant. Warm, sunny days are wonderful. Cloudy dark winter days can even lead to seasonal affective disorder [SAD]. Colors affect how we feel. We also use light to transmit information—fiber-optic cables for instance. are high-capacity channels transmitting information from one continent to another under the oceans. You’re reading this article because light-emitting-diodes are lighting up your screen, and photons are hitting your eyes, which you then interpret as words and images. There’s meaning there, and it’s all in your head.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/234883930″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

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• Became well-acquainted with fellow-travelers in the PSD program. They are all good composers, and going on this journey with them was an honor for me, as I came in the least prepared of them all.
• “Held my own” in terms of being able to write tolerable music for the assignments. Well maybe with the exception of one or two pieces where I started out pretty well and went downhill.
• Learned that I have a lot more to learn about “music theory” — which isn’t really a theory at all.
• Learned a boatload about using instruments I had never written for, even in my dreams. Strings, brass, and even a little about percussion.
• Learned I can’t hear high frequencies well enough to be a mixerman. (The Mixerman story is a blast—read it.)

The post Last day at ye ole’ SFCM PSD appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Strings » [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/179144010″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=true&show_comments=true&show_user=false&show_reposts=false&show_artwork=true&&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”400″ iframe=”true” /]

Classical Guitar (duets) » [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/178606586″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=true&show_comments=true&show_user= false&show_reposts=false&show_artwork=true&&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”400″ iframe=”true” /]

Dakini Dances » [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/132507989″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=true&show_comments=true&show_user= false&show_reposts=false&show_artwork=true&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”400″ iframe=”true” /]

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I just completed a one-semester course in Max/MSP and our final project challenged us to build a Max/MSP program (called a patcher) that implements an interesting musical performance.

The “music” in the performance is composed from a set of audio recordings — you might even call them samples — and because any kind of audio sample could be dropped in, there are billions of ways this music might be made and might sound. Because it can all be controlled from the stage in real time, we could also put together a performance using not only the Max/MSP components but live performers.

Video clips for you to play:

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Today, the people I’m meeting are putting their music on SoundCloud. It’s easy to upload, and the player is sweet. Nice visuals. Each to click to play. When you’re at the soundcloud site, the player minimizes down to the bottom of the window and keeps playing while you look for other things to explore. I started putting things on SoundCloud this week. A player can also be embedded in your own web site, and there are lots of shapes, visuals and functionality.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/124222697″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” iframe=”true” /]

As you see from the panel above, you can embed the player in your own web site. You don’t have to send listeners to SoundCloud, though you can do that too.

You can also make your uploads private. Well that’s kind of stupid—that you’d put up music and don’t want anyone to hear it, huh? But for sharing a work-in-progress, it’s perfect. I can put up the file and share it with my teacher, or musicians who are going to play it, and nobody else needs to hear it until it’s ready.

SoundCloud uses a freemium model, where the first 180 minutes you upload are free, then you start paying if you need more.

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In January (2015) I began a zero-to-sixty transition from full-time computer scientist to composer. The next stage in the process begins in September (2015), where I have been accepted as a student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in their Technology and Applied Composition program. Their Professional Studies Diploma [PSD] is a non-degree, full-time “post-graduate program” that runs one academic year. (I guess I don’t really need more degrees — just want to learn how to do more stuff.)

You can find my recent in-progress work online and I will update this frequently. You can work “upward” from that link to find other works from the recent past. I am currently writing a three-part suite with the working name “Flight” and there is one excerpt online. A second three-part suite, which is yet untitled, is represented as well.  All are works-in-progress.

During this time I will continue to support cyberspark.net efforts in human rights and free speech, and a limited number of Red7 clients.

A pivotal event during the transition was the New Music Gathering which was hosted at SFCM in January 2015. I wrote a short article about the gathering in January.

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I’ll be posting links to performance recordings as they become available. (I try to write articles only about upcoming events, but in this case I didn’t know what to expect and it was so great that I have to just post this article to anchor the upcoming info.) Surprise guest Friday night in the audience was Terry Riley.

Also upcoming on March 6-8 in San Francisco is the 20th OtherMinds festival of new music. This year, for its twentieth, a review including many composers-performers from the first 20 years, so I guess it’s a look at the old new, which is still new.

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