Carmina Burana- Part 2

I'm not going to talk about the rest of the piece quite yet, but I just found a Carmina Burana film on Youtube from the 70s. It's pretty interesting... to say the least. Not every word is pronounced correctly and that's a little distracting, but the music is well done. It's still pretty good overall, almost comedic with the addition of actors "performing" the songs. Check it out.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

Film Scoring Project/Orchestra Reading

The orchestra score is done! That is, if I don't have to go back and make changes. The people at the Staples Copy Center probably hate me already for asking for an 11x17, two sided, bound edition of my score. The binding part gets them especially upset, because apparently, one can't fully bind an 11x17 score at the Staples Copy Center. I really appreciate the place and have spent many an hour killing trees and making tons of copies of show fliers that everybody ever has used as birdcage lining, but they need to step up their game with this binding thing, or else I'm taking my $2.71 and going to Kinko's from now on.

The life of a composer...

Today, I started scoring that student film I mentioned a few entries back. Just a couple of cues at the moment, but I came up with a pretty cool motive to use throughout the film. Composing for film is a completely different process than just composing... your music is second to the film, only there to enhance the experience of watching the movie. So that changes the composition process. But I like the challenge of composing within boundaries.

Bring on the boundaries! Student film makers, read this: I. Would. Love. To. Score. Your. Film.

Film Scoring

Hmm... I've had this blog for about two weeks now, yet I haven't really spoken too much about my interest in film scoring. So here goes.

Many semesters ago (I think Spring 2007... feels like a long time ago), I took a class entitled "Music In Film", taught by this man. It was there that I really developed an interest in what I feel really brings a movie, TV show episode, or video game to life: the background music. Every week during the 2 1/2 hour class, we watched a classic film and paid close attention to the score and how it enhanced the experience of watching the movies. Here's a partial list of the films we watched:

Frankenstein
The Sea Hawk
A Streetcar Named Desire
On The Waterfront
To Kill A Mockingbird
Psycho

All of these films have excellent scores. The ones that, to this day, strike me the most are the scores from On The Waterfront and Psycho. Watch these movies and pay attention to how perfectly the music enhances the film. Meanwhile, next time I watch a movie with an excellent score, I will write about it.

Speaking of film scoring, I have undertaken a film scoring project for a student film. I should start work on it this week. More on that to come.

TV Music- South Park

With the South Park season premiere airing tomorrow, I thought it was a good idea to talk about the background music in the show. Jamie Dunlap does the background music for the show, and while he is probably not a well-known composer, he has had a ton of experience in the scoring world. Check out his extensive resume, and listen to his library of musical samples. Also, keeping relevant to South Park, check out the scene from the Season 9 episode entitled Ginger Kids that he also has on his website. The music is intense and captures the "horror" genre perfectly, and keeping with the quick production time of the show, it is quite possible that the orchestral music for that sequence was composed in just a few days, two or three tops.

While many of the episodes reuse and revamp musical cues (this is not an uncommon practice, hence many film composers having a library of musical samples), there are many other episodes with excellent original scores, most notably the Season 11 finale entitled The List.

The feature-length musical film also has amazing music, however, Dunlap was not doing the background music for the show during the time it was produced.