Intrada Soundtrack Forum

12/8/09

I was getting ready to let people know that BLACK STALLION RETURNS was disappearing and Jeff beats me to the punch, so to speak. It's gone already.

So I thank you for supporting it. Even with such a crowded CD marketplace and other holiday expenditures upon us, you went for this one from the get-go. I've always thought of this score as one of Delerue's all-time most evocative. Sweeping themes, robust action music, colorful desert music, whatever. What's not to like? The original LP served up a nice sampler, our CD provides the full meal.

Just in case you're curious. Richard Band's THE CALLER is still available. I understand about 250 copies are still piled up back in the warehouse. Anyway, like many of you, many of us were unfamiliar with the movie. But it's sure got first-rate music just the same! Richard Band is one of those few composers generally steeped in B-pictures (modest-budget sci-fi thrillers, horror pictures from Empire, Full Moon, so forth) who always delivers A-class music. THE CALLER is a nice stretch.

12/18/09

They're back!! I refer, of course, to BACK TO THE FUTURE. It's back in stock, albeit just now arriving after hours. (Freight companies love the business no matter when but the poor guys actually unloading the boxes this late on a Friday night can't be having much fun.) Anyway, Jeff and his hamsters will start shipping back-orders out on Monday. Thank you for your patience while we re-stocked. Then again, there's certainly been no shortage of new music to keep you occupied in the meantime!

12/23/09
Why I think AVATAR is the best score of the year. Quite simply, it keeps alive the "art" of film scoring. Don't worry. No spoilers here. So read on, unless you have no taste for James Horner, in which case you may want to tune out somewhere about now.

Movie music has dropped down from its once lofty position as part of the storytelling. It now hovers somewhere between sound effects and sound design, and seldom carries more weight than that. Its important to the overall feel of a movie, to be sure. Ditto rhythm and pace. But it doesn't do much more than that. Film makers don't want it to.

There actually was a time when composers were brought in because of their individual styles. You didn't ask Rozsa to copy Herrmann. You didn't hire Dimitri Tiomkin to imitate Hugo Friedhofer. What's more, all these well-trained musicians were asked to bring something really important to the table: emotion.

Jerry Goldsmith was asked to help tell a story about a blind girl and her attachments to an outside world she could never see. He sifted through his bag of tricks, came up with a sensitive combination of instruments including strings, woodwinds and harmonica, and created A PATCH OF BLUE. Elmer Bernstein was asked to bring life to THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. He designed rhythms that drove the action, and melodies that literally filled the screen. Alfred Hitchcock let Bernard Herrmann carry the day with his shower scene in PSYCHO. And so on and so forth.

Now, its just part of Hollywood history. Rare is it that a composer isn't asked to simply imitate the sound of another composer's recent success. Keep themes to a minimum, don't comment on the action, don't be emotional and never - absolutely never - assume the role of storyteller. Just keep the music going at all times. If a tune emerges, just mix it out and let the drum parts go it alone. Audiences get the same score no matter who writes it. Audiences get the same score no matter what the genre.

Then we have AVATAR.

James Horner hasn't written the finest work of all time. But he's written great music. Emotional music. Complex music with multiple layers of color. It's dense, it's textured. It's melodic, it's exciting. It reminds me that scoring films was once an art form.

Horner is one of the very very few composers today that can write for the orchestra. I mean, actually write for it. You could ask him to compose a trio in sonata form for violin, viola and French horn. He wouldn't need to research just what the comfortable register of the horn is, nor would he need to study the sonata form. And he can write out the viola part in the alto clef without a computer program.

Perhaps that's really what's dwindling. Composers who themselves treat music like an art. Composers who study music and analyze it and sort out what works with what doesn't. Composers who really do know how to write music, be it emotional, complex, atmospheric, riveting, you name it.

Bring in a generation of film makers that actually want music to be a part of all this and perhaps the cycle will come back.

How wonderful it was that James Cameron asked his composer to be an integral part of his movie. And how equally wonderful it was that James Horner was up for the challenge.

Two artists at work, giving us AVATAR the movie and AVATAR the music.

12/25/09
Here's hoping everyone is having a safe holiday season. My family celebrates Christmas and all four of us are together here in Los Angeles. Well, Anaheim to be exact. Regina works at Disneyland and was just promoted to ride supervisor so we're helping her celebrate that event, too! Just being together is the best Christmas present of all.

I'll return just before New Year's Day so it's going to be several days of fun, meaning and good will. I hope all of you are finding similar meaning and merit to this week as well.

We've got a fabulous array of new releases coming up for 2010. And given the plethora of great albums coming out from all the other labels, it looks like things are just gonna stay exciting for months to come. I guess Arthur C. Clarke never saw all this in his future.

Happy Holidays to all!