Notes from Film Scoring Class
by David Cieri
STRAVINSKY – THE GAME OF NOTES - Flight patterns – Listening into images. What do they sound like –instead of superimposing flowers on the tree, how can we create conditions which encourage the tree to flower naturally - what does the scene already possess that we can etch/encourage/heighten/augment with the music. Film music is music with a hole in the center. The power of the thing – Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Lost Weekend. Also, Auber and the Belgium revolution and Battleship Potemkin/Meisel’s score greatly worried the Soviet Realists – his music might insight revolution.
Scaffolding -
WORDS
1 – Music has intrinsic meaning of its own – forms of poetic transformations all its own from the 1st note – 3 distinctions between musical metaphors. What it expresses and How it does so. Totally metaphorical language. Metaphor – beyond (to carry) Aristotle – metaphor between the unintelligible and the common place. Quotillion – metaphor provides a name for everything. Communicating the unknowable – META LANGUAGE.
a) Intrinsic musical metaphors derived from transformations from musical material from one state to another (Brahms 4th – this is that statements and “Juliet is the Sun”)
b) Extrinsic – musical meanings are related to non musical meanings – (Beethoven’s’ Pastoral Symphony – associations MEANT to be made in the mind –merry peasants, brooks and birds – eg. These notes ARE those birds) close to program music as Beethoven gets.
c) Metaphor in an analogical way – strictly verbal transformations
MUSICAL MEANING DOES EXIST – RATIONAL OR AFFECTUAL OR BOTH
Difference between meaning (reporting back objectively) and expression (something we feel…passion glory, mystery – unscientific – subjective).
Universal Grammar gives way to deep structures gives way to language gives way to poetry. Given information transformed thru many techniques – this is the meaning of music.
William James – how we react to music IS JUST A TICK OF OUR NERVES.
Robert Pinsky. Finding the right sounds for words. Onamonapia. Phrases and emphasis – “He’d kill us if he had the chance” and Bernstein’s Unanswered question Lecture - explication of the rhythmic set up of Mozart 40th. How punctuation changes the sonority of words and phrases. Ictus. Vowels. Consonants. Verbs. Adjectives and Adverbs. Volume. Space. The elements. How can we –
Anthesis – (Psalm) – Mozart C- piano sonata – basic structural principle (repetition and opposition and then to variation or as linguists say TRANSFORMANTION) KING LEARS’ last words - Never Never Never Never Never
Ask questions with pure sound?
Alliteration – Shelly’s “Wild West Wind” – Beethovens 8th – Shostakovich 5th- William Tell – now groups of notes repeating called – Anaphora – tennyson’s “Wring Out…”Beatitudes - Mahler’s 5th
Chiasmus – reversing the order of the statement in the middle – ABBA –ask not what your country can do … Schubert in his piano sonata. Rhapsody Espanzia.
Make declarative statements
Insert a comma
Semi colon
Run on sentence
Palindrome
Convincing in a few words – uncertain – loose ends – assuredness from confidence/fear_how can we make judgements with pure sound_condemn_villify_exonerate_how do they sound similar and yet very different?
COLOR
Mood. Rhythm. Intensity. Viscosity. Viscosity breakdown. Fluent.. Overbearing and Inviting. Visual clash and dissonance. Playing one note – how many different colors can you get? Apocalypse Now – Murch and the Ride of the Valkryies/Blue of the Water. Ellington’s record of colors. And his mixed voicing approach on Mood Indigo.
The meaning and power of good Orchestration.
The Overtone series – how wavelength in light – rainbows – is similar in music – how to hear like a mantis shrimp sees. – what are our associations with each of the different colors? How do we express them musically?
LIGHT
Transparency. Opacity. Oliver Sacks – seeing voices. High resolution or pixilated. The world through a white curtain. STORM EXERCISE, MONET_ROUEN CATHEDRAL
TOPOLOGY
Smooth, reflective, stucco, oceanic, desert, 59th street, volcanic ash. Lava Icebergs. Stalactites and mites. Getting your voice to sound like a falling ribbon, a mineral, smoke, weightless, a pin, a tractor tire, a field.
STILL IMAGES
Walking outside and taking snaps with the phone – articulate shapes and shapeless shapes. Mood. Texture. Thinking in terms of time and history (denotation) and thinking in terms of atmosphere and texture (contour)
Describe water – how specific can you get? Postman’s poetry list. Newspaper clippings and still image Advertisements/portraits/journalism pictures as sheet music. Two Images of the same person – Le Pen. Landscapes. Walker Evans ad Many are Called.
PAINTINGS
Mondrian, Diebenkorn Bacon. Pollock. Rauschenberg. Calder. Richard Serra/Kristof and Joseph Cornell. How does bigness effect content? Engels – quantity effects quality. ABBAS KIAROSTAMI.
ARCHITECTURE
Johnson’s safe danger concept. What is it like to be in a cathedral? How does the space feel? (after all we are essentially creating little spaces to be in or even live) Airplane? Coat closet? Versailles? Diner? Shopping Mall?
Also – temperature – how does this effect the space? Hot/smaller – Cold/Larger How do we translate hot and cold in music? (Ice chips of the high notes on the piano and warmth of the French Horn – why do we make these almost universal associations?) Sagrada Famillia and Goudi. Symmetry and balance. How much does the music weigh? Frank Lloyd Wright_Antonio Gaudi_Bernard Tschumi_Architecture and sound. FLW and “Beethoven as an edifice of sound” Bauhaus Book!
… from the other angle now …
SOUND
MOTION
SCALE
DENSITY
VISCOSITY
TEXTURE
The Devil and Daniel Webster_There will Be Blood_music as fabric, atmosphere and texture – Pauline Oliveros, Brian Eno, Zorn and Ken Jacobs. Extended techniques. King Kong’s cry made by the sul circular motion of the bow on an upright bass. Keys in Titus. Corn starch used for walking on snow (better than walking on snow!). Plastic as rainstorm. Own private weather – the very small implicating the very large system – with trash!
The Conversation/Apocalypse Now – David Shire – Opening – music and sound as metaphor – the emphasis on the spoken word invokes the word painting of As Vestos was descending and R Schumann’s Wonderful Month of May.
Simple Machines - the beginning of an assembly of parts
LITTLE MOVING MOMENTS
Video of carrier birds in Brooklyn. Lighthouse light. Flower Blooming. Muyerbridge/Stanford_Monkey Shines_Early Actualities_Lumiere, Edison, Alice Guy. A face changing expression. A moving sky. Take 1 minute videos. How when we draw undivided attention to things, they suddenly can feel unique and important.
Intermission thought – turning Plato’s cave upside down – we are intrigued not by a clear truthful look at things in their natural light – we are after the shade on the cave wall – leaving our imagination to fill in the rest. Our music cant point to literally – it has to insinuate and let the listener/viewer co author.(story about the building either looking like its being built or being taken apart and the magic of the in between – the 2 lights of twilight.
FILMS_SOUND_MUSIC_PRINCIPLES
The Kid – Chaplin – Wall to wall sound – Melody is everything. Mozart, pleasing variety and natural simplicity, melody drives. The balance of the gardens at Versailles. Period Piece – Barry Lyndon – Re appropriation of the Baroque_ Wendy Carlos and A Clockwork Orange.
Birth of a Nation_Jaws_Star Wars, Gone with the Wind – Wagner/JC Breil - Leitmotif
Stranger than Paradise – John Lurie - Marinating the score with Hungarian folk/Bartok’s approach without getting at it directly. Being a non-sectarian composer. Goddard – It doesn’t not matter where you take things from but where you take them to. Assimilation.
Ghost Dog – RZA - carrier pigeons video from Williamsburg – collage/cut up/Zorn’s jump cut.
Bicycle Thieves – Alessandro Cicognini – One Overarching Theme throughout. Static – stuck – never moving out from under the melody. Also, Raging Bull – opening scene. High Noon. McCabe and Mrs Miller. MUSIC AND FILM CLASS ON INTROs TO FILMS.
Koyaanisqatsi – Phillip Glass – Repetition - Repetition Invoking Terry Reilly – Persian Surgery Dervishes 1971. Reich and Music for 18 Musicians – boogey woogey and the train. The Blues. Ostinato. Travel . Boiling and containing – Louise Bourgeois and then tension in spiral staircases.
The Devil and Daniel Webster_There will Be Blood_music as fabric, atmosphere and texture – Pauline Oliveros, Brian Eno, Zorn and Ken Jacobs. Extended techniques. King Kong’s cry made by the sul circular motion of the bow on an upright bass. Keys in Titus. Corn starch used for walking on snow (better than walking on snow!). Plastic as rainstorm. Own private weather – the very small implicating the very large system – with trash!
The Conversation/Apocalypse Now – David Shire – Opening – music and sound as metaphor – the emphasis on the spoken word invokes the word painting of As Vestos was descending and R Schumann’s Wonderful Month of May.
The Exorcist – Tubular Bells and Lalo Schifrin’s music thrown out by William Freidkin for being too atonal. Krystof Penderecki and threnody. Schoenberg and the second Viennese school.
Streetcar Named Desire, Elevator to the Gallows, Birdman – Jazz scores, improvisation.
Goodfellas, Miller’s crossing, Raising Arizona, William Bill Lava and Carl Stalling_The Simpsons. (The music insures no one will get hurt, allowing us to be fee and enjoy the danger)_counterpointing the action by playing the opposite mood_mickey mousing_stingers_ Is it true that mimicking the mood of the scene with music is redundant? EXAMINING Ford’s The Informer.
M_Once upon a Time in the West (opening)_ Greig and Ennio Morricone_effective use of diegetic music
Godfather_soundeffects, High Noon. Opening Theme to Breaking Bad. Mammoulion’s sound effect opening. How to fold “noise” into “music” androgynous sounds.
Harakiri_Effectives (ma) spaces in the score – Kirosawa._Japanese prints_Eisenstein’s (visual) armies on the ice in Alexander Nevsky
Apu Trilogy_The Third Man_Cairo station_American Graffiti_The Wrestler_Around the World in 80 days – don’t even need the visual_Culturally specific scores
Psycho_Taxi Driver_Caligari_Bernard Herrmann_Horror_Film Noir_non linear article
Triumph of the Will (Reifenstahl) and the Derek Jeter Gatorade commercial_The music of nostalgia_Mahler and Death in Venice.
Alexander Nevsky and Romeo and Juliet_Prokofiev_perhaps read selections of Romeo and Juliet and score them_comparing them to Tchaikovsky’s and Prokofiev’s scores. Hamlet/Shostokovich.
North by Northwest – Music after the action.
The Unanswered Question – universal musical grammar – teasing and the overtone series – a certain engrained musical vocabulary that comes with being human. Also, Why are higher pitches heaven and Lower pitches of the earth and associated with Hell? Peggy Guggenheim’s boy and horse at the entrance to her Venice museum.
Playing Charades with music
Making our own Film Sound Diagrams as inspired by Eisenstein.
Classes
1) Filling out Artists Intentions followed by a discussion_Introduction of the SOUND ATLAS - Still images as sheet music - _Monet’s Rouen Cathedral and how light changes sound – Apocalypse now, Valkyrie and W Murch’s quest for the right string section _taking class outside to shoot images which are with and without recognition.
2) Lenny B and THE UNANSWERED QUESTION and a universal sound grammar – DEEP STRUCTURES - the overtone series and its implications_ R Strauss and THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA – 2001
3) OSTINATO_CHACONNE_PASACAGALIA_ BABY CRYING_LAMENTO BASS_VIVALDI Violin Concerto_RAY CHARLES Hit the road Jack_THE CHANTELS_SIMPLE TWIST OF FATE – Bicycle Thieves_stuck in a recurring cycle_the debilitating nature of poverty. Koyannisquatsi .
4) Horror_non linear expressions_psycho_Penderecki (The Sargasso Manuscript) and The Exorcist_Pinker and The Meaning of Life
5) Enter Dialogue_writing with dialogue_documentary. Bach and Art of Fugue or A Musical Offering/counterpoint
6) Culturally specific music_ Apu Trilogy_The Third Man_Cairo station_American Graffiti_The Wrestler_Around the World in 80 days – don’t even need the visual_Culturally specific scores_also, combining an influence_Bartok/Lurie and Stranger than Paradise
7) The Weight of Music_Nature Documentary_Planet Earth_Saint Saens Carnival of Animals. Why are birds light and Lions Heavy? What would be good instrumentation? LEITMOTIF EXERCISES
8) Sound effects_Making sound metaphors_apocalypse Now_The Conversation_The Godfather_a dripping faucet_the keychain in Titus and corn starch/snow. Blending Diagetic and “music”_39 Steps_The Shinning and the tricycle_The Devil and Daniel Webster_High Noon and the secondhand on the clock. Into another Life from Vietnam and the Gil Hodges memorial bridge. The implications around a Train.
