Here's my recent podcast with Coleman Hughes. Topics covered include stagnancy in popular culture, the next new thing in music, and whether musicians have an easier time getting a date on the weekend.
Interestingly, orchestral music for films became "old fashioned", was looked down upon, and was far less often used during the late 1960s and the early 1970s. More contemporary music styles became preferred for movie music (some of which sound terribly dated today). At that time Stanley Kubrick lamented the lack of "grandness" in then current movie scores when he made 2001: A Space Odyssey and insisted, against the studios wishes, upon the classical score used. Alex North even composed a more contemporary score for the film at the urging of the studio executives and Kubrick chose not to use it and go with the classical score we all know instead. Such scores had fallen into such disfavor that a great film composer like Bernard Herrmann found it difficult to find work during those years. When Brian DePalma hired him for Obsession he hadn't had a film job for a very long time and was extraordinarily grateful to get the work. I remember an interview with John Williams back when Star Wars was first being released in which he stated that when George Lucas told him what he wanted for the score of Star Wars, with Lea's theme, Luke's theme, Vader's theme and so forth, he was actually afraid people in the theaters would laugh at the score. Boy was he ever proven wrong! Such sweepingly grand orchestral scores had become so rare they were nearly unheard of by then, and a whole new generation unaccustomed to them no longer thought they were outdated and old fashioned, but ate the Star Wars score up like it was something brand new (and to them it was). After the massive success of Star Wars and its music, such scores were back in fashion big-time and their popularity hasn't waned since. Such a score connotes the massiveness of a truly BIG and massively EPIC production like nothing else can. That is certainly a big part of their appeal for films hoping to come off as truly epic in scope. But, sadly, that doesn't mean it is necessarily what people want to listen to very often at home, in their car, at work, shopping, or waiting for coffee at their local Starbucks. It would be great if it was, though.
I'd like to make a movie and the only music that would be used was when there was live music being played, or a radio or some recorded performance was being played, or in a store where there is always background music. I don't like being emotionally manipulated by a movie soundtrack. Eerie music, here comes the scary scene, big orchestral sounds, here comes the bombs, etc. Can a movie make it on it's own merits or does it always need to have a music track to help it along and set up the viewer for the next scene?
The music in Movies / TV, the manipulation is so overdone & Cliched. (For most things).
"Nowadays music is a lifestyle choice. The music is supposed to represent who you are as an individual." Couldn't care less. In my opinion (only) most Folks nowadays live a very Lemming Like existence. So for many of them, it may be true. They are mostly all Joiners, believers, etc. So they seem to listen to what they are told to.
Personally I have never thought Politics or Lifestyle when I listen to something. I think that is ridiculous. I listen to Music because - whatever it is - because I like it. It may be new, original, astounding. It has nothing to do with how I live. Or whether it is "Approved" & Popular.
And sorry - when I am abducted, or walk up to an alien or Grayman ... personally I would never suggest Bach (or anything like it) as wonderful as it may be.
Amen and amen. My life does not need "background" music. I can eat in silence or while engaging in conversation. I can wash my hands without Vivaldi or electronic pulses in the background, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
I read a Musician's forum regularly. There is a Thread in it most days: What are you listening to ... Right now ! My comment: Nothing. I didn't get any likes.
The thing that gets me is sometimes a tune moves in and plays for awhile, maybe 30 choruses or so, and I wonder what triggered it and eventually I notice the lyric has a phrase that I heard offhand in some real-life context maybe 4 hours earlier, and there it is, front and center in my mind, like a little cosmic joke. Sometimes the jokes are in languages other than English, and it takes a little longer for me to get the punchline. Like the time I had 'La Vie En Rose' floating along, the French lyric kinda forcing itself on me, and I suddenly realized it was playing on the fact that hours earlier I'd been watching a stage of the Giro d'Italia, wherein the lead rider wears a pink jersey – la Maglia Rosa...this kind of stuff happens to me all the time.
A few other very well known movies with no score are "Dog Day Afternoon", "Network", and "No Country for Old Men". Also, are a couple of foreign films such as Ingmar Bergman's "Winter Light" and Fritz Lang's serial child killer classic "M", if you are okay with reading subtitles.
That's interesting. I seem to do that a lot. Not only that, seems to me somethings are just not mixed well (in a hurry probably). Many times the Music is in there overpowering the words
Some movies CAN make it on their own. Some films do exclude the use of any background score at all. Examples of films with no musical score include Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", although composer Bernard Hermann was involved with the sound design used instead of a score. Director Sidney Lumet, noted for his later film masterpiece "Network" (also with no score), chose to have no musical score for his earlier nuclear war suspense film "Fail Safe", based on the excellent novel of the same name. And the film version of "Patterns", considered by many to be the finest screenplay of Rod Serling's illustrious career, was also devoid of any musical score. The background sounds of the Ramsey and Company offices sufficed instead of a score. And there are numerous other films devoid of any score as well. What's amazing is that, counter to what you would expect, the absence of a score does not detract from the intense emotional impact of these films, or from the performances of the actors within them. If you haven't seen them, you might like these films that do not use music to manipulate the audience, but depend upon the directing, the script and the performances to move the viewer instead.
Hans Zimmer made a bold break from this formula with the soundtrack for Dune. He actually dared to extrapolate what music would be like in a human based extraterrestrial society 10,000 years in the future.
I hope other composers follow his example. This could force the producers and directors to use more innovative music and inspire audiences to appreciate it.
Love the quote in that blurb:”...the rules of harmony...were not invented by humans” ( but discovered instead). I’m down with that. Keep up the good work, Mr Quote Machine. That one made me a bit more comfortable in this universe.
"rules of harmony... rules of music" - I think it's not so simple. From what I've read of ethnomusicologists, there's disagreement about how much is discovered/universal and how much is culture specific. Acoustics/physics may help determine what intervals sound consonant or dissonant (Pythagoras gets credited/blamed). But, for example, standard "Western Music Harmonic Theory" doesn't work when the scale has a minor 2nd and major 3rd (AKA "Hijaz") like in some Balkan music. And there's those weird scales in Gamelan music...
A thought experiment. Imagine an alien planet with atmosphere like ours, and sentient beings with auditory systems like ours - what would their music be like? I bet they would almost certainly have pentatonic scales, very likely 7 note scales like our major scale. Maybe not something like the Turkish classical system of 9 commas per whole tone and 53 commas per octave. Would they have leading tones? Secondary dominants? Enharmonic modulations?
Fascinating, as always. Bergman made very interesting use of classical music in his films, with a far lower death count overall. I love the Bruckner in his final film, Saraband, and of course The Magic Flute.
The Golden Record that Sagan et al sent out on Voyager is 1 of my most treasured possessions! But also interesting to reflect on how there has to be a lot of deaths in a movie for sweeping classical romantic music to succeed…I might be one of those dying if I had to sit thru Mozart at a concert! Give me Messiaen or give me death!!!
Interestingly, orchestral music for films became "old fashioned", was looked down upon, and was far less often used during the late 1960s and the early 1970s. More contemporary music styles became preferred for movie music (some of which sound terribly dated today). At that time Stanley Kubrick lamented the lack of "grandness" in then current movie scores when he made 2001: A Space Odyssey and insisted, against the studios wishes, upon the classical score used. Alex North even composed a more contemporary score for the film at the urging of the studio executives and Kubrick chose not to use it and go with the classical score we all know instead. Such scores had fallen into such disfavor that a great film composer like Bernard Herrmann found it difficult to find work during those years. When Brian DePalma hired him for Obsession he hadn't had a film job for a very long time and was extraordinarily grateful to get the work. I remember an interview with John Williams back when Star Wars was first being released in which he stated that when George Lucas told him what he wanted for the score of Star Wars, with Lea's theme, Luke's theme, Vader's theme and so forth, he was actually afraid people in the theaters would laugh at the score. Boy was he ever proven wrong! Such sweepingly grand orchestral scores had become so rare they were nearly unheard of by then, and a whole new generation unaccustomed to them no longer thought they were outdated and old fashioned, but ate the Star Wars score up like it was something brand new (and to them it was). After the massive success of Star Wars and its music, such scores were back in fashion big-time and their popularity hasn't waned since. Such a score connotes the massiveness of a truly BIG and massively EPIC production like nothing else can. That is certainly a big part of their appeal for films hoping to come off as truly epic in scope. But, sadly, that doesn't mean it is necessarily what people want to listen to very often at home, in their car, at work, shopping, or waiting for coffee at their local Starbucks. It would be great if it was, though.
I'd like to make a movie and the only music that would be used was when there was live music being played, or a radio or some recorded performance was being played, or in a store where there is always background music. I don't like being emotionally manipulated by a movie soundtrack. Eerie music, here comes the scary scene, big orchestral sounds, here comes the bombs, etc. Can a movie make it on it's own merits or does it always need to have a music track to help it along and set up the viewer for the next scene?
The music in Movies / TV, the manipulation is so overdone & Cliched. (For most things).
"Nowadays music is a lifestyle choice. The music is supposed to represent who you are as an individual." Couldn't care less. In my opinion (only) most Folks nowadays live a very Lemming Like existence. So for many of them, it may be true. They are mostly all Joiners, believers, etc. So they seem to listen to what they are told to.
Personally I have never thought Politics or Lifestyle when I listen to something. I think that is ridiculous. I listen to Music because - whatever it is - because I like it. It may be new, original, astounding. It has nothing to do with how I live. Or whether it is "Approved" & Popular.
And sorry - when I am abducted, or walk up to an alien or Grayman ... personally I would never suggest Bach (or anything like it) as wonderful as it may be.
Amen and amen. My life does not need "background" music. I can eat in silence or while engaging in conversation. I can wash my hands without Vivaldi or electronic pulses in the background, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
I read a Musician's forum regularly. There is a Thread in it most days: What are you listening to ... Right now ! My comment: Nothing. I didn't get any likes.
I've also been listening nothing for for several weeks. It's become the soundtrack to my life; no drama.
Yes
I can't NOT listen to music. It plays constantly in my head. Between that and the tinnitus I get no silences.
I don't have tinnitus but like a friend said, "I have a 100 yr. jukebox in my head."
Huh. Yeah, pretty close...
The thing that gets me is sometimes a tune moves in and plays for awhile, maybe 30 choruses or so, and I wonder what triggered it and eventually I notice the lyric has a phrase that I heard offhand in some real-life context maybe 4 hours earlier, and there it is, front and center in my mind, like a little cosmic joke. Sometimes the jokes are in languages other than English, and it takes a little longer for me to get the punchline. Like the time I had 'La Vie En Rose' floating along, the French lyric kinda forcing itself on me, and I suddenly realized it was playing on the fact that hours earlier I'd been watching a stage of the Giro d'Italia, wherein the lead rider wears a pink jersey – la Maglia Rosa...this kind of stuff happens to me all the time.
A few other very well known movies with no score are "Dog Day Afternoon", "Network", and "No Country for Old Men". Also, are a couple of foreign films such as Ingmar Bergman's "Winter Light" and Fritz Lang's serial child killer classic "M", if you are okay with reading subtitles.
I enjoy subtitles. I can go along without consciously thinking about them
My hearing isn't great these days and I only watch movies with subtitles, I've grown to prefer them.
That's interesting. I seem to do that a lot. Not only that, seems to me somethings are just not mixed well (in a hurry probably). Many times the Music is in there overpowering the words
Yes, especially the low frequencies. Maybe we're better off not hearing the words.
Ha ! Yes indeed. Surely sometimes
Some movies CAN make it on their own. Some films do exclude the use of any background score at all. Examples of films with no musical score include Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", although composer Bernard Hermann was involved with the sound design used instead of a score. Director Sidney Lumet, noted for his later film masterpiece "Network" (also with no score), chose to have no musical score for his earlier nuclear war suspense film "Fail Safe", based on the excellent novel of the same name. And the film version of "Patterns", considered by many to be the finest screenplay of Rod Serling's illustrious career, was also devoid of any musical score. The background sounds of the Ramsey and Company offices sufficed instead of a score. And there are numerous other films devoid of any score as well. What's amazing is that, counter to what you would expect, the absence of a score does not detract from the intense emotional impact of these films, or from the performances of the actors within them. If you haven't seen them, you might like these films that do not use music to manipulate the audience, but depend upon the directing, the script and the performances to move the viewer instead.
Thank you for the list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diegetic_music
A very thorough and convoluted explanation. I'm a diegetic person.
Hans Zimmer made a bold break from this formula with the soundtrack for Dune. He actually dared to extrapolate what music would be like in a human based extraterrestrial society 10,000 years in the future.
I hope other composers follow his example. This could force the producers and directors to use more innovative music and inspire audiences to appreciate it.
I assume it’s a friendly UFO? 😁
Love Bach, but in the realm of symphonic music there's Mozart, Beethoven and everyone else ...
Love the quote in that blurb:”...the rules of harmony...were not invented by humans” ( but discovered instead). I’m down with that. Keep up the good work, Mr Quote Machine. That one made me a bit more comfortable in this universe.
"rules of harmony... rules of music" - I think it's not so simple. From what I've read of ethnomusicologists, there's disagreement about how much is discovered/universal and how much is culture specific. Acoustics/physics may help determine what intervals sound consonant or dissonant (Pythagoras gets credited/blamed). But, for example, standard "Western Music Harmonic Theory" doesn't work when the scale has a minor 2nd and major 3rd (AKA "Hijaz") like in some Balkan music. And there's those weird scales in Gamelan music...
A thought experiment. Imagine an alien planet with atmosphere like ours, and sentient beings with auditory systems like ours - what would their music be like? I bet they would almost certainly have pentatonic scales, very likely 7 note scales like our major scale. Maybe not something like the Turkish classical system of 9 commas per whole tone and 53 commas per octave. Would they have leading tones? Secondary dominants? Enharmonic modulations?
Fascinating, as always. Bergman made very interesting use of classical music in his films, with a far lower death count overall. I love the Bruckner in his final film, Saraband, and of course The Magic Flute.
The Golden Record that Sagan et al sent out on Voyager is 1 of my most treasured possessions! But also interesting to reflect on how there has to be a lot of deaths in a movie for sweeping classical romantic music to succeed…I might be one of those dying if I had to sit thru Mozart at a concert! Give me Messiaen or give me death!!!
In reference to your S3EP32 quote. Discovery in music, math, science etc. brings us great joy!