Scored by Burt Bucharach, the film is perhaps more widely known for its song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”, which Bucharach wrote with lyricist Hal David. A total of 26 minutes of music appeared in the film’s 112-minute runtime.

What merits discussion is how the music was spread within BUTCH, as opposed to a more recent film. In an equal situation in contemporary films—say, 20-30 minutes of music in a 100-minute runtime—the music is often broken up into extremely small fragments, sometimes lasting only a few seconds, such as smoothing a change of setting or even just scaring the audience with a single sting. Such films—sometimes deliberately, sometimes not—simply don’t allow any room for the music to breathe: there’s just too much trying to be crammed in. BUTCH, on the other hand, is a telling example of the far other end of the spectrum—where there’s just so much space and room for the plot to unfold, that hardly any music is needed. You know what the characters are thinking; you don’t need to be told by the music. You know when the characters are in trouble; you don’t need pulse-pounding action music to make your heart race. In fact, almost none of the action sequences have any music at all; on the contrary, Bacharach instead opts to focus all his strengths on character development, which is perhaps why the characters of BUTCH seem so grounded in reality, despite the somewhat over-exaggerated lifestyle of a criminal.

No, the music of BUTCH is as relaxed as the film’s cinematography; firmly grounding the characters of Butch and Sundance in the viewer’s mind before bringing them into tense situations, and then letting the viewer come to their own conclusions, rather than being told what to think by aggressively-placed music around every corner.

That’s enough of what BUTCH’s music is not, and onto what it is: an upbeat, bright meandering of the 60’s doo-wop variety; a solo accordion featured as the characters discuss their future; as well as the toe-tapping rendition of “Raindrops”, as heard throughout the montage of Butch showing off the newly-invented bicycle to Anna. The scene below is well-representative of Bacharach’s placement of the music in the film, often extended sequences with no sound or dialogue—not in short fragments like some of today’s productions, but in deliberately longer segments—leading to a superiority of music over other elements of the picture, at least while it’s playing. This is a far cry from some films today, where the music is turned down so low under character dialogue (or is obliterated by sound effects) that it might as well not be there. No, the music of BUTCH is intelligently placed within the narrative, and freely allowed to shine on its own. That’s enough of a rant about today’s films—enjoy the brief segment below.

EDIT: Here’s another clip, which occurs midway during the film; a montage of successful robberies in Bolivia.

Read:

• Advice for the Emerging Composer – Competitions

To a lesser extent, modern film composers have to deal with these same problems. Probably the most deplorable stipulation in practice today is that, upon signing off their completed music, composers no longer own any rights to it—the studio does. This isn’t to say that composers don’t get any royalties—many mainstream composers could stop writing today and live the rest of their lives quite comfortably—but that the composer can no longer use their ‘locked’ music in ways that they see fit. I won’t get into many more details here, but do have a look at the article after the jump.

Anyways, the intent of this post was to relate two ‘new’ approaches to the composition of music, both of which appear in the introduction to Music for the Films. These may or may not lead to a higher quality of work, but are at least relevant to keep in mind while creating.

1. The ‘camera’ analogy – music with focus, similar to a camera’s depth of field. You can choose to focus wherever you want—foreground, middle, back—but there’s always something out of focus; patterns or sonorities whose edges aren’t clearly defined. For example, the easiest way to define your focus might be with dynamics—as simple as having some elements come forward while pushing others back. Other possibilities could be the relative rate of new events—in this case the layer with the most activity becomes the one in focus—or something as simple as introducing the damper pedal on a piano. The amount of difference between what you define as ‘blurry’ and ‘not blurry’ determines the depth of field which your music will exhibit.
2. Music that is appealing on all levels. This one’s a little more up in the air, so I’ll stick to the basics for now. The idea is that the composer writes with multiple perspectives in mind, taking care to make sure that each is satisfying unto itself. Take Bach as an example—the musically uneducated can easily acknowledge the complexity without explanation, while a theoretical expert can approach the same material from a high level of analysis and still walk away satisfied. What’s important is that during the writing process the composer is aware of what ‘layers’ are even possible, and secondly that each ‘layer’ maintains its own level of interest. This is where it’s highly subjective, as 20 people listening to a piece of music might walk away with 20 completely unique impressions of it. Can a composer anticipate for this? Should they care what people think? I don’t have the answer right now, but it bears importance to wrestle with this on your own terms and see if it affects your own process of creating.

More info:

• Film History of the 1940s

Read on…

• Official page with video from the Gwent Police
• Interview with Stuart Fox on the Vienna Symphonic Library
• Stuart Fox’s official website

This somewhat unique plot device was capitalized on by composer John Williams, by now his 19th collaboration with Spielberg. Most of Minority Report’s score is mixed atonality, with rare diatonicism coinciding with a theme for the protagonist himself and his family. Much of the writing is deliberately disturbing, matching Spielberg’s often dark sense of humour. Williams does well to maintain an overall level of consistency, permeating the film with rambling bass at one end of the spectrum, occasionally shrieking winds and strings in the other, all the while painting a bleak picture of the future despite the apparently ‘perfect’ system. Indeed, it’s when things start to go wrong that the plot gets interesting.

The music of Minority Report can mostly be classified into a few broad categories: the somewhat typical action content, the psychologically dark and uneasy material, and the family theme which instills a sense of longing. Often the line is blurred between the first two, and the level of tension created is formidable. This is especially prevalent in the first sequence in the film, where the viewer is treated to a demonstration of pre-crime in action.

“Pre-Crime To The Rescue” is a good representation of the album, starting with low bass meanderings accompanying the gathering of evidence. By the time the police officers reach the location, viewers are already tense with the clock ticking down, but the pace keeps quickening, building right up to the last instant. It is at T = 0, the moment where the future becomes the present, where a curious musical thing happens:

(It’s impossible to tell exactly what notes are sounding, and which are overtones, due to the nature of the synth sound. The second example occurs later in the film, found at 4:55 in “Leo Crow… The Confrontation”.)

This phenomenon happens at multiple instances during the film, a musical representation of a time paradox. It’s quite effective; just when the pressure couldn’t get any higher, you’re treated with something even more mysteriously puzzling. Above are two examples of this phenomenon, the first of which appears in the excerpt below at 0:36. The following transcription accompanies a scene where the protagonist, a pre-crime officer, runs into a house and grabs the murderer literally in mid-swing. Afterward the suspect is taken away while the ensuing trauma is dealt with.

(You can imagine the calibre of the players in that the string section stayed pretty much together. Notice how the phrases come across when heard quickly—a lot more clearly than the apparent mash of random notes on paper.)

A curious shift to diatonicism happens as the suspect is apprehended (bar 37). Why the change? This moment makes sense because attention is drawn to the emotional consequences, which up to this point have been absent. Rounding off the scene this way once again enforces the somewhat questionable morality of the whole premise. (As a side note, about 20 seconds of music is missing in the film version, likely a result of a last-minute editing decision. Thankfully, I was able to cut-and-paste the soundtrack version to match.)

Minority Report instills a healthy amount of creepiness if you allow yourself to be caught up in the story. It was generally not well received with critics, likely due to its slow second half. Nonetheless, the production values were as good as any Spielberg film, well-polished from start to finish. The concepts proposed in Philip K. Dick’s short story—which the film was based on—are as relevant today as they were in 1956.

But what I really wanted to share was his website. On it, Hokoyama has an array of concert pieces (every bit as good as Afrika), with audio and the full score for each (this is a bit of a rarity for composers.) For anyone looking to learn more about orchestration, extended techniques, proper notation—this is a gold mine of information (Halloween Dance features some particularly strange percussion effects at the outset.) Once you start listening to a piece, it’s hard to stop because it’s simply so good. The full scores are available as PDF files, and the audio is available to be streamed from the same page. Keep up the great work, Wataru!

More:

• See Wataru Hokoyama’s website
• Watch Hokoyama record Afrika’s main titles
• Read an interview at Music4Games
• Read a review of the official soundtrack

Loudness, timbre, melody, texture, and tonality all help to create form, but our perception of music form ultimately depents on our memory, since the musical events take place within a time continuum. We compare what we hear at one time with what we hear at another, and we are led to expect certain sound possibilities yet to come, thus, proper timing is the very essence of musical form.

How much of a piece goes by unnoticed or unrecognized just because a person didn’t remember what you wanted them to? From now on, I’m going back over my pieces and making sure that what I want people to remember is actually memorable, or somehow stands out easily from the rest of the piece.

This is something I’ve had to come to grips with: learning how to orchestrate and create suave, diatonic melodies is not the final step in the journey to being a successful composer. Not by a longshot. As a film composer, this covers probably less than half of your total output. The rest entails such things as atonal, aleatoric, and sound effect or synthscape music, music for various ethnicities or time periods, as well as smaller instrumental groups, and writing for nonstandard instruments. Ugh, the very word atonal gives me shivers. But, it’s just another area that needs to be researched and mastered. Like anything worth doing, it takes time and effort.

Below is a collection of snippets where the composers diverged drastically from their pre-established sound.

• Once again, Newman proves that he can’t be stereotyped into the folk song genre, effortlessly switching between traditional orchestra and rock ensemble.

David Arnold: “Welcome to Cuba”, Casino Royale (2006)

• While there is no style-switching within this clip, this track alone stands out as the furthest deviation on the album as a whole. In this case, it’s questionable how much of this cue Arnold actually composed; as a piano player, he could have written the head and performed on it. It’s possible that to get that characteristic Southern flair, he relied more on the ensemble’s sound than on his compositional choicies (most of it was improvised). Nevertheless, Arnold obviously did his research in creating this piece.

John Williams: “Journey to Akator” from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

• “Akator” follows the above example almost as precisely, although more of it is dependent on the actual written score than the performer’s experience. Given that the transition happens mid-cue, the effect is all the more striking.

BT: “Main Title”, Stealth (2005)

• In all the above examples, the composers all started from an orchestral sound, then moved into their other style. Here, it happens in the reverse order: synth artist BT starts with the electronic version of the theme, then incorporates the orchestra. But in this case, the effect isn’t nearly as captivating: by already using a blend of acoustic and electronic sounds (likely all software-generated), when the brass comes in, it sounds sampled, too! The effect of the transition could’ve been made more effective by engineering a more dramatic shift in timbre, rather than just layering the horns on top of an already pseudo-acoustic sounding mix.

James Horner: “Collecting the Ballots” from The Legend of Zorro (2005)

• Horner’s career has been one of the most vibrant and diverse in terms of musical styles. The entire Zorro score stands out as a departure from Horner’s more standard stuff, if you can call it that. This cue, the first of the album, features an ensemble of tap dancers, and a trio of flamenco guitarists, interspersed with elements of the more traditional orchestra.

• Pre-planning everything: not writing a note before you have the entire piece figured out. This is the way Mozart worked. I tried this once, and while it did turn out a well-rounded piece, I would have preferred not banging my head against a wall and staring hopelessly at a blank page for hours on end.
• Pre-planning nothing: while working this way could mean that you start writing right away, it also comes with its own caveats. Namely, if you don’t have an idea, or if you forget the idea along the way, you’re lost. I had a frustrating time with this while working on my first album; I was constantly aggravated by how I was unable to see more than about 3 bars ahead of where I was. I guess that if you want to be successful with this method you’ve got to always keep mulling over the idea, so that it becomes fully developed, with no corner left unexplored.
• Working by revision: as Dan Visconti points out, sometimes the best way of composing is to plough through an entire rough draft, using notes as ‘placeholders’, which relieves a huge amount of stress in the end because now you can see the overall form of the piece, and zero in on those sections which need work. Another spin on this particular method is working out the short score, then going back and filling out the instruments. In the end, I find this method the most comforting, as the overall shape of the piece is solidified in the early stages, and the constant revision ensures that your ideas become fully developed.

Read: Composing Like a Painter, by Dan Visconti

When the fog clears, we’re presented with a vista which—in high-definition 3D theatres—should be nothing short of magnificent. What seemed odd about this 1930s, Hermannesque-type music was how small it seemed in comparison with the huge vista being shown onscreen. The ensemble can’t be more than about 30 people (about a third the size of a modern studio orchestra) and the sense of depth is practically zero with the lack of reverb. (Listen to some Zbigniew Preisner to hear an example of very ‘wet’ reverb.) What’s going on here, Giacchino? Surely you know better than this?

He does. In a video interview, Giacchino stated that his intent with the score for Up was to present music that the protagonist, Carl, would have listened to throughout his lifetime. Brilliant! Giacchino has chosen a musical ‘lens’ with which to frame his subject matter, in this case, the vista. And now it makes sense: the music for this scene is only a small sample from the palette that Giacchino is drawing on to paint a deeper picture of the main character. Throughout the rest of the movie, we’ll hear some swing, some Golden Age… maybe even some rock and roll if Carl is so inclined!

While it may seem counter-intuitive to this scene, if the rest of the music functions as he’s described, then it will succeed as an integrated, yet diverse musical work that enhances the story. All that’s left is to see if it plays out—I know that I for one am going to enjoy this moment.

Sources:

• Watch ‘Tepui Landing‘ from Up
• See the interview with Michael Giacchino