Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Favorite Scores of 1950's Sci-Fi Movies or All Great Works of Art Border on Being Awful!

I received a number of responses to my last posting (thanks!) on the subject of "top ten" film scores. The majority of the questions and comments were about Bernard Herrmann and his original score for "The Day the Earth stood still". It's seems most people weren't aware Herrmann had scored the film! Many seemed curious about other composers of music for sci-fi films of the 1950's. So, by request, I've put together a general "best of show" list, that for me, represents ten of the most "interesting" sci-fi film scores of the era.


Forbidden Planet - 1956 – Color

Tagline: IT'S OUT OF THIS WORLD!

Directed - Fred M. Wilcox

Music - Louis and Bebe Barron

A starship crew is sent to investigate the mysterious lack of communication from a distant planet's colony only to find on arrival two survivors and a deadly secret! Oh… and Robby the Robot!

The movie's score was composed by Louis and Bebe Barron. The Barrons were “discovered” by film producer Dore Schary performing (essentially doing an electronic noise “freak-out session”) at a beatnik nightclub in Greenwich Village in New York City. Schary hired the Barrons on the spot to compose the films score.

Using equations from the 1948 book with amazingly pretentious title: Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine by mathematician Norbert Wiener, Louis Barron constructed the electronic circuits which he used to generate the films distinctive "bleeps, blurps, whirs, whines, throbs, hums and screeches". Most of the sounds were generated using a primitive ring modulator then adding reverb, delay and or tape manipulation to change the pitch of sounds. The result: this score cum Dadaist soundscape was the first all-electronic music soundtrack!

In the end, Louis and Bebe didn’t belong to the Musicians' union and, in a classic producer “save money” move, Schary refused to release a soundtrack album and credited the score as "electronic tonalities", to avoid paying guild fees (goodbye Academy Award nomination!).


Invaders From Mars - 1953 – Color

Tagline: NATURAL or SUPERNATURAL?

Director - William Cameron Menzies (who strangely gets a Production Design credit above his Directing)

Music -Raoul Kraushaar

In the early hours of the night, young David Maclean sees a flying saucer disappear into the sand dunes just beyond the backyard of his house. His once loving parents begin to act strangely and little David begins to fear aliens from the spaceship have possessed them! No one believes him until he manages to convince Dr. Pat Blake of the city health department and Dr. Stuart Kelston from the local observatory, that something is amiss! And chaos ensues etc…

I first saw this movie when I was a kid late one night on the local PBS station in the 70s (1979 maybe) and it really scared me! Maybe because the film’s told from a child’s point of view or perhaps it’s the surreal production design, they’re both interesting. But the real breakout element of the film is it’s score, the outre sound effects, the strange stinging choral stabs that buzz through the film like an ethereal wasp, taunting and cold! I love this soundtrack! It’s my favorite of the 50’s sci-fi B-movie genre!

What about the composer? Mort Glickman was a mainstay of the Republic Pictures music department for 13 years but this was the one and only time that he ever got to write for a relatively big-budget movie .

His main inspiration for the score to the film seems to have come from “Neptune, The Mystic” from Gustav Holst's suite “The Planets“(now this is long before John Williams "nicked" the entire score for Star Wars from the same Holst work!) but with a new kind of “flava”. His use of micropolyphony, a technique where the harmonic-musical flow doesn't change suddenly but is gradually blurred over time to form a sort of “harmonic cloud”, was and still is truly unique! His use of this technique in a film score foreshadowed the more well know works of György Ligeti, i.e.“Lux Aeterna” and “Atmospheres”, by a decade or more (both were later used in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Glickman died in February 1953 at the age of 54 just after finishing “Invaders From Mars”. R.I.P.

Other works include:

The serials - Mysterious Dr. Satan as wells as Nyoka and the Tigermen


Kronos 1957 –B+W

Tagline: PLANET ROBBER TRAMPLES EARTH...STEALING ENERGY FOR OTHER WORLDS!

Directed - Kurt Neumann

Music - Paul Sawtel/Bert Shefter

Scientists investigate what appears to be a meteorite that crashes into the ocean. After a few days and nights of mysterious lights and noises, a giant alien machine comes out of the ocean to steal earth’s energy!

I like Paul Sawtells/Bert Shefter score it’s sort of “Perry Mason” meets “Planet of the Apes”. Sawtell perfected this style by striking-up alliance with fellow film composer Bert Shefter and then scoring numerous films together, including the classic science fiction and horror films: The Fly, Curse of the Fly, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and It! The Terror from Beyond Space in 1958. Later they composed many-a-score for director Russ Meyer, including the cult classic Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!


The Thing – 1951 –B+W

Tagline: Where Did It Come From? How Did It Get Here? WHAT IS IT?

Directed - Christian Nyby

Music - Dimitri Tiomkin

Produced by Howard Hawks, “The Thing” tells the story of a small group of researchers and military sent to recover a crashed flying saucer in the Arctic. They discover in the spacecraft an unstoppable alien (half Frankenstein’s monster /half Telly Savalas: in fact it was James Arness of Gunsmoke!) hell bent on world domination. This is the genre starter: the unfathomable super alien that must be destroyed; scientists who let intellect hinder action; claustrophobia; and the fate of mankind resting on in the hands of a few who must sacrifice all.

Scoring “The Thing” fell to Dimitri Tiomkin (who received credit ahead of the director), one of cinema's most famous composers. Tiomkin's booming, pugnacious score for “The Thing” scared stiff the uninitiated 1950s audiences and became the touchstone for a decade of sci-fi movies. The score is a particularly forceful and enigmatic composition for Tiomkin, who was more well know for his sense of melody than muscle, it’s great work! He never revisited the sci-fi genre but perhaps that’s because he mastered it in a single stroke! Sadly the master tapes of the score were lost but recently a series monaural acetate transfer disks were found in Tiomkin's personal belongings. So hopefully with some restoration they’ll soon surface like some long frozen alien from the Arctic depths to dominate our planet!


Creature From the Black Lagoon - 1954 - B+W

Tagline: Not since the beginning of time has the world beheld terror like this!

Director - Jack Arnold

Music - Hans J. Salter

A scientific expedition searching for fossils along the Amazon River discover a prehistoric “Gill-Man” in the legendary Black Lagoon. The explorers capture the mysterious creature, but it breaks free. The Gill-Man now filled will anger (and mojo) returns to kidnap the lovely Kay, fiancée of one of the expedition, with whom it has fallen in love. Quick aside: Ricou Browning who played the monster in the underwater scenes could hold his breath 4 minutes!

Hans J. Salter’s cues and scoring of the underwater scenes for “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” are doubly famous, once of being fanatically effective in the original film and secondly even more famous when John Williams “nicked” them for the movie Jaws. Never you say… it’s true just have a look! Though the theme to Jaws is now considered a classic suspense piece, the score's ominous two-note motif becoming nearly synonymous with sharks and danger, anyone who listens to even ten seconds of the score of “The Creature from the Black Lagoon”, will quickly find the “shark” in the motif.

Alas, Salter was no John Williams and composed mainly for Universal as an in-house composer, most famously for horror and science fiction films. His most celebrated scores include The Wolf Man (1941), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1953) and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). The latter like much of his output for Universal was uncredited, as it became stock music, used time and time again in B-pictures.


The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) B+W

Tagline: A robot and a man . . . hold the world spellbound with new and startling powers from another planet!

Directed - Robert Wise

Music – Bernard Herrmann

Klaatu and his mighty world-destroying robot Gort land their “cherry” 50s spacecraft on a Cold War-era super-noided-out Earth to offer us peace and gets shot!

Bernard Herrmann (one of the greatest film composers of all time!) used not one but two Theremins to score the film, an otherworldly-sounding instrument that it is played without physical contact. The Thereminist stands in front of the instrument and moves his or her hands in the proximity of two metal antennas. The distance from one antenna determines the pitch, and the distance from the other controls volume. The sound generated is a sort of an electronic whistle (think Beach boys “Good Vibrations”) with continuously variable pitch and portamento over its entire playable range (again justly like whistling). The result, a ground breaking electronically enhanced score and sci-fi’s first and perhaps “greatest’, sound cue. Hail Herrmann!


The Space Children - 1958 - B+W

Tagline: Slowly...and with horror the parents realized THEIR CHILDREN WERE THE SLAVES OF 'THE THING' FROM OUTER SPACE!

Director –Jack Arnold

Music – Van Cleave

The score (especially the intro) sounds like the beginning of a Yes album from 1973 (or substitute any 70's solo Rick Wakeman album). It gets a 7.5 on the “All Great Works of Art Boarder on Being Awful” meter. It’s a retro-progressive score!

Director Jack Arnold produced the classic 50's sci-fi films like "This Island Earth", "It Came From Outer Space", "The Amazing Shrinking Man” and "Tarantula" to name a few (He later helmed the “Minnow” directing numerous "Gilligan's Island" episodes), and had the good sense to hire the extremely the prolific composer Van Cleave.

A word about the composer Van Cleave (or should I say Nathan Lange Van Cleave). Though born into an era somewhat unfathomable to us today (May 8, 1910), he was still enough of a modern “stud” to know that his “aura” would certainly be improved by the dropping of “Nathan and Lange” and leaving behind the “Composer” with a big “C” name of Van Cleave (I’ve always thought that “Van” was a great first name, for example film star/matinee idol Van Johnson, that’s a name always seemed to have a define sexual overtone!… and Van Cleave…. Van Johnson… Van Cleave…wait a minute!). Anyhow… In 1945, Van Cleave moved to Los Angeles to pursue his musical career. His film credits, as a composer and orchestrator, include "Cinerama Holiday", "The Colossus of New York", "Easter Parade", "Funny Face", "Robinson Crusoe on Mars", and "White Christmas". But Van really hit his stride working on many of the classic Twilight Zone episodes!


The Incredible Shrinking Man - 1957 - B+W

Tagline: Almost beyond the imagination . . . A strange adventure into the unknown!

Director - Jack Arnold

Music Super Vision by Joseph Gershenson -Trumpet Soloist – Ray Anthony

While out on the ocean with his wife, Scott Carey's boat drifts through a strange mist that leaves a metallic residue covering his body. He thinks nothing of it at the time but within a few weeks he begins to notice that he is losing weight. A visit to the doctor also confirms that he is getting shorter. As he gets smaller and smaller, doctors determine that his exposure to insecticides followed by what must have been a radioactive mist has caused a genetic mutation. Basically he gets smaller, the plot gets bigger and chaos ensues!

This score is on the list primarily because of the truly bizarre/unique vision of the director in choosing to put a “quasi- Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass” soundtrack to this classic sci-fi film. Trumpet Soloist – Ray Anthony (dig it!) is featured prominently in the opening credits as well as the score (maybe it because he was married to sex symbol actress Mamie Van Doren… obviously a point of pride! Note: to this day, Ray Anthony, maintains a close friendship with Hugh Hefner, leading him to make numerous appearances on the reality show, The Girls Next Door with Hef… What a player!). This one's a real head scratcher, a funny trumpet/film noir/Tijuana Brass at an over the top bullfight score that illustrates the “little” story in the “big picture”… I don’t know… My suggestion is as follows: adjust the ears on your bunny, heat a burrito, dim the lights, and get small!


The Blob - 1958 – Color

Tagline: Beware of the Blob!

Director- Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr.

Music – Ralph Carmichael


The Blob is a sci-fi bor-o-rama film from 1958, depicting a giant KY-jelly/booger-like alien that terrorizes the small community of Downingtown, Pennsylvania, starring Steve McQueen.

The amazing opening song garners “The Blob” it’s spot on the list. A young and unknown Burt Bacharach composed the opening novelty song with lyrics written by Hal David's brother Mack. This song scores a perfect 10 on the “All Great Works of Art Border on Being Awful” meter. It’s hard to believe… but it’s true… evidence you want… well here’s your stinking evidence…

Beware of The Blob, it creeps
And leaps and glides and slides
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall
A splotch, a blotch
Be careful of The Blob

Those were and are the actual lyrics to the opening song! Too rich says you? Never says I!

And in an ironic twist, the background score for The Blob was composed by Ralph Carmichael. Known as "The Dean of Contemporary Christian Music," it was one of just a few film scores that Carmichael wrote. What a legacy!



The Trollenberg Terror a.k.a The Crawling Eye - 1958 - B+W

Tagline: A man dissolves...and out of the oozing mist comes the hungry eye, slave to the demon brain!

Directed – Quentin Lawrence

Music - Stanley Black

The film begins with shots of the Alps and no score. Two men are kneeling at the edge of a small ledge, a third, connected to the others by a safety rope, is ascending the cliff above them. A terrible scream and the climber plummets off the mountain. The other two climbers attempt to pull him back up only to find their comrade’s head missing!

Cut to:

A speeding train enters a dark tunnel, the opening credits and score slam onto the screen. In particular, I like the Hammond organ/orchestra mix, it’s interesting and what I would technically classify as “far-out”. It’s a sort of 60's before the 60's soundtrack. Stanley Black is probably most remembered for writing the theme for “The Goon Show” and his theme tune for the Pathé News, written in 1960. Well in this ”Goo Show”, strange electronic beeps accompany run-away-train styled music (which match the cuts). Over all, the music is the best part of the film, bringing real character to this “Lovecraftian” sc-fi/horror flick!



Saturday, March 21, 2009

"Here I go again on my own" or "Judge me not lest you be judged by others"

Everyone these days is putting up top ten lists of likes and dislikes etc... My own personal opinion of this trend is paradoxical. I would certainly put top ten lists as one of my top ten dislikes when reading blogs but... I would also put top tens as one my top ten likes. Why? Well that's an easy answer... it's fun to judge others by their choices! You know... when you read a list you agree with you get that self satisfied feeling of "I have good taste" or "this list confirms my mastery of popular culture!" or lastly and certainly not least "great, now I have something to spout off about the next time someone wants talk about the top ten greatest abstract expressionist painters of the twentieth century, Ya! I'll look smart!" (of course I'm paraphrasing here and any number of substitutions can be made for the former examples...softest toilet paper etc...). Now, on the other hand, if you don't like a list that's where the fun really begins. Demonic incantations filled with declarations of "pedestrian taste" and "secretarial insight" flow like wine at the last supper! Now, that's not to say all types of lists engender the same kind of response. For example I've long noted the interesting phenomenon of films vs music. And what is this phenom you ask? Let me try to explain. A person will generally, if they start watching a movie, even if the don't like it, watch the movie all-the-way- through and then comment or criticise or debate the merit of the said work-of-art. While on the other hand it sometimes only takes seconds for someone to dismiss, deride and despair over music, often putting a CD or play list to rest extremely prematurely. How many times have you gone out on a date with someone, gotten back to the apartment, had candles lit, wine poured, pupils dilated only to sneak-a-peak at his or her music collection and thought "what am I doing here?" (don't get me started on books!). All lists are not equal, nor are they judged equally. It's a fact and in fact I think music lists leave their authors most vulnerable! But in the words of the immortal 80's hair-metal band Whitesnake (see I made you flinch!) "Here I go again on my own, going down the only road I've ever know".


Here are my top ten pics for the greatest film scores by Bernard Herrmann.


10) Vertigo - 1958 Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

A haunting score. Poignant, quiet, painful music frames the film's melancholy motif.

9) Psycho - 1960 Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Herrmann could of had it easy on this film, being that Alfred Hitchcock's instructions for the score were simple: ''Do what you like, but only one thing I ask of you: Please write nothing for the murder in the shower. That must be without music. Thankfully Herrmann agreed, took the job, cashed the check and then did what he wanted! In the process altering film history and scoring.

8) Taxi Driver - 1976 Directed by Martin Scocesse

Herrmann's final score. It's all horns, muscle and harp. Ya harp! Herrmann died the day after finishing the score.

7) The Day the Earth Stood Still - 1951 Directed by Robert Wise

This 1951 black-and-white sci-fi classic that tells the story of a alien visitor who comes to Earth with a stern warning "surrender or die" ( wait... no... that was Ghingis Khan). Herrmann used two Theremins (early proto-synths) in the score. And in my opinion the instrument was never used more effectively in a film score. With perhaps the exception of Jimmy Page in the Led Zepplin concert film "The song Remains the Same". Jimmy got points for using a violin bow and pretending to be a wizard in a purple jumpsuit whilst playing his single Theremin.

6) The Snows of Kilimanjaro - 1952 Directed by Henry King

I pick this one because of the interesting and ever shifting score which moves from frivolity to drunken dark swagger to African Gothic! Herrmann really enhanced the gangrene and whiskey soda bubbling just beneath the surface!

5) The Magnificent Ambersons - 1942 Directed by Orson Wells

Again frivolity clamoring toward strange empty hollow tones. Herrrmann made sure the film got it's "comeuppance"!

4) North by Northwest - 1959 Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

A triptych of musical suspense, whimsy and rhythm brought together by Herrmann in with a moody perfection.

3) Cape Fear - 1962 Directed by J. Lee Thompson

Herrmann conjures up terror, obsession and the sound of nightmares .

2) Fahrenheit 451 - 1966 Directed by Francios Truffaut

Paul McCartney nicked the marcato string style for 'Eleanor Rigby' from the Herrmman score.

1) Citizen Kane - 1941 Directed by Orson Wells

Ok... is this really the best score by Bernard Herrmann? Let's put it this way, Citizen Kane, is an exemplar of Herrmann unique insight into: character, irony, framing, pacing harmonic structure and most of all his ability convey unspoken emotional content.

I'm done. Just one last word, "judge me not lest you be judged by others" (of course I'm just paraphrasing).

Friday, March 20, 2009

EastWest/Quantum Leap Orchestral - Viva la Update!

Everyone in the "know" already knows that EastWest/Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra is famous for the warmth and detail of its sounds. The story of how founders Doug Rogers and Nick Phoenix accomplish this by separately recording the natural hall ambiance of each instrument is now close to legendary! The tools they've created have put the "digital" baton in the hands of tens-of-thousand of would be conductors (without them having to shell out tens-of-thousand of dollars...well maybe). Oh the sweet satisfaction of having 11 Violins, a perfectly tuned cello and the sheer joy of having an English horn always available for that perfect cinematic texture, pure ecstasy. How do I know all this about Symphonic Orchestra users... it's simple....I'm one of THEM!

Now nothing is perfect and I've had to live through a few upgrades and a nearly traumatizing switch to the dual processor-intel-mac world (that was an interesting week!). But all and all I have been quite happy to share my time on this mortal coil with my East/West Symphonic Orchestral library. But now life has gotten a lot better! It first began to improve when I realized that I qualified for the free Play upgrade (woohoo!). I had been using Kontakt 3 to manage my library before that, this is no diss on Kontakt 3 but the fit of the glove was let's say...more O.J. than OK, anyhow about a week ago I opened a email from East/West Quantum Leap and there it was the next leap or should I say Quantum Leap... within was a link to the new Play update version 1.2.0. The list of it's fixes was impressive and were as follows:

* improved save times for instrument files on windows
* improved streaming engine
* voice limited expanded to 1024 for 64-bit version
* new micro tunings for QL Silk and QL Ra
* extended streaming setting dialog with reset engine functionality
* resolved mute bug issue
* fixed sustain pedal threshold
* improved fonts for Stormdrum 2 and Orchestra
* hard limit to 0dB on the audio output for standalone
* implemented poly aftertouch automation
* product libraries entries in the browser now can be changed/added/deleted
* fixed portamento and first silent note issue
* resolved FL Studio GUI issue
* fixed voice swapping issue
* improved installer

Looks good right... but who cares about how it looks. How does it sound and more importantly does it work? Well friends I'm here to report that I'm just about to finish my first commercially produced project with the new update installed and I can give it an unequivocal four star rating. Here's the bake, the work flow, CPU usage, general finickiness and yes I'll say...the "feel" is better. I don't know exactly why but the whole GUI is just that much more friendly. I use Play with logic 8 and I thought that the two programs might need couples therapy but now I'm sure that the romance has returned. And if that isn't enough I'll put it simply, I used to 'like' Play but now I've learned to "love"! Viva la Update!

Fashion Week Milan

I recently finished a project for designer Matthew Cunnington's "Fashion Week Show" in Milan. Here's a little background; Matthew was the 2008 Hyeres Grand Prize winner and this year was his Milan debut and word had it the the "whole of the fashion world" was going to be showing up for a look, so as you can imagine expectations were high! Matthew rung me up in Paris, he was here with Sandy (that's John Sanderson Matthews design partner), putting together their collection at their studio in the 7th arrondisement near San Sulpice. He said that what they needed from me was a soundtrack to accompany their show at the "Museo Della Permanente" in Milan. I was glad to get the call because I was impressed by Matthew's collection for Hyeres and was really excited to see this years line. So after running over a few details, I happily agreed to put the soundtrack together for the show and we were off and running!

Now it's always interesting and challenging to put together a score, sound design or even an arrangement for a live show but in this case I had to do all three. You see Matthew had already picked out a few pieces of music he wanted to use in the score and wanted me to find ways to link them together. Not the most daunting of requests but not without it's ticks. The first of the two main pieces he wanted in the program was a Linkin Park track called "The Shadow of the Day", the second was a piece of music by Yiruma called "River Flows in You". Doesn't sound to hard right? Well maybe not.... but the two pieces are in completely different keys and tempo, one is in a modern classical piano style and the the other...well..it's linkin Park. I took a deep breath opened up logic 8, fired up the midi controller and dug my snout in. Well that said, the rabbit was out of the box and after a few late-night tuning sessions with Sandy and Matthew and 48hrs of "cracking the spine" I had found "a way in". I'll save you all the gory details but suffice it to say that the key to the whole project was a simple piano refrain that was reflective of the Yiruma piece that morphed over about 12 bars into the structure and rhythm of "Linkin think'n" and another 8 bar outro morph back into Yiruma and it was "Bingo Time!". Some reediting and remixing the original music (thanks Fat Camel Audio!) and the tracks were in Sandy and Matthews hands and on there way to Milan! And what happened? Here's the email I received the following week:

Hi David.

Hope you are well. Finally we arrive back in Paris. The Music worked perfectly for our collection.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards,

Matthew and John.


Score!



 
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