On A Sad Note

Maurice Jarre, composer and master of the Hollywood epic score, died this weekend in his Malibu home. The nine-time Academy Award nominee was 84.

Jarre won three of those nine “Oscar” nominations, all for films directed by David Lean. From the deserts of Saudi Arabia in “Lawrence of Arabia”, to the Russian taiga for “Dr. Zhivago” or the Indian subcontinent in “A Passage to India”, Jarre’s use of simple noble melodies to illustrate vast cinematic landscapes was the glue that held the aforementioned films together and allowed Lean the grandiosity, scale and reflective space necessary to execute his larger-than-life vision. Their collaboration was one of the great cinematic pairings, like Hitchcock and Herrmann or Truffaut and Constantin. Jarre described his relationship with Lean and why it worked in the simplest of terms; “Lean had very specific ideas about the music for the films and I understood what He wanted”.

Jarre was one of the first film composers I was really aware of as child. His already legendary status was burned into my memory one chilly New England evening when I watched (with my grandmother) “Lawrence of Arabia” on the television. Lying on the indigo-rag carpet of my Grandmother’s living room floor I was transfixed, nothing could have seemed or sounded more exotic.

In the years to come both “Dr. Zhivago” and “A Passage to India” had a similar effect on me and in one of those "lateral" steps in life, twenty-five-years later I found myself in Bangalore, India working with Ashok Mandanna, one of the stars of “A Passage to India”. I remember in particular an afternoon at Ashok's home, where over tea, we discussed Lean, Jarre and the production of the film. It was an amazing afternoon, really great fun and a long long way from Autumnal New England nights.

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!