Anatomy of a Tear-Jerker

Following up on my last post about sad music, here’s a great article from the Wall Street Journal about some of the musical secrets behind Adele’s Grammy-winning smash hit “Someone Like You.” Emotionally intense music, whether happy or sad, releases massive amounts of dopamine in the pleasure centers of our brains, acting like a drug and making us yearn for another dose. Intensely sad music behaves just like happy music in this sense—it causes physiological reactions in our brain that keep us coming back for more.

The article also details a couple of musical tricks that help to intensify the emotion, including the humble appoggiatura. In a study 20 years ago, the psychologist John Sloboda found this seemingly minor accent present in 18 out of 20 (unnamed) tear-jerkers. As the song’s co-writer Dan Wilson told Minnesota Public Radio, neither he nor Adele knew what an appoggiatura was when they were working on “Someone Like You.” They used it instinctively. As Wilson said, “Hey, if I had a scientific method for making a heartbreaking hit, I would do it every day… But it’s not so easy.”

A Wealth of Info for Finale and Sibelius Users

I assume many of you out there use either Finale or Sibelius for your notation needs. If you’re not aware of fellow Seattleite Robert Puff’s blog, Of Note, you should be. It’s a treasure trove of tips and tutorials for both programs.

Recent posts include quickly deleting unison notes in Finale, two methods for creating Grand Pauses in Sibelius, and techniques for creating both boxed and free-floating aleatoric notation in Finale. If you’re like me, mastering your notation program can be a difficult path. Robert is a tremendous resource for anyone needing more out of their software!

Blow Them Away

I watched Battle Los Angeles last night (good film; intense and fun). In the extras there’s a doc about the director, Jonathan Liebesman. If you haven’t heard of him, that’s not surprising. Battle LA was only his fourth feature. He wasn’t exactly an unknown in Hollywood, but he was still in a place where he needed to hustle to get this choice assignment.

Initially, the producers had no idea who would direct this $70 million blockbuster. They interviewed lots of directors, most more qualified than Liebesman. His knew this going in, so he decided to blow them away in the interview. He brought in five black bags filled with props and goodies he’d made. He had drawings of the soldiers and aliens, models he’d built, before and after photos of the soldiers in battle, storyboards of various scenes, and even a ten-minute computerized previsualization of one of the action sequences. He worked incredibly hard on these materials, but it paid off. None of the other directors could touch his presentation or his passion. The producers hired him immediately.

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Business Not Busyness

Photo by Paul Shanks

Here’s an interesting post from KonsonantMusic on how to get the most out of the composer/director relationship. Whether you’re a composer or a director, it’s well worth reading. The post details exactly what composers need from their directors: video and time code specs, picture lock, schedule and timing, constructive input and direction, and perhaps most importantly, clear communication.

So much of the composer/director relationship comes down to communication. This of course works both ways. If a composer is silent for weeks and doesn’t keep the director informed about what their up to, it should be obvious that that would be frustrating for the director. Likewise, if the director isn’t clear about exactly what they need the composer may end up having to make needless revisions. This may not seem like a huge deal from the director’s standpoint, but unhappy, overworked composers rarely do their best work.

Take a look, and see if you can find ways to improve your relationship with your composer or director on your next project.

Modal Interchange

Photo by David Hawkins-Weeks

Tired of using the same old chords in your cues? Modal interchange (also called borrowed chords) is a great technique to add variety and interest into your chord progressions. It’s an idea borrowed from jazz, but I guarantee you’ve heard it in hundreds of pop songs and film scores as well. You’ve probably even used it yourself without realizing it.

Modal interchange combines two rather simple principles. The first is the harmonized major scale. Simply put, that’s a fancy name for taking the notes of the major scale and building triads or sevenths on top of each one using notes diatonic to the scale. In C major, you end up with CMaj7, Dmin7, Emin7, FMaj7, G7, Amin7, and Bmin7b5.

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The Descendants: Scoring with Songs

Gabby Pahinui (and family), who's music is featured in The Descendants

I saw The Descendants a couple of weeks ago. It’s an excellent film, and much has been made about the fact that it uses no score. Instead, the soundtrack employs music by Hawaiian artists, much of it featuring existing recordings by some of the greats of Hawaiian slack-key guitar. This is entirely appropriate given the film’s subject and locale, and this strategy has been praised by Hawaiian musicians tired of Hollywood’s overuse of surf music and hula dancing to portray the islands. The music is beautiful and quite effective in the film, but I couldn’t help but notice a few of the disadvantages of creating a soundtrack using only songs.

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Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Stems

Photo by Rob Sheridan, L.A. Times

This just in: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have made the stems from five Girl With the Dragon Tattoo cues available at Tunecore. They’re up until March 31st, 2012, so download and enjoy.

Aslo, if you like these two, the L.A. Times  interviewed Reznor back in December.

Incidentally, I haven’t seen The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
yet, but I plan to sometime this week. I’m rapidly getting caught up on my list of possible best scores of 2011, and I’ll fill you all in soon. (For the record, I’m not anticipating GWDT will make the list, but Trent and Atticus did win the Oscar last year, so I feel obliged to consider it.)

Quick Tip: Scoring Around Dialog

Photo by Julia Freeman-Woolpert, courtesy of sxc.hu

Writing music for a dialog-heavy scene is one of the trickier aspects of film scoring. It’s not too difficult if you’re just writing a simple pad or drone, but often the music needs to be more detailed than that.

As we all know, in a movie dialog is king. Rightfully so, since that’s where most of the story lies. It may be a pain, but as film composers it’s our job to stay out of the way. Writing a melody on top of dialog usually means your music will be mixed so low you can barely hear it. Keeping the music in the gaps between lines is still the safest approach, but here’s a little trick for those times when that’s impossible:

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How To Write Three Minutes of Music a Day

Here’s an excellent post from Deane Ogden (of SCOREcast fame) on getting the most out of your creative day and maximizing your composing time. Deane discusses topics like preparing for work, composing tools, scheduling your time and avoiding TV and meetings.

This is essential reading for anyone who’s serious about their composing career. While you’re there, Deane has many other great articles about creativity and the music business to inspire you. But be warned: he tells it like it is and doesn’t sugar coat the truth. If you take his advice you’ll likely end up working a lot more than you are now, but you’ll work smarter and faster, and likely improve your music and your career immeasurably.

Stairway To Heaven: How and Why It Works

Photo ©2006, Andrew Becraft

I’m gonna get all classic rock on y’all again. Expanding on Bobby Owsinski’s analysis of Led Zeppelin’s iconic “Stairway To Heaven” from November, I decided to geek out about the theory behind the tune in a little more detail. I realize it’s a rock song and not a film score, but there are some interesting and educational things to learn from the unusual way it’s crafted. In this post I’m also borrowing from and adapting Spy Tunes excellent piece, “How ‘Stairway To Heaven’ Used Modal Scales to Reach the Top.”

Despite “Stairway’s” eight-minute length, it’s relatively simple under the hood. Most of the melody uses just six notes (and their octave equivalents), and there are only five basic chords in the song. Structurally it has four main sections, two of which are related, and one is nothing more than a brief interlude. The apparent intricacy of the tune comes from its use of slash chords, modal interchange, the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic development throughout the song, and of course the remarkable musicianship of the band.

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