Working with Video Art

I have never seriously looked at video art in the past but the way Roberto has introduced it to us has really opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibility. The use of music is perhaps more critical in video art than any other form of visual, but because it is an abstract art form the composer is able to be perhaps a lot more free and experimental with his score.

Some of my favourite videos that Roberto shared with us are:

Flex - by Chris Cunningham. Music by Aphex Twin
The meticulous synchronisation with the image is fantastic and has given me new ideas for scoring techniques.

We Have Decided Not To Die - by Daniel Askill. Music by Michael Askill/Daniel Askill
This film stuck me as being rather frightening the first time I watched it. The way that the characters' bodies convulse so unnaturally gives quite an impact. The score compliments the image perfectly and I drew a few ideas from it.

Itsu - by Plaid. Music by Plaid
This is a fantastic film and works as a very effective protest against pig farming. Again, the music is absolutely brilliant and compliments the image perfectly.

These are just a few of the videos that opened my eyes to a whole new media. I think that composing for video art would be an opportunity to be completely free and experiment with some radical ideas

Fun with foley

Yesterday I began converting my newly recorded sounds into audio samples using Logic's EXS24 Sampler. This took a loooooooong time but I now have a selection of rather interesting "instruments" at my disposal.

I started putting all the foley on the Intruders video - this is going to take ages! I want to get it absolutely perfect so am going to great depths with timing, sample manipulation etc, if I get this finished by monday then I can start actually working with the soundtrack...

Ear training

Yesterday, I borrowed a rather fantastic (hopefully) pair of books from the LRC: "The Complete Musician" and "The Complete Musician Student Workbook."

Basically the idea is to improve my aural abilities as I feel it is this area that is my glaring weakness in all things musical.
Theory=excellent, reading skills=excellent, improvisation=excellent, composition=excellent (you gotta have some arrogance to make it big) but aural perception=pants. So basically I am focusing on improving my ear.

Have also asked for christmas - Perfect Pitch and Relative Pitch training by David Burge
This looks reeeeeeeally good!

Fun sound recording

So the other day I had great fun recording all manner of funky sounds for my "Intruders" coursework. Chris Barn was a dude and lent me his rather awesome handheld recorder for the evening so home I went to make some mischief...

I recorded bangs, screams, whooshes, sinister laughter and various other creepy noises to use in my score to Intruders. My wonderful girlfriend, Sam was a great help; offering fantastic screams and whispers, and helping record the wheeling suitcase.

I now have a splendid array of macabre sounds to add to my arsenal and to manipulate beyond recognition for all kinds of interesting ideas for Intruders.

Inspiration...

Right, I shall now jot down a few of my most inspirational pieces of music. This is rather difficult as there are so very many!

John Williams and Hans Zimmer are, in my humble opinion, the kings of film composition. Everything that they churn out is exceptional and it makes me sick at how good they are! My personal favourite John Williams score is the theme from Jurassic Park and my favourite Hans Zimmer is Gladiator.

James Horner is also a particular favourite of mine. Titanic was fabulously scored and my personal favourite of his is the score for A Beautiful Mind.

I could go on forever but I will keep this list brief; the final composer that I draw tremendous amounts of inspiration from is Bernard Herrmann. All of his works for Hitchcock are brilliant, particularly North By Northwest and Psycho. His score for Taxi Driver also demonstrates that he can compose in completely different fields and is not afraid to leap out of his comfort zone.

Other notable composers that I admire are:
James Newton-Howard - The Village
Howard Shore - Lord of the Rings
Ennio Morricone - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Jerry Goldsmith - Planet of the Apes
Danny Elfman - Batman
Vangelis - Blade Runner
Gabriel Yared - The English Patient
Michael Nyman - The Piano
Alan Silvestri - The Polar Express

The beginning...

So this is my very first blog entry ever, how exciting!
I am seeing this as basically an online diary of all things musical so any musical ideas I have, research I undertake or inspiration I come across will be broadcasted on here.

May as well start right now…

Dave played us a piano concerto by Constant Lambert today, I am now going to go home and attempt to learn the piano part and possibly try and write something in a similar style as I found it rather interesting (lots of time changes but with some very sexy chords and interesting rhythms).

Over the coming weeks I am attempting to blog 3/4 times a week, we’ll see how well that works out…