Matt's Music

Back soon!

2012-01-07T12:06:00.000-08:00

I cannot wait to get back to university and get started on new projects and assignments! Admittedly, it is quite difficult balancing job and university but the university work is fun so it is not really a chore to slave away every evening and weekend at my studies.

Here's to hoping the second term is as exciting and stimulating as the first!

12 tone jazz

2012-01-05T14:02:00.000-08:00

Dave set us a tricky little project: Compose a piece that is 12 tone jazz (or serialist jazz)

I listened to the works of David Mack for inspiration and after a few listens I felt that the project was not in fact as daunting as I first thought it would be.

I started with a serialist bass line (all 12 notes of the scale are played before any note is repeated - this renders the music "key-less") and then added a swung beat, playing the drums with brushes. The melodies are played by piano, trombone section and a jazz organ which dip in and out of the piece and then there is a tutti at the end before the piece climaxes with a suspension chord.

The hardest part of this piece, for me, was creating an authentic drum track. There are sections where the drums are almost doing a solo and this took a long time to get just right. I am, however, happy with the final result!

Happy Birger!

2012-01-04T14:54:00.000-08:00

Birger finally set us a "happy" scene to score just before we broke up for christmas. It makes a refreshing change from the morbid scenes we have had to score over the past term!

As always, my first instinct was to look straight at the orchestra and start playing with ideas. Strings are typically the happiest sounding section so I started there. After a short while of experimenting with the strings I realised that it just was not quite right for the scene. I decided that, being a modern film, it needed perhaps more contemporary instruments; so I started playing with an acoustic guitar...

This sounded perfect and I have now got a simple romantic melody that is picked by an acoustic guitar. Underneath there is a simple string section that plays swelling chords and a piano that subtly doubles the melody in places. I tried many times to expand the texture and take the music to new places but have eventually settled on "less is more." The scene does not call for a large ensemble and the intimacy between the couple is reflected in the simple, yet beautiful score.

Christmas Break

2012-01-02T16:58:00.000-08:00

So it's been a few days since I have had access to a computer and now I have a lot of blogging to catch up on!

Christmas was wonderful, as aforementioned I got a mic and a portable recorder already, and from my dear parents I got "Auralia 4"- an ear training software by Sibelius. I have been playing with it all evening and really hope that it improves my listening ability!

Whilst at home I could not do much in the way of music but I did enjoy playing on my dad's guitar (I can't remember the make, but it's a darn fine electro-acoustic) and came up with a few ideas for songs. I love picking up a new instrument, getting a feel for it and working with whatever ideas leap into your head that are drawn from the personality of the instrument. The problem is that they don't sound quite as good on my guitar! Oh well.

Absolutely loved listening to all the classic christmas songs on radio and tv! No matter how many christmases go by I will never ever cease to enjoy The Pogues, Chris Rea, Wizard, and all the other wonderful people that made christmas so musical! One day I will write a hit christmas song and be set for life due to consistent airplay from December 1st...

I shall continue to catch up with my absent blogging tomorrow. For now, I am tired and have to get up at stupid o clock in the morning so Goodnight.

Rock of Ages

2011-12-22T00:12:00.000-08:00

Saw Rock of Ages last night at the Shaftsbury Theatre... it was amazing!!!! I cannot tell enough people how incredible it was! You do not even need to love 80s rock to enjoy it (although I happen to love it) and I am definitely going again!

I left the show with that feeling of inspiration you get after experiencing a fantastic music experience and now I want to pick up my guitar again and take a short break from orchestral film scoring and just rock out! The best part about it was that they had a live band on stage playing everything, they were amazing! And to top it off, it was brilliantly funny as well! Basically my review for this fabulous musical is *****
(that is 5 stars, I was not swearing)

So I shall continue to rave about Rock of Ages until everybody has seen it!
Merry Christmas

new song

2011-12-22T00:07:00.000-08:00

wrote a fantastic (in my opinion) new song the other night, looking forward to getting a free couple of hours to properly record it in logic. Probably won't have time until after Christmas but we'll see. I want to quit my job! I have hardly any time for music anymore it seems! If only one could live without money!

I got a rather wonderful new Rode NT1a microphone for Christmas (bit early I know) from Sam's family. I cannot wait to start using it! I think people will be driven mad! Sam also got me a Zoom portable recorder; the exact same one, in fact, that I borrowed recently from Chris to do my sounds for Intruders. I am absolutely over the moon! Armed with this device I am dangerous!

It is going to be a very good Christmas!

Researching Composers

2011-12-19T09:43:00.000-08:00

The other day I was feeling curious about the backgrounds of a few prominent film composers and wanted to find out certain things about them such as: where they studied, who they studied under, how old they were when they made their first successful filmscore.

It was comforting to find out that the majority were not widely recognised until they were at least 30 years old, there is plenty of time for me yet! However, the tutors that composers like James Horner had (Jerry Goldsmith) were amazing so I need to start networking and wheedle my way into an apprenticeship with a prominent composer!

Also, when I manage to get the funds together I would like to attend one of the big American composition universities or even the national film institute in England (I think it is in Bedfordshire) that Birger attended.

Thief!

2011-12-17T16:08:00.000-08:00

I have decided that I am rather terrible and often steal ideas... from myself!

Whenever a musical phrase, a melody, a riff etc comes into my brain I record it on either my keyboard or straight into Logic. I have hundreds of little files with a few seconds of music and occasionally dip into them when I am having a dry spell or have completely hit a wall.

It is amazing how versatile some of these ideas can be; a heavy metal riff can be manipulated to be the foundation of a wonderful string quartet; a song played on acoustic guitar can be orchestrated into a symphony. Whenever I am faced with a new project or assignment I flick through this library of ideas and hope that one jumps out at me.

This way I can use my own creativity even if I am not feeling creative.

Peter and the Wolf

2011-12-16T07:08:00.000-08:00

Whilst researching clarinet melodies for the scoring of Londongrad I came across Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf." I think this is a truly fantastic work! I cannot believe I have never heard of it! I have always enjoyed playing with the idea that certain instruments, pitches, chords etc represent certain things. Prokofiev has refuelled my interest in this and I shall be experimenting...

Londongrad Ideas

2011-12-16T06:26:00.000-08:00

I have been busy conceptualising for Londongrad recently. The fact that we have been told to use predominately clarinet and percussion for the score is not a bad thing; I actually find myself to be more creative when given parameters. I also completely overlooked the fact that pitched percussion is at our disposal as well. This adds an awful lot more of opportunity! Very exciting!

The fact that the clarinet can be such a forlorn sounding instrument works very much in our favour. There are a few moments in the film that necessitate a melancholy or reflective timbre and I have been playing with ideas and listening to other clarinet melodies for inspiration. A few pieces that I have been drawing ideas from are:
-A theme from "The Pianist" by Wojciech Kilar
-Theme from "Over gaden under vandet" by Thomas Hass
-Mozart's clarinet concerto in A (used in "Out of Africa")
-Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" - the clarinet represents the cat

2011-12-13T14:58:00.000-08:00

Watched "Love Actually" yesterday (yes, I really do like it) and the soundtrack made me want to go and play piano. The "Glasgow Love Theme" is particularly impressive to me; it is so simple but so evocative. Genius. The film reminded how less really can be more. The score is so minimal, in many cases it is simply a piano with strings, but it works so well. One of my major pitfalls is wanting to add more and more layers to a musical cue. I do at least now realise this and will be very conscious in the future of how rich my texture is.

Other films such as American Beauty also drive home this point. Newman delivers a very minimal score to great effect. The key is finding a great motif or idea then playing with it; expanding it, inverting it, changing timbre. Simply whacking a huge sounding mass of music down does not do the job! I must remember this!

Oxford street

2011-12-13T14:51:00.000-08:00

On Saturday I went christmas shopping down Oxford street (little bit busy) and was overjoyed at the number and variety of buskers and bands lining the street. I passed a fantastic steel pan band which instantly made me think of my Martini advert, they were playing christmas songs with a Caribbean lilt that made me want to spend christmas in Trinidad!

We then passed a saxophonist, a trumpeter, a guitarist, 2 choirs and a man singing into a traffic cone. I love all the different ways of sharing music that have developed and I hope the performer's made a pretty penny in the process! (hypocritically, I am a skint student so did not have available funds to share with these admirable players)

All this put me in the mood for christmas songs so when I got home I dug out the christmas song book and started bashing out tunes on the piano :-) Every year I say I will write a platinum-selling christmas song but I am yet to get round to it!

Other bits...

2011-12-13T14:44:00.000-08:00

Whilst I have been slaving away at the electroacoustic soundtrack for Roberto, we have also been doing various other assignments for our other lecturers. Dave has been setting us interesting weekly compositional tasks and I particularly enjoyed the latest one; composing a variation to the Martini advert theme.

I chose to do my theme in a steel pan style. Having played the steel pans with Dave two years ago I remembered enough about the instruments and their ranges to produce a realistic piece that obeys all the workings and capabilities of the steel pans. Unfortunately the samples in Logic sound slightly synthetic toward the higher range of the instrument but I did what I could to make the sound as authentic as possible.

The "Londongrad" assignment is the assessed work for Birger's module and the score is in for February. I have now spotted the short film (9 minutes) and have calculated that I shall be writing 4 minutes and 17 seconds of music. This does not seem like a lot at all but I am approaching it very seriously, I have got a fantastic book out of the library called "On The Track - a guide to contemporary film scoring" by Fred Karlin and Rayburn Wright. This book is simply brilliant. It covers all the necessary areas of composition for film; spotting the film; developing the concept; the actual composition and much more.

I have used the techniques described in this book alongside some of Birger's own advice to spot the film. Much of the spotting is rather typical (which is not a bad thing) though there are some scenes where music is perhaps used untypically and some scenes where music is absent when it perhaps would not normally be. I am still in the process of developing my themes and have not started to actually score the film yet.

It's been a while

2011-12-13T14:27:00.000-08:00

I have been rather negligent over the past week and have not submitted much in the way of blog. From today I am getting back into the habit! My excuse is that there is a deadline tomorrow which I have been slaving towards!

The work in for tomorrow is the electroacoustic soundtrack. I found this a rather daunting task from the outset as I have never actively pursued this area of composition; I would even go as far to say that I have actively avoided it. However, I feel that the way Roberto approached the module and taught us the background and the various styles involved in electroacoustic music was very inspiring. I have, to my surprise, found this assignment actually quite enjoyable and I hope the quality of my work reflects this.

I described in a previous post how I borrowed a portable recorder from a classmate and recorded various sounds for the soundtrack. I have since manipulated these sounds in all manner of ways to create a spooky and altogether atypical score. I really mean it when I say that a door has been opened to me and I shall always consider the use of electroacoustic music in future when approaching a new project.

Just some of the effects I used are:
-sampling
-pitch shifting
-reversing
-delay/reverb/echo
-distortion/feedback
-time shifting
-EQ/compression/gating

I have experimented with the majority of these effects in the past already but never quite grasped the mechanisms behind them or their full potential. I feel I have come out of this project with some added ammunition to my arsenal of music-creating material.

It was also rather fun creating the DVD. I have never made a DVD before so using the software was entirely new to me. Unfortunately I appear not to have iDVD on my mac so Sam's (my girlfriend) dad showed me how to use a program that he uses on windows. It worked like a charm and I created a spooky title menu and even composed 30 seconds of music to play in the background. I also purchased some DVD labels and a case to really enhance the professionalism of my work. Designing the labels and the case cover was also fun and the finished result does look rather spectacular if I do say so myself!

There were a few slight issues with the DVD that I had to overcome; firstly, somewhere on its journey from Logic to DVD parts of the soundtrack had distorted. This obviously would not do so I had to go back into Logic and reduce the levels to compensate for the conversion issue. This was then sorted BUT now a couple of the sounds' reverb tail was delayed resulting in a dead sound followed by a second's silence then a sudden reverberation. This now had to be sorted out. Finally everything was perfect and the finished result is as good as I could have hoped for.

Hand-in is tomorrow, fingers crossed there are no more unseen hiccups before then!

Richard III

2011-12-04T08:56:00.000-08:00

We have been set a short clip from Richard III to score. I very much enjoy the fact that Birger sets us these short clips to write for, it is great practice and also expands our library and gives us more for our show reel. I also love the fact that we share our scored clips as a group and discuss the process and concept behind each of our scores.

It is quite amazing how much I found that I can learn from my peers; there are sometimes ideas that they glean from the film that I would never have come up with. I get that "oh yeah!" feeling that makes me want to rush off and play with new ideas. I hope that my classmates feel similarly when they hear my work!

This particular clip is quite challenging to write for. It is clearly in need of a "sad" score but it is difficult to decide when to bring in the theme. The decision of when to start the music, when to start a theme, when to end a theme is always utterly subjective and poses problems for the composer. I have been watching a few "sad" clips from various films to get an idea of what I am going to do

Working with Video Art

2011-11-29T08:43:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-26T02:42:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-24T12:14:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-24T12:07:00.000-08:00

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...

2011-11-23T07:27:00.000-08:00

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...

2011-11-22T09:32:00.000-08:00

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…