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intro to film music 101
Jan. 30th, 2005 01:05 pmI've been totally off this entire time. The Bizet piece played in "Hammer into Anvil" (a Prisoner episode) isn't the Prelude to Carmen; it's actually the prelude to his L'Arlesienne suite (the first one)! How could I have been so STUPID?! Geez, I really need to brush up on my classical music. This is why I really need to take music history, so I can finally figure out what I'm talking about. That, and I'm trying to make as much of a complete Prisoner soundtrack as possible. Thanks to my beloved Prisoner Files 3-disc set which should be coming in the next two weeks or so, I'll hopefully make some headway with that.
Approximately 3 hours later after I wrote the above: I managed to find a free full length version of the Prelude to L'Arlesienne Suite I (a 1967-1968 recording by the Miami Youth Orchestra, of all things) after searching through 16 different pages of results on Yahoo. Go me! Actually, it's the entire Overture to L'Arlesienne, but all that I care about is the prelude. It only took me two hours to find a free version of the Beatles's "Eleanor Rigby", last time I did a similar search. Now if only I could identify that 12 second Eiffel Tower clip from John Barry's A View to a Kill on Bond Smells a Rat Music site. Apparently the rumor that it comes from Barry's Until September might be false.
Musc is very strange for me. My problem is that I can't listen to a piece of music for its own sake anymore; I have to analyze it and trace the development of the various themes and melody lines and figure out what instruments play what. And I don't even know any music terminology or theory or anything like that; it's more like analyzing a work of literature, in a way. I'm mostly talking about film scores here, and how the music adds symbolism and creates atmosphere and what not, and possible influences from composers of the same genre. And then there's the issue of making real complete soundtracks that include every single cue instead of just the main themes; how are you suppose to appreciate the entirety of the score if so much is missing? I've found that it's often those six second cues that are cut off the soundtrack that are sometimes the most memorable, the most intriguing. And how do all of the themes relate to one another? If I've seen the film, how do variations on the same theme contribute a different atmosphere for different scenes? How does the music continue to sound fresh and yet retain a thematic unity? And when I do manage to figure it all out, I feel like I've discovered something truly extraordinary all on my own, and somehow I finally begin to understand a different auditory realm. Perhaps that's what drives my semi-subconscious (whatever that might be) into tracking down obscure cues and figuring out where they originally came from. It's the fact that I manage to come up with these discoveries on my own that makes me feel like I'm actually finding my own niche. I don't know how to explain this, really. It's a way for my ego to express itself, I suppose.
It's weird that I've finally found some sort of passion. And yet I know that I will never dedicate my life to this.
Approximately 3 hours later after I wrote the above: I managed to find a free full length version of the Prelude to L'Arlesienne Suite I (a 1967-1968 recording by the Miami Youth Orchestra, of all things) after searching through 16 different pages of results on Yahoo. Go me! Actually, it's the entire Overture to L'Arlesienne, but all that I care about is the prelude. It only took me two hours to find a free version of the Beatles's "Eleanor Rigby", last time I did a similar search. Now if only I could identify that 12 second Eiffel Tower clip from John Barry's A View to a Kill on Bond Smells a Rat Music site. Apparently the rumor that it comes from Barry's Until September might be false.
Musc is very strange for me. My problem is that I can't listen to a piece of music for its own sake anymore; I have to analyze it and trace the development of the various themes and melody lines and figure out what instruments play what. And I don't even know any music terminology or theory or anything like that; it's more like analyzing a work of literature, in a way. I'm mostly talking about film scores here, and how the music adds symbolism and creates atmosphere and what not, and possible influences from composers of the same genre. And then there's the issue of making real complete soundtracks that include every single cue instead of just the main themes; how are you suppose to appreciate the entirety of the score if so much is missing? I've found that it's often those six second cues that are cut off the soundtrack that are sometimes the most memorable, the most intriguing. And how do all of the themes relate to one another? If I've seen the film, how do variations on the same theme contribute a different atmosphere for different scenes? How does the music continue to sound fresh and yet retain a thematic unity? And when I do manage to figure it all out, I feel like I've discovered something truly extraordinary all on my own, and somehow I finally begin to understand a different auditory realm. Perhaps that's what drives my semi-subconscious (whatever that might be) into tracking down obscure cues and figuring out where they originally came from. It's the fact that I manage to come up with these discoveries on my own that makes me feel like I'm actually finding my own niche. I don't know how to explain this, really. It's a way for my ego to express itself, I suppose.
It's weird that I've finally found some sort of passion. And yet I know that I will never dedicate my life to this.
