Mike: 

It seems to me that the great works you describe and other like examples of true compositional greatness were, in most cases, created over extended periods of time. Many of these works took months and even years to write and orchestrate. Even so, they were often revised extensively by their composers.

Certainly, Bach, Haydn, Mozart and many composers of the 16th and 17th centuries worked under tremendous time pressure and had to produce a lot of work in a short period. However, most of the composers of those eras produced only pedestrian work at best. Only the few true geniuses were able to create great works under those conditions. From the 18th century onward, it seems to me that great compositions were mostly the result of a combination of talent, tremendous education and a lot of time.

Of course, it is possible that I am wrong about this but, I don't know how it is possible to create extended works at the highest possible level with a deadline of the kinds most of us work under. This seems true whether you are in Film, Television, Games or in my world of the Theatre. For myself, I completely empathize with your statement, "I hear my own work and I see a galaxy-sized gulf between my work and the work I truly am inspired by." I know for sure that I am not good enough to do great work quickly. Of course, I don't know whether I can produce great work at all. I do know that the only chance for that to ever happen is if I find a way to take more time than I do now.

Be Well,

Poppa 

But of course, the film-going audience doesn't care how long you had or didn't have to write the music.  There are no disclaimers in the credits.  This is true for most any conditions we write under: what we deliver is what we deliver.  It may not always be fair, but I don't maintain any illusion that my audience will be in any way forgiving; they'll hold my music right up against the best stuff, so I have to maintain that as a goal.

_Mike

Mike:

What you say makes sense to a certain extent. Certainly, it is worthwhile to set high standards. Still, I wonder if you are correct that audiences hold film scores up against the very best art music. Frankly, I doubt that. I certainly don't.

That is not to say that such high quality of writing cannot be achieved under those circumstances since it has, on occasion. I'm simply saying that, as far as I can tell, the greatest works, the ones we admire most, seem to me to have taken time to create.

Be Well,

Poppa

Of course they do; they absolutely do and couldn't help it.  If you don't find a particular stand-up comic funny, you can't make yourself find him funny just by telling yourself, "well, this is just a little out-of-the-way comedy club he's performing in and not Madison Square Garden, so I should expect less."  You don't find them funny, period.  Same with music.  It either moves you or it doesn't, and if the stuff that moves you most is truly masterwork stuff, you're going to feel less from inferior pieces. You're not going to be able to convince yourself that just because it's for a film, or was written quickly, it is as satisfying as your favorite pieces.  That's a totally unrealistic expectation to put on -certainly the average- viewer.  Music is wonderfully pure in this sense.  As it is, most of the best and enduring film scores are ones which approach these levels of compositional virtuosity, which only seems to solidify the point: the better they are, the better they are.  

_Mike

Mike:

I'm afraid I must respectfully disagree. I understand the concept of unconscious response, etc. But, in my opinion, the average movie goer has not even heard most of the greatest art music. This has been increasingly true throughout the history of film. We can say that, in the silent film era, some art music was played along with the films and some of that audience may have also listened to art music. However, as the history of film, and film music has progressed, the wider film audience consists of people of less and less art music education.

I do not believe you can use the argument that this music exists all around and people are aware of it. In my opinion, the vast majority of the movie going audience does not listen to art music and has absolutely no ability whatsoever to compare or contrast it with film music. They cannot tell the difference between Bach and Bartok and honestly, most of them don't care. I think this is true all over the world. I think it is true in every media genre (TV, Games, Theatre, etc.).

We may want to tell ourselves that audiences can somehow sense the difference and that the greatest of our creations will stand the test of time due to their intrinsic merits. This may even be true to some extent, I really don't know. But to think that people really have a sense of the comparison between a film score and art music, that they put these genres up against one another consciously or unconsciously is wishful thinking. They just don't.

Be Well,

Poppa

I'm aiming for the harshest, most well-informed critic in the audience, not the lowest common denominator listener - who nonetheless seems proportionally moved by better music, even without the benefit of familiarity. I think counting on the ignorance of an audience to forgive the quality of our work is... well, let's just say we have opposing philosophies on the matter.  I sure as hell am not taking that chance.

_Mike

Mike:

You might be misinterpreting my opinion. My primary point was that, as far as I can tell, the music we tend to think of as the great masterworks, seems to take time to create. The discussion took the direction of what audiences think and it appears we have a difference of opinion there. However, I don't mean to imply that the standard to which we aspire as composers should somehow be altered because of either opinion. I believe in striving always for the highest possible level in any work whether it is a 3 pc arrangement of "Kum ba yah," a film score or music one wishes to call "art." In this, I suspect we are in agreement.

Be Well,

Poppa

@PoppaJOL said:

Mike:

 

You might be misinterpreting my opinion. My primary point was that, as far as I can tell, the music we tend to think of as the great masterworks, seems to take time to create. The discussion took the direction of what audiences think and it appears we have a difference of opinion there. However, I don't mean to imply that the standard to which we aspire as composers should somehow be altered because of either opinion. I believe in striving always for the highest possible level in any work whether it is a 3 pc arrangement of "Kum ba yah," a film score or music one wishes to call "art." In this, I suspect we are in agreement.

 

Be Well,

 

Poppa

Mike:

You're quite right. If you look back a couple of posts you'll see I specifically mention Bach and Mozart in exactly this context. They were supreme geniuses who were able to create deathless works quickly. Most composers of their eras, working under the same time constraints, were not able to create works of that calibre.

Please understand, I am not saying anything is impossible or even that I'm right. It's just an observation. You mentioned these wonderful composers whose work I also admire and I made the observation that most of these works were created with plenty of time rather than under the high speed conditions usual to the film industry. I wasn't saying it's not possible to create great music under those conditions. Clearly some people have done so.

Be Well,

Poppa

" I don't maintain any illusion that my audience will be in any way forgiving; they'll hold my music right up against the best stuff" - mverta

What planet are you from?  That's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time.

Yeah, right -  everyone at The Dark Knight is wondering "Is this as good as Bach's Mass in B Minor? No, not quite. The counterpoint is not up to Johann's standards." 

Audiences in American cinemas are absolutely, completely subconscious.  They are affected mainly by thumping noises, gunfire and explosion sounds.   The artistic quality of music is an insignificant decoration slipped in by the composer, usually against the producer's wishes. 

 One other thing -

"All this computer crap is just us trying to approximate the great orchestral palette with what we've got -" - mverta

No. That is what YOU are trying to do.  Don't assume that everyone else here is trying to do what you are doing.  This "computer crap" - as you crudely put it  - is a revolution in musical expression that deserves far more serious use than your concept of "faking an orchestra."

...such anger, geez.  I think what Mike was saying was that an actual, real orchestra sounds better and is way more flexible in its sound versus what you can produce using VIs.  And I'm not quite sure what you mean by your comment that we must use this revolution in a 'far more serious' manner.  If I want to produce a 'flippant' score in a most flippant manner, is that not ok with you?

And finally, regarding your previous comments suggesting that American audiences have barely enough sophistication to appreciate explosions, while the Batman score was indeed forgetable, I'd much rather listen to it than to a composer who feels it his duty to remind his audience how ignorant and provincial they truly are.

Oh, and by the way, wasn't it Mozart who composed for the riff raff rather than the highbrow.  Hard to tell, he might have loved composing a move like Batman.  Leave all those Lifetime Channel gigs to that Beethoven guy :)

@William said:

Yeah, right -  everyone at The Dark Knight is wondering "Is this as good as Bach's Mass in B Minor? No, not quite. The counterpoint is not up to Johann's standards." 

You misunderstood.  I'm saying that they're going to be moved by the music or they're not, and are not going to scale their emotional reaction simply because it's a movie they're watching, and not a symphony they're attending.  The burden on a film composer to create great music is as high as it is for a concert composer, usually with more challenges, less time, and more cooks in the kitchen, but the goal is still the same.  The best film music, as I've pointed out, is usually that which is musically most satsifying on its own.  In fact, the measure of a truly great film score - and today a largely unheard quality - is that it manages to serve the otherwise non-musical picture edit, the director's vision, and the drama while somehow simultaneously maintaining complete internal cohesion within each cue, and taken together as a complete 90-120 minute work. It has to be of a completely dual nature, yet simultaneously existing in complete syngery.  When it's done properly, it's a beautiful accomplishment.

_Mike

 Anger? What anger?  This is me being nice.  

Mverta - I did not misunderstand anything. You changed what you said.  And it's still wrong.

"The best film music, as I've pointed out, is usually that which is musically most satsifying on its own." - mverta

Where'd you point that bullshit out?   Some of the worst film music ever written is brilliant musically on its own, but functions badly in the film.   Some of the most banal, simplistic block chords and moronically repetitive themes (i.e. Last of the Mohicans) works perfectly as film music.  

@DMac said:

...while the Batman score was indeed forgetable, I'd much rather listen to it than to a composer who feels it his duty to remind his audience how ignorant and provincial they truly are.

So would most everyone else, which is why the militantly highbrow composers end up languishing in the halls of academia bestowing each other with meaningless accolades for their boring music nobody listens to, while decrying the masses.  Anyway, you get it.

_Mike

@William said:

" I don't maintain any illusion that my audience will be in any way forgiving; they'll hold my music right up against the best stuff" - mverta

 

What planet are you from?  That's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time.

 

Yeah, right -  everyone at The Dark Knight is wondering "Is this as good as Bach's Mass in B Minor? No, not quite. The counterpoint is not up to Johann's standards." 

 

Audiences in American cinemas are absolutely, completely subconscious.  They are affected mainly by thumping noises, gunfire and explosion sounds.   The artistic quality of music is an insignificant decoration slipped in by the composer, usually against the producer's wishes. 

@William said:

 Anger? What anger?  This is me being nice.  [...] 

May I please ask all participants in this discussion to stick to a friendly tone and to avoid getting even _close_ to personal attacks. Thanks a lot for your understanding.

Kind regards,

 Hi Mike,

Just want to say that I have followed this thread with interest - I have not read all of the posts yet though - but out of curiosity I decided to go to your site, and I was just knocked out by your music and your demo's. Truly amazing! I think I downloaded nearly every mp3 demo on your site as they are not only great to listen to, but they are full of good orchestration ideas.

Now, this is the one chance, if I get it, to ask a succesful composer for films like yourself some questions. [if that's OK].

1. Listening to the Batman track that goes with the ride, I noticed the orchestration was not only pretty amazingly wonderful [well, marvelous actually].

.. were you able, or are you able, as a film composer that is, access to the actual orchestral score by Danny Elfman? Well, I'm guessing that the rights for the use of the Batman theme may also possibly give you access to the score by Danny Elfman - so, are you, lets say, if you are composing for a Warner Company film, and you want a specific orchestration effect that you liked in a certain film that was done by Warner Company - does that mean you can acess the actual score for that film to see how it was done to help you orchestrate the sound you need?

It's just that  I am guessing that film composers and orchestraters for film may be able to access many movie scores that many of us not in that business would be able to - am I correct thinking this?

2. Your orchestration  skills are obviously bowling us over in this thread, including myself. How did you aquire such great skllls in this area? Besides the obvious fact that you were already extremely gifted musically and also had a very strong aural memory and the ability to be creative and have the imagination for orchestral sounds in your mind before you started -  was  there any course of study you did that helped improve and or add to these skills? Special scores you studied? Seminars attended such as the Smalley Seminars?  Equal Interval System Training? Obviously nothing beats learning orchestration as actually doing it, and being gifted in this area before starting out as you are, but I suppose I am asking what you feel has been the most important influence on your skills in this area.

3. As a matter of interest to us composers/orchestrators, I notice that more and more of the John Williams scores are available, and I've brought quite of few of them. Are there any particular scores in  the realm of classical/romantic/20th century concert music that has been a big influence on your orchestration?

I hope that you don't mind me asking the questions and that you get the time/chance to answer.

best regards,

Steve Martin.

Brisbane, Australia. [:D]

Hi Steve -  Thanks so much for the kind words... 

In regards to the Batman Ride score:  Six Flags/WB MovieWorld had paid Warner Bros. Pictures the licensing fee to use that theme long before I came aboard, (I actually replaced a composer they were not happy with), and I was initially hesitant to use it because, well, it's Danny's. But they'd paid for it, and wanted to get their money's worth, so that greatly influenced the sound of the rest of the score, because I wanted it to be cohesive.  They sent me the score for 1m1 - the Main Title theme, and I used it pretty much as-is for a short section near the top of the ride.  One change I made immediately, though, was to drop 2 of the Horns (it was written for 6).  My engineer, Shawn Murphy, had previously helped clean up the original Batman soundtrack which had a lot of issues with it, and the horns were especially unwieldly and problematic because they were just blasting unnaturally/disproportionally.  I'm not sure what motivated the 6 horns, as it was still written for 4, with doubles, but I suspect all the ff and fff and ffff markings everywhere else were wreaking havoc with the balance.  In general, orchestras of that size record better about a dynamic marking to 2 dynamic markings quieter than you might think, which tends to make it more musical, gives you more dynamic headroom, and records better.  We didn't miss the two horns for one second, and had no balance issues otherwise.

My training is a mixture of utterly self-taught methods, tempered later in life by academic schooling.  What happened was that as a young boy, I was making up my own training regimen - just guessing, really - and by the time I got to college, the academic teaching helped organize the practical experience I already had.  I had the good fortune of going to a high school wtih 4 orchestras, 4 wind ensembles, 4 jazz bands, a swing choir, a bunch of other vocal groups, two pit orchestra groups, a synth ensemble and a recording studio, so I basically wrote something every day for friends or bands to play or sing.  I wrote competition pieces for soloists, or quartet/quintet stuff, or big band charts, jazz combo pieces; I wrote for the student musicals,  played in rock bands, etc.  Truth be told, I ditched a lot of my academic classes to hang out in the arts wing.  It was really a lot of trial and error, hands on, every day.But even before that I was doing a lot of composing on my own - I was basically expelled from the conservatory I studied classical piano at for 6 years because I kept changing the music - they sent me to learn jazz, which encouraged improvisation, and thank God for that. There were a ton of other things, too... lots of experiments playing at parties and studying the ways music influenced people consciously and unconsciously.  

About John Williams: he is the reason I'm a composer. His melodic sensibilites are remarkable, but you also don't have to dig very deep to hear exactly where he learned his "thing," and that's what I study. There are tons of pieces to mention, but pieces like William Schuman's Symphony No. 3 or Prokovief's Scythian Suite, or Vaughan Williams' Sinfonia Antartica are just dripping with higher-order manifestations of most of his favorite orchestral sounds.  I study film scores for the thing that makes them truly unique: their structure.  For the orchestrational study, I listen to repertoire pieces.  And of course, not just listen, but absorb, study, transcribe, re-arrange, re-harmonize, etc.  

In the end though, I'm just a typical Rimsky-Korsakov orchestrator, with French-School efficiency tendencies - the "less is more" philosophy.  I enjoy finding that full, rich sound that somehow looks deceptively simple on paper.  "That's IT?"   And more importantly, good orchestration is just part of the deal - I prefer to focus on what I'm doing harmonically and melodically.  Without those, it's just a lot of forgettable, pretty noise.

_Mike