Cue of the Week: Celamy End Titles

This past weekend I attended the Angelus Awards at the DGA, where Celamy, a short film I scored last year, walked off with the Grand Prize. It was a bit odd to see a preist serving as master of ceremonies at a film festival, but, as they say, this is Los Angeles. Other onstage luminaries included Gary Oldman and The Passion of the Christ's James Caviezel. An unexpected treat was hearing my score interpreted, albeit briefly, by a four-person band onstage.

The film's director, Julie Meerschwam, is one of the most talented visual storytellers I've had the pleasure to encounter, and I'm not just saying that to embarrass her into hiring me again in the future. So in honor of the film's success, this week's selection will be an excerpt from Celamy's end title music.

Celamy - End Titles

Cue of the Week: The Storm Breaks

Here's the companion piece to last week's cue. This composition features the same thematic idea as "The Storm Gathers", but presents it in a somewhat less atmospheric and more dramatic context.

The Storm Breaks

This was recorded at the same session in Russia as last week's cue. I wasn't sure about the capabilities of the musicians, and so gave the main thematic statement to the trombones, where I normally might have given it to the horns and put it an octave higher. (Feel free to imagine that as you listen.)

The string accent at the very end is an homage to one of the great contributors to the "storm music" tradition, composer Modest Mussorgky. The only problem is, I can't remember in what piece he used the effect, or whether it was his orchestration or Rimsky-Korsakoff's. Hey, I said I was paying homage, not that I have great memory.

Hope you enjoy the cue! Back to work for me.

Interview

I have been interviewed by GSoundtracks.com, a gaming soundtracks website. The main focus of the interview is my score for Empire Earth II, though I talk some about my film music work and the differences between working in both media. And, there's that same dashing photo of me, of which I know you can't get enough. Check it out!

Cue of the Week: The Storm Gathers

This week's cue is film music with no film - yet. I wrote this piece earlier this year for a production music library. As the library is in the process of being bought out by a substantially bigger music library, you may well hear this cue in theatrical trailers or television in the not-too-far future, though it's impossible to tell where in advance. Such are the exciting mysteries of library music work.

The Storm Gathers

I wrote this piece's central theme back in college. I've always been fond of it, so I took the occasion to develop it into this stand-alone composition. I took some inspiration from program music pieces like Mussorgsky's "Night On Bald Mountain", which try to suggest storylines through music. Maybe it's my Russian ancestry speaking, but I've always been moved by images of dark and stormy nights, or images of racing through forests at unhealthy speeds. While not necessarily program music, this piece tries to evoke a mood along those lines.

I was actually not present at the recording session, which took place somewhere in Russia. (It wasn't as espionage-intensive as that description implies.) Hats off to the anonymous conductor who interpreted my score, as he or she did a great job.

There is a companion cue to this piece, which I'll present next week.

Rock and/or roll, and the theory of underscore

These days I'm working on a feature film called Siren. I'm writing what's primarily a rock score, which is a among other things a tremendous self-indulgence. The style of the cues has included country and western, contemporary indy-rock, Bo Didley-esque blues rock, smooth R&B, and other forays into pop styles. As you might guess, this has been a pretty fun project.

Writing a rock score isn't the same thing as pop songwriting. (Songs do play a predominant role in this film, but as integral parts of the story.) The process is conceptually very similar to writing orchestrally, in that I'll start with thematic ideas associated with characters, situations, or moods, then develop them across the course of the film. The themes are of course in a different musical language, and unlike their symphonic analogues they're often created as much during mixing as writing or recording. But I find that my methodology is very similar otherwise.

In the 80s there was an MTV-fueled trend of simply needle-dropping in songs as film underscore. Sometimes the approach worked very well, typically in lighthearted or contemporary films. Other times the end product was unintentional comedy. Now don't get me wrong: I have fond memories of The Allan Parsons Project. But their score for Ladyhawke, consisting of beer-commercial rock bafflingly added to a medieval fantasy backdrop, was actually singled out in my USC classes as the worst film score of all time. (It's possible that someone has subsequently snagged the title.)

Cue(s) of the Week: "Gaming Steve"

Given my druthers, I'd time travel back to the late 60s and be a writer/arranger for Motown or Atlantic at the height of the soul music era. Ergo, when my old friend and colleague Stephen Glicker, a.k.a. Gaming Steve, asked me to write some Motown-style theme music for his popular podcast, I leapt at the opportunity.

So hot off the proverbial press, here are the main and closing themes for the show. (Since both are stylistically similar, I thought I would give you a double feature this week.)

Gaming Steve Opening Theme Song
Gaming Steve Closing Theme Song



I was lucky enough to rope in an all-star team of horn players for the session. John Papenbrook, our first trumpet, had been playing with Aretha Franklin that weekend, so he was in the right frame of mind to say the least. The rest of the horns - I can't bring myself to call trumpets and saxes "brass and wind players" in this context - boasted similar talents and impressive resumes.

And if that bluesy growl belting out the lyrics sounds familiar, it may be because you recognize Oren Waters' voice from the Jeffersons theme song. (It is Oren who informs you that beans don't burn on the grill.) Kudos also go to Gennine Jackson for her backing vocals, and Tom Strahle for his jaunty fender solos.

Needless to say, this gig was a lot of fun.