The SCORE - Fall 2017 by The SCL in NY

VOLUME XXXII NUMBER THREE FALL 2017

T H E C R E A T I V E P R O C E S S

Analysis Paralysis By Jack D. Elliot & Jemma Elliot, MA, LMFT, LPCC

o much of our physical, mental and spiritual energy is absorbed by the demands of our careers. In Western culture, it seems that our career path and achievements almost define us, creating the persona which is seen and evaluated by the outside world. Think about the last time that you were introduced to someone new in a social setting. We are guessing that it is inevitable that one of the first questions asked was likely, “So, what do you do?” As members of a couple who both inhabit intriguing careers, when asked that question, we are used to hearing, “Wow, you really have such opposite career paths.” And our response is, “Well, not really!” Vocationally, one of us is a composer, songwriter and music producer, while the other is a licensed psychotherapist and graduate professor of psychology. It is true that our daily professional tasks are wildly different, so on the face of things, it’s easy to see why folks would view our careers as divergent paths. At the heart of it, though, the paths are actually extraordinarily similar: we are both looking to be highly attuned to the inner workings of what moves the mind, spirit and psyche. We have a goal in mind to connect with others and create healing and movement through our work in the world. We often find common ground when discussing a cultural phenomenon, observing a dilemma, or pondering a question. And one of those areas is something we have observed frequently, both in ourselves and others: a common process for the artistic individual which our culture has affectionately deemed “Analysis Paralysis.” This is a process in which over-thinking, over-analyzing, secondguessing, self-doubting, and generally amped-up worrying can derail us from our intended goal, essentially paralyzing our creative process and stopping us in our tracks. As

the pace of life continually quickens, and the dissemination of new information and ideas intensifies, the opportunity to fall victim to Analysis Paralysis presents itself often. We are guessing it is something you have wrestled with as well, so hang in there with us as we explore not only some examples of how the process of Analysis Paralysis can manifest for the busy creative professional, but also as we ponder what might be done about it. A Common Analysis Paralysis Dilemma: Second-Guessing Your Art

Composers, songwriters, and musicians are motivated by different factors. Some of us want success and recognition. Some want financial rewards. Others just want to share their work with the greater collective. Whichever path drives us in the pursuit of this very unique career, underneath it all, we are emotional, creative creatures who work incredibly hard to hone our craft and refine our skills. In a competitive and fast-paced business, there is always something new to learn. New technology to master. New sounds to consider. New people to interface with. Comparing ourselves to what’s already out there can be both very motivating and extremely crippling. For anyone who is hardworking and passionate about what they do, the Analysis Paralysis loop can kick in. With composers, though, add in the combustible combination of emotion, creation, and business pressure, and watch the plot thicken. Fear and doubt when it comes to the creation of our art is a big contributing factor to the possibility of Analysis Paralysis. Overanalyzing, as opposed to flowing and trusting, can be a powerful derailer. How many times have you sat in the studio, started writing, and something great is coming really quickly? But then, if you take a pause, there may be a Continued on Page 18

Fear and doubt when it comes to the creation of our art is a big contributing factor to the possibility of Analysis Paralysis. C O N T E N T S

If These Walls Could Sing! Rediscovering The Legendary Sound City Studios 5 Tech Talk 7 High Quality Plugins For Composers 9 Inside The Mind Of Marco Beltrami 12 Musical Shares 23

F R O M T H E E D I T O R ' S D E S K

What’s In A Title? By Lori Barth

President ASHLEY IRWIN Vice Presidents ARTHUR HAMILTON CHARLES BERNSTEIN Recording Secretary JONATHAN DAVID NEAL Treasurer/CFO CHRISTOPHER FARRELL The SCORE LORI BARTH, Senior Editor Advisory Board ALAN BERGMAN MARILYN BERGMAN CHARLES BERNSTEIN BILL CONTI CHARLES FOX JAMES NEWTON HOWARD QUINCY JONES ALAN MENKEN THOMAS NEWMAN LALO SCHIFRIN MARC SHAIMAN HOWARD SHORE ALAN SILVESTRI DIANE WARREN PATRICK WILLIAMS CHRISTOPHER YOUNG HANS ZIMMER In Memoriam Advisory Board Members ELMER BERNSTEIN JOHN CACAVAS JERRY GOLDSMITH MAURICE JARRE PETER MATZ DAVID RAKSIN Directors RAMÓN BALCÁZAR LORI BARTH FLETCHER BEASLEY RUSSELL BROWER GEORGE S. CLINTON DAVID DAS JOEL DOUEK IRA HEARSHEN LYNN KOWAL MICHAEL LEHMANN BODDICKER MARK MCKENZIE HELENE MUDDIMAN GREG PLISKA MARK ROOS ELIZABETH ROSE ADRYAN RUSS GARRY SCHYMAN ELIZABETH SELLERS KUBILAY UNER Past Presidents JOHN ADDISON RICHARD BELLIS BRUCE BROUGHTON JAY CHATTAWAY RAY COLCORD JAMES DI PASQUALE DAN FOLIART ARTHUR HAMILTON MARK WATTERS

good title is worth a whole song. The story is there waiting to be written. Arthur Hamilton once told me that he would tell his mother the titles he thought up, and she would say, “Don’t write me the title, write me the song.” You can catch a title out of the air, in a line of movie dialogue, or over-hearing something from a conversation…. Every title has a story, and every story can be told from several angles. This is the job of the lyricist, to catch magic out of the air. The story is waiting to happen. g

DIAMOND MEMBERS Kristen Anderson-Lopez Lori Barth Alan & Marilyn Bergman Dennis C. Brown Carter Burwell Ray Charles George Clinton

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P R E S I D E N T ’ S M E S S A G E

The End Of A Fine Romance

By Ashley Irwin

s another sultry summer here in North America comes to a close, it’s always interesting to catch up with colleagues and find out how they spent their time if, in fact, they had time off. Many people take the opportunity to travel or do repairs and renovations on their homes while a not so surprising number of others update their studios — swapping out obsolete equipment for cutting edge replacements and installing new computer operating systems and software upgrades, knowing they have time to iron out the invariable “wrinkles” that ensue. Anyone who’s been in the business as long as I have (almost 40 years!) has lost count of the technological changes that have occurred over the years and the modifications to our arsenals of equipment we’ve made along the way — not to mention the devaluation that’s affected all but the most sought after pieces of gear. I’m constantly amused by the newbies that stop by my studio and marvel at my 2-inch reel-to-reel tape recorder, my racks of classic synths connected via a bank of MIDI Timepieces and a slew of outboard effects. Their eyes light up like they’ve entered the “recording Smithsonian” and I guess, in some ways, they have. But as I look around my room, somehow there’s something unique that distinguishes the gear from all the software plugins I’ve acquired since the move to working “in the box” began. Even though I don’t use most of it anymore, virtually every piece of hardware in my room has a story behind it: if nothing

more than when and how I came upon it or the projects on which it was used. There definitely exists a romantic attachment that is simply not there with software and it’s this relationship that often precludes us from sending certain pieces of gear out to pasture. Why is that? There’s no doubt those of us who grew up with knobs and faders, patch cords and switches have a certain tactile preference that we have to overcome when embracing the touchscreen and mouse approach to creating sounds or mixing music. But each of us has had to transition, to some degree or another, in order to remain relevant or even communicate with the rest of the industry. One day recently, another SCL board member and I began to explore this phenomenon. He had used the summer to overhaul his room and set-up: from carpet and paint to a complete purge of redundant hardware. He explained that his curiosity had been piqued by music school graduates entering the field with little more than a computer, an interface, one or two microphones, a couple of pairs of headphones and some speakers. Once you’ve settled on a DAW and loaded your drive(s) with some soft synths and virtual instrument libraries, you’re pretty much on your way. He was curious to see how hard it would be for him to emulate this trend and was determined to try. I began to consider how hard it would be for me to divorce myself from certain pieces of gear, some of which I haven’t even turned on in years. Frankly, it’s not been uncommon

Many years ago I resolved to only add the gear or software to my set-up that made my workflow more productive and, ergo, my life easier.

Continued on Next Page

James Di Pasquale Honored The Society Of Composers & Lyricists honored James Di Pasquale at their 2016 Annual Holiday Dinner with an inscription on the award that reads: In Recognition of His Immeasurable Contributions to the Organization Since Inception in 1984 James DiPasquale Is Hereby Designated An Honorary Lifetime Member of The Society of Composers & Lyricists December 14, 2016, Los Angeles, California The SCL owes so much to Mr. Pasquale for all he has done for this organization (see June, 2017 lead story The Score). This is a debt we can never repay. Again, thank you Jim! Well-deserved and long overdue.

N O T E S F R O M N E W Y O R K

SCL New York Events Spring 2017 Song Placement Workshop

with songwriter Peter Bliss and Soda Box Music’s Carolyn Baron, Daniela Crudup, and Allan Tepper; Moderated by Adonis Tsilimparis Wed., June 14th at Alchemical Studios

L-R: Allan Tepper, Mark Roos, Daniela Crudup, Adonis Tsilimparis, Carolyn Baron, Peter Bliss, Elizabeth Rose L-R: Adonis Tsilimparis, Peter Bliss, Carolyn Baron, Daniela Crudup, Allan Tepper

Screening: Once Upon A Time - The Musical Episode

with songwriters Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner Moderated by Stephen Schwartz Thurs. June 15th at Soho House

L-R: Alan Zachary, Stephen Schwartz, Michael Weiner Annual SCL NY Community Picnic

Friday, June 16th at Prospect Park, Brooklyn

President’s Message Continued from Page 3

Christopher North and Mark Roos at SCL picnic SCL NY Mentor Program events:

L-R: Mark Suozzo, Lara Stolman, Ron Sadoff Screening: “Swim Team”

with director Lara Stolman and composer Mark Suozzo Wed., July 12th at IFC Center 4

Documentary Scoring with Mark Suozzo — May 18th Composing for Games with Tom Salta — May 22nd Songwriting for Television with David Wolfert and Elizabeth Rose — May 31st Entertainment Law — Tues., June 6th Inside the Film Scoring Process with Chris Hajian — June 12th

in the past, when I have powered up an old keyboard or classic synth module, that the beast has needed servicing in some capacity and I ended up spending a few hundred bucks on repairs while ultimately reverting to a soft synth emulation to complete the task while the gear is at the shop. Many years ago I resolved to only add the gear or software to my setup that made my workflow more productive and, ergo, my life easier. I surmised that there would not be one client willing to pay me any more money because I had the “latest and greatest” and I believe that not being the “first cab off the rank” has saved me an inordinate amount of expense and time. Now, my new resolution is to quietly cull the equipment I no longer use, regardless of emotional attachment. I’ll miss you, old friends. g

S O U N D C I T Y S T U D I O S

If These Walls Could Sing! Rediscovering The Legendary Sound City Studios By Lynn F. Kowal

hen you walk into a recording studio, you look around. You snap your fingers. You go into various corners and you let out a few “ah-ahs” to gauge the acoustics. You play a series of chords on the resident piano. You size up the mixing console. Then, maybe (if you’re lucky) you start absorbing the heritage and the lingering echoes of past recordings created in that very space. You imagine your music reverberating through that hallowed room and your chance to add to the audial history embedded in the walls. This is one story, in a series, of the romantic musical life of recording studios. Any set of walls and a mic can stand witness as you record your music, but how often do you get to lay down tracks and season your sound with the undeniable essence of music history? Sound City Studios’ original, physical space began as Vox Amplifiers’ factory warehouse in 1964. The studio space was built as a testing area for their amps. In 1969, the building was acquired by Joe Gottfried and Tom Skeeter who hoped to create a recording studio and a record label. What they created was an environment (backed by solid gear and acoustics) with the true love of creating great music. The early years were slow going, even with Neil Young (After The Gold Rush) and Dr. John recording there. The mid-1970’s proved to be something else entirely. An upcoming duo named Buckingham Nicks (Lindsey and Stevie) were working in Sound City’s Studio B when they heard one of their tracks coming out of Studio A. As it turns out, Mick Fleetwood, at the behest of Sound City engineer/producer Keith Olsen,

was there checking out the studio and was listening to the track as a representation of what could be done at the studio. Shortly thereafter, Mick was looking for a new guitarist and remembered the track. The newly staffed Fleetwood Mac would end up recording albums Fleetwood Mac and Rumours at Sound City. After that, the studio became the hot place to record. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Elton John, Rick Springfield, Santana, Foreigner, Alice Cooper, REO Speedwagon, Rage Against The Machine, Diana Ross, Bob Dylan, Metallica, Barry Manilow, Pat Benatar, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana all came to record landmark albums at this unassuming Van Nuys, California spot. Luckily, today the studios remain virtually untouched and available for recording sessions of every kind. There have been no changes to the acoustics and the rooms sound amazing. Studio A has a Live Room Dimension of 43’ x 38’ x 40’ x 40’ and has all the original surfaces. It is a legendary room for recording percussion. The space is naturally dampened but still alive—very present. Every quadrant of the room sounds consistent. Small orchestras would record really well in the space. Studio B has a Live Room Dimension of 43’ x 38’ x 40’x 40’. The room has a slightly more muted resonance, but is an awesome small ensemble space. The room does have the added provenance of Buckingham Nicks’ first recordings and Charles Manson’s last (he recorded demos here, intended for the Beach Boys, shortly before the week that brought Continued on Next Page him infamy in 1969).

Any set of walls and a mic can stand witness as you record your music, but how often do you get to lay down tracks and season your sound with the undeniable essence of music history?

Sound City Studios Continued from Page 5

And, Sound City has its original, amazing Echo Chamber, which measures 15’ x 18’ x 16’. With a full 5 second—and then some—echo, it sounds incredible. Pure and heavenly, the chamber is wondrous to hear. It really can’t be overstated how beautiful this chamber sounds. After a long run of success, Sound City closed for commercial business in May of 2011. It became a private studio. The original Neve 8028 Console from Studio A was sold to Dave Grohl, drummer for Nirvana (which recorded their landmark album Nevermind at Sound City). Newly revamped in 2017, Sandy Skeeter (daughter of original Sound City owner Tom Skeeter) along with Olivier Chastan, has revitalized and relaunched Sound City. Chastan says, “I was moving to Los Angeles to start my company, Iconoclast, and was thinking

about moving my studio in Hudson, New York. I wanted to keep working in a high quality environment. Initially, I was going to move to The Record Plant, but the studio was in the process of changing ownership and it got too complicated. The person working with Lenny Kravitz mentioned Sound City as a potential place and after a few trips to work out the details, I moved there in partnership with the original owners, the Skeeter family.” The Sound City Studios site is part of a Skeeter family complex of musicrelated buildings. Many musicians have their studios and practice rooms here. Olivier Chastan has said that he hopes this complex becomes a “hub” of creativity with performance, education and recording at its heart. Studio A has become the home to another historic board, a 1973 Helios “Type 69” Console. Throughout its worldwide studio travels, this board has heard the recordings of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Peter Gabriel,

Frank Zappa, Lenny Kravitz and a host of others. The studio continues to offer the signature analog sound in perfect harmony with digital recording. There is another exciting option Sound City Studios has in place—remote digital audio. If you are not able to be in Los Angeles, or want to sweeten your tracks with the amazing sound of the rooms or the echo chamber at Sound City, without having to book the whole studio, they can re-amp, process, edit, mix and master your project. You can upload tracks and remotely use the facilities to add an extra flavor to your final mix. Please see their website: www. soundcitystudios.com for more details. If you are looking to add this original, analog flavor or simply want a great sounding space (with historic flavor to spare) at a great rate, Sound City may be the next place to record. They are an SCL Premier Partner and offer special rates for SCL members. Please contact the studio manager via email: g booking@soundcitystudios.com.

ASCAP At Krakow ASCAP attended the 2017 Krakow Film Festival in Poland. Pictured from the festival are:

Howard Shore arrives at the festival’s closing gala concert, which featured his music from The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

L-R: Sean Callery, Brian Tyler, Howard Shore and Jan A.P. Kaczmarek sign autographs

“Working on a deadline for TV series” panel L-R: Moderated by ASCAP’s Mike Todd with panelists David Kurtz, Atanas Valkov, Jamie Forsyth and Sean Callery

ASCAP SVP of Membership Shawn LeMone strikes a pose

ASCAP Board member (and Emmy-winning composer) Richard Bellis gives his master class “Music: The Invisible Actor”

T E C H T A L K

A Look at The Orchestra: Sonuscore’s New Sample Library By Fletcher Beasley

onuscore, maker of Kontakt libraries such as Action Strings, Action Strikes and Emotive Strings, has a new orchestral sample library called The Orchestra. The Orchestra is small in size for an orchestral library at just under seven gigabytes and features basic articulations and presets for the most common instruments of the wind, string, brass and percussion families. What makes The Orchestra most compelling is the way it makes use of the Kontakt arpeggiator to create rhythmic ostinato patterns utilizing different sections of the symphonic orchestra. The Orchestra works with Kontakt and the free Kontakt player versions 5.6.8 and higher. It is available for $399 from Best Service (www.bestservice.de), where it can be downloaded directly from the site. Installation is a straightforward process and the library shows up in the libraries tab within Kontakt. The Orchestra has presets for winds, brass, strings and percussion, covering basic articulations like pizzicato, marcato, staccato, sustain and legato. The legato presets feature legato crossfading with the modulation wheel programmed for dynamic changes. It does not include articulations like Bartok pizz or harmonics such as one would find in larger, more detailed orchestral sample libraries. The presets sound pretty good and are wellprogrammed for a basic orchestral library. However, composers who own section specific libraries by companies like Spitfire Audio, Cinesamples, 8Dio and VSL are unlikely to use the instrument presets from The Orchestra, as they don’t have the depth of samples to compete sonically and expressively with those libraries. The heart of The Orchestra library is found in the ensemble engine designed to play rhythmic sequences and it is this engine that makes The Orchestra unique. The ensemble engine is employed in a preset called “The Orchestra”, found at that root level of the preset folder. This preset provides a number of rhythmic starting points in the form of snapshots, which can be customized and edited to the user’s liking. For many, this preset will be the primary one you load when using this library as it is the only one that makes use of the ensemble engine. When you open The Orchestra preset, it

loads a snapshot of strings playing an 8th note pattern called “STRINGS Basic 8ths 01.” Snapshots are essentially patches that are loaded from within a Kontakt preset. If you click on the snapshot name, the interface displays a list of snapshots divided into three categories — Orchestral Colors, Orchestral Rhythms and Animated Orchestra. The Orchestral Colors snapshots are presets of sections and section combinations, essentially expanded patches of those found in the presets folders. Here you find patches like STRING Full Pizzicato, BRASS Full Marcato and MIXED Fl+Vlns Sustain. The titles are self-explanatory as to the content. It is in the Orchestral Rhythms and Animated Orchestra snapshots that the most interesting material is found. Orchestral Rhythms contains snapshots of many basic rhythm patterns that a composer might use for ostinato sectional parts. There are a number of 8th and 16th note sequences for strings, brass, winds and mixed combinations of those sections in 4/4, 3/4, 6/8 and even a few in 5/8 and 7/8. The strings and brass snapshots tend to repeat single notes or chords during the pattern, whereas many of the woodwind snapshots feature arpeggiation in the sequence. These are very easy to modify as needed but provide good starting points for rhythmic ostinatos. Anyone familiar with the rhythm sequencer found in Los Angeles Scoring Strings will understand The Orchestra’s rhythmic interface. Animated Orchestra contains snapshots with combinations of ostinato rhythms, sustained notes and arpeggiated patterns. These can be used to create evolving rhythmic beds and are a lot fun to play. Simply playing chord progressions on a MIDI keyboard yields interesting and musical results which inspire compositional ideas. All of the snapshots in Orchestral Rhythms Animated Orchestra respond to the modulation wheel for dynamic control of rhythmic accents. At the bottom of The Orchestra preset’s interface are three tabs for editing of the snapshots—main, engine and mixer. In the main tab, five instrument slots allow for different instruments to be loaded. Each

What makes The Orchestra most compelling is the way it makes use of the Kontakt arpeggiator to create rhythmic ostinato patterns utilizing different sections of the symphonic orchestra.

Continued on Page 16

SESAC Film & TV Dinner

SESAC’s Erin Collins, Lori Barth, SCL President Ashely Irwin, Beth Krakow, Jon Burlingame

L-R: Devin Powers with wife Kristen and John Josephson

L-R: Jon Ehrlich with daughter Georgia and SESAC’s Erin Collins

L-R: Christophe Beck, Ray Costa and Jon Burlingame

L-R: Hagar Ben-Ari and Guillermo Brown with SESAC’s Erin Collins L-R: Darice Richman and Jay Cooper

SESAC Honors Attorney Jay Cooper

ESAC honored entertainment lawyer Jay Cooper with the SESAC Visionary Award at their 2017 Film and Television Composers’ Award dinner held at the Casa Del Mar Hotel in Santa Monica on May 31. Cooper, a strong advocate for creative rights, recognizes the importance of intellectual property of the creative community and, for many years, has made immeasurable contributions to the creative arts.

L-R: SESAC’s Dennis Lord, Keith Cooper and Arturo Sandoval present award to Jay Cooper

N E W G E A R

High Quality Plugins For Composers By Jack D. Elliot

or my column this month, I will review a handful of high quality plugins that composers should know about:

Reveal Spire

A go-to for many of the top DJ’s, Reveal Spire’s VST/AU software synth sounds can be heard on the majority of current EDB, Dubstep and Trapstep tracks. I absolutely love this plugin. It contains really great sounds and has 512 built-in presets and tons of optional third-party presets. Spire has four oscillators, excellent dual resonant filters, four envelopes and four LFO’s. It also includes a standard, but solid, arpeggiator. You can make everything from smooth pads to hard, raunchy, aggressive sounds. It gives a very analog sound, which can be a little bright for my taste, but is easily fixed with a saturation plugin. A really cool extra is the TB303-style filter called “Acido”, and an Access Virus filter called “Infecto.” The effects section is fairly basic, but sounds pretty good. I would still continue to use other plugins, but if you like the preset, then staying with effects is perfectly fine. You will also find a unison and de-tuning section, excellent for making huge sounds. There is a very cool drift button for slight pitch variances, like old analog synths that can go a bit out of tune. Reveal Spire is a must-have plugin for any composer. 10/10 Tracktion BioTek

An organic synthesizer which combines an advanced synthesis engine, Tracktion BioTek provides complex sounds from natural, urban and mechanical realms. The plugin is created by two of the world’s most acclaimed synth and sound designers, Wolfram Franke (Waldorf Synthesizers) and Taiho Yamada. BioTek is a really, really cool plugin…awesome for film and television composing, but certainly not limited to these mediums. You can create beautiful soundscapes, weird modular style sounds, and ticking or pulsing synth tensionstyle sounds. BioTek features four oscillators per sound layer—FM Synthesis, Virtual Analog, Sample Playback, and Karplus-Strong— capable of creating multiple forms of synthesis with unlimited sound layers per patch. It features 200 modulation routes and 32 modifier routes, and eight unique Flow LFOs, each with eight individual parallel sync-able subLFOs on every sound layer. BioTek is compatible with all DAW platforms supporting the

AAX, AU, VST, and Linux VST formats. A pong-link colored ball allows you to morph the sounds. You can either mix the various nature sounds and synth sounds, or you can isolate them by themselves. Everything is able to be automated. BioTek is a lot of fun to use. It can be simple to use, but might also be complicated for composers who don’t typically dive deep into the settings. 9/10 menuBUS

menuBUS is an application that lives in the menu bar, allowing you to add plugins to the output of your computer interface. I personally use it with the Sonarworks reference plug, which analyzed my studio and made preset EQ curves for room correction. In the settings, you can save presets. For example, I have three presets — two for speakers and my headphones—but you could have multiple presets for iTunes, Safari and so on. This company has worked incredibly hard to continually provide updates to hammer out all of the kinks, such as interference with other items processing in the background, like Dropbox or Apple iPhoto uploads. In general, the audio is pretty smooth without dropout, but with a large amount of background processing, you can sometimes get clicks and pops. Also good to know is that the effects you add in the menus are not printed to your master when mixing from your DAW. Overall, a very handy plugin. 9/10

BioTek is a really, really cool plugin…awesome for film and television composing, but certainly not limited to these mediums.

UVI BeatBox Anthology 2

UVI BeatBox Anthology 2 is a massive hardware drum machine collection, including samples of over 50 years worth of vintage, modern, groove box, beat machines, customized drum modules, and more. BeatBox comes with over 200 drum kits and 11,000 samples, and everything is sorted by category for easy browsing. It is loaded with tons of sounds and grooves that you can export, or drag and drop the Midi file right into your session. It is also very easy to shape any sound to fit your mix (i.e., attack, decay, fx, etc.). You can also send individual drums in a kit to effects, so that each sound has its own mix. BeatBox 2 includes a strong sequencer with a lot of flexibility. You can pick different patterns on any kit, and are not limited to the groove when you open a kit. Another great feature is that you can layer multiple Continued on Page 17 9

What’sHappening

Laura Karpman attends the TV Academy concert “Music + Words” where her score to Underground was performed

By Lori Barth

L-R: Tangelene Bolton, BMI’s Reema Iqbal, Nami Melumad, Jessica Rae Huber, Tori Letzler and Perrine Virgile-Piekarski pause for a photo at “The Future is Female” concert

ASCAP writers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein celebrating their Emmy nomination for Original Main Title Theme Music for Stranger Things. Also pictured are ASCAP Film and TV Executives, Rachel Perkins and Shawn LeMone

SESAC Vice President Erin Collins attends LA film premiere for LA92, a documentary about the LA riots in 1992, scored by long-time SESAC affiliate Saunder Jurriaans along with Danny Bensi

Gabriel Mann attends the premiere of Humor Me with director Sam Hoffman at the LA Film Festival Justin Hurwitz with BMI’s Reema Iqbal at the “La La Land in Concert: A Live to Film Celebration” at the Hollywood Bowl 10

Pictured at the LA Film Festival are, L-R: BMI composers Atticus Ross, Rob Simonsen, BMI’s Doreen Ringer-Ross and BMI composers Tyler Bates and Miriam Cutler

What’sHappening

appy Anniversary Sonic Fuel Studios and congratulations to Christopher Lennertz and Tim Wynn for five wonderful years with a great celebration on June 3rd at their studios in El Segundo, CA!

By Lori Barth

Multi-Emmy-nominated SESAC composer Danny Lux visited the Berklee School of Music on SESAC Day in June and discussed his scoring process. L-R: Alison Plante, Chair of Film Scoring at Berklee, with Erin Collins, SESAC VP of Film and Television and SESAC composer Danny Lux

L-R: BMI’s Chris Dampier, Jacob Shea and Jasha Klebe, and BMI’s Evelyn Rascon

L-R: Tim Wynn, Dara Taylor and Dave Lawerence g g g

BMI’s Phil Graham, Sir Tim Rice, BMI’s Doreen Ringer-Ross and BMI composer and 2017 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Alan Menken. Menken received the Johnny Mercer Award and Ed Sheeran (PRS) accepted the Hal David Starlight Award

Jacob Shea and Jasha Klebe of Bleeding Fingers Music provided provocative insights into the making of the score for Planet Earth II after a screening of the “Islands” episode by the Society of Composers & Lyricists in Hollywood. The informative Q&A was moderated by film music and arts journalist Tim Greiving.

Comic Con

CL members Ray Costa and Chandler Poling both moderated panels at this year’s Comic Con. Costa moderated a panel entitled “5th Annual Musical Anatomy of a Superhero” and Poling moderated a panel entitled “The Character of Music: Music for Popular TV,” presented by White Bear PR.

L-R: Chandler Poling, Dave Porter, Nathalie Bonin, Michael Stein, Kyle Dixon, Eskmo, Molly McIsaac L-R: Ray Costa, David Russo, Mark Isham, Brian Tyler, Ludwig Goransson

Inside The Mind Of

MARCO BELTRAMI INTERVIEWED BY

LORI BARTH

Marco is best known for his work scoring horror films such as Mimic (1997), The Faculty (1998), Resident Evil (2002), Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2011) and The Woman in Black (2012). A long-time friend and collaborator of Wes Craven, Beltrami has scored seven of the director’s films including all four films in the Scream franchise (1996–2011). Beltrami has been nominated for two Academy Awards for 3:10 to Yuma and The Hurt Locker, and won a Satellite Award for Best Original Score for Soul Surfer (2011). He also scored Guillermo del Toro’s 2004 supernatural superhero film Hellboy, the 2013 superhero film The Wolverine and its sequel Logan. Most recently he has build a state-of-theart recording studio in the hills of Malibu where he considers this to be his musical playground. After a long drive up the hill from the Pacific Coast Highway, I visited Marco at his Pianella Studios. Score: Do you prefer writing for film or television and what are the challenges of each? 12

Marco: I mainly do film though I do a couple of TV shows which I usually do with other people. I do a show with Brandon Roberts that just finished called Turn, and one with Dennis Smith called Six. But for the most part I have mainly been doing film work. My strength is not in synth production, and for TV you have to be really good at that, so that is why I work with other people for doing that stuff. I was trained more from a concert music side. Score: Do you lean more towards orchestral music? Marco: I do both but I like to have a little bit more of a longer schedule where I can play around. One of the things I really enjoy doing with Buck [Sanders], who works with me here, is recording acoustical sources, whether it’s from instruments or from creating sounds. One of the things I’ve done is focus the wind when the Santa Ana’s blow through here. Playing around with that becomes like an instrument — becomes something I can use with orchestral stuff.

When I was younger I was always interested in trying to extend the orchestral timbres and colors, and now with electronics it really pushes that envelope. And one of the things I like about doing film music is that you can really work toward that singular performance. With TV, it’s more what sounds you have; everything is a much shorter schedule. You might hire a player or two but I haven’t done a show where you have a full orchestra each week, or even a small orchestra each week. So, from that standpoint I really enjoy working on film stuff. Some of the best material is coming out of the TV world. Score: Charles Bernstein told me you made this wonderful crazy instrument with long strings. Can you describe that? Marco: I was working on a movie for Tommy Lee Jones called The Homesman that took place in the previous century, the homesteaders. A lot of people went crazy out there on the plains. It was partly from the wind. Buck and I were thinking, “How Continued on Next Page

can we channel the wind?” We built basically a giant Aeolian harp. We got a piano and had the piano strings go 175 feet up the hill to these water tanks. When the Santa Ana winds blew, it would resonate the strings and the piano soundboard would resonate and you could also play it as a regular piano which was really cool. (You can’t anymore; it’s been out there for three years and it’s deteriorated.) So that’s an example of an instrument it takes time to put together and build but it’s a lot of fun to experiment with, record and use in a score. Score: You attended Brown University, Yale Music School and the Thornton School of Music at USC where you studied under Jerry Goldsmith. What were some of the most important lessons you learned from him? Marco: I think the most important thing I learned from him was to be economical in your writing by writing things as simply as possible for the effect that you want. Especially back then, coming from a concert background, there was a trend to make things complex. Working with Jerry was really learning how do we make this the simplest, the easiest, most playable way that we can achieve what we want to achieve. That is something that really sticks with me in everything that I do. The second thing, I think, was that he was really disappointed and thought that people were not writing melodies anymore, so I kept that in mind too — thinking about melodic structures when I write, as well. It was a great year I spent with him. Score: You’ve had wonderful collaborations. Tell us about working with Wes Craven. Marco: Wes really sort of led me by the hand in terms of film scoring. I did my first project with him; my first real film. I did a couple student films, I did a couple TV series, a movie-of-the-week, but Scream was really my first movie. He was very patient. Not only was it the first movie I had scored, but it was also the first horror movie I had ever seen so I remember being terrified, not by the daunting task of writing all the music, but just watching the people get murdered and maimed and stuff. Wes helped me see, for instance, that using silence as an element of the composi-

tion, teaching me about that and how to anticipate or play against the audience anticipation of what’s going to happen and use that musical craft or inspiration, the effect of delaying or advancing musical gestures. I learned a lot from Wes. Score: What was it like working with James Mangold. I read that he strives for originality and he’s very inspiring. Marco: Yeah, I love working with Jim. We’ve done a few projects together and he’s got a tremendous knowledge of films and film music. It’s not often that you meet a director that has such a knowledge of film scores. He’s also a huge western fan which, as far as I’m concerned, every movie’s a western. We hit it off very well. I love his sense of creativity and striving for originality and not really being into the sort of traditional film score sound like everything has to be smooth and balanced. It’s more intent and I find his outlook to be very inspirational. Score: He gives you a lot of freedom? Marco: Oh yeah, a tremendous amount of freedom. Score: He doesn’t throw out ideas? Marco: He throws out ideas when we start. Like on Logan, he referenced movies that he liked that you wouldn’t necessarily think of for a superhero movie. He referenced Taxi Driver and he referenced, as a movie, not as a score, Paper Moon and he referenced The Gauntlet. So obviously these scores wouldn’t work in Logan but there was something about the intensity that he was after, which was something that he wanted me to capture. In that sense, it becomes like a quest, how are we going to achieve that and I find that really inspirational. If someone is to say, “Oh, I don’t like clarinet, don’t use the clarinet, or whatever,” then to me it’s like a generalization, like a stereotype or something. It must mean something specifically. When there is an open canvas that has some boundaries, some things that you can explore, I think it gives a lot of freedom to discover something new. Score: In general, when you are working with people, is it easy to read what they want, understand what they want? Do you pickup on that right away, or do you have to fish?

Marco: Sometimes it takes a while to understand. I mean, everybody’s notion of certain adjectives is different. If they say they want the score to be “muscular” or something like that, it’s a meaningless term. You have to decipher what these adjectives mean to people and then you know how to proceed. And sometimes that can be a fast process and sometimes that takes a while. And also, it can be an evolving process because often times a director doesn’t know exactly what the music is so it’s going on a journey together — it’s discovering. And that process of exploration is the collaborative part of the business that I like. Score: It must have been something to work with Phillip Glass. He’s kind of out there. How was that? Marco: It was great. I loved working with Phillip. We met and watched the movie together and talked about ideas. I sent him a few thematic things I was working on and he sent me some things he was working on with a paper sketch of some of his ideas. I took some of what he was doing and what I was doing and came up with sort of a hybrid. I’d love to work more with him. Score: Is piano your main instrument since you are orchestrally trained? Marco: I’m not a performer in any sense. When I was younger I used to play piano but it’s not an instrument that I practice. I also played oboe. Score: When you write, what is your process? Do you go to the keyboard? Marco: I like to just write and then I’ll try things out on the piano and play through them. I get distracted if I sit at a piano and write. I get caught up in what I am playing at the time and I get caught up in my own inabilities and I get caught up in other stuff. So, everything becomes a little disfigured. The pure thought comes when you’re thinking away from anything and writing ideas down, then later manipulating them at the keyboard. I often find that whatever instrument you are writing with, for example, if it’s a guitar, you end up writing guitar music, and if it’s piano, you end up writing piano music. Score: You’re lucky you can just go to paper. Not everybody these days can do that. Continued on Next Page 13

Beltrami Interview Continued from Page 13

Marco: Yeah, most people don’t use paper anymore. I guess I am one of the few that keeps the paper companies in business. Score: Do you run your own electronics or do you have somebody run that for you when mocking-up scores? Marco: I do it myself. I know how to run one program. I learned a long time ago Digital Performer, so I can do a mock-up. It doesn’t go much beyond that. I’m not too good with Kontact and all of that, but I do have some help. Buck helps me with that if I have a problem, but I try not to get too bogged down on technical stuff. Score: I read you have an aversion to horror films, but you write for so many plus action and sci-fi. What is the difference between scoring “scary” as opposed to scoring different types of films? Marco: I think because of the success of Scream, it led to a whole string of horror movies, you know how that works. I enjoy it from a musical standpoint. You get to write over-the-top, exploring the orchestra, but it gets tedious for me. I don’t really like watching horror films. There’s certainly after all this time certain conventions I can rely on that will achieve what I need to do to make something scary. I think the process ultimately is the same, no matter what type of music you are writing because it’s a question of manipulating the emotions of the viewer, the listener, and even though it might be a different technique, it’s the same concept. Whether it is something that is melodramatic or something that’s scary, the only thing I really haven’t done much of is comedy stuff where I think it really depends on timing and how you play things against picture. Score: Do you just hear themes when you see the scenes? Are you good at that or do you have to work at that? Marco: Sometimes inspiration comes early, you’re thankful for it. Sometimes you can labor and labor and not get anywhere and get really stressed out about it. It’s part of the process; I don’t really know why or how inspiration comes, or how it synthesizes out of

nothing, or what causes the trigger to create an idea. It’s mysterious. I know that it works, but who knows if it will always work. It’s part of the scary unknown. And—it’s not always the same. I’ve been at screenings where I will decide if I will do the movie, watch it and know exactly what to do, what it needs and I will even hear thematic ideas in my head. And then other times I’ll watch the movie and love it but I have no idea what I’m going to do. Score: What’s the essence of the collaborative process with filmmakers? Marco: I think it’s like the relationship I have with James Mangold. Inspiring each other. Making it a collaboration and working together. And sometimes even coming up with musical ideas that inspire the filmmaker as well. I think that’s really where the fun of this is and I think why composers want to do it. What we do is a very solitary business. You know, we’re stuck in dark rooms by ourselves for long periods of time. To get out and share ideas with other people or working on similar problems and you are working toward a common goal and creating something. It can be powerful. The worst is when you know you have a film that people know is in trouble; they have a temp that they want you to copy, or be close to. You may as well be doing anything else, it’s just a paycheck at that point. But that’s not why we get into it. It’s good to fulfill a creative vision. Score: What composers have inspired you? Marco: That’s a huge list. Everything I hear inspires me in some way. I don’t really believe in background music. If there is something I’m going to listen to it’s going to move me, it does so in a way where I want to take something from it. The sources can be anything, classical music from the 1800s to African folk music to popular Italian songs. It can be anything. I have favorites, things that I find myself drawn to like Bach, for instance. In the film world, probably my biggest influences are Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota, and Ennio Morricone. But I’m influenced by everybody too, like my peers, like Danny Elfman; any score that I go see I have things to learn from.

Score: You’ve built this beautiful studio, Pianella. Can you tell other composers about your experience building the studio? What to do, what not to do, what you loved about it? Marco: I think you go into it ignorant and if you knew all the pitfalls and all the strings you have to get around and hoops you have to jump over, maybe you wouldn’t do it. But I’m glad that I have the space because we use it a lot. I love to keep it as a creative space. But it takes time and a lot of energy. Like on this raw land, it had a well on it. I was thinking about making this musical playground closer to town but it was too noisy. It was either put a lot of money into soundproofing everything or move out here in the middle of nowhere. I like it out here. Score: Is there anything you would have done differently? Marco: I had a really good contractor who was very conscientious and a good acoustics person. There was a constant battle between the acoustics guy and the practical side because the acoustics people wanted complete sound isolation and everything to be done perfectly. They didn’t want windows. I wanted a connection, they didn’t want this or that. But here we are, I wanted to have windows, I wanted it to be a more open space. Figuring that balance out took a little bit of time. The only other thing I would have done was put another bathroom in here. For example, when we have a session with 30 musicians. Score: I see you are building something else up the hill. What is that going to be? Marco: There’s some echo chambers we are building into the ground, and then we are going to have another mixing room up there and a smaller live room, maybe like ten people, and then some living spaces as well. Right now, we only have one guest house up there. Score: What are you working on now? Marco: I’m doing an eight-part TV series called Waco, and I’m doing a movie for Universal called The Snowman. I am also working on a couple of side projects of my own. Score: Tell me a little bit about your relationship with Buck Sanders. Continued on Page 20

R E V I E W

AudioTie

By Mark McKenzie

udioTie (www.audiotie.com/welcome/ demo) is a cloud-based online service platform constructed and designed to make music easily playable, customizable and flexible to end users. It presents your music in multitrack mode, giving the end user many mix options. With this system you load your stems from your DAW or any device into AudioTie. The stems then can be used inside AudioTie to create a wide variety of clearly labeled mixes. It can be easily accessible online by anyone you choose to give permission. With this flexibility, content users (music editors, music libraries, music supervisors, production companies, film directors, editors of visual media, etc.) can instantly listen to various versions of the same music. They choose at their leisure what version appeals to them. Then they can create a final HD stereo mix and master of their personal favorite combination online. It could be a great demo tool in certain situations especially for those working in library music and television. I am viewing a prototype here and I’m told our friends at AudioTie are improving this each week. The first public release will likely be late August 2017. Costs are not available at this time, but will be based on the amount of music you have stored inside AudioTie. Pros:

• AudioTie makes it very easy to choose from multiple mixes and variations of the same piece of music • You can easily send your various incarnations of your piece with one simple cloudbased URL link • The flexibility in mixes potentially makes the music more likely to be used • AudioTie can be used by you as a marketing tool imbedded on your website • This can be a potential extra backup and storage solution for your music • It has a search engine to find the right music from your library • You control the level of public access to your music • You pay only for the amount of music uploaded no matter how many people listen • Audio Tie offers statistics and metadata on the music • Can be used as a stem delivery system • Can be used as a collaboration tool

• Audio Tie doesn’t profit from your music; it is your music to do with as you choose • It allows, in a limited way, to lock to picture (this will likely improve with time) Cons:

• You have some limitations in your creative compositional thinking process (i.e., you have to compose and record your music in layers such that any layer can be added or removed) • This entire concept requires letting go of your artistic vision. It is strictly utilitarian • You still have to create the stems in your DAW and load them into this program • Once you load them in, you, your assistant, or your client have to create and label the mixes • This is time-consuming and could be done in your own DAW and delivered yourself though not in quite this very user-friendly environment • In the long run, if you are lucky, it might save you time because the end users might not ask you to rewrite the music given they have broader options • You don’t own the audio program; you rent the use of the software online • You have one more monthly expense • If your Internet connection breaks down or gets interruptions, it could be frustrating and possibly tie you up under a deadline, or worse yet on a dubbing session • Your music is only as secure as the cloudbased security being used by AudioTie. (They use Amazon’s “Cloud Drive” storage.)

With this system you load your stems from your DAW or any device into AudioTie. The stems then can be used inside AudioTie to create a wide variety of clearly labeled mixes.

SCL Board Member Mark McKenzie (www.markmckenzie.org) has composed on numerous television series, 22 independent films, and has orchestrated over 100 features. His 20 original soundtracks are available at most music outlets.

Pictured at the Musicians Institute Film Music Program Intensive are, L-R: Haim Mazar, filmmaker Matt Leutwyler, Musicians Institute’s Tom Villano, BMI’s Doreen Ringer-Ross, Musician Institute Film Music Intensive co-artistic director Craig Richey, filmmaker Vicky Jenson, filmmaker Fritz Bohm, and George S. Clinton

Tech Talk Continued from Page 7

instrument can be assigned to one of three independent arpeggiator patterns or one of two global amplitude envelopes. This allows for complex beds up to two measures in length. Unfortunately, you cannot load any percussion sounds other than harp (Sonuscore designates harp as a percussion instrument) into the engine. The engine tab is where you edit the arpeggiators and envelopes. The engine area has two sections—arpeggiator and rhythm. The arpeggiator section determines what notes will play and in what order. Here you can determine note order, rate, transposition, number of octaves and feel. This, in and of itself, is typical of most arpeggiators, but the fact that you can combine three different arpeggiator patterns within a single preset makes for many interesting possibilities and there are enough arpeggiation options to make most users happy. The rhythm section uses Kontakt’s sequencer to program rhythm patterns and note accents. A vertical bar that can be raised for a stronger accent and lowered for less emphasis denotes each subdivision of the pattern. If the bar is pulled all the way down it disappears and this indicates that the step will be skipped. In this manner, a wide variety of rhythm patterns can be created and, in combination with the arpeggiator options, allows for a lot of variation within a single arpeggiator. The rhythmic patterns are surprisingly organic sounding when programmed in this manner. The engine tab also features two programmable envelopes for controlling the amplitude of sustained sounds. 16

The last tab found in the Orchestra preset is the mixer. The mixer gives you control over the five instruments level, panning and amount of reverb. You can also apply equalization and compression as well as change between different convolution reverb settings. The EQ and compression settings are very basic and don’t allow control over frequency bands or compression ratio, which is a bit disappointing. On some of the snapshots I found the 1st violins to be too loud, but it was a simple task to make adjustments that were more to my liking. The library also includes a number of multis that feature a bigger sound by stacking multiple presets. In the Orchestral Rhythms sections, you can get a tutti sound of the symphony playing variations on 8ths and 16ths. The Animated Orchestra multis add similar variations as found in the Animated Orchestra snapshots in The Orchestra preset. My inclination is to stick with The Orchestra preset as a starting point, but some composers will like the bigger sound of the multis. The Orchestra is not a library that will likely replace your favorite strings, brass and winds presets from the best libraries in your collection, as it doesn’t feature the multiple mic positions, detailed sampling and less common articulations found in the best sectional libraries. However, its rhythm engine offers many features not found in other libraries making it an excellent tool for creating orchestral ostinatos. The snapshots are fun and inspirational to play and sound very good, particularly with string rhythm patterns and wind arpeggiations. I recommend this library as a great tool for anyone who has a need for rhythmic propulsion in their g orchestral mockups.

SCL Premier Partners SCL members can find out the member discount details and how to contact Partners on our website. ALFRED MUSIC AUDIO PERCEPTION BANDZOOGLE BIG FISH AUDIO BLACK LION AUDIO CINEMATIC STRINGS CINESAMPLES COMMERCIAL SCORING WORKSHOP FOCAL PRESS AND ROUTLEDGE MUSIC GUERRILLA FILM SCORING GRAPHICALLY ENHANCED MANUALS JAN-AL-CASES LUDWIN MUSIC PUBLICATIONS MEGATRAX RECORDING STUDIOS MELROSE MAC MUSIC BUSINESS REGISTRY MY MUSIC MASTERCLASS NOTEFLIGHT PAGU BATONS PC AUDIO LABS PUREMIX THE RICHARD BELLIS MASTER SERIES SAMPLELOGIC SONIC FUEL STUDIOS SONOKINETIC SOUNDIRON SPITFIRE AUDIO TUNECORE UCLA EXTENSION

SCL AMBASSADORS BURT BACHARACH ALAN & MARILYN BERGMAN CARTER BURWELL GEORGE S. CLINTON CHARLES FOX ELLIOT GOLDENTHAL DAVE GRUSIN ARTHUR HAMILTON JAMES NEWTON HOWARD MARK ISHAM ROBERT LOPEZ & KRISTEN ANDERSON-LOPEZ JOHNNY MANDEL RANDY NEWMAN THOMAS NEWMAN MIKE POST LALO SCHIFRIN RICHARD SHERMAN DAVID SHIRE

ALAN SILVESTRI MARK SNOW MIKE STOLLER DIANE WARREN PATRICK WILLIAMS PAUL WILLIAMS MAURY YESTON

In Memoriam: VAN ALEXANDER RAY CHARLES HAL DAVID RAY EVANS EARLE HAGEN JACK HAYES JERRY LIEBER VIC MIZZY ROBERT SHERMAN

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD BILL CONTI QUINCY JONES

GINNY MANCINI

HONORARY LIFETIME MEMBERS JAY L. COOPER, ESQ. JIM DiPASQUALE

CLINT EASTWOOD

DENNIS SPIEGEL JOHN WILLIAMS

BMI Film, TV & Visual Media Awards

MI proudly held its 2017 Film, TV & Visual Media Awards on May 10, 2017 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. The ceremony was hosted by BMI Vice President, Film, TV & Visual Media Relations, Doreen Ringer-Ross and BMI President and CEO Mike O’Neill. Alan Silvestri received BMI’s Icon Award, which is bestowed on composers who have made significant contributions to the realm of film and television music.

L-R: Trevor Morris and Brian Tyler, BMI’s Doreen Ringer-Ross, Abel Korzeniowski and Sean Callery on the gala red carpet

BMI At Krakow Film Music Festival

Alan Silvestri

L-R: Justin Hurwitz, Mark Mancina, and James Newton Howard, BMI VP Film, TV & Visual Media Relations Doreen RingerRoss, Brian Tyler, BMI President and CEO Michael O’Neill, and Tyler Bates L-R: James Newton Howard, BMI VP Film, TV & Visual Media Relations Doreen Ringer-Ross, 2017 BMI Icon Award recipient Alan Silvestri and BMI President & CEO Michael O’Neill

L-R: Christopher Lennertz, West Dylan Thordson, BMI VP Film, TV & Visual Media Relations Doreen Ringer-Ross and Sean Callery

he renowned Krakow Film Festival was held May 17-23 in Poland. Highlights of the festival included Jean-Michel Bernard’s Cinematic Piano concert featuring works by BMI composers John Williams, Lalo Schifrin, and the late Bernard Hermann. The next night, the gala concert again featured the work of Korzeniowski, as well as BMI composers Trevor Morris, Sean Callery (who played piano with the orchestra rather than conduct), and Brian Tyler, along with featured gifted cellist Martin Tillman. During the Festival, Doreen Ringer-Ross participated in two insightful panel discussions: “Lyrics and Scripts: A Match Made in Film” and “Film Market: Welcoming the New g Generation.”

High Quality Plugins

L-R: Composer W. G. Snuffy Walden, BMI VP Film, TV & Visual Media Relations Doreen Ringer-Ross and composers Mike Post, Fil Eisler and George S. Clinton

Continued from Page 9

L-R: BMI President and CEO Michael O’Neill, BMI VP Film, TV & Visual Media Relations Doreen Ringer-Ross, Danny Elfman and BMI Assistant VP Film, TV & Visual Media Relations Ray Yee

L-R: BMI’s Ray Yee, Kurt Farquhar, and BMI’s Doreen Ringer-Ross and Michael O’Neill

L-R: BMI Asst. VP Film, TV & Visual Media Relations Ray Yee, Mychael Danna, BMI VP Film, TV & Visual Media Relations Doreen Ringer-Ross, Jeff Danna and BMI President and CEO Michael O’Neill

drum kits and grooves together, which is awesome. BeatBox 2 allows you to offset sounds, which works great for hip-hop grooves, or just making things sound less computerized. There is also the ability to load individual elements, like a kick or a clap. Another great feature is the sample section, as BeatBox 2 has sampled the exact loops from the original drum machine, which are already mapped and sliced. You can pick loops based on drum machine— so awesome. The sounds are great, and are well recorded. Although there are tons of Kontakt and other plugin libraries very similar to this one, the features that come with BeatBox 2 and the UVI engine make it a very good investment. The library works in the UVI Engine plugin, or the Falcon Plugin engine if g you own Falcon. 10/10 17

Analysis Paralysis Continued from Page 1

moment for the doubt to set in. Does this really sound good enough? Does it sound like what’s current right now? This came so quickly…should I have worked harder on it? Thought about it longer? We all meet these critical inner voices from time to time. It is easy to second-guess yourself, to secondguess your art. To feel a need to change directions and ideas, or even to scrap what you’re working on and start from scratch. Depending on the motivating factors behind this process, it can become an obsessive or fear-based behavior, instead of a constructive and artistic one. Does this scenario sound familiar? You second-guess something that you are working on, and get into a loop of scratching and starting over. It’s getting late, and you’re tired, but you feel like maybe you’ve finally stumbled onto something. So, you keep going and pound it out, thinking, “Great! I’ve got something down. Now I can relax and sleep.” Only to find in the morning on fresh ears, it’s more like “What the heck was I thinking? This is not good at all.” And then when you backtrack back to the start of it all (before the Analysis Paralysis loop of scrapping and restarting), your very first original idea actually sounds great! When you first sit down to begin a new creation, you have not fallen into the rabbit hole. Yet. You are in a space of artistic freedom, and are moving more from a place of intuition. But with extremely tight deadlines, worries about getting it “right,” and sometimes even technical problems, the stress level ramps up, and the loop of worry and second-guessing can begin. When a producer or supervisor wants to hear a track example by noon tomorrow, and then you have just a day to revise everything, record, and orchestrate so that the episode is wrapped up by the end of the week, the pressure can seem crippling. In these types of scenarios, Analysis Paralysis can become your worst enemy. Spending three hours looking for the perfect sound, when you’ve heard 20 sounds that would work just fine, can cloud your mind and interrupt your process. Sometimes 18

the deadline has to win. Sometimes you have to be done and hand it in, even if you feel like you are not yet completely satisfied with the outcome. And would we ever truly be satisfied? Or is there always another nuance, another detail that we could attend to? Often times, we listen and think, “I could have done even better,” instead of accepting that we did our absolute best within the parameters we were given. And Yet Another Common Dilemma: Studio Equipment!

For professional composers and songwriters, our gear is essential to our craft. But what happens when it’s time to add or replace a piece of equipment or software? The choices can be overwhelming, and the opportunity to obsess, overthink, and endlessly analyze presents itself. Let’s pretend it’s time to buy a new keyboard. The days of just walking into one or two brickand-mortar stores and being able to try out lots of different synths have passed. There are so many boutique companies making outstanding modular, desktop, and full keyboard synthesizers, and these days, most of us make our equipment purchases online. With all of the available options, it’s incredibly easy to fall victim to Analysis Paralysis in these situations. At the moment, it seems that modular and semi-modular are taking over the world. The choices are insane, especially in the Eurorack world. But even just on a simple level, let’s say you are looking for a specific sound you heard in a big radio track. Future Bass is very popular right now. So, you look at the new Roland System-8 Plug-Out Synth, the Behringer DeepMind 12, and the Dave Smith Rev2. Any one of these three would be a great buy, and would sound amazing. The catch, though, is that they all have something just a little bit different. Does one difference or the other make you lean toward a specific purchase to get that new sound you are looking for? Realistically, you can make or buy the sound that you are looking for on any of these three mentioned here. But with easy access to online reviews, detailed specs, and YouTube videos, the decision turns from something fun to an anxiety attack waiting to happen. Let’s say you are specifically looking

for a synth with the Moog Ladder Filter. One keyboard has the Ladder Filter, the next one has a SEM, and the third one has a Curtis Filter. The Ladder Filter sounds great on Keyboard 1, but Keyboard 2 has many more features, even though the filter is different, but still great, too. Keyboard 3 has an even different filter, but comes with three oscillators instead of two, giving a larger sound if needed. Confused yet? Absolutely. Why not just buy Keyboard 1? It has the exact Ladder Filter that you were originally going for. But in the back of your head, you hear the voice of the A&R guy who told you how much he loves a SEM filter…or the music supervisor who is a sequential circuit fan. Of course, you could go crazy and just buy all three! But is this the wise choice? Is it even what you were setting out to do in the first place? Good luck falling asleep at a normal hour now, as insomnia is guaranteed while you burrow further down the rabbit hole comparing specs and features. And then the scenario repeats. Each time, you will discover new and different features, and start comparing them all over again. The chaos has just begun. So, What’s REALLY Going On?

1) The Need To Be Perceived As Expert We all desire to feel keenly competent, even expert, at managing our lives, and especially our careers. There is a strong external drive to be perceived as having it all together, of being able to navigate processes smoothly and with authority. When it comes time to make a decision, or to stand behind our art, our need to be perceived in a positive light feels like it may be at stake. This is a largely unconscious process for many, quietly developed over years of integrating the outer call to be great at all that we do. When this inner doubt kicks in, making a choice, or taking a stand, can feel akin to taking a big, or even dangerous, risk. And this parallel line of thinking can cause us to magnify the task before us into a much bigger ordeal than necessary. Instead of tackling the individual task at hand, we instead focus our energy into worrying that this one could be a game-changer. We elevate the importance and urgency to a level that can bring Analysis Paralysis to the fore. Continued on Next Page

Analysis Paralysis Continued from Page 18

2) Worry About Making The “Wrong” Choice Sometimes, decision-making can leave us feeling paralyzed as we worry endlessly about making a bad choice, or picking the wrong scenario. We weigh, analyze, ponder, and make lists of pros and cons…everything possible in an attempt to guarantee our ideal outcome. If we can just reason, think and scrutinize long enough, we think, then we will arrive at the “right” answer. And we imagine that the “right” answer ensures a happy, positive outcome. If we take a step back, though, and really think about it, with the vast majority of the decisions that we face, is it really all that serious? Is picking a keyboard that you end up not loving, and maybe need to return or sell, really that big of a deal? Is handing in a track that the recipient ends up disliking going to effectively derail the trajectory of your career? The terror of being “wrong” can be palpable…and feeds the Analysis Paralysis loop. 3) Perfectionism Ah, the quest for perfection. For some of us, our need to be perfect gives us a sense of control over the chaos of a widely unknown day-to-day life. For some of us, perhaps our perfectionism even hearkens back to childhood, and pressure put upon us by family members or cultural institutions. In the highly competitive creative field, a drive for perfection can feel like a necessary companion as we compete for gigs and attention. Most musicians we know who are great at their art, work hard, and are succeeding in the brutal business of entertainment, are real perfectionists. Whether it’s coming up with the perfect hook, or identifying the perfect software, they can zone in until they just about make themselves crazy. What would happen if you were to realize perfection is an illusion? When facing a decision or a creative dilemma, it would serve us well to remember that while something may not be perfect, it can be excellent, unique, and even good enough. 4) Lost Connection With Intuition And The Creative Function Although there are professional con-

straints and demands that must be met when making music as a vocation, the true act of music making comes from a vital connection with one’s intuitive and creative functions. There must be time and spaciousness for the intuitive and the creative to be honored, where imagination can come to life. But when deadlines loom and doubts creep in, it is easy for us to lose that vital connection and to train our focus outward not inward. Loss of at-tunement with our creative mojo wreaks havoc with our ability to really be present with the work that needs to be done. Instead of listening to our intuition, we are bogged down by outside messages. And the louder these messages, the quieter our inner voice becomes in the mix.

into the Analysis Paralysis spiral, make a conscious choice to put whatever it is down and leave it alone for a while. Move on to other things, and let your psyche reset. Give it 24 hours, or even a few days if you can, and then revisit the situation again. Reevaluate your authentic reasoning and motivation. Take yourself back to the start of it all…what was your original thought? Intention? Hope? Remind yourself of what priority you had in place before the worry loop started. Staying rooted in perfectionism can prevent us from being able to let go. When something starts to feel overwhelming, giving ourselves time and space to let things decompress a bit can feel like an opportunity to push the reset button.

5) Fear Of Failure…And Success Underneath all of the moving parts and the various messages, the simplest fact emerges: we are terribly afraid to fail. The idea of not being able to grasp and own our deepest hopes and dreams is terrifying. We want it so badly and know that we are good enough to realize our goals. How could we possibly tolerate it if we don’t reach that summit? What will it all mean? The worry about striking out can lead to over-worry, over-thinking, and, yes, paralysis. And while a fear of failure is pretty widely understood and accepted as a motivator for Analysis Paralysis, the equally important and motivating flip side to this is that we are equally terrified to succeed. Sound crazy? When faced with this thought, folks are usually resistant and defensive to the idea. “Fear of success? Absolutely not! I’m completely driven to meet my goals!” However, it is a psychological truth that the fear of success, of truly becoming and completely embodying our full potential, is a paralyzing thought for many. The truth of what it means to really become authentically whole, and to achieve great things, means that many things in our lives are impacted, from relationships to daily tasks of living. Again, an often unconscious process, but one that affects us deeply nonetheless.

2) Check In With Others When the Analysis Paralysis cycle is in full effect, we’ve got to get some outside perspective. The more we circle around and around, the more we become disoriented. This is the moment to call a “time out” on the spiral, and get outside of yourself. Check in with a trusted colleague or respected mentor. Feeling lost with the song you just keep re-working? Have someone else take a listen. Be open to their input and feedback, and let it interface with the worries you’ve been chewing on. Not sure how to choose between some new gear? Ask a fellow writer or composer which one they would choose. Being open to reflections from others gives our own psyche an opportunity for a breather. Consult, listen, and integrate.

So What Can We Do About It?

1) Just Stop! Step back. Take a break. Breathe. When you feel yourself descending

3) Listen To Your Gut Artists are highly intuitive beings. When we allow the overcritical, overanalyzing voices to take charge, we are not honoring our true artistic center. When facing Analysis Paralysis, stop, and go back to your very first instinct, thought, or choice on the matter. It will almost always be the choice that is unequivocally in alignment for you! It is interesting to note that many successful business, inventions, and works of art were created intuitively, or even by accident, coming from a place of genuineness as opposed to a place of creating to fit into a specific model. Let your intuition be your guide—truly! Keep your passion mixed in with your art, and your gut will always guide you. Continued on Next Page 19

Analysis Paralysis Continued from Page 19

4) Trust Your Ability To Make A Good Decision A fundamental necessity in both decision-making and creativity is the need to absolutely trust in your own talents and abilities. Accept that at the end of the day, you will need to rely upon your own wisdom to make a decision. And then trust that you will be able to do so. Realize that you will never be able to accumulate all of the desired information on any given topic. There will always be another piece of the puzzle to uncover and more information to unearth. While the web can be a great source of data, don’t take it too far. Recognize when it’s time to get off the internet! Google, for example, can create a vortex of infinite information, which only serves to feed the Analysis Paralysis beast. Let go of the need to research voraciously, to relisten endlessly. Trust your talent. Trust your ability to choose and succeed. 5) Know That You Can Always Make Another Choice The absolute most important piece, we believe, is being at peace with the understanding that you always have permission to make a new and different choice. When facing a deadline, dilemma, or choice, avoid thinking that this

is “THE” decision, a cataclysmic, lifechanging sealing of the fates. Nine times out of ten, it simply is not. Put things in perspective, knowing that you are doing your very best. With equipment, for example, stop spiraling and just pick one. Buy it, learn it, practice with it, use it. If it’s not working for you, you can make a new choice! Easy options like eBay and Reverb.com are great tools for buying and selling your gear. With song submissions, just go for it. They didn’t love what you did? Shake it off, and know that you have another opportunity to kill it with the next one. Take a chance, and dive in. Make a choice, and stand behind it. If the path you picked doesn’t light your world on fire, regroup and give yourself permission to make a new choice. Periods of time where we feel overwhelmed are inevitable and can never be completely eliminated. Try as we might, situations and difficulties will present themselves when we just can’t seem to get a full handle on our worrying or anxiety. We will absolutely be saddled with deadlines that seem impossible. We will face down our inner critic as we take risks and share our music with others. We will worry about making smart choices, and how they will impact our career paths and overall sanity. And we will also know that we can keep these things from taking over and sidelining our creative focus.

With practice and mindful attention, we can lessen the impact of Analysis Paralysis on our daily lives. Practice slowing down. Practice catching yourself when you feel the worry spiral start to kick in. Remind yourself to trust in your ability to make good choices. Talk back to the worries that whisper that perhaps you are not trying hard enough or not sounding good enough. Let go and take the next step, even when you worry about not knowing what may come next. The biggest advantage to letting go of Analysis Paralysis is that both time and space of an emotional, physical, mental and spiritual nature can free us up to focus on the things that really do matter. To work both hard and smart on artistic endeavors that are important to us. To devote moments to hobbies, to movement and care of the physical body and to spend time with those we hold most dear. The life of an artist is both hard and beautiful, challenging and rewarding. And we can do it all, with balance at g the center. Jack D. Elliot is a composer, songwriter, and producer who has created music for Billboard-charting artists, video games, commercials, and numerous television series. Jemma Elliot, MA, LMFT, LPCC, is a practicing psychotherapist, as well as faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she serves as the Director of Research for the M.A. Counseling Psychology Program.

ASCAP Workshop

Beltrami Interview

The ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop was held at Fox Studios on July 31, 2017. Along with an evening-full of scores, Richard Bellis received an award for mentoring the FSW for 20 years. Congratulations, Richard.

Continued from Page 14

Shown at the July 31 recording session, where ASCAP composer and FSW Mentor Richard Bellis was honored: L-R: ASCAP Board members Dan Foliart, Bruce Broughton and Bellis, ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews, ASCAP Board members Michelle Lewis and Dean Kay 2017 ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop Participants at the Fox Newman Scoring Stage 20

Marco: Buck and I have had a partnership now since 1997, a long time. I really like to have an extra set of ears and also, when things get really difficult, having someone to share the burden with. It makes things a lot better. I know it’s traditionally a solitary business, being a composer, but I really like having someone you feel esthetically aligned with. I encourage people to do that. Somebody else’s energy inspires you in ways you would have never thought of. Score: Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to The Score. I know our readers will love hearing what you have to say. It’s just beautiful out here at Pig anella Studios in Malibu!

SCL Events June 6 — An Evening With Composers of Fargo, Feud, 24: Legacy & This Is Us, Linnwood Dunn Theater.

May 11 — Sonic Sea, Sonic Magic Studios. L-R: Jonathan Wales, Heitor Pereira, Daniel Hinerfeld, Trevor Gates, Ray Costa

L-R: Zach Laws, Siddhartha Khosla, Mac Qualye, Jana Davidoff, Jeff Russo, Mark Smythe, Sean Callery

May 23 — Film & Music Collaboration: A Director Perspective, AFI L-R: Inbal-Rotem Sagiv, Arun Vir, Justine Raczkiewicz, Rainy Kerwin, Seeling Lipski, Emily Robinson, Miranda Winters

June 8 — The Music of Netflix, Netflix FYSee Space. L-R: Zach Cowie, Kyle Dixon, Michael Stein, Melinda Newman, Duncan Thum, Kris Bowers, Elliot Wheeler, James S. Levine

May 24 — When The Headline Becomes The Story: Creating The Perfect Dramatic Score, Landmark Regent Theater. L-R: Mark Smythe, Gary Lionelli, Jordan Von Netzer, Doreer Ringer-Ross, Trevor Morris, Jana Davidoff, Nathan Barr June 12 — Once Upon A Time “The Musical Episode,” Sepulveda Screening Room. L-R: Alan Zachary, Michael Weiner, Mark Smythe May 30 — Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Walt Disney Studios Main Theatre. L-R: Geoff Zanelli, Ashley Irwin

June 13 — Planet Earth II, Arclight Hollywood

L-R: Jasha Klebe, Jacob Shea Continued on Next Page

June 1 — Harlots, Sepulveda Screening Room. L-R: Michael Todd, Rael Jones, Ashley Irwin

June 14 — From Canada to LA: SOCAN All-Star Composers, Raleigh Studios. L-R: Zach Laws, Amin Bhatia, Darren Fung, Alexis Marsh, Jeff Toyne, Chad Richardson 21

L-R: ASCAP SVP of Membership Shawn LeMone, EVP of Membership John Titta, Founders Award honoree Stephen Schwartz, CEO Beth Matthews and President Paul Williams

Continued from Page 21

June 15 — Haters Back Off!, Goethe Institute. L-R: Drew DeAscentis, Amotz Plessner

2017 ASCAP Screen Music Awards

he 2017 ASCAP Screen Music Awards took place on May 15th at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. Stephen Michael Schwartz was celebrated with the ASCAP Founders Award. ASCAP Composers’ Choice Awards Revealed: TV Composer of the Year — Didier Lean Rachou Film Score of the Year — Michael Giacchino for Zootopia Video Game Score of the Year (tie) — Tom Salta (Atlas Plug) & Klayton (Celldweller) for Killer Instinct: Season 3; Michael Salvatori, Skye Lewin and C. Paul Johnson for Destiny: Rise of Iron Congratulations to all. Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein open the Screen Awards with a mesmerizing performance of their theme from Stranger Things

Didier Lean Rachou accepts his Composers’ Choice: TV Composer of the Year award from ASCAP Board member Dan Foliart

L-R: Top Themes and Underscore winners Jared Gutstadt, David Vanacore and Robert Duncan take a selfie onstage

Henry Jackman (center) accepts his Top Box Office Film award from ASCAP Board member Bruce Broughton (left) and ASCAP’s Rachel Perkins (right) after an exhilarating performance of his score to Captain America: Civil War 22

SCL Events

June 19 — The Flash, NeueHouse. L-R: Adryan Russ, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, Andrew Kreisberg, Jeff Jernigan, Rachel Perkins

June 21 — An Evening With Composers From Amazon Original Series, Landmark Regent Theater. L-R: Zack Laws, Jason Derlatka, Jon Ehrlich, Jana Davidoff, Dominic Lewis, Alex Wurman June 28 — An Evening with Maestro William Kraft, AFI. L-R: William Kraft and Mike Lang

July 19 — Abelton Live for Screen Composers, Westlake Pro Presentation Room. L-R: Sebastian Arocha, Fletcher Beasley

July 24 — War for the Planet of the Apes, Fox Little Theater. L-R: Jon Burlingame, Michael Giacchino

M U S I C A L S H A R E S

BY CHARLES BERNSTEIN

Film Music: Source vs. Score

“W

here’s that music coming from?” When we hear music in a film, there is always that basic question. Music magically occurs. It can seem like there is a phantom orchestra hidden somewhere behind the scenery, scaring us, thrilling us, goading our emotions. Can the characters in the movie hear the music? Is it coming from something we can see on screen, like a radio, a singer, or a band? As film composers, we know that the music coming from inside the film is called “source music” and the sounds that only the audience can hear is called “the score.” There are fancy Greek terms for these two uses of music, diegetic (source) and non-diegetic (score). We rarely hear these more formal terms used in the professional film music world, but academics seem to favor mysterious sounding Greek and Latin words, and maybe with good reason. There is an advantage to these particular words. They take us back to the ancient Greek origins of our musicaldramatic heritage. But, whether or not we have the Greeks to thank for it, having words to describe “where the music is coming from” in a movie can be very useful for composers and directors. Actually, this distinction can be critical in planning an effective musical approach to cinematic storytelling. As with so many things in life, there is no consistent sharp line of distinction. In fact, source music and score are often blended in ways that purposely blur the boundaries (hence the coined word “scorce”). It is in the grey areas between source and score that many brilliant musical moments occur in films. One popular blending approach involves taking a piece of music that was introduced as source music and incorporating it into the score. It might be a pop song that was played on screen as “diegetic” music that wanders across some invisible border to become part of the “non-diegetic” score. Sometimes, this can create the impression that a song is be-ing “remembered” or “imagined” inside a character’s head. In Billy Wilder’s classic rom-com Sabrina (1954), Humphrey Bogart romances Audrey Hepburn by playing a recording of a ridiculous old song “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” Later, the song seeps into the score at more serious moments as if Hepburn is being haunted by the memory and implications of that earlier scene. The same thing happens to her with the French

tune “La Vie En Rose,” which she first hears from the street through an opened window beneath the Scaré-Coeur, that later returns as score to reignite memories of her Parisian life. Another among many films that wonderfully blend source and score is Elia Kazan’s America, America (1963), where Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis masterfully used period/ Adriatic-flavored source music interchangeably with his indigenous-sounding score to wonderful effect. A landmark blend of source and score can be heard in the urban drama Blackboard Jungle (1955). This is a remarkable example of source music being literally interchanged with score. The seminal rock hit “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets was used as the main title music (the first time that a hit rock song had been incorporated as a main title in a major Hollywood film). The rock ‘n’ roll title sequence then transforms into a schoolyard scene where the teenagers are listening and dancing to it. One of the teachers at the school has a jazz record collection that provides another pretext for source-as-score. Some disturbing scenes that might otherwise have been accompanied by traditional scoring are played out to that source music. The diegetic record collection includes some edgy jazz by Stan Kenton and a haunting Bix Biederback classic that underscore the dramatic scenes perfectly. But it was the 1969 hit Easy Rider that is most remembered as a milestone in the increasing use of pop source music as score. Easy Rider followed in the footsteps of Blackboard Jungle by using a contemporary rock hit (Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild”) as a title sequence and then using songs throughout the film in place of traditional scoring. I recently spoke with its editor, Donn Cambern, who recounted how he, along with actor Dennis Hopper and producer Bert Schneider, sat in the editing room with 200 LPs, selecting the rock tracks that changed the history of film music. Although radical at the time, such liberal use of existing tracks as score have by now become commonplace (even tiresome, excessive?) in so many movies. There are many creative directors who famously score entire films with source music. Others, like Alexander Payne, have skillfully utilized scores that have a “source-like” flavor (Rolf Kent’s wonderfully quirky score for Sideways [2004] almost sounds like the main

The arbitrary placement of too much licensed music into a film can easily backfire, oversaturating and disrupting the musical design of a film.

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characters are permanently tuned to a lite-Jazz radio station on their road trip). Payne’s evocative use of existing Hawaiian music in The Descendants (2011) and composed American folk cues in Nebraska (2013) are extremely effective as source and score, grounded as they are in a kind of “crossover” approach between the two. Understandably, many film composers today have come to view licensed source music as an intrusion, a rival invader into the land of musical storytelling. Unlimited supplies of album tracks can feel like a tsunami of unwelcome competition, swallowing up valuable “musical real estate” inside the movie’s limited time span. And often, this is actually the case. The arbitrary placement of too much licensed music into a film can easily backfire, over-saturating and disrupting the musical design of a film. And, of course, too much added music can dissipate the power of a composed score and destroy any sense of its unique musical identity. The legacy of Blackboard Jungle and Easy Rider can cut both ways. When it comes to stuffing unneeded songs and temp cues into a film, the abuses of this legacy probably

far outweigh the advantages in so many films today. The age-old war between original film scores and licensed source music may never see a full truce. The battle for primacy wages on. On one side we have the composed score, and on the other, an endless supply of existing pop and production music. Composers continue to struggle against usurpation and the “scorification” of soundtracks. With good reason, a film composer may be tempted to sneer the word “diegetic” as a sort of swear-word at any director, editor or the music supervisor who adds yet another piece of welcome existing music to the fray. There might be a small ray of sunshine in this often gloomy predicament for scoring composers. Not all existing, licensed, source, or even temp music needs to come from other composers. In fact, there was a time when all the diegetic/source music in a film was left to the score composer to create or supply. (Of course, this was back in the days when the music publishers hadn’t yet discovered the $$ in “placing” music into films). Great composers like Johnny Mandel or Jerry Fielding wrote dazzling source cues. Currently, Trent Reznor, Johnny Greenwood or Danny Elfman can certainly provide pop or temp elements that are useful or even

magical in a film. There is a limited amount of money in a film music budget. These days, a lot of it is being diverted to the “licensed source” part of the budget. This can definitely irritate composers and (as the Brits used to say) get their knickers in a twist. But if some of that “other” music was newly created by— or licensed from—the score-composer’s own works, that might ease things a bit. And we can all agree that a little added “diegetic income” can go a long way towards un-twisting knickers and g soothing a composer’s soul. © Charles Bernstein 2017

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DISCLAIMER: The articles in the SCORE do not necessarily reflect the views of the Society of Composers & Lyricists.