Earlier this year, I posted some in-progress music for a short film I’d been asked to score. Well, the film is now finished, and it is called “Homunculus.” The film was produced by Humble and conceived and directed by Sam Stephens. I love it. Check it out:
…aaaand just for fun, here’s the score alone, for those of you who want to check to see if the math works out (it doesn’t):
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
There’s a little bit more about the thought process behind some of what you’re hearing in my original post from March. From the more overtly 12-tone approach described in that post, I added in some chopped-up found-sound recordings of music boxes, and some hot blaxploitation-style drums for the “chase” parts of the film. All in all, I’m pretty happy with how the whole thing turned out. There’s more about the making of the film on Humble’s Vimeo page.
It’s been a while since I’ve done a music post here, so it seemed about time. For the last few months, I’ve been working on a commission for the choreographer Daniel Charon called The Listening Room, and I thought I’d post a few excerpts from the score as it develops.
This score has, for whatever reason, proved to be a difficult one to get a bead on–it’s gone through multiple iterations, each one evolving significantly from the last. The piece is in roughly four contiguous segments, with two themes evolving gradually throughout the piece’s 15 minutes. I’ve been attempting to strike a balance between harder rhythmic elements and more free-floating melodic sections, with varying degrees of success. On a purely technical level, I’ve been separating out rhythmic elements for more clarity, stratifying snares, bass drums, and cymbals in separate layers rather than mixing them together all at once, as I would normally tend to do.
Anyway, here are some excerpts. Hope you enjoy them!
Excerpt the first:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Excerpt the second:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
While trying (mostly successfully) to avoid work over a delicious Thanksgiving weekend, I discovered this excellent BBC documentary from 2003 about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The Radiophonic Workshop, with its stable of composers including Delia Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson, and the amazing John Baker, was a lab for the production of electronic music, mostly for BBC radio and television programs (the most famous example being the Workshop’s “realization” of Ron Grainer’s theme music for Dr. Who). Growing up in the U.S. of A., I grew up mostly ignorant of the pioneering electronic work created by these folks, but boy howdy, these composers were doing work that was easily the equal of their more heralded counterparts at IRCAM or in the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. That all of this unbelievable work was done with such limited resources makes it even that much more astounding. If you have an hour or so at your disposal, I highly recommend checking this documentary out. Amazing.
Image via WikipediaAwright, so my new online/virtual/cyber m(i/u)xtape o-sphere is now up, meaning that all five of you who read this can collectively exhale and begin enjoying your lives again, free of the anxiety borne out of anticipation. Koven understands your needs. Also your wants. And occasionally, your desires. I finally went ahead and moved the mixtape widget over into the right hand column over there (seriously, look to your right–it’s right there!), so that it would be permanently available. It replaces the little-loved “Favorite Tracks from Last.fm” widget, which was cool, but relied too much on Last.fm’s occasionally questionable library of tracks (most painful was listening to my own “favorite tracks” and hearing an 80’s re-recording of Sam & Dave’s classic “You Got Me Hummin’” in place of the original). Anyway, I’m still using the Last.fm recent track list, for those of you who require up-to-the-second information on what I’m listening to. So here’s a list of what we’ve got this week, along with helpful/meaningless commentary inserted at random:
The Frames – “In the Deep Shade”
The Shins – “Sea Legs”
King Geedorah – “The Next Level”
Joao Donato – “A Ra” : we might be playing this jam at next week’s Latin Hustle show at Spike Hill in Brook-a-lyn. See the “Events” page fer more info.
Lee Hazlewood – “Hey Cowboy” : Great tune that I discovered thanks to the excellent “Joe de Vivre” mp3 blog. Lee Hazlewood is a new thing for me, and I’m definitely digging his stuff. That trumpet intro really, really sounds like Burt Bacharach to me.
Fleet Foxes – “Blue Ridge Mountains” : found myself surprised at how excellent this record is, given that the band is being advertised in Starbucks.
Enon – “Raisin Heart”
Deerhoof – “My Purple Past”
The Four Tops – “Are You Man Enough” : Just a last tribute to the great Levi Stubbs. This is one of my fave Four Tops tracks, from the Shaft In Africa soundtrack.
Daedelus – “Drummery Jam” : Oh man, how do I love Daedelus. He was responsible for one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever seen, as part of the “Sound Art” concert series curated by my friend Jennifer Stock. Daedelus just blew everyone’s mind.
Stars of the Lid – “A Meaningful Moment Through a Meaning(less) Process”
Image via WikipediaI’ve of late become a regular reader of “Music Matters“, an excellent blog on music cognition written by Henkjan Honing, an Associate Professor in Music Cognition at the University of Amsterdam (that’s him on the right in the picture). The blog is utterly fascinating, as it focuses on the search for answers that most musicians (myself included) have only begun to ask about why do we, as humans, process music the way we do. You should go there yourself and check it out, but there’s also an excellent introduction to the study of music cognition and Honing’s approach to it in the form of a 10-minute episode of the University of Amsterdam’s series The Fascination (De Fascinatie). Really, really interesting stuff. Enjoy!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c48c262f-0b14-47cc-ad33-5754c76831b5)
