Music Composition & Songwriting techniques.

Tuition in music composition and songwriting is available.

Writing music / songs can be a highly subjective matter, there are however lots of cliches and techniques to aid us with writing music.

Below is a little history of film music - an interesting read for the budding composer.

© Paul Lord - 2008
1.1 in the Beginning -

The practice of synchronizing music with recorded images can be traced as far back as the silent movie era. Surprisingly though its original role was not of artistic or creative motive.
In the early days of cinema the auditoriums were very noisy, the noise from the projectors coupled with fidgety people tended to irritate rather than enthuse the audiences pleasure. In the need to drown out this noise a more amorous noise was added to the auditorium, ‘music’. A pianist was employed, his original role being to cover up all these noises and therefore alleviate most of the distractions. The pianist’s role also entailed enhancing the scenes with effects and musical embellishments.

Born out of the filmmakers desire to captivate the audiences attention, music’s role was eventually taken a step further. Music was used on the opening titles, often in the form of a full-blown symphonic score, accenting the director, producer and stars by cymbal crashes, staccato chords and other effects. What this did was announce that the film had started and had already achieved greatness, also highlighting the greatness of the director and actors etc. involved in the film.

In these early days the pianists, composers and conductors had a wealth of existing music at their disposal. All the orchestral and piano works of the past coupled with countless works owned by music publishers. These music publishers recognized a major outlet for business in this new medium of cinema and were quick to make sure they had their share of the rewards. Stockpiles of music were catalogued and pigeonholed to suit every imaginable dramatic sequence or mood.
One of these production companies ‘The Samuel Fox Company’ amassed an enormous library of music and was considered the storehouse for silent-film music. It was also the forerunner of the present-day canned music library ( Bazelon 1975  pp 13 -34).
Composers also seized their opportunity. Here was a new medium to compose for and the prospect of having their music used on a film was too hard to resist.

As a result of this commercial attitude both by the publishers and filmmakers it is considered that music was almost stripped of any artistic or creative integrity. With such a mound of labeled/categorized music, standard cliches were concluded and Hollywood seemed to take the attitude of sticking with these tried and tested ‘shallow’ formulas. Traditional repertoire was also labeled and used in the same way. They utilized ‘Asleep in the Deep’ as the ship went down, the ‘Fate’ theme from Carmen for appropriate circumstances, the ‘Bridal Chorus’ from Lohengrin to seal holy matrimony, Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ for moonlit nights and calm waters, the ‘William Tell Overture’ for rainstorms and later for western heroics the list goes on (ref. Bazelon 1975  pp 13 -34).

© Paul Lord - 2008

1.2 The birth of 'Talkies' -

After the birth of sound and ‘Talkies’ (late1920s) the practice of scoring film music started developing new techniques. One of these new techniques was called ‘Mickeymousing’; this term was derived from early Walt Disney Cartoons. These cartoons were the first efforts at precise synchronization between music and moving images. This method was a very descriptive way of enhancing images and many cliches were formed. Ascending/descending scale patterns were used for upward/downward motions, tremolo strings often discordant for suspense, characters walking - mimicked by slow or fast music often stopping and starting in sync with character, staccato brass to announce danger, low sustained tones for mystery, bassoons became associated with clown type characters.
One of the first composers to incorporate this ‘mickeymousing’ into the film score was Max Steiner. Classic examples of this technique can be found in one of his most popular films ‘King Kong’ – the scene where Kong climbs the empire state building is accompanied by ascending/descending melodic music in a stepwise fashion.

Another approach was that adopted by the composer Alfred Newman. Newman scored the original and classic ‘Wuthering Heights’ and also ‘Love is a Many-Splendored Thing’ and ‘How Green Was My Valley’. Newman’s approach was to captivate the emotional atmosphere of a whole scene rather than mimic every little movement.

There is a definite contrast between these two techniques and their effect on a scene.
‘Mickeymousing’ actually describes/mimics a sequence often in microscopic detail and almost guides the audience into every new scene/event.
This technique is very descriptive, it highly enhances scenes of action but because it is often so detailed, it seems to leave little to the imagination. It’s almost like being dictated to by a guide on a tour of a city; the guide tells of what building you are approaching and then gives you all the details of it, as opposed to driving through the city yourself not knowing what building or monument you’ll see next and using your own imagination/knowledge to piece together its history.

Newman's method of capturing the emotional atmosphere of a whole scene is more of a suggestive, almost sublime approach, rather than the often, blatant brashness of the mickeymousing technique.

© Paul Lord - 2008

1950's to present day -

Alongside the more popular clichés of film music there has always been the
experimentation of the concert composer. New techniques of the twentieth century like the atonal music of Stravinsky and the twelve tone methods of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg are all there as a reference for the film composer to draw upon. Of course though these techniques are extremely dissonant and unpopular as far as the general movie going public are concerned. So for the film composer to incorporate these new ideas into his scores, he of course has to use them aesthetically and within context of a film. The use of atonal music could ideally be suited to films of a mysterious thematic psychological nature. There are many examples were elements of atonal music have been used for film: Aaron Coplands score for ‘Of Mice and Men’ is distinctly atonal, the string section from the film ‘Psycho’ has many rhythmic and harmonic similarities with Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’. Jerry Goldsmiths rousing score for the sci-fi thriller ‘Planet of the Apes’ and countless other late 50s – 60s horror and sci-fi films also contain atonal elements within their scores.

In the same way that musical techniques and styles have advanced (serialism, atonal music, avant-garde, minimalism, even in rock, pop, jazz etc.) this century, music technology has also advanced ‘enormously’, especially in the last thirty years.
Leo Theremin’s ghostly ‘Theremin’ invented in 1920 was one of the first major electronic innovations, then came the Hammond organ in 1935, this instrument was to be used widely for the next forty years. Early films and sound tracks were monophonic but by 1958 stereophonic sound became common place in the cinema followed by Quadraphonic in the early 1970s. These innovations gave the composer much more scope and clarity to the dynamics of his recordings.
In 1959 one of the first really dynamic synthesizers was invented it was called the RCA synthesizer and was capable of producing four musical tones simultaneously. Pitches, tone colors, vibrato intensities, envelope shapes, and portamento, of the four tones were encoded in binary form on a perforated paper roll. The perforations, which the composer made with a special typewriter-like keyboard, he specified the sounds' properties for every1/30 second, thus enabling the composer to produce musical changes faster and more precisely than traditional musicians are capable of playing (Ref. Britannica 97CDROM, post-world war two electronic instruments).

Since 1959 technology has evolved rapidly leaving today’s composer with a wealth of gadgets, sounds and compositional aids at his disposal. Almost any sound can now be produced/reproduced with the aid of a sampler. With the aid of computer software and MIDI applications, the composer can now write and store all his work onto a computer, the computer will even score out his work onto manuscript. Within one composition he can utilize samplers sound modules and synthesizers all operating simultaneously to create any imaginable/unimaginable ensemble of timbres. The computer can now also handle the recording of audio sounds and simultaneously play them back with midi applications. On screen midi and audio mixers and even effects racks are all there inside the computer to manipulate and enhance his work at the touch of a computers mouse button.
There are also software applications called ‘Wave Editors’ that can actually design completely ‘original’ and new sounds. As if this wasn’t enough the composer can synchronize the computer with video and compose his music directly with the film or project he’s working on, in the comfort of his own studio. Technology has massively influenced and to a large extent changed the sound of both popular and film music. One film sequel which is traditionally associated with technology is the ‘Bond” films. Inherent in these films is a close link with the popular idiom; modern instruments gelled with the traditional orchestra. While always retaining the main theme tune we can see how modern technology has contributed in parallel sequence with the ‘Bond’ films. The 60s films saw the use of the electric guitar coupled with orchestral and early synthesizer instruments. This gradually evolved into the instrumentation used on the last bond film ‘Goldeneye’ (1995). Composer ‘David Arnold’ in partnership with modern dance innovators ‘The Propellerheads’ utilized the sampler for heavily edited drum loops and effect sounds and various Roland and other analogue/digital type synthesizers, all synchronized together by the computer. The music for the ‘Bond’ films has always retained elements of the ‘famous’ original sound track; technology has been used to simply bring the sound up to date utilizing the latest sounds, often from the popular idiom.

© Paul Lord - 2008