James Newton Howard's Sixth Sense

[Dom]

It's brilliant orchestral score and it has a great, modern sound. I wish there was a printed score available - I am trying to work out how it's done but my ears are not good enough.

I think he worked a lot with 4 note clusters (spaced in semitones) on this score, but there are unusal percussion/woodwind/brass combinations (for example around 1:00 on "Suicide Ghost") that i can't work out at all...

I uploaded Suicide Ghost here: http://dominikscherrer.com/05SuicideGhost.mp3

Can anybody work out what's going on?

best,

Dom

[mathis]

I'd recommend studying some "New Music" (with capital N). Boulez, Penderecki, Nono, you name it. These shrill WW/Brass sounds are THE New Music clichée and you find them in probably every New Music score in your local library...

[William]

Study Pierre Boulez?

Only an idiot would do that.

O.K. - that is my PG version of this post. I will be releasing the Unrated edition on DVD later this year.

[Dietz]

[8-)]

Dear William - pleeeaaase ...

[mathis]

Only an idiot would NOT study everything existent on earth.

Apart from that I don't see the point of your post. He wants to know how New Music effects are done and for that he has to study New Music. Your opinion on Boulez is of total irrelevance here

Besides that, Boulez really knows his craft. I saw him conducting his own music and it rocks. What he might have said once earlier in his life in a time when everybody and his dog said really stupid things I don't care for.

[William]

Mathis, if you heard the things Boulez said, with incredible arrogance, about nearly every great composer of the past, you would not study him. He said Beethoven AND Mozart were worthless. He laughed at Tchaikovsky (of course - a Romantic - what a joke to a sophisticate like Boulez!) and placed himself higher than J. S. Bach. I do not appreciate arrogance of that kind. Do you? Maybe you do...

To me only a fool would say those things, especially if he is a musician. And it is foolish to study a fool, unless you are a psychologist looking for insight into how the human mind degenerates, you will learn nothing from someone like that except as a study in the lowliness of human behavior.

Thanks for judging the relevance of what I wrote. I thought this was the internet and a free Forum where one can say whatever the conversation inspires one to say. So I am to stick directly to the facts? Maybe I don't feel like it. Maybe I feel like digressing. So what?

On the subject of the post, I notice that you did not answer the question. You simply dismissed it. An excellent way to seem to be making an intelligent response without doing so. I thought the James Newton Howard score was effective for this film. It wasn't mere compendium of New Music cliches (whatever that is - when is it no longer "New" I wonder?). In fact, to me it did not sound particularly "New." It sounded like typical current filmmusic, i.e., parallel minor chords, chromatic shifts between major and minor, etc., though with some interesting subtlety. The use of a shifting tonality from a minor tonic to a major one a half-step below was an evocative sound. However I don't presume as some people do to know everything that is "going on" with it (mainly because I never studied it). But I also don't dismiss it as nothing but cliches to place myself above it.

[Angelo Clematide]

@William said:

I thought this was the internet and a free Forum where one can say whatever the conversation inspires one to say. So what?

So thought possibly Boulez too.....

Boulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)?
Creole Lady Marmalade!
Guiche Cuiche ya ya da da, Guiche Guiche ya ya here.
Mocha chocalata ya ya, Creole Lady Marmalade.
Boulez vous coucher avec moi, ce soir.
Boulez vous coucher avec moi.

.

[PaulR]

@Dom said:

Can anybody work out what's going on? Dom

No. I doubt if you asked Newton Howard he would be able to tell you now. It is obviously orchestral manoevres. You can hear the same type of thing in The Shining. You would basically just work through something like this yourself. It would be difficult not to be original.

[Angelo Clematide]

@Dom said:

Can anybody work out what's going on?

Here a similar score from Matthew Wallace:

http://www.sibeliusmusic.com/cgi-bin/show_score.pl?scoreid=2810

mp3:
http://www.sibeliusmusic.com/mp3/2/8/1/2810.mp3

Just add a gong drum hit with a leather mallet and a metal goldsmith poltergeist cherry synth and a synth choir and tons of reverb. plus use some transforming for reducing the the chord width

[:)]

.

[mathis]

Bill, Dom asked specifically for the shrill woodwind/brass effect at around 1 minute. Of course the other stuff hasn't anything to do with New Music...

[William]

By way of explanation for my previous ranting (and edited) post, first of all - alcohol, and secondly, quotes like this -

"It is not enough to deface the Mona Lisa because that does not kill the Mona Lisa. All art of the past must be destroyed." -- Pierre Boulez, 1971, quoted in the Sunday New York Times

This is garbage, not only because Leonardo da Vinci was a mind that dwarfs Boulez, because also because it is like what has actually been done by totalitarian regimes - for example the Taliban. I don't like the belligerant, arrogant mentality shown by Boulez, who has no respect for "the Past." It is perfectly possible the do new work, revolutionary work, without shitting all over people of the past. That is a sign of a small mind. And people who respect great art of the past are not stuck in it, as he implies. They learn from it.

And Mathis, please understand, I don't really care that much. Believe whatever you want to believe, worship whomever you want to worship. It's all mainly a source of amusement to me.

[William]

Angelo,

Yeah, and so I'm responding to him. So what's your point? You have no point. Just attempting to contradict me in general, huh?

What neither you nor Mathis respond to is what I was disturbed by - Boulez trashing all of previous composers and music history in favor of....

himself.

That is my problem. That someone that arrogant and childish, would be put up as something to "study." As Mathis suggests. But since you contradict me, I must assume you approve of all that trashing he did, as Mathis does. So, you believe he - Mr. Boulez - is superior to not only Beethoven, but Mozart, Tchaikovsky AND J.S. Bach.

O.K. Whatever... [8-)]

[mathis]

I earlier wrote this:

@mathis said:

What he might have said once earlier in his life in a time when everybody and his dog said really stupid things I don't care for.

Come on, in the 60's and 70's really everybody was claiming shit like that. Not only Boulez. It was "en vogue" to speak like that. Don't take it so personal. Of course it's idiotic. Nobody denies that.

I mean, Boulez himself really does completely different things now that he did 35(!) years ago. He composes totally different. Do you want to be judged for the rest of your lifetime for some stupidity you have claimed 35 years ago?

[Angelo Clematide]

@Another User said:

It's brilliant orchestral score and it has a great, modern...

Can anybody work out what's going on?

The abusive term: modern. The expressionm is fashionable. But for me it is not applicable to music, at best it stand for a pair of nice women shoes. The chronological art music doesn't deserve this term, maybe it can be used in popoular music, or movie soundtracks. I hear all detail in the "Suicide Ghost " by James Newton Howard and could write it down anytime if I had to, but I listen to it in a clearer quality at 44.1k on a compact disc.

.

[mathis]

@Angelo Clematide said:

“The aim of music is not to express feelings but to express music. It is not a vessel into which the composer distills his soul drop by drop, but a labyrinth with no beginning and no end, full of new paths to discover, where mystery remains eternal.”

Stravinski, isn't it?

[William]

No, that one is Boulez. A pretty good one.

I was looking for outrageously stupid statements by him, but found myself agreeing with some of them, damn it! I hate it when that happens.

[mathis]

Hihi.. [[;)]]

[clarkcontrol]

WARNING!

I need for all of you to destroy all of your Wynton Marsalis recordings at once!

I attended a lecture/concert at my college years ago where Wynton was the guest speaker/performer. Man, what a let down. So full of himself, so sure of his condemnation of all music excepting his own preferences, etc.

The thing was, his opinions really didn't bother me. What bothered me was he was taking time away from his playing for us with all that stupid chatter. Shut up and play, mental-idiot-but-trumpet-giant!

Artists and composers should realize that what they say and think means nothing to me and people like me. I only like them for their music.

So my advice is to definitely study Boulez along with the others mentioned here. Who cares what he believed? I don't.

Wynton's Standard Time vol. 1 is great, BTW. The other stuff is a bit of a letdown.

Clark

[Angelo Clematide]

@clarkcontrol said:

I need for all of you to destroy all of your Wynton Marsalis recordings at once!

I have to buy a Marsalis record first to throw it away. He is a excellent musician, but I can't stand the music he is playing. I can't get rid of the the feeling that I heard his sound years before Marsalis was born and certainly original from Miles. It sounds a if he plays Miles as a music theory.

.

[William]

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