Originally Posted by: jasensmith

When it comes to innovation in film scoring people think no further than Herrmann but, as Errik pointed out, Morricone could also conjure some magic with shoestring budgets.

True! It would behove film-music aspirers to spend a few months researching European cinema (of yesteryears preferably), and discover really inspired music that isn't an orchestra making the biggest noise it possibly can. Don't forget fanboys, when Hans was asked to name his favourite composers, the first one he named was Morricone, and he went from there. He certainly didn't name any of his cheap imitators.

I had congratulated Bill privately on this film, but I believe it merits a 'bump' on the forum, as well as a public appreciation for this wonderful creation. Very warm atmosphere and colours (at an age when most people do grey for some reason), great imagery and visual concepts!

Please do more!

I prefer this version - did the tempo really change?

Anyway, if you want to take this further now - in my opinion, you should add a little more counterpoint on the guitar starting on the second verse. Not too much, just a tad, and it should be on the higher strings to complement the flute's octave jump. It basically gives the guitar more area to cover.

Thanks for this.

A little slow, but fine if heard as a eulogy. I liked it, I only I found the sudden top note a little out of place. I would drop it down an octave and place the very last phrase at the bottom register of the flute.

Morricone's music on the whole is better known to us, Europeans, and film enthusiasts who do not limit themselves to Hollywood productions. Many are ignorant of the staggering amount of great scores by this man, where budgets were penurious (compared to those in L.A.), but inspiration bountiful!

Many are under the impression that the first Leone western -Fistful of Dollars- was scored the way it was due to aesthetic considerations, but that is only a fraction of the truth. In reality, the budget for music was so low, that Morricone had to make do with the whips and the wolf-calls (as opposed to some other economical solution, due to Leone's preference for an unrelated song arrangement by the composer). By the second and third movies, the surprisingly successful musical canvas had been set. 

Oh yeah!!

The last, and for me the greatest film-melodist, has passed. Sadly, he outlived the time when melodic - or great leitmotivic - writing was mandatory in the top echelon of the profession. Devoid of this ability, one could still serve coffee in the studio.

This insignificant farewell, and gratitude for the numerous masterpieces he bequeathed us, I offer as a post scriptum to my previous thread regarding the septic noise that has expropriated such fine music for the last how many decades.

Addio Maestro!

UPDATE: And, of course, throngs of composters have labeled the organiser's exaggeratedly kind and magnanimous advice to the useless as a 'tirade' and a 'rant', and have congested his video with vituperative posts and accusations. 

If only he had read his Bible - "Do not cast your pearls..."

Serves him right for not having held the contest with my requirements.

Hybrid entries were eligible, in fact the winning one was such a score.

Jasen: I would give them made up names but only if I was confident they couldn't discern the music was not recorded with samples. Otherwise, goodbye credibility - if you care for yours with them that is.

Everybody: It's amazing! I've been vindicated! Even one of the organisers of the competition has made a video about the brain-quashing indistinguishability and interchangeability of the entries. Even he felt frustrated enough to do this. Of course he is very nice about it - because he is a nice guy, and he desperately tries in his best way to tell everybody that they are going nowhere by being absolute, unadulterated apes of already bad music (my words of course). He says it more like "Everybody's music was earth-shattering, of really breathtaking quality, however...", and he goes on from there...

What he doesn't understand -he really doesn't understand it, he's not just pretending- is that all these people, all these countless tidal waves of would-bes actually are incapable of writing any other way. It is not by choice they "compose" thusly, it is impossible for them to do otherwise, as any other style requires two things they do not, and will never, possess: a) Talent, b) Proper musical chops. 

If I'm wrong, arrogant, prejudiced, whatever, why don't you hold another contest but deny everyone the percussion section, pre-recorded patches, the arpeggiator, and the spiccato articulation. You do this and I will personally contribute towards the prizes!

I have first-hand experience in this, as for some years I was a producer at our national classical radio. It is tough for me to have an -as much as possible- objective take on this, as the target audience is not really fellow practitioners, but conservative concert-goers. I know, for the calls I answered during the season of one of my broadcasts (the one with the largest audience - 2 hours daily prime time live programme), were over 90% from lay people. I wouldn't play anything by, say Cowell (let alone Stockhausen) during that programme.

On the other hand, many local performers and composers flooded us producers with their CDs, hoping we would include them in our broadcasts. Some of the composers' CDs were digitally realised, and I never played any of them for two reasons: a) I thought the compositions did not merit airing, and b) The instrumental/chamber/orchestral simulations were frankly rank... Thinking back though, I think I played some of Guy Bacos' Christmas piano music some Decembers ago. Piano as a percussion instrument is not the hardest to simulate digitally, Guy does a great job of this, he writes professionally for that instrument (or any other), and I loved his variations. Ah! I just remembered, I played Andy Blainey's incredible rendition of Jeux des Vagues once, just to see whether anybody listening would actually realise it was not an orchestra they were hearing. Nobody called claiming so, or enquired about it. Come to think of it, I may have played one or two of Bill's songs - I can't be sure, too many years ago...

So having said that, and speaking in my capacity as a radio producer, I would be open to including sampled performances in my broadcasts, so long as they were of a certain standard of realism and above. Perhaps you can use me as an example Jasen (after all I did work for the equivalent of BBC3 in Greece - not just some local station, we transmitted nationally), and renew your petition to be programmed and, why not, interviewed.

Bill: You are right of course; I should not just target this film-muzak competition. As a 'serious'-music composer I am very familiar with the industrially cloned free-atonal works that are submitted by the thousands/year in 'serious' competitions. There is no more variation there than I claimed for that competition in the first post. Same complexity-without-a-cause, same extremity of ranges, same boring "extended" instrumental techniques (without a cause again). They too actually believe they are expressing themselves, when it is impossible to find one bar -not one- where that is evident. The "winners" of these get council grants, university appointments, and professional performances. And here I am complaining about some film-muzak mouse-riding, inspiration-patches layering amateurs...

There was one such, recently completed with such a large number of entrants (5-digit number) that -without being privy to the competition's due process- I very much doubt the judging panel heard more than a few seconds of each, more likely they employed a great number of lackeys to filter through the entries and provide them with, say 30 finalists (like I said, I'm guessing here, but I can't imagine busy executives spending a month on 24-hour/day listening sessions...).

At any rate, the main winner and a few consolation entrants were chosen, and very significant prizes awarded.

The reason I am posting this here, is that I listened to about 6-7 entries and, except for the winning entry, the ones I heard could have all come from a single entrant! Not only was the style of composition EXACTLY the same (same language, same mannerisms, same "technique", same orchestration, same tempo, same hit-points treatment, etc.), but most were in the same tonality too, so almost mappable note-for-note! Or at least perfectly superimposable, creating no (additional) cacophony...

Are there really so many film-muzak clones out there? And do they actually entertain notions of possessing a unique musical personality?

Scary...

It is always possible to work with a smaller keyboard, not least due to their capacity for transposing very easily, but this is still too cumbersome for fast work. You can always buy a secondary -even smaller- keyboard for your key switches and additional knobs and such. I am a keyboard player so if you put anything in front of me with fewer than 88 keys I feel uncomfortable - especially if they are also not 'weighted'. I have a M-Audio Keystation 88, which also has many rotary knobs and faders, for a complete control setup.

However, it largely depends on your m.o. If your room cannot accommodate a large keyboard, you have no choice. Personally, if put in such a position, I would exhaust all possibilities in order to fit a full-size keyboard in my workspace. Mine fits and slides from under my desk, and I purchased the desk with that requirement in mind primarily. And with this in mind, you can also imagine the surface space offered by this desk, for everything else...

Bill: That's also what I thought, that's why I shared it. Maybe it would inspire some people to improve their basic skills.

Jasen: Good to hear from you too! Sorry about the mayhem outside the window. I won't discuss politics on this forum, however I believe it is safe enough to voice my conspiratorial conviction that this "pandemic" is very much a laboratory product, great for big money to change hands in a lightning-short amount of time (one of many examples: Italy being stripped off its greatest assets very cheaply to outsiders, and hence lose its muscles in Brussels), for China to get the rap, and as a dress rehearsal for something much more sinister, to gauge reactions ramifications, control, etc.

Keep safe, keep sane!

I'm glad you guys enjoyed this clever diversion as much as I did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_i8qdfW5u8

There is so much atmosphere in all of these, as well as fragility that rivals John Barry's. Can't you find and post the corresponding scenes from the film here Bill?

Servando was a former cronie of this forum, a proper musician, and well within the top 5 orchestral simulators I have heard here. I do miss him...

Of course. Sorry I forgot to mention that little detail.

We are saying the same thing. I doubt it will ever happen no matter how much I wish it. It took how many years the people in Steinberg to create Dorico after they were fired by Avid, and they were specialists...

I think that someday what we want will be realized and with even truer samples as they get better all the time.

Like I said, I have been waiting for over 10 years. Hopefully it won't be another 10...

This was something I had requested myself, maybe over 10 years ago, when there were two big players on the notation market and integration with such programs was lamentable - I don't think it's really great today either. Not anywhere near the degree it should be. I had made that suggestion with the ultimate dream that through continuous development we eventually we would not need a DAW, tracks and regions and articulation lanes. Everything -or almost everything- would be feasible on the page with as much traditional notation as possible. There'd be nothing better for classically trained composers/orchestrators.

A VSL-specific (or not) notation program (of Sibelius et al calibre) with great VE integration would still be desirable but would not be worth the company's effort and expansion; not when there has emerged a strong third player absorbing the customer base, and certainly not when there are so many more orchestral libraries competing today.

Pity, pity, pity (I feel like a character from an Italian opera now).

All the more impressive!

Great fanfare Bill! It ends before you have even got a grip on what's happening, which is always a plus in this sort of pyrotechnical thing! Are you also responsible for the great visual?

Thanks for replying Stéphane,

It's good to hear that OpusModus is a progeny of Symbolic Composer, and indeed, the ability to monitor notation and sound in real time is a great advantage. I just hope that when you say that this platform is not as abstract as the older one doesn't mean that you cannot program in advance model-algorithms for more harmonically and rhythmically complex, advanced/academic computer composition.

Errikos.