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I got a really good start on America’s Next Felon this morning.  Came up with a crushing guitar riff for the main theme and some cool beats for the cue #2 (titled “an upbeat music” ).

The thing that’s daunting about scoring a feature length film is just the sheer amount of music needed.  And every single one of them has to be loved by the director.  I mean, not for the music itself but for what the music contributes to the film.

But you know what?  No matter how much music I need to compose, I do the same thing as always.  Write it one note at a time.  Well, it may be one riff or one groove or whatever.  But you build it little by little.

I get overwhelmed if I’m constantly trying to take in the big picture.  It’s good to have the view from above, of course — but when I’m working, I need to look down and see what’s on my hand.  That’s really all I can do.

I’m about to start working on my next project, the sound track for an indie film “America’s News Felon.”

I always get this when I start a new project — particularly a film project — a slight trepidation of sorts.

Basically, the question is always this: will I be able to make music that the director will like?

I have been making music long enough to know that given enough time, I can always careate good music — at least in my book.  But the tricky part of film music is that I’m writing to someone else’s taste, to serve a different purpose than just plain “make good music.”

Add to the trepidation the pressure of budgets and deadlines — meaning, I’ll have to achieve the desired outcome within constraints of time and money.  Of course, this is nothing new, either — all real world production has limits.  Limits are good — limits are what makes me creative.  Unlimited options scare me.

The only cure, really, is experience.  I have done this before.  And it came out fine, just about every time.

This time will, too.

This morning I uploaded all the mastered files to Marc Gunn’s FTP server. My first remote producing job is now finished! I can’t wait to receive the final product.

Here’s the pre-order page.

After being immersed in a project for a while, there comes a point where I feel that nothing sounds good.

And that is the point at which I need to let go — to abandon it.

Now, “abandon” sounds bad, doesn’t it? It sounds like I’m throwing away a project before it’s finished.

But yet, in my experience, every production needs to be abandoned before it’s completely “finished.” In the other words, you don’t work on it until you reach perfection. You just work on it while you’re still making useful contributions to it, and then stop when you no longer can.

And that has to be good enough.

I am not a perfectionist, not by a long shot. But I do have a standard of when things are “good enough.” On the other hand, “good enough” is also a moving target — it often takes time for unacceptable flaws and adorable imperfections to sort and reveal themselves.

But still, when the time comes where I am so inundated with the music that I can no longer judge whether I’m doing anything good to it or not, then I just have to accept it as good enough at that point and move on.

Now, I don’t mean to say that I am never satisfied with my own work. In fact, quite the opposite — I nearly always do reach a point where I feel that what I have done is good enough or more. That’s a fact I feel proud of, myself.

But at the point of letting go, it always feels like I’m leaving tons of stuff that can be fixed or improved. It always takes time for me to reach a point that what I’ve done is good enough.

I’m at that point with Marc Gunn’s album, Happy Songs of Death. It will be delivered this week.

Director: Gillermo del Toro
Composer: Marco Beltrami

Well, this one was a complete dud for me. I’ve been reading about Mr. del Toro for quite some time, so I was looking forward to checking out this film. There can never be too many superhero films with depth, you know?

Deep, this one isn’t.  Granted, I don’t know anything about the original comic book — so I had no expectation, no background knowledge.  So from a complete novice’s point of view, this film was just another well-packaged eye candy with no meat inside.  There was not a single character worth caring about, giant plot holes galore, and not a moment of the-edge-of-your-seat thrill.  The villain was a bore and visual effects, while impressive, were all predictable.

The only thing that I did like was the visual design — makeup and how everything looked.  Cinematography is good, but set design and makeup were really top notch.  It sure has a distinct feel to it.

Marco Beltrami’s score didn’t really offer anything that stayed in my head after the viewing.  It really was a typical Hollywood fare — constant bombard of operatic gestures, strung together continuously because every scene needed “help” from the music to explain, emote and be believable.  I am a fan of his work on Scream films and his collaboration with Marilyn Manson on the first Resident Evil was rather interesting.  I’m not saying he did a bad job.  A film composer’s work is only as good as the director he’s working with.  So on this film, the director didn’t get him to do anything that caught my attention.

Based on this viewing, I’ll skip the sequel.  I will still check out Pan’s Labyrinth, however.

Director: Sam Mendes

Composer: Thomas Newman

Well, this is only the 2nd time I watch this film.  And it is going to be on my all-time favorite list, and pretty close to the top at that.

First and foremost, the script.  Wow.  How do you assemble such an ensemble of believably, realisticaly quirky characters?  They all seem like people who live next door to you, but yet they are all interesting enough to make you pay attention.  People with hidden agendas and secret desires aren’t exactly rare, but when there are this many of them, the revelations that line up one after another in the 3rd act sure pack a punch.

Secondly, the casting.  Wow.  So spot on, all of them.  Chris Cooper as a rigid Marine father, Mena Suvari as a slutty cheerleader model wannabe.  Annette Benning as an overachieving real estate agent, and a 16-year-old Thora Birch really embodying a character her age.  And everybody’s having a blast — not the least of all, Kevin Spacey.

Cinematography.  Wow.  Is it possible to make generic suburbia look so fresh, so vivid, so deep? Movie studios spend millions creating sets of exotic locations.  Yet, the most beautiful thing in thie movie is a plastic garbage bag.  Flying around in wind.

I just appreciate this film, because it is so understated.  It could have turned into a totally cornball or sleaze fest.  It’s painfully poetic one moment and hilarious the next, without being schizophrenic.  Touching but unpretentious.  No gaping holes in the story that requires audience to be imaginative — yet there’s plenty here that engages your imagination.

Thomas Newman’s score is a pretty sparse affair, which doesn’t mean it’s easy or lazy. I can speak from experience that the process of boiling down music to just the most essential notes and no more is often a very laborious process.  What’s interesting about his score is how liberally ethenic percussions and instruments are used — when the film’s placed squarely in generic white America.  But he uses these instruments out of context — outside of the traditional cultural/stylistical confines — so none of the score sounds ethnic or “world music.”  Just quirky.  I have no idea what instruments were used in the dream bathroom sequence, but it borders on being over the top, just a tad — but it never actually crosses over.  Weird things are being done through music, but there’s plenty of space between notes and music.  Very well done.

I simply can’t believe this is a work of a first-time filmmaker.  Even if he is an experienced stage director, it is just so brilliant that I just can’t believe it can be done.  Sam Mendes — ironically, I understand he’s not American at all — but he certainly made something beautiful.

As I said in a previous post, I find that my process of making music is building up, then tearing down.

Now, when the final music ends up having pretty sparse instrumentation, it doesn’t mean that it takes less work. It often ends up that way only after being built up to the point of saturation, and then carefully letting the excess fall by the way side to leave only the essential notes. Maybe because I’m still developing my craft, but I am not at a point where I can get straight to the essence.

Today I was playing mandolin and acoustic guitar for the last song for Marc Gunn‘s upcoming album “Happy Songs of Death.” It’s an uptempo folk song in E minor — I really love fast folk songs in minor key. It just hits the spot for the rocker in me. So I was banging on my acoustic, busily strumming to add to the momentum of the song — only to realize that it’s too frantic. Marc is an accomplished autoharp player and he is already strumming his massive instrument busily. To add something equally busy is counter-productive.

So I supported the rhythm by adding tracks that accentuate the strong beats in the groove, but is otherwise laid-back. If I mute the driving autoharp, the song would fall apart. But because the these supporting parts are sparser, it somehow makes the whole track feel bigger.

Consider a piece of music to be like a box, and you’re placing balloons in them, which represents notes/parts. If you put just a few balloons in, then each balloons can inflate to big sizes, filling up the space. If you put many balloons, each of the balloons will be small.

Similarly, if you want big sounding record, then you have to hit the right balance of having enough parts to cover all the bases, yet, make them be sparse enough so that each of the notes have room to really vibrate, expand, and bloom.

Now, sparse doesn’t mean less work. It requires different kinds of skill. I was playing this slow arpeggio — which are among the hardest parts to play on an acoustic guitar, as you have to cleanly finger each note, hit them all perfectly, and let the notes sustain. Particularly, the last bit is important — an arpeggio with notes fading or cutting out prematurely simply sounds dry and ineffective.

In any case, I managed to add to the driving momentum of the song by doing everything except strumming busily along with it. It took some experimentation, and what ended up in there was a lot less than what I played, but the result was well worth it.

If I’m going to write some reviews of live gigs, I better have some photos, shouldn’t I?  I’ll try to remember that, the next gig I attend.  I have a decent camera, too.

This last Saturday was International Children’s Festival in downtown St. Paul, so my family and I checked it out.  While the booths they had set up was ho-hum, the live acts were terrific.  We caught the first two acts on Sunday morning.

Rince na Chroi is a Celtic dance ensemble for girls, and they were accompanied by Two Tap Trio.  The girls were extremely well-trained, and I also noticed how relaxed they seemed on stage, with smiles abound on everyone’s faces.  They certainly knew how to put on a good show!

Two Tap Trio was able accompanists, and in particular, I was very impressed by their bodhran player.  A bodhran is an Irish drum that’s about 1.5-2 in diameter and skin only on one side.  Here’s a pretty thorough tutorial on it:

It’s a very, very expressive drum in the hands of an able player, and the skinsman in Two Tap Trio was great. He had dynamics and pocket, and never overplayed. It’s funny because I have produced 3 Celtic folk albums so far, but each time my job was to put in elements that are not traditionally Celtic — so I really am ignorant of what “traditional” Celtic music is supposed to sound like.

Two Tap Trio was very competent and pleasantly understated.  If I were to produce them, I would put them in a nice wooden room, hopefully use abundance of room mics (as well as close mics) and capture them playing live together.

Next up was Up till 2, a pop a capella group.  Now, I am not as unfamiliar with this type of music — after all, I went to St. Olaf, where they have a in-house group called the LimeStones — and I have seen a few groups over the years.  And what strikes me about them is how similar they are to each other.  Not just in terms of their sound, but also in terms of their characters.  These vocal groups tend to attract middle-class, well-educated and slick-looking and sounding guys, unlike most indie rock musicians.

So if they are so similar to each other, what’s Up till 2′s claim to fame?  Well, they had one guy who was the dedicated beatmaker — yes, he made drum sounds using his mouth and a microphone — so their music had beats.  Now, that’s one fundamental way to differentiate themselves from the run-of-the-mill vocal groups.  And the guy was good, too — his rhythm had a nice propelling momentum to it, and he locked in tight with the guy who was singing bass.  They claim to make sounds of a band using nothing but voices, and they did it fairly well, but beyond the “rhythm section” I felt like what fell on top didn’t go quite far enough to support their claims.  If they’re going to reproduce a whole band, they can feature imitations of guitar riffs and horn swells more prominently.

Which brings me to my next point: if I were to produce them, what would I do to further set them apart from other vocal groups?  Most a capella recordings I heard are simple live captures of their performances, but in these guys’ case, I’d try overdubbing and have them fill out their music more with their staple imitation of instruments.  Of course, I’d be careful not to overdo it, so that the live versions of their songs won’t sound thin and disappointing, but a studio is a studio — subtle enhancing on essence is perfectly allowed, in my opinion, even for vocal groups.  It’ll also be interesting to play with different mics and effects on voices.  I’ve never heard of a vocal group who really take advantage of what a studio offers to more regular bands, so that’ll be an exciting experiment.

All in all, they put a very entertaining show — they were animated and energetic on stage, and their chemistry together as a group was apparent.  A good family entertainment, for sure.